"You Can Quote Me On That."
These were the exact words said to me by Radio 2st presenter, Graeme Day, after he told me he had complained to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) about Shoalhaven Councillors "leaking" information to media.
But Day's permission to publish didn't stop him claiming loudly on his radio program that he had spoken off the record only and that my 'tripe' reporting of his information was 'the lowest of the low'.
Mr Day's caustic warnings to his listeners has given me the perfect excuse to dig a little into my 'particular agenda': the truth.
by Cat Holloway
Graeme Day didn't mention my name or Spark's on his Radio 2st rant this week, maybe because he knows that his claims were inaccurate, so naming me would have put his employer at risk of a defamation claim.
It's tempting. But, with so many hard and important questions that need to be asked by Shoalhaven journalists, my schedule is a too crammed for a jelly wrestle with someone who, despite 40 years in radio, doesn't seem to recognise the veracity of an audio recording of a press conference.
Conveniently speaking far more reliably than Mr Day's clouded memory are seven recorded excerpts embedded in the article that Mr Day claimed was "totally utterly not what he (the CEO) said".
A lot of the stuff written by this particular person, I'm telling you now, it is not correct. It is not correct."
The audio from the conference is the reality. But when facts don't reflect a pretty picture of the source, the messenger gets shot down. What's new?
Spark Shoalhaven
In the audio excerpts, for total transparency, I have included my own line of questioning and my debating of the accusations made by Mr Day that media were publishing leaks of private information to "destabilise this Council".
What I edited out was the indignation from the other journalists in the room.
Who is Graeme Day Anyway?
I had never met Graeme Day until Monday's press conference but I was aware of his general support of the Shoalhaven Independents Group (SIG) and Mayor Patricia White alongside his vehement distaste for the Eye on Shoalhaven Council Facebook group initiated by Stephen Prothero.
So, I was curious to find out more about controversial historical claims by a muck-raking Southern Highlands journalist, Adam Greenwood, that Graeme Day had repeatedly leaked, to media, information about some Wingecarribee Councillors, but enthusiastically endorsed others.
Surely, given Day's current concern over Shoalhaven Council leaks and media interference, that couldn't be true?
Adam Greenwood, now the Deputy Editor of True News Weekly, knows Graeme Day from his years reporting for LatteLife magazine, which became The Southern Highlands Express.
He said the editor, Jane King, regularly ran front page stories on information provided to her by Graeme Day about the activities of councillors.
"He began as a whistleblower and ended as an enabler—first helping expose wrongdoing, and later shielding it," said Greenwood.
"I was among several reporters exposing widespread corruption within Wingecarribee Shire Council in the years leading up to the 2016 election. We broke major front-page stories that rattled local power structures.
"Jane King, the paper’s editor, ran LatteLife from her home, where we worked closely.
"Interestingly... nearly all of our stories came from one source: Graeme Day.
"Graeme frequently called Jane to share insider details—his voice so loud I often overheard entire conversations from another room.
"He consistently supplied accurate information about behind-the-scenes misconduct.
"Jane would shape his intel into a draft, and I would turn it into a publishable article. Roughly 90% of his tips became front-page news."
Greenwood said Day changed allegiances after 2016 to be a vocal supporter of Duncan Gair, even after Gair was removed from his position as Wingecarribee Mayor and Commissioner Ross Glover found repeated instances of inappropriate behaviour by some councillors, failures by the governing body to address it, and 'improper interference' in operations by individual councillors.
Greenwood said Day went on to use his radio broadcasts to "tear strips off" Viv May, the administrator appointed to manage Wingecarribee Council after the Council was sacked.
In an interview with Day, Jane King asked him if he truly held people to account on his radio show?
"Well, you’ve got to hold them to account," Day said
"The community is the one that suffers (if you don’t).
"If you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purpose of chasing ghosts in people’s political lives, and suing people and blowing out councils budget as far as legal action is concerned, how can you justify yourself to the community when you can’t fix their roads?"
At another point in that interview, Day said:
"If you’re deliberately flouting the rules of the council or the state government you should be held to account. I don’t care who it is, or what it is, the law needs to be enforced."
Adam Greenwood is currently working on a feature series chronicling his legal and personal ordeal after reporting on Wingecarribee Council's 'institutional corruption within what many now call one of the most disgraceful local governments in NSW history'.
Greenwood promises that his first-hand, gonzo journalism account will be a "searing indictment of abuse of power, censorship, and the weaponisation of the legal system to crush dissent'.
Spark is just one of several journalists Graeme Day has deigned to insult, including former Wingecarribee Mayor, Juliet Arkwright who Day called 'bitter', 'twisted' and 'irrelevant'.
What did Day say here in Shoalhaven?
At Monday's press conference with the Mayor and CEO of Shoalhaven Council, Graeme Day alleged, without any sense of irony:
People are fast discovering Shoalhaven Council's instability is its own making.
Investigators at SafeWork NSW or the Office of Local Government, for example, are certainly not taking instruction from bloggers or reporters.
Graeme Day's history of inserting himself into local council politics and media reporting didn't stop him criticising others for supposedly doing the same.
Day's 'group of media' we can safely assume is Stephen Prothero's Eye on Shoalhaven Council Substack publication and Facebook network of more than 2000 community members discussing and critiquing Shoalhaven's elected body and the organisation as a whole.
Given Spark's numerous articles scrutinising the actions of the Mayor and Council, I'm almost certainly included in Day's suspicions.
But the idea that there is some conspiratorial political collusion between Eye on Shoalhaven Council, Spark and Councillors (or even staff) shows Day doesn't understand that journalists don't exist to manipulate and congratulate power.
We challenge it.
We do so via telephone and email conversations, scouring social media threads, listening to interviews and meetings or by reading publicly available documents that are brimming with revealing details, if you bother to look.
If voices are trying to release hidden information of public interest, the questions should not be who is dissenting and how to shut them up, but what exactly is being said and why so much secrecy in the first place?
During the previous Shoalhaven Council, under Mayor Amanda Findley, Graeme Day didn't apparently fear a threat to government stability by the much larger, vitriol-fuelled Facebook Group Shoalhaven City Council Resident's Complaints.
That group was run by now Councillor Denise Kemp (aka Denise Joy) and promoted various openly anti-establishment public petitions including one to get rid of the Mayor - hilariously still active online.
Day's selective outrage over threats to democracy also didn't seem to extend to SIG campaign misinformation spread so widely prior to the 2024 Council elections.
One man's 'agenda' is another's right to free speech.
Day takes the Mayor's bait.
Graeme Day's hypocrisy and bias was not limited to this topic of supposed leaks.
He fell hook line and sinker for Mayor White's spurious claim that the Minister for Local Government directed the Shoalhaven Council to block previously open communication channels between State and Federal MPs and Council staff.
While we wait for an official response from Minister Ron Hoenig and Liza Butler MP who are in parliamentary session this week, Member for Gilmore, Fiona Phillips, didn't hold back on this matter:
"I am disappointed with the letter jointly signed by the Shoalhaven Mayor and CEO on 14 October 2025, in which they tell me I am not to approach Council staff directly, and must instead go through the Mayor or CEO."
"I was not consulted regarding that direction.
"The direction is unworkable and draconian in nature.
"It is effectively an attempted gag-order on myself as the federal member.
"No other Council in the Gilmore electorate places such a restriction on the federal member of parliament from talking directly with Council staff.
"I referred the Mayoral/CEO letter to the Minister for Local Government on 16 October 2025.
"As the elected federal member for Gilmore I will continue to talk with all of my constituents to enable delivery of commitments, in the best interests of people and local organisations.”
You can take the boy out of politics, but...
Graeme Day's allegations about institutional leaks and media collusion was a lost opportunity for the new CEO, Andrew Constance, to prove his apolitical ambitions and capacity to be a fair, measured public service administrator.
Mr Constance was firm in his answer to my question on the facts of the elimination of Council's Environmental Services section and major changes to those staff.
But, compare this with the way the CEO embraced Graeme Day's allegations and calls for an investigation into the Mayor's claims of a documented leak.
It was unclear whether the said 'leak' came from staff or Councillors, what privacy was breached and whether there were other cases to justify so much debate.
But in one breath, the CEO spoke about trusting his staff and bearing the brunt of criticism against them.
Then in the very next moment he repeated his 'zero-tolerance' of leaks and again that he would use undetermined 'means and ways to obviously follow that through'.
Given how long Council staff have been walking on eggshells worried about holding onto their jobs since some loud Shoalhaven Independents Group campaigners in the community started braying about “culling” staff two years ago, it was disturbing how quickly Mr Constance leapt up to play the fearless enforcer.
Imagine if the CEO had responded to Graeme Day's request for investigation thus:
I won't react publicly to rumour, especially when we are here to discuss difficult staff redundancies.
If there is evidence of leaks of confidential information, I will consider why that is the case and how I can improve the culture throughout Shoalhaven Council so it doesn't happen again.”
But, so far, it seems that you can take the boy out of politics, but you can’t take the politics out of the boy.
Amid so many pious calls for confidentiality, it's worth remembering that the purpose of the Local Government Act regarding confidentiality is to protect privileged information or individual privacy.
But the Act specifically 'does not allow councils to make secret decisions' or protect the institution from 'embarrassment' or 'loss of public confidence'.
