The brochure was an attack on our mayor, who has achieved much in her public life for the people in Shoalhaven. It offered no solution or positive direction to improving our area.

We expect our councillors to work together to move the Shoalhaven forward, not have it dragged down by personality politics.

The person who authorised this publication - Mr G Nosworthy of South Nowra - should come forward with the facts around these allegations and if he has any evidence of breaches to the Code of Conduct he must send them to the General Manager. Mr Nosworthy also has the opportunity to address a council meeting with his concern.

Whoever penned this brochure should hang their head in shame. It is more than an attack on Mayor Gash. It is an attack on the people of Shoalhaven.

If the Prime Minister, the LNP and their advisers believe that Mediscare was the main reason for their bad polling in the federal election it is time they all took a reality check. To my way of thinking some of the reasons many decided they could not trust the government were: planning to give large companies $50 billion worth of tax cuts over 10 years; reducing support for health, infrastructure, education (particularly Gonski), aged care and veterans care, most of which have traditionally been core functions and responsibilities of our former federal governments.

Despite massive cuts the budget deficit is worse than it was three years ago. Where has all of the money gone? 

I recall a statement made by Mayor Gash during the recent amalgamation debates that the local road network is aged and needs a lot of work done on them to bring them up to date and how a rate freeze would severely impact the ongoing upgrade program.

I was pleasantly surprised (after the amalgamation issue was finally put to bed), to see Paradise Beach Road at Sanctuary Point was to undergo road works and that the locals should expect some short term delays.

It didn’t take long for this excitement to turn to disgust.

The proposed road works started some two to three weeks later than originally proposed.

During this reconstruction, the top layer of bitumen was stripped back, the road base below was trenched and fill imported.

Has council ever thought about using a proper road base material as a standard instead of mud?

Council has no control over the weather, so we can forgive in some small part that this mud was tracked for kilometres each side of the road works.

It is interesting to note that around a dozen drainage culverts had this mud washed into them during the rain but I suppose we should be grateful council at least applied half of the sediment control measures that should have been installed.

I fail to understand how the application of mud being tracked in by the local community over a period of three weeks helps alleviate the underlying problem that the substrate below our roads is inadequate.

After enjoying mud for almost a month, we then get a top layer of bitumen and gravel, even though the bitumen layer would equate to the thickness of a cigarette paper.

It is now two weeks since this project has been completed and yes we have had more rain, however the road surface has already started to break up with the actual driving surface rougher than the mud we enjoyed for three to four weeks.