Public meeting declared off the record by Labor campaign

A PUBLIC forum was held with some of the Corangamite candidates in Torquay last week – but this reporter is unable to tell you anything that was said as it was declared off the record at the request of the Australian Labor Party.

The April 23 meeting, held at the Spring Creek Reserve Clubrooms, was organised by Rural Australians for Refugees and the Combined Refugee Action Group.

All Corangamite candidates were invited, and Labor’s Libby Coker, independent Damien Cole, Simon Northeast from the Greens and Neil Harvey from the United Australia Party attended.

Incumbent Liberal MP Sarah Henderson did not attend, and Naomi Adams from the Animal Justice Party was going to attend but was prevented by a last-minute work commitment.

Upon arriving at the venue, forum moderator Mary Bremner told this journalist that the ALP campaign team had requested that the meeting be off the record to allow the candidates to talk openly on the issues of refugees and asylum seekers.

Speaking to this journalist in the days after the meeting, Ms Bremner offered this explanation.

“On the day of the meeting, the ALP campaign team requested that the meeting be ‘off the record’ after I asked for their permission for an RMIT journalism student to record it,” she said.

“I was persuaded by their argument that this would allow the candidates to speak more freely on the issue. They did not state that this was a condition of Libby Coker’s participation.

“I did not see anything unusual in this and did not think that it would prevent the media from reporting the event, as there would still be the opportunity to speak to the candidates at the end of the night and get ‘on the record’ quotes if that was what was needed.”

The ALP campaign team have not responded to questions from this newspaper about why they did not want the meeting recorded.