Friday 14 March 2008

Negative is their middle name

Byrne is up to the only trick he can muster in the last hours of the campaign.
It what seems to be an unlimited advertising budget from his developer mates, he's taken out negative advert after negative advert. Seems that $5,000 for another full page is nothing for looking after his big donor mates for another four years.
Val Schier was talking about the costing policy and said that having a vision is important. Kevin Byrne does not have a vision. He certainly hasn't articulated it to the community
A Cairns 1st council will not raise rates and instead will put in place and be guided by a Rates Reference Group to ensure that there is greater equity in rating systems across the region.

Cairns Regional Council Mayoral candidate, Val Schier, has spoken out in response to the full-page negative advertising that has been authorised by the current Cairns City Council Deputy Mayor, Terry James, for Kevin Byrne and the Unity team.

"It's disappointing that the Unity team, with all the power of incumbency, has stooped to a dishonest smear campaign in the last days of the election campaign," said Ms Schier.

"I have made it clear that rates will not be raised and that our commitments will be funded from the existing budget," she said.
"There is a lot of room for re-allocation of existing budgets.

"For example, why would we go ahead with stage two of the $38 million Botanic Garden upgrade when suburbs require rates to be used for footpaths and drains that need to be unblocked?"

Schier said that progressive councils on the Sunshine Coast and in Townsville had rating systems that do not just rely on Unimproved Capital Value evaluations set by the state Department of Natural Resources.

"This Council has been using a blunt instrument in an attempt to maximise revenue raising and has not taken into account the needs of ratepayers, particularly pensioners and those on fixed incomes."

Schier said that she and her Cairns 1st candidates have run a clean, focussed, grass roots campaign and can't hope to compete with the big budget dishonest advertising of the developer-backed Unity team.

It looks like they are running scared as the general population have seen through this.
"The people of the Cairns region are smart enough to see through this latest scare campaign and I have confidence that they won't be swayed and will vote for a change and new leadership this Saturday," Val Shier says.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

King Boob has pronounced that only he can put rates up ... Queen Vivacious is not allowed to copy me he snarled