Jim Welsh
Complaint re: Examiner misquoting wording of Elector Poll while reporting its wording is confusing …
Mr Jim Welsh
George Town Council elector poll co-lodger
Good morning Jim,
I refer to your emails in which you request the provision of a ‘preamble’ to be distributed with the ballot papers for the George Town elector poll which is to be conducted on issues associated with the proposed pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.
I have considered your request and have decided to adopt the same approach as used, without complaint, for the recent similar elector poll conducted for the Hobart City Council. That is, I will not be providing a summary of agreed facts, or ‘yes’ or ‘no’ cases with the ballot papers for this elector poll.
The basis of my decision is that the issues are extremely complex, involve 4 questions and have been widely canvassed.
The purpose of the poll is to gauge the opinion of George Town electors, in a properly conducted secret ballot, on issues which have been publicly debated for some years.
I see little prospect of preparing a statement of agreed facts on these issues and I do not believe it would be possible for either side of the debate to do justice to the issues on the one page format you suggest, particularly in the short time available.
Regards,
Bruce
Bruce Taylor
Electoral Commissioner
Tasmanian Electoral Commission
Level 2, Telstra Centre, 70 Collins Street, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
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From: [email protected]
Date: 05 Jan 2008, 09:33:48 AM
Subject: More re: Preamble for George Town Council pulp mill elector poll
Hi Bruce,
Thank you for considering the addition of a preamble to the elector poll. Talking with Julian Type back in early December, we had just assumed that a preamble would by default be allowed and furthermore that the choice regarding whether a preamble would be included, would be with the lodgers of the petition. For that reason, by the time we heard from you that a preamble was not to be included, we had already written the anti-mill side of the preamble as well as asking Chris McIndoe to arrange for the pro-mill side of the preamble to be written.
Written media seems to be where most people in the xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” / George TownMunicipalityget their information from. See results of survey done in George Town regarding “What type of Medium do You get Your information from?” at http://www.journalinc.net/Poll%20Results.htm
So we consider that likely bias in the Examiner, compared to the Mercury’s pulp mill coverage, does hinder George Town Council electors from having access to the full facts. TV and radio coverage helps to address this imbalance however newspaper seems to be the predominant form of media from which most George Town residents get their information from (83% according to the George Town Journal local newspaper publication’s survey). Incidentally, the George Town Journal is edited by George Town Councillor Dr Tim Corey who was retained by Gunns to promote the pulp mill via a series of TV ads ! The Journal is considered by us to be a mouthpiece of the pro pulp mill lobby.
George Town township in particular, as a subsection of the municipality, has a culture which generally does not encourage free and open discussion regarding the pulp mill. Those in favour of the proposed pulp mill are pretty vocal against anyone who expresses any opposition to the project. In fact those within the generally far more silent anti-mill lobby quite often expect to be discriminated against by the local council. George Town is a relatively low socio economic area with a lot of residents living in housing commission homes. There is also an above average rate of poor adult literacy. Anyone searching for explanation regarding inconsistencies in what they have heard, and who does not have easy access to or familiarity with the internet, can find it somewhat difficult to get access to balanced printed coverage regarding the pulp mill unless they regularly read the Mercury. This has been evident when talking with George Town residents during door-to-door gathering of the petitions’ signatures (i.e. 600 signature public meeting petition in August and 383 signature elector poll petition in late November). Clear summaries of the Yes and No cases on a single A4-sheet is seen as assisting them in reaching a decision when voting in the elector poll.
I had to amend that email I sent you on Thursday evening. A printed copy with a correction that pro-pulp mill supporter Chris McIndoe was not actually an elector poll petition signatory, was mailed down to you on Friday. Chris McIndoe was very grateful though when we contacted him in early January prior to hearing from you regarding the preamble, to ask if he would arrange for the For-the-mill section of the preamble to be written. The good thing about having the two sides of the preamble on opposite sides of the same A4 sheet is that no elector will have access to only one side of the preamble.
Regards,
Jim
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From: Bruce Taylor
Date: 04 Jan 2008, 12:18:33 PM
Subject: Re: Preamble for George Town Council pulp mill elector poll
Good afternoon Jim
Thank-you for your email regarding the addition of yes and no cases.
I will consider your request and comments and reply early next week.
Regards Bruce
Bruce Taylor
Electoral Commissioner
Tasmanian Electoral Commission
Level 2, Telstra Centre, 70 Collins Street, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
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To: Bruce Taylor
From: [email protected]
Date: 03 Jan 2008, 04:40:48 PM
Subject: Preamble for George Town Council pulp mill elector poll
Dear Bruce,
I am sending you this email from my alternate email account ([email protected]) as there are currently problems for me accessing my Bigpond account.
Following our telephone discussion this afternoon around 3PM, I have consulted with the other two elector poll petition co-lodgers as well as Chris McIndoe who is a pro pulp mill signatory of the elector poll petition. They are all of the view that a preamble for the elector poll is a desirable thing in view of the vast array of information scattered from a number of sources. I have reconsidered my position and am now in agreement with them. I therefore request that the elector poll include a preamble. Following discussion with these people, we are of the opinion that a single A4-double-sided sheet would be sufficient with one side summarising arguments in favour of the anti-mill case and the other side with arguments in favour of the pulp mill.
We think that possibly as a result of your Hobart-centric view, you may feel that the information already available makes a preamble unnecessary. However in George Town Municipality, we have noticed that the Examiner seems very selective when it comes to covering the arguments against the pulp mill. Furthermore, you probably have not had Gunns Ltd advertising extensively in the Mercury with what the petition co-lodgers consider to be propaganda-style claims regarding the impacts of the proposed pulp mill.
An elector poll preamble is more justified in the case of an elector poll for George Town Municipality in view of what we consider to be the incomplete presentation of the arguments against the pulp mill by the Examiner. Having read the Mercury, this doesn’t seem to be the case for Hobart’s primary newspaper. However, not all that many people in George Town Municipality read the Mercury regularly.
So I therefore ask that you reconsider your decision to exclude a preamble from the elector poll based on Hobart City Council having done so for their October council election pulp mill elector poll. Please let me know at your earliest convenience what your decision on this will be as we are intent on having the preamble in the elector poll mailout and if need be will pursue the matter further.
Sincerely,
Jim Welsh
George Town Council elector poll petition co-lodger
