The Mayor of Sutherland Shire Carol Provan has lashed out at the Channel Ten reality series that will follow various 'unknowns' in the area, insisting that she will take "any means possible" to prevent it from going ahead.
Provan told The Age that the Sutherland Shire Council put forward a motion at a meeting on March 19 saying that they do "not approve the filming of The Shire and [would] not co-operate in any way with the production".
She said: "We saw a leaked clip of the show, all the councillors saw it and here's this girl saying 'I want to be a porn star', there was a guy saying 'I like false boobs', another one saying 'I'm going to shove her down the stairs' and of course the red lights went on.
"It's taken us a long time to heal from the Sylvania Waters reality show [in 1992] and then of course we had that drama [the Cronulla riots] five years ago, we're only just getting over all that and we just don't need this type of publicity. Our legal people are now trying to find ways to stop them."
Provan said that Ten representatives have insisted that the series will not be anything like the leaked promo, but said that she is still going to "do everything [she] can to stop them".
She added: "I just don't think this show will support us. It will not help us, it'll just be very negative... I said to them I'd put a boom gate on the Captain Cook Bridge and Tom Ugly [Bridge] and keep them out."
"I've got the support of everyone in the Shire, the councillors... and as I said to [the producers] if we don't have the power to stop you, you'll get no co-operation from residents, they don't like it when you portray them as something they are not. This is a family Shire, there are amazing people who live here and we'll fight very hard to keep it that way."
The Shire is reportedly scheduled to start filming on March 26.
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