News media is a voice of, and for, the community.

However, there’s nothing stopping media facilitating a forum where the voices of politicians can be heard by the community.

Wednesday night’s public forum at Club Sapphire gave our community a first-hand snapshot of the views and election platforms of candidates standing for Bega Valley council.

Given the value everyone places on their time, our responsibility to provide balanced coverage, and that 24 of the 26 candidates accepted our invitation, we were never going to be able to gauge everyone’s views on every topic you believe important.

However, we sincerely hope Wednesday’s event gave the large audience some insight into a wide range of views ahead of the September 10 election.

An estimated 200 or so community members attended. Numbers dwindled as the night progressed, but there was still a good contingent of interested audience members through to the end.

And online, where some fear to tread, our shared video streaming had a peak live audience of 50, and even more pleasing was the total number of viewers across the night of around 1500.

If prospective councillors felt their message was not getting out into the community, the forum was their chance to do so – rather than assuming local papers would carry their views verbatim as some seem to believe.

It is our job to question those messages, to get to the heart of issues, and give the community and voters the opportunities to do the same and make up their own mind. To that end Wednesday’s forum was a success, even if it may not have satisfied everyone’s expectations.

It’s also not the place of the local news media to advocate for one candidate over another. But paraphrasing one candidate’s statement from Wednesday night resonated strongly with an ideal we could all get behind.

“Community getting behind leadership, with synergy and vision.” Well said.