An event celebrating Maitland’s history of steam has touched on the political with organisers removing a group of nurses for collecting signatures as part of their latest campaign.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
NSW Nurses and Midwives Association members were asked to leave the grounds of the Maitland Toyota Steamfest after originally being given permission to set up a stall at the premier event.
But organisers said the association had breached a section of Maitland City Council’s events policy.
“When the association started circulating a petition they were asked to move on simply because this is against our events policy,” mayor Cr Peter Blackmore said.
“These events are not political,” he said. “Nobody is against nurses in our community, but this event is not the place to hand out a petition.”
RELATED CONTENT: Steamfest 2014 photos
Association members remained outraged and said the forced removal was a censorship of public speech.
“We are absolutely disappointed,” Matt Byrne, association organiser for Hunter New England, said.
“This is censorship to the nth degree. We live in a democratic society and public speech is part of that.”
More than 40 NSWNMA members had volunteered to man the stall during the weekend event.
By 10am Saturday the stall had closed but not before 200 signatures had been collected supporting the association’s renewed call to improve safe nurse to patient ratios.
The ongoing debate surrounding the funding of the new Lower Hunter hospital was also on the agenda.
“We remain extremely suspicious about whether this hospital will go into a private/public partnership or not because no one will give us an answer,” Mr Byrne said.
“The government is offering up this bureaucratic vomit of saying the hospital will offer public services, but the door has been left wide open for a public/private partnership.
“The organisers of this event clearly didn’t like our message so they shut us down for being too political.”
Cr Blackmore said he had shouldered the blame for the incident.
“This is Twitter and Facebook at its worst and I have copped the blame,” Cr Blackmore said.
“But these events are for entertainment for the people of Maitland ... that’s what this is about.”