by Sahar Foladi
Greater Dandenong Council has set up a “hot spot team” to remove a “prolific” spree of illegally-installed election signs, including a Greens candidate whose corflutes were found nailed onto trees.
The issue was also brought to light at a council meeting on Monday 28 April by Labor councillor Lana Formoso.
She had asked council to conduct a “sweep” particularly of council parks, reserves and trees to remove “unsolicited materials”.
Cr Formoso also noted “some pretty horrific material” such as “extremely disgusting” banners targeting a candidate.
This was presumably a reference to homophobic banners on 11 April, which were removed and being investigated by Victoria Police.
Council’s chief executive Jacqui Weatherill said council had sent correspondence to all the candidates on the issue and dispatched a “hot-spot team” to remove corflutes from council-owned property.
“We’ve had quite a few reports from various people about signs in inappropriate locations.
“We’ve sent out correspondence to all the candidates but many of them are also on private land or state government land so we’ve contacted Vic Roads and others to remove a lot of them.”
She says the council is managing the “topical issue” as best as they can.
“They’re very prolific at the moment. It’s hard to keep up with the volume.”
Bruce Greens candidate Rhonda Garad, who is on leave from her Greater Dandenong councillor duties, said she hadn’t been aware of her corflutes being nailed into trees on Stud Road, Dandenong North – which were a “one-off mistake”.
“We had someone go hunt for it and remove it.
“I didn’t notice it at all, but if I just assumed that anything that was out there was attached (not nailed).
“We’ve got lots of ties, and that’s what we do – so we must have just had a very zealous volunteer and soon as we were aware we’d put it down.”
Garad who is endorsed by Muslim Votes Matter said some of her older volunteers don’t speak English very well but they’re kind enough and do their best.
“So we tell them, don’t put them on public places and nail anything.
“Sometimes it’s hard to sort of control what they do.”
She says they’re being “very careful” and mentioned two corflutes “accidentally” put on a bridge which were taken down as soon as they knew about it.
