Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery has hit back at comments from the City of Newcastle CEO about her friend's letters to the editor, saying Jeremy Bath "is scraping the bottom of the barrel".
Ms Hornery was responding to an opinion piece Mr Bath wrote in the Newcastle Herald where he said she benefitted from letters to the editor, namely those written by her friend Jayne Sharpe.
"For more than two decades, Jayne Sharpe has been authoring political, sometimes nasty letters published in the Newcastle Herald," Mr Bath wrote.
Ms Hornery said Jayne was a former teacher, and a local mum "who cares about her community".
"She is a well-respected Newcastle ratepayer, a voter, and pool user. She deserves as much as any Novocastrian to have her say. How can Mr Bath ever compare his friend Mr Neylon, a fraudulent letter writer living in Japan, to a local ratepayer concerned about her city," Ms Hornery said.
In a statement sent to the Newcastle Herald on Friday evening Mr Bath alleged Ms Hornery was "refusing to explain her knowledge of the letters, whether she counselled her friend to write them, or if she unsuccessfully asked her friend to stop writing them".
"Sonia has also remained silent on the appropriateness of her best friend, who is also a member of her campaign team, attacking people within her own Labor party, including current and former local state MPs as well as Labor leaders," Mr Bath said.
"It's clear Sonia thought she could lead this nasty political campaign against me without being held accountable for her own letters to the editor saga. She is sadly mistaken."
The pair's latest exchange follows City of Newcastle releasing a redacted four-page outcome letter summarising the findings of an investigation into Mr Bath's links with letter writer Scott Neylon. Pinnacle Integrity was commissioned by City of Newcastle to investigate alleged confidentiality and Code of Conduct breaches by council CEO Jeremy Bath through his connections with Mr Neylon, who lives in Japan.
The outcome letter said Pinnacle Integrity's preliminary assessment identified two allegations - whether Mr Bath passed on confidential information to Scott Neylon which Mr Neylon included in letters to the Herald or that Mr Bath wrote one of the letters, which related to the Newcastle Maritime Museum.
The finding summary said "regarding the allegation that Mr Bath provided confidential information to Mr Neylon in order he could include that information in letters to the Newcastle Herald, it was identified that Mr Bath did have ongoing discussions with Mr Neylon".
It said Mr Bath denied writing any of the letters and Mr Neylon told the Herald that he was the author of the letters. Pinnacle Integrity found that the "information and opinion published in the letters were matters that were reasonably accessed, or inferred, through personal experience, or available open source media, including published articles in the Newcastle Herald".
It said "the evidence" identified that Mr Neylon was the author and he wrote the articles "of his own free will".
The investigator said that Mr Neylon used an overseas IP address until such time that he considered the Herald did not accept communications from overseas IP addresses. He then claimed to have used a VPN (virtual private network) to disguise his Japanese location. Ms Hornery called the use of a VPN "foul play" and "sneaky tactics".
"The Pinnacle Integrity letter also says that Mr Neylon was transparent with the Herald about his identity," the MP said. "This is false. He lied about his suburb, age, pensioner status and his family. He went to such great lengths to hide his identity from the Herald, that he used a VPN.
"Mr Bath must give answers to the ratepayers of Newcastle. He claims he knew about the fraudulent letters from his best friend of 25 years and yet did nothing to stop them. Mr Bath's appearance on NBN, and his opinion piece in the Herald demonstrate how desperate this man is to preserve his dwindling integrity."
She said the investigation did not access all the letters from the Herald, and that a number of "victims" of the letters, including herself, were not contacted. "Pinnacle Integrity's investigation... appears to be a narrow scoped and flawed investigation. There are many questions still to be answered. This scandal continues to bring the council into disrepute."
Newcastle council said it was continuing to pursue releasing the full investigation report. Executive director corporate services David Clarke said the redacted sections of the outcome letter were the subject of consultation with a third party. Councillors read the outcome at their December 12 meeting.
