August 3 2011: Coast mayoral race's dirty tricks

Coast mayoral race's dirty tricks
Matthew Killoran
August 3 2011

THE wife and a friend of a sitting Gold Coast City councillor have been linked to social networking pages purporting to represent mayoral candidate David Power.

Mr Power said the fake Facebook sites, and an unrelated series of Twitter accounts and blogs, were evidence the mayoral campaign was getting dirty.

The creator of some of the Facebook sites, Steve Davis, said he did it to be obstructionist, satirical and to stop Mr Power from becoming mayor.

Mr Davis is a long-time associate of and financial contributor to Councillor Peter Young, who is expected to run for the top job, while Cr Young's wife Karen Young was a member of one of the fake David Power Facebook pages.
Mrs Young cut her association with the page when the matter was raised with her husband yesterday afternoon.

Cr Young said he was unaware of the sites or that his wife was a member of one and Mr Davis said his friend did not know about his actions.

Mr Power, a former Gold Coast council deputy mayor, said two Twitter accounts presenting as being his had been shut down.

One account was blank, while the other made `controversial and offensive' statements.

He said there was a blog, davidpower4mayor.blogspot.com, which listed Gold Coast Bulletin articles covering the 2005 Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry into the Gold Coast City Council and Mr Power, but not articles about him being cleared.

There is no suggestion Cr Young is linked to the sites.

"They haven't put all the information up so it's defamation by malicious intent," said Mr Power.

There are similar "blogspot" sites for confirmed mayoral candidate councillor Susie Douglas, as well as potential candidates councillor Eddy Sarroff, Cr Young and former federal MP for Forde Brett Raguse, but they are blank.

There is little love lost between Cr Young and Mr Power; documents made public by Cr Young launched the 2005 CMC investigation that looked into a voting bloc led by the former deputy mayor.

Mr Power was found to have no case to answer.

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Mr Power said he had subpoenaed the search engine Google to find out who was behind the fake blog and any other sites using his registered campaign name "David Power 4 Mayor".

"I'm making it pretty clear that anyone who goes down this path has to have big pockets," he said.

"I let them get away with it in the 2004 election; I won't be letting that happen again."

While Mr Power said he was aware of three fake Facebook pages, Mr Davis said the mayoral candidate didn't do his research because "there are about 12 of them".

Mr Davis said he was responsible for the blank Twitter account, but did not post any comments and had nothing to do with the fake blog.