Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery has raised concerns about a series of “anti-merger” leaflets he found stuffed in his letterbox this week, warning they could represent a breach of NSW government rules.
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Cr Bradbery said the leaflets – encouraging people to “rally to show your support for Shellharbour City to stand alone” and saying “amalgamation wrong way go back” –were delivered together to his Berkeley home.
When mergers were proposed, the Office of Local Government issued guidelines under the local government act, saying councils should not “exercise their functions or use council resources to oppose or support a merger proposal for personal or political purposes”.
Although the pamphlets both focus on saving Shellharbour – with one bearing the southern council’s logo – Cr Bradbery said he was worried it may look like Wollongong was conducting a “negative campaign”.
“The pamphlets are obviously questioning the proposal,” Cr Bradbery said.
“And it’s up to Shellharbour what they do, but I don’t want Wollongong implicated in their campaign, because we might then be deemed not to be complying with the requirements of the act.”
Explaining his cautious approach, Cr Bradbery said he was worried about the risk of councillors being sacked.
“I can understand the passion [in Shellharbour] but you also have to be extremely careful that being against the proposal doesn’t discredit your submission,” he said.
“I don’t want [Wollongong] to go back into administration. We went through that period and it caused the city to go into a holding pattern for three years.”
The government guidelines dictate say council information campaigns must only inform the community about the merger proposal and “should not involve disproportionate or excessive expenditure or use of council resources”. They “should be conducted in an objective, accurate and honest manner and should not be deliberately misleading”.
Councils may be “surcharged” for a breach of the rules, the guidelines say.
Asked if Shellharbour council distributed the flyers, media officer Caitlin Lewis said “one of the pamphlets isn’t ours”. She would not answer when asked whether the council believed they complied with the local government guidelines, only saying “the poster in question is promoting a public, community event”.
The Mercury was unable to reach Shellharbour mayor Marianne Saliba for comment.
