The Huon Valley Council has been forced to apologise after mistakenly ordering the removal of an election campaign billboard belonging to anti-salmon independent candidate Peter George.
The large election sign on a Claude Neon commercial billboard location at Castle Forbes Bay was taken down earlier this month following council orders sent to the property owner.
The council had claimed the billboard did not comply with exemption provisions for electoral signage under the Statewide Tasmanian Planning Scheme, despite Liberal and Labor candidates having advertised on the same billboard during previous elections.
A lack of communication by council with Claude Neon and Peter George’s team initially led the candidate to believe his sign had been stolen.
“Following community complaints, the Huon Valley Council conducted a review of the election sign located at 4046 Huon Highway to assess compliance with the new Statewide Tasmanian Planning Scheme,” Huon Valley CEO Lachlan Kranz told Pulse last week.
“As a result of this review, Council determined that the election sign does not meet the requirements for an exemption under the Planning Scheme and, therefore, requires planning approval. As this approval had not been obtained, the sign was deemed non-compliant. ”
However, following further questioning by Pulse, a second review determined that billboards with existing planning approval aren’t required to meet new electoral signage provisions.
Kranz has today issued an apology to Peter George and his campaign.
“At the time, council officers, acting in good faith investigated the sign in response to public complaint,” he said.
“Our request for removal was made in error.”
“I contacted Mr George and his team immediately to explain the circumstances and offered my sincere apologies.”
Kranz says the billboard will be reinstated today, with council offering to cover the associated costs.
He said he wants to assure the community that the removal of the sign “was not a politically motivated action”.
“In line with our values of integrity and continuous improvement, we will implement internal process changes to ensure similar errors do not occur in future.”
George accepted the apology but expressed his disappointment over the incident.
“This should never have occurred in the first place as council staff could easily have checked the regulations before taking action,” George said.
“To remove democratic election signage without clear reason and legal authority is an outrageous action and to do so to an independent campaign whose voice often struggles to be heard above the old parties, is deeply disappointing.”
