I believe honesty, transparency and integrity should be at the heart of everything an elected representative does for their community and I like to lead by example.
In every council election I have been involved in, organisations (both local and beyond) email candidates requesting particular details about their campaign in the form of a survey or questionnaire.
Requested details can be limited (tick boxes without options, restricted word count and/or time to respond), which is a concern to me as the information could be misinterpreted or misused.
Additionally, many of these organisations do not disclose their name, associations or where/what the information is used for or distributed to, .
Source of Truth
I have politely declined most surveys and instead, prefer to respond and provide commentary about my thoughts on the topics using my owned channels including this website as a source of truth.
Misinformation
A recent Facebook Page post reports that one group determined how they would publicly rate candidates based on a survey they sent out. I never received such a survey so I am unsure how they managed to rate me!
Added to increasing popularity of these surveys, is the rise of community forums on social media capitalising on the influencer/affiliate marketing trend and the ability to reach and influence people quickly and effortlessly. These forums, similar to the example above, can provide misinformation and bias.
Transparency
However, just because I did not respond to a survey does not mean I do not support in part some, the ideas put forward in principle.
I emailed back all of these survey providers, and most were very understanding of why I had chosen not to complete their survey.
For transparency, surveys I did not responded to include:
- Vote Climate
- TMR on behalf of Visitor Economy Stakeholder groups
- Council Watch
- Streets People Live
- Zero Waste Australia-Stop burning plastics
- One Place- transforming underutilised land
- Rainbow Local Government
- Pledge for Palestine Today
- Australian Services Union
How to fact check a Candidate?
- Visit the Candidate’s source of truth like in this case it is my website and social channels.
- Contact them directly.
- Research and verify all candidates and the information they, or others, have provided.
- Understand if promises made can actually be achieved when on council and as part of a Councillor’s role.
- Look at what they have done in the community over time including group think, political bias and other trends that could raise an alarm.
CR JENNIFER ANDERSON 