November council elections: No donations, says King cat

Andrew Mathieson
prominent Geelong businessman Frank Costa has ruled out funding candidates at November’s council elections after his involvement in the city’s cash-for-councillor scandal.
The Geelong Football Club president said he was unwilling to risk a repeat of the damage to his standing in the community.
Mr Costa headed a group of businessmen who provided up to $50,000 to council candidates at the 2004 elections. The donors put their money behind candidates who were in favour of “development going forward” in Geelong.
Mr Costa had put forward a proposal to council before the elections to redevelop a former Ford site in North Geelong for a Homemaker centre. Councillors later rejected the Home Town project following a public backlash against the election donations, which sparked two investigations.
Several councillors were found to have campaigned with the businessmen’s money, including David Saunderson who was later fined $5000 for failing to declare the donations. Others escaped legal sanctions because they had either accepted less than $500 or were not incumbent councillors.
Mr Costa told the Independent this week he would not fund candidates again this year.
“Because of what happened last time, a lot of people were hurt after people got asked to support a group of candidates to stand,” Mr Costa said.
“I tried it and, unfortunately, I don’t think I did favours to the people who were involved, so I’ll stay right away this time.
“As far as we knew, councillors didn’t have to declare donations.”
Mr Costa said he still backed the right of others to finance council candidates.
“To try to attract the right people, and it’s hard enough to convince people to put the effort and time in, you’ve got to make it easy for them to stand and get on (council),” Mr Costa said.
“If you haven’t got a lot of money and you have a big campaign coming up, it stops a lot of people from having a go.”