Conducting a council campaign is not easy – it requires time and resources to ensure you can reach and engage the community . Fortunately, there are rules and standards that help make this fair for everyone including candidates and voters.

• Letterboxing is the most common form of communication. I am fortunate that as a community powered campaign, I have had many wonderful local volunteers who assisted me in letterboxing across Montague Ward.

• Doorknocking is also a common approach and it’s always fantastic to speak to so many members of our community. As I have been doorknocking across the ward, there have been common concerns expressed to me about safety, open space, poor service delivery and governance issues. As a member of the community, these are concerns I too share and will resolve if I am elected.

There are less 4,500 households in Montague Ward and while I have knocked on many of those doors, I won’t pretend to have doorknocked all of them. Any claims by candidates pretending they doorknocked over 5,000 houses is false (unless they had no idea what ward they were in!).

Candidates have access to the electoral roll of the ward which must then be deleted at the conclusion of the election. While the voter roll includes people’s names and postal address it does not include email addresses. There is no ability for candidates to access your email addresses without your consent, so be cautious if you suddenly receive random emails from candidates.

Advertising is also a common technique. In this council campaign I have advertised through posters, corflutes and online . Thank you to the many members of our community who offered to display a poster and their support of our only local candidate in this election.

With ballots now being distributed, make sure you complete your ballot form by numbering every box in order of your preference.