by Cat Holloway /
A perfect storm has blown the Shoalhaven Greens way off course in a sea of conservative councillors set to take control of Council following last weekend’s local government election.
For the first time in 20 years, no Greens candidate will sit on Shoalhaven Council, while the Shoalhaven Independents Group (SIG) will have two candidates in each of the three wards.
Not even Labor candidates sneaking into one seat in each ward could rain on the SIG parade with the party’s leader, Patricia White, definitively winning the Mayoral race, garnering more than 46% of the vote so far.
Second-place Mayoral candidate Jemma Tribe, at nearly 36%, conceded defeat on Tuesday and congratulated Patricia White on her successful campaign. Tribe earned enough votes to become a Ward 2 councillor alongside the other Team Tribe Independents (TTI) lead candidates from Ward 1 and 3.
Trailing in third place was Green’s Kaye Gartner, with 17.40% of the Mayoral vote so far. Gartner did not contest a councillor position - a decision that may have cost Shoalhaven Greens their best shot at a Council seat since polling outcomes appeared to rest heavily on name familiarity with many voters saying they did not know most candidates.
Current vote tallies are updated here. Official results will not be declared for another couple of weeks - after postal votes are in, preferences distributed and recounts completed.
Wasted Preferences
Even if the final counts reveal a large number of preferences for Jemma Tribe from Kaye Gartner supporters, it will not be enough to pip Patricia White at the Mayoral post. All three Mayoral runners officially campaigned for voters not to use their preference vote and instead mark only the box of their chosen candidate.
That was possibly a grave mistake for Jemma Tribe. It was clear early in the campaign that Patricia White and SIG were out for Green blood, so a strategic collaboration between conservative Tribe and progressive Gartner could have changed the Mayoral outcome. But hindsight is, as they say, 20-20.
Lies circulated widely during the campaign asserted that Jemma Tribe and TTI “made preference deals” with the other Mayoral candidates and political parties. Many angry (and misinformed) voters appeared not to understand that preferences are optional in NSW local government elections but are also a way to make individual votes potent after first-round counts.
Shoalhaven Greens and Labor campaigned for supporters to second preference each other in the councillor ballot. But for Mayor, Gartner said Greens members discussed “at length” the issue of preferences before deciding not to encourage voters to preference either of the two Mayoral opponents "based on our understanding of what was on offer."
“There was no other candidate whose values we could examine, or whose policy position, as we understood it, could be seen to reflect social justice or environmental sustainability,” Gartner said.
This election saw more Greens than ever elected to councils around NSW. But Shoalhaven has the pundits stumped as most expected three Greens councillors would be among an even spread across all four parties/groups.
Ben Raue of The Tally Room, predicted the same but noted Shoalhaven’s “precarious progressive majority…built on the peculiarities of the local electoral system and division within conservative ranks.”
So, what went wrong for the Greens? And how did SIG get it so right?
As the military maxim from ancient Greece goes, 'In war, truth is the first casualty.' This election campaign was certainly a crusade hard-fought on Shoalhaven streets and in social media where truth was hard to find.
Neither Greens nor Labor addressed the left bashing seriously enough or early enough. Nor did they recognise how the moderate demeanour of Team Tribe candidates could spread the progressive vote - an angle open to leveraging and an opportunity to show voters that independents and political parties can collaborate.
Well-known Liberal or Lib-aligned figures like Shelley Hancock, Joanna Gash and cancelled Mayoral hopeful Paul Ell came out swinging on mainstream and social media as endorsing their old rival, SIG, apparently now united in the goal to get rid of Greens.
Gareth Ward MP was typically strident on Facebook, in news reports and even on the floor of parliament, urging people to “put Greens last” because they are “nasty parties” who do “nothing but damage”.
The person with the most experience copping anti-Green rhetoric was outgoing Mayor Amanda Findley. She was finally, just days before the election, driven to call out Patricia White over claims of financial expertise and honesty after ABC Illawarra reported that White’s failed past businesses had left her with unpaid court-awarded legal costs - a publicly recorded judgment White vigorously denied.
Findley was immediately slapped with a long letter from White’s lawyers threatening defamation.
This litigious reaction raised many eyebrows given the relentless degree of personal attack and extreme criticism directed at Findley from SIG candidates and supporters during Findley’s 16 years on Council and this campaign.
Findley said exhaustion from facing such vitriol was the main reason for her retirement. That May announcement arguably signed the Greens’ death warrant, as the right seemed to have beaten the left before the game even got started.
Greens local government spokesperson Amanda Cohn referenced Shoalhaven’s rolling natural disasters over the last five years, acknowledging (SMH Sept. 16) that Shoalhaven voters were “looking for change after the difficult times they’ve been through.”
“It’s been a really tough time to be an incumbent on that council."
Much of the Greens and Labor campaign was spent rebutting misinformation from SIG and connecting with existing grassroots supporters.
Only Mayoral candidate Kaye Gartner was willing to confront Council’s debt with a revenue-raising proposal to implement 'Visitor Paid Parking'. Despite being operational in other councils and embraced by some Shoalhaven communities overwhelmed by tourist pressure on local facilities, the primal fear of parking fines proved a hurdle too high even for Gartner’s agility.
By pre-poll, the “antagonism and hatred from one group” was at a fever pitch, according to Labor’s Ward 2 lead Ben Krikstolaitis, who administered an often argumentative Elections Discussion page on Facebook.
Jemma Tribe’s group was also targeted online and at polling, with police called to manage angry behaviour towards Team Tribe Independents volunteers outside one booth location.
Adding to the final-week drama was a Vincentia community incensed with SIG’s Bob Proudfoot over the sudden closure of Vincentia Golf Club. But even shock over a SIG volunteer campaigner who attended Wollongong court preparing to plead guilty to possessing 102 child abuse material files did not detract from SIG's message to voters.
The Long View
For the Shoalhaven Independents Group, battle lines were drawn after the 2021 election when, for the first time in decades, conservative control gave way to the progressive partnership of six Green and Labor councillors plus Amanda Findley as a progressive Mayor who narrowly won a second term. If you are interested in a historical and statistical context, read Ben Raue’s The Tally Room.
Patricia White campaigned unsuccessfully for Mayor in 2021 but this time SIG was united behind White for Mayor. Based on White’s record-breaking expenses and claims of tireless attendance at community events throughout the entire Shoalhaven region (not just her ward), many argued that White has been campaigning for the top Council job since she became a councillor in 2012.
With the vast majority of voters disengaged or confused about local council elections, White’s networking commitment and name recognition might have been enough to get the win. Many winced at White’s branding herself as 'The People’s Mayor’, noting White would ‘go to the opening of an envelope’.
But White and SIG were hungry for more than a win. They wanted the Greens to lose. A negative mantra formed the foundation for SIG’s entire campaign: Shoalhaven Council is a disaster and it’s all the Greens’ fault.
Sport and the Animal Brain
One of SIG’s first press releases tapped into a love of sport to stir up fear of a Green/Labor conspiracy to steal away our rights.
The 'No Charge for Sport' campaign set the tone for the months ahead, claiming to reveal an “outrageous tax on our sporting community” that would see "all sports, men, women, young people and kids" be charged a participation fee.
SIG also claimed that a spectator fee would hit "all those wanting to watch their children, grandchildren or relatives play sport" with volunteers cast dramatically in the role of "tax collectors for the Council."
Of course, this was rebutted, as was SIG’s equally false claims of an impending 44% rate rise, secret background deals to overstaff Council, a desire to allow trees to fall on vulnerable residents, the worst potholes in the state and auditors threatening to place Council into administration. Interestingly, true information about Council’s failed waste recycling ambitions grabbed less public attention than the much simpler fake spin.
None of this playbook surprises Australian political historian and author Dr Chris Wallace, a Professor at the University of Canberra and former press gallery journalist.
Wallace wrote How to Win an Election to illuminate ways conservatives win most elections and what progressives must do to end what she calls their ‘hit and hope mentality’.
“Democracy only really works when there is a strong level of performance on both sides,” Wallace said in a State Library interview.
“I just don’t buy it - the idea of Australians as innately conservative or averse to change.
“Australians have a record of recognising quality policy…they are open historically to things that are for the greater good.
“But you have to sell it.”
Wallace said progressives consistently display a "poor level of basic political craft", whereas conservatives "tap into our animal brain".
“They have taken deep into their bones that what moves voters is emotion - especially fear.”
“They are willing to abandon facts, reason, science - so yesterday in their book.
“While the progressives earnestly keep dealing in facts and reason, thinking it’s enough.
“Hello, wake up! Until the progressive side of politics realises that you’ve got to harness emotion to comprehensive, full-blooded policy, they are going to keep getting their dials wiped.”
“Meanwhile, the planet is continuing to get toasted.”
Wallace said emotion and connection can, and has in the past, come from vision and authenticity, but she said you need ‘substance and theatre’ to make people want to listen to you.
She said if progressives could fix just one thing in their campaigning, it would be to up their social media game.
“Progressives are so far behind conservatives in understanding how to use social media.”
“Conservatives have basically occupied Facebook…using networks of mutually reinforcing propaganda aided and abetted by external actors."
Wallace suggested emulating the format of television sports shows and managing political parties more like top sporting codes to engage the populace.
“The more people involved in politics, the better it works.”
What's Next?
In Shoalhaven, a failure to inspire or educate young voters showed in this year’s large percentage of informal votes. The Liberal Party stuff up in registering candidates on time is another factor in informal voting and in consolidating the conservative vote behind Patricia White and SIG.
The ‘no politics in council’ sentiment also emboldened those running under an increasingly fashionable independent brand, even though The Shoalhaven Independents are, in fact, a registered political party with a very clear pro-developer anti-environment ideology.
Shoalhaven Council’s 2040 strategic statement identified two management directions: economic growth and nature/heritage. With so many business-minded representatives elected now, the first direction is sure to gain attention.
But Shoalhaven’s clean and scenic beaches, bays, estuaries, forests and rivers are consistently listed as the main reason people live in and visit the Shoalhaven.
Multiple Shoalhaven Council awards in the last two years for sustainability, renewable energy innovation, Indigenous representation, tourism, water, community infrastructure and leadership did not cut through the negative narrative.
So, how will Shoalhaven’s environment fare over the coming four years without any Greens on Council?
Labor has a strong track record supporting environmental and Indigenous interests. But the three genuine independents, including Jemma Tribe, also stated during the campaign a commitment to environmental protection and sustainable development.
So, even if it is true that the Greens are no longer just an environment party, protecting the environment is no longer just a Greens ideology.
That’s something to look forward to in Shoalhaven’s new Council.
