Torched signs and a wacky website: Local council skulduggery rears its head

Campaign corflutes have been slashed and burned across different local government areas and acts of skulduggery and trickery performed in others, as Sydney’s 1437 council candidates enter the final fortnight of campaigning ahead of the September local government elections.

In Hawkesbury, on the north-western fringe of Sydney, Small Business Party councillor Eddie Dogramaci reported his election posters being torched, torn and doused in acid.

Several of Eddie Dogramachi’s corflute signs in the Hawkesbury region appeared to be set alight.

Dogramaci said vandals had destroyed or pulled down many of the 40 to 45 posters he had put up around Windsor, Wilberforce, Kurrajong, Ebenezer and Pitt Town in the past fortnight. The culprits have not been identified.

“I’ve never had this experience. I never thought this would happen in Australia,” he said. “Initially they started throwing acid on them. I saw posters burnt and torched. They’re torching them all along Pitt Town Road. They’ve been pulled down.”

He said he “definitely” believed local Liberal Party supporters were responsible for the damage.

“I was at Wilberforce shops and a woman came up to me and said, ‘I know your face, I support Liberal’, and she showed me her middle finger.”

‘[It was] quite confronting to see your own face slashed.’

Randwick Greens councillor Kym Chapple, whose election signage has been destroyed

He reported the vandalism to Hawkesbury Police but said he would continue his campaign undeterred.

At Maroubra Junction, in the city’s south-east, dozens of posters for Labor and Greens candidates for Randwick City Council were slashed and ripped off poles between late on Tuesday night and early on Wednesday morning. It was only signs for Liberal councillor Daniel Rosenfeld that were left untouched. Again, the culprits have not been identified.

Greens councillor Kym Chapple, whose posters were destroyed, was told about the incident by her husband who noticed them lying across the street on his way to work.

“He said, ‘Warning, you should probably get here and clean these up if you can,’” she recalled. It was “quite confronting to see your own face slashed”.

Left and right: the sliced-up corflute posters around Maroubra Junction. Centre: the only posters left standing.

Chapple, who has been on the council since 2021, said she had not seen such confronting behaviour in previous election campaigns.

“I’ve not seen this before, at this level. It feels particularly aggressive and divisive, and it’s really meant to put you off. It’s intended to intimidate, really.”

Rosenfeld, a current councillor, said he was not aware of the incident and had also experienced some posters of his own being removed near Maroubra Beach.

“I certainly don’t support any [removal of posters].”

Willoughby Mayor Tanya Taylor.Credit: Louie Douvis

Website redirection

The mayor of the City of Willoughby, Tanya Taylor, said she knows nothing about a website domain eerily similar to that of her competitors that is redirecting traffic to her own website.

The Willoughby Community Independents ticket, a group of environmentally minded candidates on the north shore, have been using the website willoughbycommunityindependents.com.au. But if a council watcher dropped the “.au” from the domain, they’d get a surprise: instead of ending up on that group’s website, they’d be redirected to the webpage of Taylor.

Web domain records show willoughbycommunityindependents.com – no “.au” – was registered less than three weeks ago, but the owner of the domain has been hidden.

That prompted outrage from John Moratelli, a Willoughby Community Independents councillor, who said he was “disappointed to find out that people would go to these sorts of lengths to spend the money to register a name, hide their identity and mislead voters”.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Taylor said. “I don’t know how that works, but I can certainly attest to [the fact that] I haven’t done anything.”

“They might be espousing that they are community independents, [I am too] … I’m running my own my campaign, doing what I can to get re-elected.”

Two hours after the Herald first made inquiries about the issue, the URL that was redirecting traffic to the mayor’s website sent users back to the original community independents page.

The preferences saga

Plans have also been hatched in local party rooms across the city to make sure preferences flow against some former friends or common enemies.

In the Sutherland Shire, current mayor Carmelo Pesce, once touted to be a successor to former prime minister Scott Morrison in the federal seat of Cook, only to lose his preselection, quit the Liberal party and then run for council as an independent, is encouraging voters to put their second preferences to Labor.

He is encouraging voters to not put any number on the Liberals’ box.

At the City of Sydney, the Liberal and Labor tickets have found an unlikely alliance in attempting to dislodge long-serving Lord Mayor Clover Moore from office. They will both preference each other over Moore, who is leading her team of Clover Moore’s Independents.

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