I do not believe I was accurately quoted as I had considered how to explain to the community what the position was carefully before the interview, which was "… we certainly intend to be open and transparent with our community".

In discussions with The Daily Advertiser, I have been assured that the reporter took notes of what I said during the interview and that those notes support her recollection of my comments.

I do acknowledge that the reporter does and was working hard to ensure that she reported what I said accurately, however there remains a difference of opinion about what I said.

If there is one lesson that can be learned from this, it is that no matter how seriously councillors and reporters do their work we are all human, and are not always going to get things 100 per cent right. 

In this instance, one of two things has happened.

Either the reporter has misheard and recorded something slightly different to what I said, or I have misspoken and not communicated a message that I had put some thought in to as clearly as I had hoped.

While I suspect that we will not come to agreement about the words I used in that interview, it does not diminish the respect I have for this particular reporter.

So rather than being a sook about it, what I would like to do is take the opportunity to clarify the message I had hoped to communicate about the issue.

I am committed to being open and transparent with the community about what has happened in relation to the council loan to Douglas Aerospace.

From the time the decision was made in the previous term of council and the processes that led up to that, through to what this current council has done to protect the community interest since we became aware there were problems.

I believe and am confident all councillors are committed to being open and transparent on this issue.

One of the things that the October 3 The Daily Advertiser article does is clearly support my belief in this, as all councillors assured the community of their commitment to openness and transparency.

It has been important for us as councillors to deal with this issue responsibly and transparently.

We have had a number of things to balance when making our considerations.

There is some information that we will not be able to release for a variety of legitimate reasons.

For example, we must maintain the integrity of commercial information that has been given to us in confidence.

Business must be able to have confidence that we understand and respect their work and intellectual property when they deal with us. 

We must also ensure that proper process is put in place, and that we can be confident that the information we release is accurate and that it is sufficient for the community to clearly understand the issues.

We have been working our way through this and at the same time working to achieve the best outcome possible in relation to community resources.

This work has needed us to be careful, focussed and discreet; but this should not be read as an unwillingness to be honest with our community.

I understand our community is concerned and wanting answers, but I ask them to be patient for a little while longer.

We are committed to being open and transparent.

And I believe we are very close to being in a position where we can talk to them about these issues.