Dubbo councillor Vicki Etheridge responds to Ben Shields fraud claim

A member of a troubled NSW council has hit back at former mayor Ben Shields who criticised her for uploading an election poster to Facebook after she joined calls for him to resign.

Dubbo councillor Vicki Etheridge has rejected a call for her to resign in the wake of a dispute over an image of an election poster she posted on Facebook.

Last month, Cr Etheridge shared an election poster encouraging people to vote for her and at the bottom poster it said “authorised by B Shields”.

A Facebook post Cr Vicki Etheridge made has been criticised by former Dubbo mayor Ben Shields.

Former mayor Ben Shields took to Facebook to attack Cr Etheridge and messaged her to say he was “going to the police” and that it was “fraud”.

Cr Etheridge had quickly removed the post and in response to Mr Shields’s message, she wrote back saying “lol lol lol”.

The pair were previously close allies and Cr Etheridge was elected as part of the “Ben Shields team” in 2017.

In March this year she joined a majority of other councillors to call for Mr Shields to stand down over alleged conduct concerns.

Before the controversial Facebook post was made Cr Etheridge announced she would contest the next election as a Country Labor representative.

On Wednesday, Mr Shields’s supporter and council election candidate, Mick Catelotti, reignited debate about Cr Etheridge’s Facebook post and called on her to stand down.

“The councillor, despite abandoning the Ben Shields team, has now been caught out trying to look like she is part of his team,” Mr Catelotti claimed.

“While it may be the case that Clr Etheridge is regretting leaving the team, she is not a member so she should not be pretending to be so.

“She should resign immediately. If she refuses to resign, the Labor Party who has endorsed Cr Etheridge should do the right thing and disendorse her.”

Supplied Editorial Dubbo councillor Vicki Etheridge. Picture: Ryan Young

Cr Etheridge told The Dubbo News she had made “an honest mistake”.

“I wouldn’t have deliberately done it,” she said.

“I do regret what’s happened and I feel really bad over it. It wasn’t fraud, it was a stupid mistake.

“I stood up to him, I signed a piece of paper for him to resign so why would I want to be aligned with him again? It beggars belief.”

According to Cr Etheridge, the criticism here was “attention seeking” behaviour from her political rivals.

“I think it’s just attention seeking because there’s going to be a lot of new candidates and they’re clutching at straws to find something to attack me on,” she said.

“The post had only been up for 10 minutes and I took it straight down when I realised the mistake I made.

“It’s just petty and the assertion that I did it to try and cash in on Ben is just absolutely ridiculous. Anyone else without an agenda wouldn’t have paid any attention to it.”

Dubbo council candidate Mick Catelotti.

Mr Catelotti and Mr Shields claimed old election posters used to promote Cr Etheridge’s previous election campaign had contained a different address to the one that featured in the now deleted Facebook post.

They allege the poster Cr Etheridge shared a photo of on Facebook had been edited to include Cr Shields current residential address, which he was not living at when he authorised election posters endorsing Cr Etheridge in 2017.

Cr Etheridge has rejected the claim.

“The last thing I want to do is align myself with that man,” she said.

“I’m fit to serve, that’s why I put my hand up again. I’ve kicked a lot of goals while I’ve been on council, it hasn’t all been Ben kicking the goals, there were other people around the table.”

According to Cr Etheridge, the decision to stand for re-election as a Labor candidate was about going to back to her roots.

“Growing up in a working class family, my family always voted Labor,” she said.

“I voted Labor for years. I got so disillusioned with the politics I dropped out and never bothered again.

“I felt it best to go back to my roots.”

Dubbo Mayor Stephen Lawrence said criticism of Cr Etheridge was “disgraceful” and slammed people for directing an “absolutely disgusting flood of online abuse and vitriol” towards her.

“Ben Shields and Vicki Etheridge used the same printer, the printer in Newcastle assumed Vicki was still on the Ben team and put Ben’s authorisation on the first digital version of her poster,” Cr Lawrence said.