Denial does not make it right

A local newspaper did not allow the right of reply to the Mayors letter so here it is. Of course Kwinana Council's and Kwinana Industries massive advertising budget would not have anything to do with the seemingly bias of our media would it?

In refernece to the issue of Kwinana's Mayor Carol Adam's denial of any Conflict of Interest in her public praise supporting her husband's employer, (the KIC ) and her attempt in your newspaper, to deflect from that, by counter claiming that I was guilty of "turning a positive into a negative"

Denial does not make it right.

Mayor Adams' attempt to spin the story to suit her denials, only serves to muddle the issue, because at no time did I criticise the Kwinana Industry Council, the education program itself or the fact that it is funded by corporate industry.

However what I did attempt to point out, is that in my view (and I’m positive that I’m not the only one) the Mayor does have a conflict of interest when it comes to the corporate giants that make up Kwinana Industry, because it is her husbands job as Director of the representative body of that collection of corporate giants (KIC), to make Kwinana industries look good in the eyes of the community; and that their inherent 'goodness' far outweighs any adverse health impacts their operations may inflict on the local Community.

Surely Mayor Adam's interests in promoting her husband's employer, should ALWAYS be declared in such as material distributed for public consumption and advertising, where she is quoted, or is likely to be quoted.

It is not irrelevant as she complains that her comments were used in an advertisement paid for by Kwinana Industry. It is 100% entirely relevant.

It is also relevant to there being a conflict, as she was quoted in the advert as saying that she “cannot stress enough how lucky the Kwinana Community was to be in close proximity to the most important industrial area in Western Australia"; She did not state that it only applied to those involved in the program, and not those members of the general “Kwinana Community,” That indicates that she was referring to us all.

The Kwinana Council after years of pure denial, now finally admit to our concerns that there are serious health and social disadvantage issues within the Kwinana Community but still blindly denies that those issues could have anything to do with Kwinana Industry pollution.

Sadly I cannot see any signs of the major change required to find and reduce those likely unjust and costly impacts.

It is simple - Mayor Adams should always declare the conflict of interest she has between her Office of Mayor and corporate industry. Or is that too much to ask?