Controversial Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg wins Joy Baluch award for women in local government

ONKAPARINGA Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg has won a prestigious women’s leadership award, despite her own councillors refusing to back her nomination.

Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg. Picture: Stephen Laffer

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ONKAPARINGA Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg has won a prestigious leadership award, despite her own councillors refusing to back her nomination.

Ms Rosenberg was last night awarded the Local Government Association’s Joy Baluch award, which is given to a female who has made a significant contribution to their council and community in the past year.

Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg is a passionate Port Adelaide fan.

The Australian Local Government Women’s Association SA nominated Ms Rosenberg after Onkaparinga Council knocked back her nomination in January.

The association’s president Betty Gill, also a Salisbury councillor, said Ms Rosenberg was a good leader and worthy of the award.

“Even with the adverse publicity that emanated from her council, she has held her head high and continued on,” Cr Gill said.

“She has tenacity, fight and stands up for women in particular, and that has been amazing.”

The Joy Baluch award is named after the long-serving Port Augusta mayor, who died of cancer in May 2013.

The award’s criteria stipulates nominees must demonstrate “extraordinary leadership”.

Only five of Onkaparinga’s 14 councillors present at the January meeting voted in favour of nominating Ms Rosenberg, who is also LGA president.

At the time, Cr Don Chapman said Ms Rosenberg had “been divisive” and that her leadership “had not been beneficial” to the council.

In February last year, Ms Rosenberg came under fire because the council had paid chief executive Mark Dowd’s joining fee at Kooyonga Golf Club and then tried to hide it from ratepayers – a decision criticised in a report by the State Ombudsman Wayne Line.

A panel of women, which Ms Rosenberg was not a part of, assessed the nomination.

Ms Rosenberg has been contacted for comment.