Feud between Golden Plains Shire mayor Owen Sharkey and local resident headed for court

A Golden Plains Shire councillor who felt he was targeted by a group of ‘online trolls’ in the lead up to elections last year is seeking an intervention order against a community advocate he claims was behind the group.

A bitter feud between a Golden Plains Shire councillor and an outspoken community advocate started in a modest setting but will escalate to the Magistrates’ Court this week. David Cairns finds out how the matter escalated.

The tale of why a Bannockburn councillor is currently seeking an intervention order against a passionate community activist seems to have started at a bowls club two years ago.

A whopping 300 people showed up at Inverleigh that night.

Motivated by Andrea Bolton, the town’s most determined advocate, they went to register their protest against plans to change the town’s streetscape being proposed by Golden Plains Shire, then being led by mayor Owen Sharkey.

There are different accounts of what was said, or not said, as people mingled after that meeting, but two years later the fallout is continuing, and has escalated to an unlikely legal proceeding with Cr Sharkey, a local real estate agent, now alleging he needs a personal safety intervention order to protect he and his family from harassment from Ms Bolton.

Andrea Bolton. Picture: Mark Wilson

In the lead-up to last year’s council election, Cr Sharkey told the Geelong Advertiser that he was the victim of an aggressive campaign by online trolls.

On Friday, Cr Sharkey did not wish to say much ahead of his application to the court, except that he would present his evidence to it and that it had nothing to do with the bowls club meeting which he described as “a separate matter”.

But as the subject of the proposed order, Ms Bolton alleges that she had been robbed of being the true victim in the saga with the bowls club incident key.

Ms Bolton alleges that about 9.30pm as the meeting wound down, Cr Sharkey accused her, or “her group” of making death threats to him and his young family.

She is adamant she did no such thing.

She has a high profile witness to the exchange and two years later she still wants a public apology.

Golden Plains Mayor Owen Sharkey. Picture: Peter Ristevski

Fuelling Ms Bolton’s determination for an apology is that following the bowls club meeting, she says there was a campaign of hatred against her that ultimately led to intrusions at her isolated property.

As evidenced by the numerous successful community campaigns she has orchestrated (the streetscape plan was ultimately shelved), Ms Bolton, who is battling breast cancer, is not one to shy from a contest.

In pursuit of the apology Ms Bolton said she had contacted Cr Sharkey via his council email and his council-oriented Facebook account on a dozen or so occasions without getting a response.

On February 3 this year, she emailed Cr Sharkey and his six fellow councillors on the subject of “Owen Sharkey – Accusations of me making death threats to his family”.

Cc’d in to that email were the shire CEO, the “inquiries” email at the shire and two MPs.

The gist of the email is that she hopes the group of newly-elected councillors “will finally resolve this issue”.

“The only way this can be resolved is for Cr Sharkey, who has made no attempt to have the police investigate those very same death threats, is for a public, written statement to be made by him, issuing an apology to me acknowledging that no such accusations were ever made by me,” she wrote in the email.

Following that email, Cr Sharkey applied for the intervention order which Ms Bolton said reads:

“The social media posts and emails are derogatory and are seriously affecting my professional and personal life.

“Ms Bolton continuously and consistently spreads defamatory comments and spreads lies using Facebook

“This harassment is ongoing, relentless and I consider it actually stalking.”

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Originally published as Feud between Golden Plains Shire mayor Owen Sharkey and local resident headed for court