10 April - Ordinary

Everyone, tonight we'll just get underway. I'll pass over to the General Manager for the introduction.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land, the Darug people, their Elders past and present. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our fire warden. I would also like to advise members of the public that in accordance with clause 6.3.1 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings.

The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, and the recordings are stored on Council's record management system. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation, or personal reflection against any person, present or not, at this meeting. This request relates both to your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors.

Finally, it is also requested that if any person in the Council chambers has a mobile phone, they either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any apologies? I note Councillor Ross and Councillor Rasmussen aren't here, but I've not had an apology. I'm expecting they must be just running a little late , so we'll leave it at that at this stage. Any declarations of interest?

No declarations. Someone to confirm minutes from last meeting. Moved Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Calvert. All those in favour? We'll move on to our items for public address.

And our first item is item 90, the rescission motion, and our first speaker is Brian McCabe.

Is Mr McCabe here?

He doesn't seem to be. We may have to reverse the order. We'll move on to the other speakers, Steve Cavanagh.

No, there's only Mr McCabe, and he doesn't seem to be here.

General Manager. Microphone.

Thank you

Lloyd. I just wanted to speak on the conservation management plan. You might remember last time I was here, it went well into 11.30 at night. We put our conservation management plan together as directed by Council. That came about as a result of a Council meeting we had probably 10 months earlier where, just three hours before the Council meeting, we found we had to put a conservation management plan together after two years of trying to get our church approved as a function centre to have, of all things, weddings, which apparently had been having weddings about 150 years ago. Anyhow, so we went off with our tail between our legs, did our conservation management plan, did all our due diligence.

That took eight months, to the value of roughly $10,000. We engaged Michael Edwards to do that conservation management plan. He did a great job, a very passionate local heritage guy. That was then peer reviewed by Otto, who's the Council's heritage advisor, and he again, to and fro, is a controversial issue with my neighbours, so they were very full-on scrutinising that conservation management plan, as well as the Council staff. We had numerous discussions about it, and it went to and froing between Michael and Otto on a number of occasions. Then the Council were able to review it. The issue with this, and the reason why we're here is because of that 441-page document, there is one piece of what has been called by my opponent or objector, this cemetery that we happen to own on the same property.

So we've got a cemetery with 1,840 graves on it down to 1972. There are about 30 graves. Incidentally, no one that we know of from the First Fleet, but I'll come to that in a sec. Yeah, so we share a boundary and we happen to share a graveyard. Five of them are on my next-door neighbour's property, and the legs of three ladies are on his property, and the rest of the gravestone and all the monuments are on the church's property. That was with a place that's nearly 200 years old, you can imagine there are going to be some little anomalies along the way. So the first anomaly was that back in probably 1830s, they went to the governor of the day when they were trying to appease Irish Catholics and get the Catholic religion happening here, as my church is the second oldest Catholic church in Australia, and they granted money for these churches to be built.

So the first little lie was that we had 500 parishioners out there, and that was just to get a bit of extra dollars from the local politicians of the day. The next thing that happened was the cemetery realignment. On a road realignment, I had the cemetery sliced, about 20% of the cemetery sliced off and given to the property 400 metres down the road, namely the objector. We've managed that cemetery fine. We've just mowed the lawns and we don't do anything. This conservation management plan only speaks of how to look after this cemetery. The bulk of the conservation management plan talks about my church and its ongoing maintenance, and it's a nearly 200-year-old building. So as much as it's structurally sound, it still will need ongoing work over the next 20 years, and part of that.

Document talks about curtilage, which is just the surrounds, and happens to talk about the church. There is no monetary requirement by me or my neighbour. There is no obligation by my neighbour or I. There is no, there is no nothing on the title that says that we have any restrictions as a result of this cemetery. This action that's been brought five months after I had my CMP accepted by this council is just another delaying tactic. The same tactics that have been used in the past go as this. I've been accused of having my driveway not wholly and solely on my property. We had a survey done at great expense. The driveway is fully on my property. The parking area was accused of being on my neighbour's property.

It's seven metres inside my property. When our last DA went in, we have a local Facebook page on our community. I'm not into Facebook, and neither is my wife, but this Facebook got so vitriolic and so personal in our little community—we live in a community of 200 people—that got so vitriolic that the administrators had to take down the posts from my objectors. So I've had enough. All I'm trying to do is have a church that's nearly 200 years old that we have weddings at, not at 11 o'clock at night, but they finish at 7 o'clock, daylight hours. And I'm just struggling to see how I have to just keep butting heads with these people. It's ridiculous.

Thank you, Mr. Kavanagh. Are you happy to take questions? Should there be any? Are there any questions for Mr. Kavanagh? Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mr. Kavanagh, can you answer how many years you've been through this council process or in council just trying to get your small business up and running?

Well, it started with, it's been three years is the total process. The first part of it was we were operating illegally , and I take the different councillors' points that yes, we were operating illegally. Although there is this technicality, we had a DA in train, so we were allowed to do that whilst the council spent two years trying to get it through. Before we did upset our neighbours, and I think I've had enough time now to have enough contrition about that. Yes, we had loud weddings and we upset our neighbours. We then came back with a plan to just have weddings. In the interim, the council did allow me to have a guest house. I'm allowed to have 10 people in this building. And the other thing I'd really like to ask council is that the one particular person who is the most vitriolic about this situation, I jumped through so many hoops, and so I should, to be able to have a guest house at my property.

It took a lot of time, it took two years and countless thousands of dollars. The person down the road, he operates a 16-person guest house in a fire zone with no approval at all.

Thank you

Mr. Kavanagh. Councillor Reynolds.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Thanks, Mr. Kavanagh, for coming in. Thanks for handing this plan out. Is this survey, I see the date on the survey is the 7th of February this year, is that right? Is this the same survey that appears in the conservation management plan?

As I said on this documentation that's been, some of it nearly 200 years old, that survey that's on that plan, which shows cemetery almost right out to the road edge, and if you look at a Google map or a, I think it's a state government mapping thing, it even shows the road in my next-door neighbour's paddock. So some of these surveys are all over the place, but the historic survey that you're referring to in that conservation management plan shows that the cemetery goes right to the road. This is probably just another piece of 150-year-old history, but we've never found any evidence of any other graves or any sunken ground or pieces of tombstone apart from what's on the cemetery, which is in the conservation management plan. That is an old, and you know what I mean, like it's an old piece of survey that's just part of history.

Thank you. Sorry, just a further question. I appreciate that, but this— I'll just ask the question again. This survey here, done in February this year, this doesn't appear in the CMP. Is that right? That's right

That was done as a result of the thought that I didn't have my driveway fully on my property, so we've done that, and I didn't have the parking area fully on my property, so that's as a result of that. Yep

Thanks very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Cavanagh. Thank you. Our next speaker is Matilda Cavanagh.

I'm

A bit nervous.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and Councillors. I'm Steve Cavanagh's wife. Coming from a background of having studied landscape architecture at UNSW for several years and working in the industry before training as a chef, I'm familiar with conservation management plans and obviously share with Steve a passion for the built environment, Aboriginal culture and Australian colonial history. As many of you know, my parents have owned the Settlers Arms Inn for over 30 years, where I also work and reside with Steve. We were recently married, which included a welcome to country smoking ceremony conducted by Colin Lyons, an Aboriginal elder of the community. Apart from our shared passions of the built environment, colonial and Aboriginal history and antiquities, we also love the valley we live in and intend to raise our child there, as I have raised my two grown-up children, Isabella and George.

With this in mind, I find it difficult to understand why the adoption of the Council's CMP is being challenged. From my limited understanding, a conservation management plan is not a legally binding document, only a guideline on how to conserve and manage. This conservation management plan took the best part of a year to compose, with weeks of peer review from the Council's own heritage officer, Otto. The implication being made by rescinding this document is that the CMP is somehow a bad thing. The CMP, as it stands, does not imply any cost to the neighbours section of the cemetery. It merely provides a framework so that the lesser of the heritage items of site, being the cemetery, is protected for future generations to explore.

In no way does it imply any kind of destruction of this section of the site, but more a view to preservation. Michael Edwards is a consummate professional who researched for months to produce this document. The information was gleaned from many sources. He works on projects all around Australia, not just the Hawkesbury District. This CMP was produced for the protection of the site at the cost of Steve Kavanagh, in no way does it attempt to destroy or wreck his neighbour's property. If anything, it gives advice on how to protect this portion of the historic site. Some would see this as a good thing, free conservation advice for your property. At the end of the day, it's a non-binding document compiled by a paid professional in this field, giving advice on how to look after the historic part of your property.

Thanks for listening to me.

Thank you. Are you happy to take some questions? Any questions, councillors? No questions. Thank you. Our next speaker is Michael Edwards.

Good evening, everybody. I'm Michael Edwards. I'm the consultant that prepared the conservation management plan. I'm assisting Mr Kavanagh, as you're aware. I have over 12 years' experience in conservation management throughout New South Wales, and I'm disappointed that we're back here before the chamber again having to talk through these issues, which I understood had been comprehensively considered as part of the council assessment of the application and addressed by council staff. My time here comes at a cost, and the cost is at the heritage significance of that property, because we're taking away valuable funds from the owner and directing them into consultants' fees and administrative process, which is a disappointing outcome for a heritage item of immense cultural significance to not only the Hawkesbury, but the Catholic community and probably Australia as well.

The CMP already addresses the issues that have been raised in the rescission motion, and I'll briefly step you through the responses to those. I'm happy to field any questions that you may have at the end as well. You've heard briefly from my client that a revised survey plan has been undertaken to ratify the location of the property boundaries. It does show that part of the cemetery extends over into the neighbouring property. The Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter sets the guiding principles for conservation management in Australia, and it advocates that conservation needs to be considered as a whole and not in isolation. We can't consider places of cultural significance in silos; they need to be considered as a whole.

So that's why we've approached the site as a whole based on the information that was provided from the land and property information, and I agree that there may have been some parallax error in their aerial photography and cadastral data. However, it does show that the majority of the cemetery falls within Mr Kavanagh's property . One of the conservation policies in the CMP actually recommends that a further survey be undertaken, which Mr Kavanagh has already done. And again, we have already heard that the CMP is not a legally binding document. It's a series of recommendations to guide good conservation and management of the heritage item to ensure that it's appropriately managed for future generations to enjoy and appreciate the cultural significance of that site.

The further issues that have been raised in the rescission motion relate to the concern that the neighbouring property is going to have to foot the bill for ongoing management and conservation works of the cemetery. This is not the case. The CMP, as you've heard, is not binding. It is a series of recommendations, and if anything, the neighbour stands to benefit from the work that we have produced over a 12 or 18 month period at no cost to them. My client has footed the bill for that conservation management document, and they have also use of the principles in that to guide and look after their own assets on their property.

The other concern related to the neighbour not having opportunity to provide input to the conservation management plan, and in preparing the document we did not consider that to be necessary, given that the majority of the elements of cultural significance were identified on Mr Kavanagh's property. However, the CMP does have a conservation policy to require cyclical review and updates of that document, and there is opportunity for neighbours and other interested or relevant stakeholders to be consulted and to provide input into that. I did not believe that any comments offered by the neighbour would add any value to the conservation management document that we had produced. The final comment about the inaccuracies of the conservation management plan making reference to a number of First Fleeters who are buried in the cemetery is false.

It's incorrect. There is a reference to the First Fleeters in the cemetery. However, this is a direct quote from the National Trust of New South Wales. It is not a quote of Edward's Planning or Edward's Heritage Consultants. In fact, we did further research to ratify what and who is buried in that cemetery, and there was no reference that we could find of any First Fleeters. Further reference and further research may indicate such existence, but that's beyond the scope of the CMP at this point in time. We included reference to the First Fleeters being a direct quote of the National Trust. It was the citation for the award that Mr Kavanagh had received as part of the conservation works which he had undertaken.

So, in the interest of historical accuracy and continuing along that theme, we retain that quote in that document. So, there's absolutely no reference or suggestion on our behalf that there is First Fleeters buried in that cemetery. So, I put it to the council that the CMP provides a well-informed and appropriate conservation management document to set the conservation management for this property, and there's absolutely no reason why the CMP, the support or endorsement of the CMP should be rescinded. I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions for Mr Edwards? Councillor Reynolds.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. Thanks, Mr Edwards, for that. Pleasure. In your talk, you mentioned that the CMP recommends that a further survey be carried out.

It's probably actually probably a question for staff. Does that, in your experience, does that sort of recommendation often occur in a conservation management plan as part of a cyclical review?

It can do,

Yes. Okay.

Updates, new information coming to light, changes in legislation, changes in custodianship.

Better push the mic on. Sorry.

I

Didn't know it went off. I was just saying that, yes, the CMP does include a conservation policy to permit and require, or recommend rather, cyclical reviews based on new information coming to light, or changes in ownership, or obligations in terms of statutory requirements and legislation. Okay. So if there was a further survey plan, which there has indeed been, then that is able to be incorporated into the conservation management plan. Okay Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Connolly.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Thank you for that, Mr Edwards. Just a question regarding these points in the motion. Yes. Given you're the published author of this plan, had you received any contact with questions around these matters before it appeared in the business paper? Was there a process

Followed there? Some of these issues were raised in the submissions that were received as part of the development application process, I understand, but there was no direct contact after the CMP had been endorsed by Council.

Thank you. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. Mr Edwards, I'm not sure if you can answer this question for me. I'm looking at the survey document. Are you familiar with this? Do you have a copy? So, the dotted black area is, I presume, the cemetery. That's correct. And that appears to be added later to this survey document . Are you aware of how that ended up being added after the, I presume that it's all been printed off and then these have been drawn on later? Yes, I understand that Mr

Kavanagh added that layer on. That was based on the pegging out on the site, and the layer didn't appear on the drawing.

Okay, so to your knowledge, is this accurate?

To my knowledge , this is fair and accurate, yes. Thank you. I'm not a registered surveyor, but it is, to my understanding, as accurate as can be.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Rasmussen.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mr Edwards, thanks very much for that presentation. I appreciate it because it did highlight a few issues for me. Can you just clarify the percentage of the cemetery that is actually on the neighbour's property?

Yes, it has been claimed in the rescission motion that some 80% is inside or outside. I need to double-check again now. Outside. But looking at the survey plan, it would indicate quite the opposite. It would suggest that more than 80% is actually within Mr Kavanagh's property.

Right. Okay. So, follow-up? Yeah. Thank you. So that leaves 20% on the neighbour's property.

Possibly 20%, yes.

Did you, when you discovered that, did you contact the neighbour about that?

No. Again, this information has come to light after we had prepared the conservation management plan. But our report was based on the cadastral information that we obtained from the New South Wales Land Property Information, and again, I accept that there may have been some parallax error with that information. But from our desktop assessment and ground truthing of that, there was no cause to suspect that the headstones in that cemetery were outside of the property boundaries.

Okay. Well, given the significance of this site and the cemetery for... All of us. I guess it would it be your hope, certainly mine, that the two neighbours could work together and keep a common theme to the conservation and stick with the conservation plan.

There's no reason why the two neighbours couldn't work together on that

To achieve the overall benefit and gain.

Exactly. They have the benefit of the conservation management plan. As I said, Councillor, the neighbour stands to benefit from that in the sense that they haven't paid a cent for that, yet my client has, but they can use that for the management of whatever aspect is within their property and they are custodian of.

Let's hope that happens. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions? I think that's time anyway. Thank you, Mr Edwards. Thank you. Has Mr McCabe arrived?

Oh, he's

On his way.

Well,

I think we'll have to proceed. So that was our final speaker then. Councillor Reynolds.

Yes, I move the rescission motion, Madam Mayor.

Do you have a seconder? Seconder

Councillor Wheeler. Discussion?

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. This is something that wasn't done with any joy. As we know, this development is quite contentious and has divided the community, and as such, I think it's important that Council is totally transparent and follows due process and is seen to follow due process. If there are anomalies in the CMP, I understand. That the CMP cannot be amended as is, but must be rescinded and then amended and then re-adapted. So, could I ask a question of Mr Conroy or Mr Kearns? Mr Edwards, in his talk to us said that the survey could be, new survey could go into the CMP and be amended as part of a cyclical review. That's one question, and the second question is: does the survey need to be accurate in regards to the CMP and the application of it for Council?

Mr Conroy.

The statement that was made during the previous discussion is correct, insofar as a CMP is not a legally binding document in itself. But the difference with this particular situation is that the land is zoned in a way that provides greater flexibility for the range of land uses that can occur on a site in response for the preparation of a CMP. So it's not so much just for heritage reasons that the document is prepared. It's also prepared as a justification for the flexibility in the planning scheme to allow this current application that's before Council, not tonight, but before Council, to actually be considered. If there wasn't a heritage item on this property, you wouldn't need a CMP, but you wouldn't have the flexibility for the range of land uses that are possible on the site.

So the CMP is important. In this particular instance, because of its relationship with the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, and there is, to the minds of officers, an error in the CMP. And for that reason, it's felt appropriate to correct that error so that we've got a conservation management plan that is very robust and relates just to the property that is involved in the development application. And so the relationship is between the development application and the CMP. That's why I think there's some merit in correcting the CMP. So it's not, I don't think anyone's criticising 99% of the CMP. It's an administrative arrangement that we believe there's some merit in correcting it, so that there's no doubt going forward about what the CMP relates to and what the obligations it places on the property owner that it relates to and nobody else.

So I think there is a distinction to be made in this particular instance in relation to the relationship with the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and the CMP.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Councillor

Reynolds.

Just a follow-up question to Mr Conroy. So the amendments required to the CMP to just make that small adjustment, does that require the CMP to be rescinded and then amended and then re-adopted?

Mr Conroy. Again, we've got a CMP that relates to a development application. So I believe we should have a correct CMP. So that there's a really accurate and correct relationship between the CMP and the development application.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just following on from that, I have a question. If, in the future, things change on the property, are we always going to come back to rescind the CMP? It seems to me that, from my reading of the problems that were inherent with the perceived errors on the map, that surely could be fixed without having to rescind our decision to accept the CMP. It seems to me that there must be a mechanism via recommendations in the CMP to review it. Surely allows us to just get on with clearing up these minor errors. It seems to me extraordinary we have to come back and rescind something to correct a small error. Mr Conroy.

So the decision to adopt the plan was made by Council. So Council has to make any decision to adjust the plan. So there's going to have to be some formal arrangement whereby a document is re-presented to Council to confirm that previous Council decision. So it does have to come back, and there is going to have to be some direction from Council to adjust that original document so that it's accurate and relates to the property in question. Now, Council may choose not to rescind, but may choose to direct that a— Amended plan be presented for reconsideration by Council. It's the same outcome one way or another.

Mr Conroy, can you just guide us on what form that direction would take? Would that be a substantive motion after the rescission, or without the rescission, how do we direct something like that? Mr Conroy

I think the wording that's proposed in the rescission is, if the motion is adopted, we proposing to move a further motion wherein Council will request the author of the conservation management plan to correct and resubmit the conservation management plan for endorsement by Council. So Council may decide not to rescind, but to request the author of the conservation management plan to correct and resubmit it for endorsement by Council, if that's what they choose to do. But one way or another, I think we need to have a correct plan.

Councillor Conolly: Thanks

Madam Mayor. I've got some concerns around this process and how we've got to this point. Firstly, what we're debating is whether or not we should rescind our adoption of the conservation management plan. We're not considering a development at the moment, as has been mentioned. This is not the consideration of a development. I don't see how the fact that there is a DA is relevant to our consideration of whether or not this conservation management plan is fit for purpose. That's my first issue. My second issue is that we've come here with very little information at the motion. To be told by the general manager he thinks there's a lot of merit in this, and I'm really concerned that this has not come in the form of a staff report, that this information is being presented to us tonight for us to consider for all of a few minutes before we vote.

I think it's a real lack of process. I think it's really bad form anyway for a Council to— Rescind an adopted plan five months after it was adopted by the Council, you know, adopted unanimously, but it doesn't matter if it's unanimous or not, without any sort of process to get to that point. I don't think the first step in the process is you move a rescission motion. And I'm not sure if there has been other steps in the process, which is maybe a question I'm going to ask at the end, in terms of have the staff gone away and done an investigation on these claims and verified that they're correct and there is a definite need to amend this? It would seem from the advice of the general manager that staff have done a fair bit of research on this and looked into this in detail.

But then the question is, if the staff have already done that work, why would we need to make a decision without a staff report on what is, effectively, a planning matter, we're told, even though it's a CMP? So I've got concern. Personally, I can't vote for this tonight without the information being presented a few minutes before we vote, brand new information to us. This is not normal practice. To me, it just seems a very strange process to follow. I'm not sure why we're following this process for this application or for this plan. I also don't understand why one of the actions in the conservation management plan would have been to resurvey the land if the act of resurveying the land would have required an amendment to the plan and for us to rescind our adoption of it.

That is nonsensical. It's not logical that that would be the required outcome, that we would adopt a plan saying, go and resurvey, and then once we resurvey, we've got to rescind the plan because we resurveyed. So there's a few things that just aren't adding up, Madam Mayor. I would really caution, I would actually like to move an amendment, Madam Mayor, that we defer consideration of this matter to the next Council meeting, and I'd hope in the meantime that if that's successful, the staff would get us some proper information around what's going on with this.

Do you have a seconder for your amendment? Seconder, Councillor Tree. Further discussion?

Madam Mayor.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. I just wondered whether Councillor Connelly would like to also refer this matter to a briefing session, because I think there's, as you said, there's a lot of information that's come in at the last minute and it'd be good if we could sit down and have a good talk about it. Happy with that. Happy to include that in the amendment.

Are you happy with that, Councillor Tree? Councillor Kotlash. Can I ask another— request another addition to that, that we deal with this matter very quickly, because I think that this has gone on for far too long and I think the stress of all of this must be, you know, avoided. So as quickly as possible, that's okay. I'll just see if I can get

A

Date of when that

Might be .

The next council meeting is 10th of May or something like that, I think, 8th of May.

Yeah, it'll be one of the next briefings. Any further discussion? Councillor Ross.

Put your microphone.

Thank you, Mayor. Could I direct a question to the staff, please? Yes . Through you.

I'm just wondering about the effect of the survey which has been placed before us this evening. Is that in fact now to be regarded by all and sundry as the authoritative view of the extent of the property and its boundaries, please?

Mr Conroy.

I suspect it's an accurate survey of the property and its boundaries, but as we've heard earlier, the location of the cemetery has been documented by hand subsequent to that survey. So what we're asking for is a survey that both documents the property boundaries, but also documents the exact location of the cemetery within the property boundaries. That's the piece of the puzzle that's still missing from the process, and that's, I think, something that is required, given that the conservation management plan refers specifically to the cemetery

Councillor Ross.

Thank you, sir. Could I carry on from that? I just

Am seeking virtually a yes or no, I would think, that I understand your concerns regarding the location of the cemetery.

To me, that puts in question— sorry, sorry. Could I inquire, the survey, does that now represent the authoritative statement and document that will, if you like, be part and parcel of the certificate of title, et cetera, et cetera, affixed to that property?

Mr Conroy.

It's legal status of this survey.

I don't think that survey is— I don't think we can be certain that that survey is 100% accurate in terms of all the information that's presented on it, no.

Councillor Conolly. Sorry, Councillor Ross.

I'm sorry to keep on hounding this.

How do you, as officers of this council, get to that point where you have comfort, please?

Mr Conroy. We would ask for a document prepared by a registered surveyor and certified by that surveyor, indicating that it was correct in all aspects of information that's presented on it, and that's not what we've got at the moment.

Thank you for that.

Could I inquire as to the generation of this particular map and survey that has been presented this evening. Has that been, to your knowledge, generated as a result of interactions between staff and the applicant or the proponent or the CMP?

Mr Conroy.

I don't believe so.

Sorry, so in your understanding that was an initiative undertaken by the proponent or submitter ?

That could be the case, given that the date of the survey is February and some later information has been included on that plan at a later date, it would appear.

Right, okay. Thank you. Now, when you—so, in other words... Do I take it from you, sir, that

You would not be happy to come forward to Council with, in regard to the matters which my fellows have raised, and ladies,

Without there having been, in fact,

A survey with the appropriate supportive, if you like, affirmations that you mentioned just a little earlier?

Mr Conroy.

I think that would be preferable, yes, to put everything beyond doubt in terms of what land the Conservation Management Plan relates to and what heritage assets sit within, fall within that land.

Thank you.

Councillor Conley. Thanks

Madam Mayor. Just a question following up on some of those comments through you, Madam Mayor. Just in relation to the comment that it's essential we know where the cemetery is exactly, I guess my question is why, to an extent. I mean, if there's no obligation on the neighbour under this CMP, there's no legal obligation for them to go ahead and carry out these actions or some consequence is going to happen. That doesn't exist. And in general terms, surely we would want the cemetery maintained in the same way, no matter which part of the boundary it sits on. I can't. And given the CMP is primarily not concerned with the cemetery but the major heritage asset that is the church and property, I'm just not sure.

And also given that Council did not ask for this information the first time it did this assessment, I'm just struggling to understand why it's all of a sudden of crucial importance we know exactly where the cemetery sits. For this plan,

Mr Conroy.

So there are two points there. One is it's important because the issue's been raised, and in making some preliminary investigations, it appears that the issue raised has some merit. The second thing is, as I said, the conservation management plan is required in this instance to support the development application that is not under consideration tonight. I would agree with that. But you can't have that development application without this conservation management plan. And the conservation management plan refers to land , both the land that the church sits on and land outside of the property that the church sits on. And for clarity and, I suppose, legal tidiness, it would be better if the conservation management plan just related to the property that the church falls within and no other properties and doesn't make any other reference.

It's up to the other parties to pursue a conservation management plan for the balance of the cemetery, whatever it may be. But there's also obviously an issue about the boundary between the two properties, and that probably needs to be considered as part of any administrative amendment because we don't really want a fence running through the middle of the cemetery.

I guess just to clarify, if I can, Madam Mayor, just one follow-up question would be, I'm just still not 100% sure why . I understand what you're saying, that it's been raised and so we should find out. I'm still not sure why it's of critical importance to the plan. And I found it interesting that you made the comment that we would have a conservation management plan for half the cemetery and a different one for the other half. Surely it would be best practice that one plan would cover both anyway.

It would be best practice if the two owners cooperated and prepared one plan, yes.

Okay, Councillor Reynolds, a question?

I'm speaking on the amendment. Okay. I'm speaking in support of the amendment. Support

Yeah.

I think that it's important. We know that this development application will go through to the IHAP panel now that that is in place, and I think that we need to make sure that our documents have all the I's dotted and all the T's crossed, especially if any decision is appealed to a higher body. I support Councillor Connolly's amendment that this comes to a briefing and we're given more information. Councillor Reynolds

That being the case, do you wish to withdraw your motion?

Well, the amendment becomes the motion, doesn't it?

If you withdraw it, the amendment is the motion. Or you could vote for it. We could go through the whole process, but you can

Withdraw. Yeah, I withdraw it. Is that possible in the case of a rescission motion?

Yeah, I believe it is .

Okay.

Councillor Wheeler, are you happy with that? Mr Mifsud

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Could you just repeat the question, please?

Could—if Councillor Reynolds wishes to withdraw his rescission motion and Councillor Connolly's amendment would become the motion, or do we have to still—because if we vote on the rescission motion and it is rescinded, then we don't have an opportunity necessarily for another...

So thanks, Madam Mayor.

So

Normally if you've got an amendment, if you've got an amendment before Council, you'd vote on the amendment first and deal with that. If you were to withdraw the original motion and then the other, the amendment became the motion, you would vote on that. Yeah.

Doesn't really matter. It's just semantics. So yes, further discussion.

Councillor Richards. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I will be supporting the amendment tonight. This was an inconclusive rescission motion, lacking sufficient detail and process. It is four to five months after it was adopted and no actual evidence within the rescission motion has been put forward to verify and support each claim made. I honestly believe the things that are being dealt with could have been done much quicker and probably behind the scenes without the need for such a public airing and distress to all of those involved. Our staff should have been given the opportunity to check every single point and when it did come back before Council, as the general manager has said that it needed to do since it was adopted by Council, all of us councillors, as is now obviously in the amendment, should have been given all the sufficient information and it should have been a conclusive report with the attached CMP so that we could have easily voted, taken five minutes and adopted the new CMP.

This whole process tonight didn't need to happen. The amended document should have been brought back and I'm still in shock that we've actually had to go through this tonight. It's nearly an hour into the meeting when there could have been a better way to go forward. So I certainly support the amendment and I hope that we can get a quick resolution to this matter next time it's in the chamber.

Thank you, Councillor Richards. Councillor Conolly, just with your amendment, I'm happy to support that. What I would like to perhaps happen at the briefing session, if this could be taken on board, doesn't have to be written, is for us to be given an explanation about when we have an issue, because I understand this is an issue where the conservation management plan was necessary because of the utilisation of a heritage clause in the Act. And I know for those of us, maybe people on the Heritage Committee understand this, but maybe not everybody understands the sequence of events which have to occur. And I think it would be an opportune moment for us to be given a briefing to understand the process when we're going outside and utilising other clauses.

And not that we get to decide on any planning matters anymore, but I think that it would be good if we were to understand that and how things such as a CMP fits in and why, what the steps in the process are. So I'm certainly happy to support looking into that further. Thank you. Right of reply, Councillor— Councillor Ross.

I've got a question, if I may please, through you, Mayor, to the staff. I would like to inquire of the staff, please,

Given that Councillors are about to vote upon this amendment—

Motion, should I say—is it sufficiently well expressed to allow the staff to make contact with the proponent? To seek whatever other information may be required to put things into, shall we say, a shipshape state, please. Mr

Conroy.

I think all the information is on the public record. I think the proponent understands what's required in terms of the answers that have been provided. If there's a survey plan prepared by a licensed surveyor that's certified by that surveyor that it's accurate and it shows the location of everything, I think that's all that's required for us to do the briefing with councillors. But that briefing will also include the other matters that the mayor and other councillors have referred to through the course of the night in terms of information and context that they would like to see.

Thank

You, councillor. Sorry,

Councillor. Just to follow on from that, in light of the comments made by Councillor Reynolds in regard to the fact that

We have some indication that there may be other activity in regard to the particular location, which may take this into an area outside the council in terms of an IEM, should the amendment also include an authorisation by the council to request staff to undertake, or to advise the proponent or the preparator of the CMP that that person, in fact, undertake… The tasks to which you've just alluded, please. I don't

Wish to include that, Madam Mayor.

I think that, Councillor Ross, the staff still do the preparation of the reports for IHAP. It's the same process, just a different decision-making body.

Yes, I'm just concerned that if we're worried about being squeaky clean, that there is a flow of documentation that can be readily addressed if needs be.

Well, we're having a briefing on it, so you can specify perhaps those things there. And Mr Conroy, unless you want to comment on that.

I think we've got sufficient direction from Council to deal with this. Thank you.

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm happy to support the amendment, although I would have been equally happy to support the rescission motion. I think we have to make it very clear this isn't an intentional error with the CMP. This isn't Mr Edwards' professionalism being called into question. We have heard from him as the author of the CMP that there was a parallax error involved. But we have also heard from the General Manager that this isn't just a CMP for the sake of having a CMP to guide restoration works. Owners of properties listed on the LEP, so locally listed heritage items, are not required to have a CMP. They're nice to have, but they're not essential. The reason that it's essential in this case, the reason that it's been prepared, is because the owner of the property wishes, under Clause 5.10.10, to use the property for purposes that are not permitted under his zoning.

So this CMP is really important. It's also subject of a lengthy and now increasingly bitter neighbourhood dispute. I think it's quite fair to say this will probably end up in litigation, and we therefore need to have, as the General Manager stated, an accurate and correct relationship between the CMP and the property. We could just stick our fingers in our ears and say, yes, the current CMP is fine. We know that it's not, and we need to act. So I'm hoping that out of the briefing, we have some forward actions that we can direct the applicant so that when this does come up for determination in front of an IHAP, that the answer that is given is a final answer and that everyone can move on with their lives.

And we can't do that if the CMP on which that DA rests is in doubt.

Sorry, yours was withdrawn. Councillor Conolly, right of reply.

Only very briefly to say that whilst I understand the considerations that you've raised, Deputy Mayor, and Councillor Willoughby raised, I don't think that we've actually got the ability to consider a CMP any differently because of what we think its intended purpose is. I think we should be looking at each item as it comes to us, rather than thinking about how it's going to fit into a future process for development. I think we should give equal weighting to every CMP that comes before us, rather than be very, very picky about one because we think—

I think it is a prerequisite of the DA.

Yes, that's right. It is, yes. Yes, but that doesn't— I understand it's a prerequisite of the DA, but that doesn't mean we're allowed to consider it differently to any other CMP. That's what I'm saying. It's not the DA. It's something that they have to have in order to get the DA because they're not allowed that land use. It doesn't mean that we're allowed to consider it in more detail and give it more weight than we otherwise would, just because we know that they intend to then go and lodge a DA relying on the document.

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. I'll put Councillor Conolly's motion. All those in favour? Against. The motion is carried.

Our next—

Someone's gone into a door, probably.

Okay, we'll move on to our next item, which is item 91. We have four speakers. The first speaker is Kim Ford.

Thank you, Mayor and Councillors. My name's Kim Ford. I'm here tonight to talk about the Notice of Motion number one, which is the raising of the dam wall and council support. Just a prelude, I'm a member of the council Floodplain Risk Management Committee, and the views tonight are mine and nothing to do with the committee, so I'd just like to make that clear. I'm not trying to take over their job or spot. But just to start, Infrastructure New South Wales identified the dam project some time ago as a cost-benefit ratio of, depending on how you read it and what part of the reports that you read, of up to 10 or 7 to 1, which put it far in advance of any other project that Infrastructure Australia came up with.

So the next closest was the Victorian power lines, put them underground, it came up at about 4 to 1, so it's nearly double the cost-benefit ratio. So obviously it's there, it's a great money saver, if you like. It's pre-planning, it's what the future's all about. But up until lately, there's been some, I suppose, protest building or some less enthusiasm for the dam raising, and some in some quarters. And recently the March... Addition that Infrastructure Australia put out, they listed priority initiatives. They listed infrastructure high priority initiatives, high priority projects, and then right down the bottom, all of a sudden, this great money saver and cost benefit ratio ended up right down the bottom as a priority initiative.

But even that put it in fourth place, right down the bottom, right alongside the Tasmanian sewerage upgrades. So I don't think they're really taking it serious, to be honest. And I think that the Hawkesbury is affected by flooding, and I think the free space in the dam wall that will come from the raising of the wall is a benefit to everybody in the Hawkesbury and a lot of our neighbours. I think it's council's duty to sort of bring that forward and make a statement tonight to say that we favour the dam wall raising. It's not the only aspect of the floodplain management plan, Hawkesbury management plan. There's education facilities and all sorts of other things that happen, but it's all based around raising the dam wall.

And the benefit of that is that hopefully we'll reduce some of the flooding in our area. It will also give us more time, because one of the big problems we have is time to get out and time to organise evacuation and time to organise evacuation routes so people can move safely and quickly. Because we haven't had a flood for such a long time, it is very difficult to try and convince people that it's an important issue. It's, you know, it will happen. I mean, that's all we know, but when it does, if we're not prepared, we are going to be in a lot of trouble. We've had big floods before. I mean, we've just had the anniversary of the 1867 flood, and we had floods back in the 60s and the 70s and 80s and even in the 90s.

But, I mean, it's really the 60s since we've had anything that was dramatic or enough in people's memory. So people say that, oh, you know, it's a one in 100 chance or one in 500 chance, but we've got that same chance every year and every time it comes around. And I think what people need to know is that the Macdonald Valley had two one in 100-year events, I think within about six weeks of one another one year. So it's no good just sort of throwing your hands up and saying, Oh, it won't happen. But my concern is that it will happen, and if we don't act soon and we don't keep the local members and state and federal governments interested in the project, then what we're going to do is end up with a big mess.

So I think I encourage Council to go with the notice of motion that's been put forward and to stick up our hand and say that we need this done for our ratepayers and we need that to happen for the Hawkesbury community. We need to get our neighbours on side. Some neighbours are, some neighbours aren't. We're Hawkesbury, sort of built one in 100, and we stick to that. Some of our neighbours are building and still building in 125, so that's another problem that's going to come up. My concern at the moment, my big sort of drama is if you walk down Blacktown Road or drive down Marsden Park, Atalara, Greenway, all these areas have all been built up to two and a half metres. And in my memory, South Creek floods all the way to where the M7 is.

But with all that area built up, all that water is going to come back our way. So I think the quicker we get started on raising the dam wall and giving us a bit of time, the better off we'll be. Thank you.

Thank you. Are you happy to take questions? Yeah, sure, if there's any. Any questions for Mr Ford? No, I'm off the hook.

Look at that. Beautiful.

Thank you. No, no questions. Thank you.

Our second speaker is Morrie Smith. Madam Mayor, Councillors and residents, my name is Morrie Smith. I'm the Secretary and the Communications Officer for the Hawkesbury-Nepean Flood Mitigation Action Committee. It's a community group. I'm also a member of

The Hawkesbury City Council Flood Management Advisory Committee. I speak in favour of the motion before you in supporting of raising Warragamba Dam wall. I just have a declaration of interest. I'm a father of four adult children who live alongside with their families. Three of the families live in the Hawkesbury along with seven of my grandchildren. And as a father and a grandfather, I have a duty of care to protect them and avoid them from harm and damage, and also their families. And you as councillors, I believe, would have a duty of care to protect the constituents of this electorate, as they are your legal representatives in this case, and their families and their businesses.

Our committee submitted, have been lobbying state and federal governments and local governments for several decades to include mitigation in the verbal conversation for discussion around flood strategies in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. In June 2014, our committee lodged a submission to the Productivity Commission in reference to National Disaster Funding. The submission contains key points for consideration as to why the Hawkesbury City Council should support raising the dam wall, as per the recommendations in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy, January 2017. There are items as per the 2014 submission. According to New South Wales Office of Water Summary Report, March 2014, in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy, report page 5, states that 73,000 people are currently, 2014, living in areas prone to flooding from the Hawkesbury-Nepean River.

The floodplain also is the heart of the Western Sydney region, one of Australia's largest and most diverse economies , and the annual gross regional product at about 95.6 billion as of 2010-2011. In 1995, the New South Wales Coalition Government spent 10 million dollars on an EIS investigating the possibility of Warragamba Dam being raised as a flood mitigation dam. The report was prepared by Sydney Water together with Australian Water Technologies and the consultants ERM Mitchell Cotter. It was found that the most practical and cost-effective means of mitigating flood damage would be to increase the air space above Lake Burragorang behind Warragamba Dam wall. It was considered a project justified because it was socially, economically and biophysically benefits exceeded the social, economic and biophysical costs.

The proposed project was proved to be the best ratio benefits to cost over the 20 options looked at. There is about 35 sewage treatment plants below the dam that would possible to be inundated. This would put raw sewage into the river. A combination of inundation of electricity substations would mean the evacuation of the 73,000 people who would then not be able to return to their businesses or their homes for a few months, according to the SES.

The economic and social hardships would be experienced by the residents and the businesses would have devastating effects for many years. In 1995, the cost of the implementation of the recommendations of the IES was just under 300 million. However, cost to the Australian Government in not providing flood mitigation to the Hawkesbury River was estimated at 1. 8 billion. It is believed today that this 4 billion, according to the estimates from New South Wales and the government in 2012. The most flood-prone valley in Australia and the devastation would be similar devastation of Cyclone Tracy in the recent flood in Queensland, and a cost of 5 billion dollars. There has been an enormous increase in the housing development in Western Sydney and the population explosion.

Many of these people have not experienced floods and would refuse evacuation from the homes, resulting in an enormous loss of life, not only to the residents, but to the rescuers who were sent in to evacuate them at maximum flood heights. Our largest floods, historically, was in 1867, as Kim alluded to recently, and we celebrated that some time back. We have had over 220 major floods in the last 200 years. Historically, 1867 was the largest flood. It would have inundated the RAAF base in Richmond. The flood waters in the hangar where the Prime Minister plane sit would keep the floor level at about 2 metres underwater. The base would not be operational, evacuation or defence purposes. According to the IES 1995, the raising of the dam wall by the 23 metres would reduce the flood level by 4.4 metres.

The current proposal is to raise it at 18 metres.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Risk Management Strategy Report, January 2017, page 36, Item 3, makes reference to building controls being based on the 1 in 100 year change as per the flood levels shall continue to be subject to those controls following the raising of the wall. That is no lowering of building levels. That is it has even strengthened the controls in place for the flood-prone lands. Further actions

Controlling development have come from the new Western District Plan. There are current examples are

The changing of the development for the Lakes District where there's been a reduction in the number of occupations who could be there and what type of dwellings can be there and the land use, and not building the 400 prisoner jail at Emu Plains. We hereby actively seek the support of a motion, the motion to raise the dam wall Warragamba Dam, and keep the key point of achieving the outcomes of the Hawkesbury-Nepean Flood Risk Management Strategy Report, January 2017. This project is fully funded at no cost to Council. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Smith. Are you happy to take questions? Yes, thank you. Any questions for Mr Smith? No questions. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Les Sheather.

Madam Mayor, Councillors,

To speak about this, I concur with the previous speakers. I've been working on this for 30 years. Nothing's changed. We've had one direction, raising the dam wall. We were hoping for 26 metres. Looks like if we get it at all, it's going to be 14, which is okay up to probably about a one in a 500 year event . When this all first started, Nick Greiner spent $10 million on NIS. The dam needed work done to it, and he decided that he would involve flood mitigation. And the results come out that raising Warragamba Dam by 26 metres was the best option . Bob Carr got in, that got canned, and they went into flood evacuation . He put me on that committee, on that state committee, and I worked with a lot of people for a long time.

That EIS that Nick Ryan took seven years, by the way. The implementation that the Bob Carr did, that's the document here. The problem with evacuation is, as one of the speakers said earlier about people perhaps not wanting to leave, and in a catastrophic event when you've got up around 60,000 people to evacuate, I can guess there'll be a few that don't want to go. We've been unlucky enough to lose two people since 1867, both by accidents that could have been prevented because of flooding. But when you have floods of the magnitude of the 1867 flood, which is bad, but there's catastrophic after that, there's concerns. And that's a small group of people over that 30 years have worked with one objective all that time.

So we're pretty keen to have this move forward. We haven't made issues in the community because there's people out there, and probably rightly so, that when you start talking about their houses going under and loss of property and everything else can go wrong, people get scared, and we didn't want to do that. So we've worked with governments, both in opposition and in government, both state and federally, and they've all worked with the objective to come up with a conclusion. The problem with evacuation,

And our past mayor indicated there's been two one-in-a-hundred-year events in our city, and they're both in the McDonald Valley. And I sit in this room when we had a bloke from the Weather Bureau that I'd known for many years was beating his chest about how good the Weather Bureau is. Well, they've got three monitors on the McDonald River, and not one of them were working. There was no telephone calls. There was no nothing. These people woke up in the early hours of the morning with water through their homes. So I don't have a lot of faith in that sort of thing. When you've got a bathtub overflowing, there's one of two things you can do. You turn the tap off, or you pull the plug out, or make it bigger.

Otherwise it'll keep overflowing. We can't make the plug any bigger. There's been 26 options looked at in relation to mitigation on the Hawkesbury River, and that includes dredging, widen the river, all those sorts of things, levy banks, the whole lot. The options aren't there. But I'd just like to read something out of this document. Current, and this is in '97, by the way, it's not the current document, but it relates to current studies indicate that if no action is taken to upgrade existing evacuation routes from their present condition, the local and local flooding occurs. The majority of flood-prone population, which is estimated to be 40 to 60,000 people, will be isolated and potentially drowned in a severe extreme flood event.

Even if the threat of local flooding is mitigated by improvement of current designated evacuation routes, in excess of 15,000 persons can be expected to remain unevacuated and potentially drowned. So we've been pretty passionate about this project. The other thing that we're concerned about, and

I had the opportunity to speak to Infrastructure NSW last year, was about the development of land above the 1 in 100 but below the PMF, which is a massive difference. There's nowhere else in Australia that's got a situation like we have. And I had the opportunity to suggest that the state might put a state plan over the area of 1 in 100 to restrict the type of development that may happen below the PMF. And housing, I think, in appropriate areas above the 1 in 100 can happen in appropriate areas, but there's things like hospitals, schools, power stations, sewage plants, all those sorts of things that could go out, and Ning is a good example of that, that they shouldn't—well, I don't think they should go there. And I'll

Leave 30 years there, Madam Mayor. Okay,

Thank you very much, Les. Are there any questions for Mr Sheather?

No questions.

Thank you. Councillors, Nathan's got a CD that the councillors might want to look at. It's the old EIS. It's 25 years old, but it's appropriate, and it talks about all the sort of things that's in there. Thank you. Okay,

Thank you. Our next speaker is Bill Sneddon.

Madam Mayor, Councillors, gallery, press. After the previous, I probably won't be very welcome up here. Initially, quoting from this notice of motion: critical long-awaited piece of infrastructure will mitigate against flooding originating within the Warragamba catchment and feeding the Hawkesbury River. Raise the dam wall by 14 metres, an agreed project between state and federal government to fully fund the project by early 2020s. But do remember, please, that the dam is built in sandstone and it's actually on a grouted fault line. The original dam proposal, when it was built, they were told not to build it there, build it a couple of hundred metres either side. The EIS is to follow all of this process here, but it's not a document that's likely to tip the balance between the ecological risks, according to the notice of motion.

And then the generations of residents from the last flood in 1992 have had no firsthand flooding experience. And then we also, in the notice of motion, mention potential $5 billion of damage reduction for the population in the area by 2040. If so, and we have this naive population of new residents and people are coming, why aren't we aggressively educating these newbies with the reality of life in our flood liable valley? I've received no answers to that at the Windsor Mall presentation, and also in all of this current bumps that's being put out by the state government regarding the dam raising. As people have busy lives, real and ongoing efforts and real dollars will also be needed if we're going to educate these naive people, especially as the dam raising team on the public relations duty, as I've indicated, the community forums have also mentioned this in their literature.

They're all stunned that nobody seems to know about the dangers in the floodplain, yet nobody seems to be wanting to actively telling them. Remember also there is significant population increase coming to the Western Sydney, as was mentioned previously, under State Planning, 1.5 plus million people by 2040. Significantly, signifying this also, we have now the Parkland City Councils and the Western Sydney Deal that Hawkesbury Council has signed up to. Whilst not all new residents will be in potential direct harm's way of flooding, these new residents need to know, and also put pressure on our already stretched infrastructure of roads, bridges and services. How much more cost shifting to council will all of this involve?

We hear that the dam is to be fully funded by state and federal, and yet we don't have the money in the bank balance from what I can make out.

Now we also have, I note in this paper here, we have three flood road upgrades proposed in the Floodplain Mitigation Committee report, and also now serious mention of the North Richmond Bridge, and yet there's no funds indicated directly coming out of the last Floodplain Management Committee meeting. Now there are at least five flood signatures possible in the Hawkesbury. They are acknowledged actually in this new community information, which I was pleased to see. We can get flooding out of the Warragamba catchment, more than 50% of the Hawkesbury catchment area. Then we can get South Creek catchment flooding, Rickaby's Creek, Grose River, Colo River, and add to all of this, one, the Cattai Narrows choke point, and the second point, sea surface storm surge rise of one to two metres, possibly more, as in the 1867 flood, and then long-term sea level rise.

And remember, Hawkesbury is a tidal river, and more extreme weather events are expected now that we have higher CO2 levels. We're now at 450 ppm, and there are interactions of all the above. The single issue Warragamba Dam raising is simplistic. Under correct circumstances, it could be a help, but nobody can predict how the next flood will come, or all the possible interactions, or the next flood after that, or all the following flood events. I've experienced floods in both the Hunter — I'm from Newcastle and remember effects of the 1955 flood and later — and the Hawkesbury from 1978 since becoming a resident here, and I'm living in a parallel river system in many ways to where I grew up in the Hunter.

My concern with this notice of motion is that we are addressing a simplistic single item of a complex reality. Yes, it's possible to build a new dam wall, but could we do better? And we can't rely on this one item to save the valley. And at this stage, the EIS appears considered a foregone conclusion. However, the balance of loss to the environment and flooding, et cetera, is yet to be determined. We don't know. We can't take it as a given, as in the papers. Still going? Thank you

Yeah, winding up.

Okay, so could we do other things? There's a list here of active flood mitigation measures that we don't seem to want to run. We could run the desal plant at Botany full time for water. Operate Warragamba for flood mitigation and water supply by changing water regulations. Pump more water from the South Coast catchments, as we now do. Increase water reuse by recycling. The technology is well established, although people don't want to drink treated sewage. Further reduce per capita water use and increase rainwater use. Better planning on the floodplain to keep the naives out of harm's way in flood times, and we need them well above the one in a hundred level. The 1867 flood would be a disaster, and the 1.4 mil or so more people coming into this area, if we let them be in the one in a hundred, we're going to be putting a lot of people in harm's way.

We could potentially spend the dam project money making a more resilient floodplain population. I continue to be concerned about simplistic answers to a complex Shades of Grey world problem. We and our schemes are but the blink of an eye in geological time that the river runs to. Unlike the Hawkesbury inhabitants before us, Europeans, we are unable to walk away from all our fixed investments built on the floodplain. Thank you, Madam Mayor

Thank you, Mr Snedden. Are you happy for questions? Any questions? No questions. Thank you. That was our final speaker. Thank you, Councillor Zambrano.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move the notice of motion standing

In my name. Seconded, Councillor Conolly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm very pleased to bring this to the chamber for debate tonight. Our community here in the Hawkesbury has always been profoundly shaped— By our relationship to the river and to the reality that it floods. Since European colonisation, there have been 123 floods. Now , despite the fact, as has been pointed out, that an entire generation of Hawkesburians have grown up with no firsthand knowledge of flood in the quarter century that's elapsed since the last one, that's still, on average, a flood every 20 months, and these floods have wrought enormous damage. Many of you know that one of my own ancestors died right here in Windsor in the flood of 1809, so please forgive me if this is personal.

Last year, when we commemorated the anniversary of our worst ever flood, we were reminded of the loss of 12 souls, women and children from one family, the Eathers. And an inland sea stretched more than 20 kilometres wide from Riverstone to the foot of the Range. The survivors huddled on a shrinking island just across the park from us in St Matthew's Church, and in fact where we meet right here would have been underwater. If not at this elevation, you certainly wouldn't have been able to get down to your cars.

At the mouth of the river, the beaches from Bar on Joey to Long Reef were black with uprooted trees, bloated dead livestock and probably the bodies of the dead. If we had a flood of that level today, it would inundate 12,000 homes, prompt the emergency evacuation of between 70 and 90,000 people, and cause five billion dollars' worth of damage. Now, this history lesson is not meant to be alarmist. No one advocating flood mitigation denies the relative rarity of these worst-case scenarios, but it is a statistical certainty that the river will one day flood again. 1867, in fact, happened as the result of only four days of rain. And that's because the catchment for our river system is truly vast: 22,000 square kilometres, stretching from Singleton all the way down to nearly near Lake George in Canberra, and as far west as Lithgow.

I did a count and lost track at 22 different river systems and their tributaries draining into our river and arriving here in Windsor. Our floodplain is, as Mr Sheather said, an enormous bathtub with a very small plug hole, the choke points at the Sackville Gorges. But We have an ace up our sleeve. We can do something to mitigate against floods. We can raise Warragamba Dam. It's daring engineering, but the modelling shows that it might reduce the damage caused by a bad flood by fully 75 percent. That's billions of dollars worth of property and priceless lives saved. And as we've heard, this plan has been around since the late 1980s, and it came closest to realisation when the detailed planned scientific modelling, two EIS documents and various costings were done in the mid-1990s, only to be scuttled by the election of a Labor government.

Their conclusion was that extreme rainfall and flood events are probably even more likely than the predictions that were made in the 1950s before the dam was built. And we've learned since that climate change also increases the probability of extreme weather events. A range of solutions were considered, including lowering the permanent storage level, building other dams above or below the current dam or in other catchments, blasting the bottlenecks at Sackville, dredging the river, straightening it or building levees. As Mr Sheather said, that study took seven years, and its findings were ratified by three international and independent experts. The emergent logical and preferred solution was to raise Warragamba Dam to provide some flood mitigation, because generally upwards of 70 percent of the water arriving here in a flood is probably coming from the Warragamba catchment.

The plan recommended not only the higher dam but developing comprehensive plans for emergency management and planning on the floodplain. We are now doing the latter two, the missing piece of the puzzle is the flood mitigation works themselves. Madam Mayor, this council represents the community that is most at risk from flood. We need to advocate for this. Our predecessors in this place have diligently advocated for flood mitigation for decades. I'd like to thank council staff for assisting me in my research. They told me that Windsor Council was asking the Water Board to lower the water level in Warragamba for flood mitigation purposes as early as 1974. And in 1996, Mayor Stubbs brought a mayoral minute confirming the council's support for raising the dam by 23 metres.

And I might add, Dr Stubbs led this community by also being the chairman of DamIt, the advocacy group who have long supported raising the dam. From then until now, our own Flood Risk Advisory Committee have frequently stimulated debate about flood mitigation. But crucially, Hawkesbury Council have not availed themselves of the opportunity of throwing their support behind this specific new plan to raise the dam by 14 metres, and to support the agreement to fully fund the $700 million cost through an accord between the state and federal government. Madam Mayor, this plan was announced in June 2016, and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy was released nearly a year ago in May 2017.

Why have we taken so long? Why has it taken a notice of motion from me to have this endorsed by this council, a project that will literally save the lives of our community? I believe that there is a wealth of information that has been compiled over literally decades, including a previous environmental assessment of a dam that was fully 9 metres higher than the current plan. This is the compromise. It is frankly wrong to say that there isn't enough information in hand for Council to affirm our support for this project tonight. And lastly, I believe that it's very timely that we do so, given that I am aware of this rising and organised protest against the project, driven by people who do not live in the bullseye as we do, and on the basis of rumours which are demonstrably misleading.

I therefore commend this motion to the Chamber.

Thank you, Councillor Sam.

Any further discussion?

No further discussion? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Where to start? There are a number of councillors sitting around this table who are on the Floodplain Risk Management Committee. We have received two briefings now from Infrastructure New South Wales on this project, and the short answer is that we are not at the point where we would be endorsing it, because we don't have all the information, and neither do they. What we have heard from them is some really useful information about how this raising of the wall could work within a suite of mitigation and evacuation and education strategies. What we don't have is any significant money on the table or projects that are currently being rolled out where we can confidently say that something is happening that will do something about flooding should it turn up in the next few weeks or the next few months.

We have— Still, something on the never never. And I think that's really unfortunate for our community, regardless of whether we raise the wall or not. We have, as has been correctly identified, a great many people living in the path of a potential flood. We haven't educated them effectively. We have many people who don't know, who are unable to make decisions about whether they stay in place or whether they go. We should have in place an education system and a community working, a community group set up, just like the RFS has done with community fire teams, where each street knows what it's going to do. People know how they will speak to their neighbours, and they know who is vulnerable in their community, and families know what to do.

We've done this around bushfire for a couple of decades. We have really dropped the ball on what we do about flooding, and I think these are actually things that we should be looking at doing with far greater urgency than voting on whether the state government should raise the dam wall or not. I think we've heard some really interesting points from speakers, and unfortunately none of those convinced me that I should be supporting this notice of motion. We've heard that it's very difficult to convince people of the importance of flooding because it's been so long since we've had a decent flood, and that is very true. We've estimated a large percentage of the LGA who doesn't know what a flood looks like and who, in fact, don't know that they're under threat.

And many of us would know that our neighbours are in that position, particularly those of us who are just above the one in 100 flood zone, where people think that because the real estate agent told them that their backyard or their lounge room will be dry, that they've got no worries. And these people are blissfully unaware that they'll lose power or sewer and things like that. We've heard that the McDonald Valley had two one-in-a-hundred floods within six months. Some of that flooding comes from the Macdonald River. None of that will be mitigated by raising the dam wall. We've heard that we need to keep pressure on state and local ministers, and that is very true. We most certainly do need to keep pressure on ministers.

We won't do that by just saying we will take this supposed panacea. We do need to get our neighbours on side, not just because some of our neighbouring councils are allowing building in one-in-twenty-five flood zones, but because the impact of what our neighbours does lands in our backyard, in the bathtub in which we sit. And in that case, I'm referring to the development on South Creek, on the South Creek catchment, which is the second major source of flooding into the Hawkesbury-Nepean Basin, now currently being covered as fast as they can manage with hard-standing roads, paved surfaces, houses and driveways. This will have a big impact on us. We don't even know what that South Creek flooding is going to look like.

If we put all our eggs in one basket with raising the dam wall, while we're not doing the other things that this is calling for, then we are really leaving that South Creek flooding to have a massive impact on the Hawkesbury . We've heard that building controls need to be tightened, and I agree with that completely. The problem is with evacuation and with warning, and we are here focusing on raising the dam wall and ignoring that desperate need for better evacuation routes, particularly for communities west of the river, where they will be stuck with no power, and in many communities that no power means no running water and no sewer.

So what, so again, we're back to this raising of the dam wall as the only thing that we seem to be focused on. I completely agree with Mr Sheather that we really need much tighter planning controls on things like schools and hospitals between the 1 in 100 and the PMF.

And with Mr Stedman that we should be aggressively educating new residents. And it makes me wonder why then, when we apply to funding organisations, including the state government, for money to do exactly that, for money to signpost evacuation routes, we are given nothing. And yet out they come with this idea of raising the dam wall. We don't have an EIS. We need to have an EIS before we can act on this. We need to have an EIS that details the impacts upstream, but also the impacts downstream. The Hawkesbury is a senile river. It relies on flooding for its health. It relies on flooding to maintain the food bowl that is the Hawkesbury, that generates thousands of— sorry , millions of dollars of Hawkesbury revenue.

The river needs flushes to keep it healthy. It doesn't have enough fresh water going into it. And certainly the flushes that came from the 2012 flood have been responsible for clearing out lots of weeds and improving river health. We have pleas from the downstream fishermen, and in particular the prawn fishers, that water flows are kept up to the river, that they're not stopped by this dam. But the other big elephant in the room is this dam wall being raised and Infrastructure New South Wales saying to us that this isn't about more development, that this isn't about increasing water supply. And yet we have really no evidence that at any point the state government is scaling back development, either on the South Creek floodplain or anywhere else in Western Sydney that will be relying on that dam wall for water.

And so we have this constant push for more and more development, and yet Infrastructure New South Wales assures us that no extra water will be kept in the dam. Either the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, or someone is telling porkies. We need to have a solution for extra water in Sydney that doesn't include keeping water in that dam. And I'm not seeing anything from Infrastructure New South Wales that shows that, nor am I seeing anything from planning that says that development, particularly on the South Creek floodplain, will be scaled back in any way. So I can't support this notice of motion. We simply don't have enough information to move forward on it at this stage. Thank you, Councillor Wheeler.

Councillor Connolly.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I guess the obvious rebuttal for that is: what other project do we ever wait for the state government to make up their mind before we start our advocacy? The state government has done a cost-benefit analysis, Infrastructure New South Wales. I thought it was Infrastructure New South Wales; maybe it was Infrastructure Australia, as one of the speakers mentioned, and it's got one of the best cost-benefit ratios of any project that they've ever assessed. And I would actually argue that's not even that relevant when you're talking about saving lives. You don't actually need to have a property cost in there to bolster up the project. You're just doing it because it's the right thing to do.

But I would take obvious issue with the fact that we should wait until the state government finishes their EIS and is essentially ready to make the decision before we start advocating for them to do this. Our community needs this. It's showing civic leadership to continue to fight for this project. Projects don't happen without pressure, and we do need to give up the pressure for this project to go ahead. In regards to the comments that all the eggs are in one basket and not enough happening now, I mean, first of all, obviously that's not relevant to this notice of motion. This notice of motion is about whether or not we should be advocating for the raising of the dam wall, not about whether we should tell them not to do anything else.

But just to respond to that, I mean, Infrastructure New South Wales at its latest briefing to councillors detailed that it's got in its regional strategy, a whole portion of that regional strategy is directed at educating the population who have been identified quite correctly as not being aware of the risk. A few councils in the last council, including the Mayor and I, fought very hard to get the flood risk advisory committee to stop worrying about development and to stop worrying about dredging the river and actually focus on its own part of its own strategy, which is based on educating the population of the Hawkesbury. So if that's not happening, if the Flood Risk Advisory Committee is not making progress on that, I think that needs to be reported to Council because I was not aware that that had stalled again and that that part of the strategy is not being implemented.

So I would be very concerned if that was the case, and it's certainly the first I think the councillors have heard of that. I'm not sure which councillors are on that committee, but I think that's something that needs to be taken up very strongly in that role, that you get the committee back on track with delivering that program if that's not happening. You know , this idea about development, I mean. You could use that argument about almost anything. I think it's a bit of a furphy to say we shouldn't go and put in this huge mitigation measure to make it much safer for the existing residents in case the future state government undoes it by putting in new development. I mean, the state government has been very upfront in all its documents and in all its communications that this is not about development and that they won't be lowering building heights.

That's not what it's for. So, I mean, you can continue to put that line out there. There's no evidence for that line. There's nothing to suggest that it's true. I guess it's just a good line that creates a bit of confusion in the community and sort of makes the issue a little bit messier for people to consider. But as the speakers have said, this is something that the Hawkesbury has wanted for a very long time. The benefits are obvious and huge and have been independently assessed. You know, there is no perfect solution, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try anything, as was sort of suggested by some speakers, that because this isn't perfect, it's not going to stop every flood from every catchment, that therefore we shouldn't do it.

The cost-benefit ratio between seven and ten is, you know, is massive compared to most projects that are funded with our taxpayer dollars. So I think this is a perfectly good use of our taxpayer dollars. I think we need to show some leadership. I don't think we should be waiting for the state government to make up its mind before we start advocating. We should be advocating now while they're assessing it, while they're considering it, while they're doing their consultation. That's when we should be advocating, not when they've finished their EIS and they're coming to the point they want to make a decision.

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. I might just address it now because you raised some issues regarding the Floodplain Management Committee. Just to assure you, we are progressing quite well. We've only not that long ago, as you would be aware, when our Floodplain Risk Management Study was adopted several years ago, it was adopted without one chapter, and that was the chapter of planning controls, which we wanted to have reinstated, and that has now been reinstated. So now we can move. Along the path of doing more, with regards to things such as the evacuation routes and the signage and the awareness, they are actually tied up in the strategy. So they're now being done not specifically by us, but they're part of the whole suite of measures that are being done by the strategy.

And that brings me to the fact that we have endorsed the strategy, which includes one of the measures being raising the dam wall subject to the EIS. So we already have taken that very stand, and I'm not quite sure, and I believe the government has a commitment to that as well and has allocated money to do both those studies, but also to start introducing some of the various measures that are included. So they aren't progressing probably as fast as some people would like to see, because in my opinion, the real urgency is to have some really basic easy measures in place now. That's what's going to save people. A really good awareness system, getting our evacuation routes finished, having the signage in place, et cetera, et cetera.

All of those things are what's really going to be important when the river floods. So I don't really see our role as advocating. It's a state government decision. I think we've supported the strategy and my preference would be to wait, not just for the EIS, but I want to wait and see if those other measures are put in place, because unless this entire thing is a package of what all the things that are in the strategy, then why would there be public money spent on one bit if we're not fully protecting our floodplain as we could if we follow exactly what the strategy outlines? Like some other speakers, I have some concerns with some of the other measures that would need to take place to ensure that the dam raising is being used for the purpose that it's been outlined to be, and I don't suggest that anyone here is suggesting otherwise, but just given that we are at a time when there is an immense amount of growth about to take place in Western Sydney, and the plans are talking about up to 800,000 additional people in Western Sydney.

Now that's a huge impact on our environment, on our whole area overall. So the planning for that future is being done in a methodical manner, and I think that we need to stick to that and to ensure that at each step we're making provision for how that number of people can live out here. It's a lot of people. I don't for a minute suggest that the work that has been done by the various groups advocating for this over the years, I think they've been diligent and they've done many, many wonderful studies. They've advocated hard to get it to this point, and I'm quite sure that a lot of their efforts are what have meant that it has been involved in the strategy as a part of that strategy. So I think that we're very lucky to have people with such significant knowledge of the floodplain and of flood mitigation and so on.

And I commend them for their commitment to following that literally for decades upon decades, and I know that they're very genuine in their reasoning for wanting that. That having been said, my list of concerns I think have probably been generally addressed by other speakers, but there are a couple of— there's just a whole number of things that we just really need to understand. So even just down to the point of the confirmation of the length of time that the dam would have to be closed while they actually did any work to it. So it was alluded to that that would be a period of around four years at the briefing, but it could end up being much longer. So what would be the impact of that on the surrounding townships that have been developed in those areas and their economies and their environments?

And how will they time that? And what happens if a big flood comes in the middle of that? There's so many unanswered questions which will actually come to light when all the various studies are done. And whereas there have been comprehensive studies done in the past, that really has been done with a lot of old data because we know there's been so many changes in climate and there's been so many changes in the amount of human impact on the area in the dam catchment and above, and— We really have to really understand the impact both above the dam and down below the dam. It's been addressed that, of course, we have many floods that don't have anything to do with the dam catchment. They come from the other areas, and we've got a big unknown quantity of potential flooding in the South Creek area from the massive amounts of development that have taken place along the Richmond Road, around Marsden Park and areas like that, and even in the Rouse Hill area, where, of course, once we had paddocks where the rain used to soak, and now it's generally hard surfaced, and all that water is going to run back into South Creek, and that will be another flooding incident.

And we have to think, where is the money and the planning to mitigate against flooding in that area as well? So there needs to be a holistic approach, and the strategy does that to a point, which is why I believe we follow the strategy and we don't leap out and take a single issue stand when I don't see that that serves any specific purpose, because we have already endorsed the strategy. So I don't know if I don't really see the value in doing that, with doing it without all the various information that we could possibly have. Definitely the awareness, I think, is the thing that we have to really get onto, and it needs to be an immediate thing, and we have been pushing for it within the committee, that we need to make the people that live in this valley understand just how dangerous flooding is and what sort of measures they need to take to be ready and to increase their resilience to a point that they will know what to do when there is a really, really big flood.

So I don't believe you make policy just because you think somebody is opposing it. I just think that would be. I note Councillor Sanbruno has put that in his notice of motion, that there's a growing opposition to it. But one of the most important things is really ensuring that expenditure of public funds is done in the most effective and efficient way, because I think that we've just seen with the light rail a potential doubling of the cost that goes into billions. We really need to be sure, even though getting infrastructure is great, why do we rush in and commit to things until we have all the information? I understand the urgency of the people who've spent decades advocating for this, but I think that we really have to just do it with a proper process, and I really want to see that the other measures are being put in place, that there really are proper evacuation routes to get people out, because of course raising the dam won't stop a flood.

It will just delay the impacts of the flood for some time. So we'll still have to have people evacuated and so on. And of course, there's all the floods that come from other catchments. And particularly I would be concerned about the changes in intensity of rainfall that we've seen occurring lately, and that is giving the potential for localised flash flooding incidents, which also have to be catered for, and expenditure on measures to deal with that. Last year at the flood conference, we were alerted to the evolving changes in flood behaviour. There's some rather unusual anomalies have been witnessed by floods. They were not celebrating, I guess, but commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the Pasha Bulker flood when that occurred in Newcastle, and that was something that hadn't been seen like that before.

There were people from Forbes speaking about what happened when it flooded in Forbes, and they were having things that they'd never seen before. So we really, really have to take this opportunity, when the government has committed, and I commend them for doing that, committed the money to spend on the studies to understand what the best solution to mitigating for flooding in this valley is. And so I would prefer to wait until we have the information, and I don't see that going out supporting it at this point has any value beyond our endorsement of the current strategy.

Madam Mayor, this isn't my right of reply. It's just a question to you. My understanding is that courteous meeting practice has the speaker announcing whether they will oppose or support the motion that's before the chair, and I found it difficult to establish whether you're actually voting for or against this.

We'll be voting in a minute. I said that I was speaking against it. Deputy Mayor. Thank you

Madam Mayor. I just wanted to start with a question, a question of clarification. In Councillor Zamprogno's background section, the fifth paragraph down, it says that the Resilient Valley, Resilient Communities Plan signature initiative proposes to raise the dam wall by 14 metres, and there is agreement between New South Wales and the Commonwealth to fully fund the project for completion by the early 2020s, and the commitment to raise the dam wall was made in June 2016. Now I've heard several other speakers here say or imply that the decision has not yet been made, so can I get clarification? Has the state government decided to do this or not?

Mr. Kearns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I believe the case is that they've committed to the business case being completed by 2020, and then subsequent decision after that.

So what is in the background information is not correct, is that?

Mr.

Kearns.

As I say, they've committed to the business plan, essentially. So essentially, yes, that's not correct. They have committed to the funding of the whole project.

Right. The whole project is the Resilient Valley, Resilient Communities project. So I'm just wondering then if the state government has committed to the project, then what we say here will not slow it up or speed it up. They've already decided they're going to commit to the project, which includes a possibility of raising the dam wall by 14 metres. So why is it relevant for us to say whether we like them to do that or not? Because I don't even think we're being asked what we would like. We've taken it on our own back to tell them, but state government's already decided that this project is going to go ahead, and they've got a partnership with the Commonwealth Government to fund it. I think we need to concentrate on what our role is in terms of flooding.

We don't build dams. That's not a council responsibility. But we do have a role to play in such things as, in terms of flood mitigation, in such things as escape routes, education of the population, building and planning of levees. Um. Addressing the results of sea level rise, and a lot of people don't realise, as the sea level rises, people think that that's only going to affect people who live at the beach. But no, it's going to come right up the rivers. It's been estimated that in Windsor, the river may rise by a metre in about 30 years' time. And if the river's already a metre higher than it is now, and we get a bit of rain, then the situation is going to be exaggerated. And we need to be planning for that at a local level, looking for levees, looking for escape routes.

And I think putting something like that forward as a notice of motion might have been a lot more productive than what we have here. Councillor Sam Progno asks us to renew our support. I don't see why we need to renew our support, and he hasn't explained that. In fact, none of these speakers explained why we need to renew our support. Perhaps the answer is political. I know that in Councillor Sam Progno's speech, he made a very clear distinction about the role of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party in history. So perhaps that's what his notice of motion is all about, going into political speak. And then we get told that people who don't support this are putting everyone at risk. We're going to drown the population, a whole lot of scare tactics, and all we're being asked to do is to renew our support.

Renewing our support is not going to stop people from drowning. That's all the motion asks us to do. We should be letting the New South Wales government get on with its own responsibilities. It needs to talk to the people down here in Penrith about what it wants to do, and we need to get on with our own responsibilities, which is about educating the community and providing other flood mitigation opportunities. So to that extent, this, I see this notice of motion as achieving nothing. It may have scared a few people and it may have raised the issue, but renewing our support, I don't see that that is worthwhile doing, and I don't think Councillor Sam Progno has made the case as to why we should renew our support.

Perhaps he'll do that in the right of reply, but at this point I can't see myself supporting this notice of motion.

Thank you, Councillor Calvert. Councillor Richards. Thank you,

Madam Mayor. This tonight, to clarify, first of all, I'll definitely be supporting this notice of motion. It is absolutely essential that we do. This is an endorsement of a policy that is going to save lives, to save human and animal lives. This is an endorsement of a policy that is going to reduce economic loss to property and business. This is an endorsement of a policy that aims to protect our community. Tonight is our opportunity to say to our community that we are all behind the commitment to raise the dam wall so that we are better protected. This is not about increasing development in the Hawkesbury LGA. That is not why this proposal ever came forward. It is about protection of those who live and those who work here should a flood come our way.

It is important that this receives Hawkesbury City Council's support so that all levels of government display their commitment to our residents that their safety matters. I moved to Richmond in 1993. I was 10 years old. I just missed—I don't know how that's—okay, Councillor Ross. I just missed the 1992 flood. I've seen this community go into panic mode a couple of times since then, probably a few more, when the waters rose, but not quite to the level of the bridges. I fathom to imagine if the threat of flood was any more real than what I've seen since I came here when I was 10, and I fathom to imagine that if that occurs, how this council would feel if it had an outstanding resolution not to support an effort to mitigate that reality.

I apologise, Councillor Calvert, with all due respect, but there were some lines of argument that you made tonight that actually can't stand to reason when you look at some of the other decisions that have been made by the council in this chamber in this term. If you're saying that when state or federal governments have committed to other projects, why bother informing them of council's thoughts on it? Case in point, Windsor Bridge replacement project. Perhaps the same could be said for, let's say, that project and other projects where we spend an hour or an hour and a half tossing around motions up on the screen to try and make sure that council gets its point across to every possible state and federal minister that it can to express its point of view.

And that opposition isn't political. The line that you said was, Let the state government get on with their responsibilities. If we go in to apply that line of thought to this motion, then let's try and apply that line of thought to everything that comes into this chamber. Some other things that have been said tonight: we'll signage, talking about signage, evacuation routes, having those things as things to be done now. Is signage going to be enough to save lives? Are evacuation routes going to be enough just to save lives? No. Let's endorse the measure that's going to have the maximum impact and let all the other levels of government know what we stand for and that we believe it's important and crucial.

This is a proposal. It's an idea that will have long-term benefits. As previously mentioned tonight, we will not ever be given a solution that is going to save flood concerns, as another councillor said, within the next few weeks. That's unrealistic. We can't play games on this one. We need to be telling the state government that we are backing them on this 100%. We need to be making decisions tonight, not dancing around the edges. Let's support this notice of motion. Let's support the idea, and let's apply the pressure now so that everybody knows what we stand for, that we want to protect our community, that our community matters. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Wilson.

Any further discussion?

Councillor Ross. Thank you.

I'm sorry to the gallery, but to say this, but you've been brought here with

A false expectation. The state government, as I understand it, is looking at a business case. It hasn't decided on the project at all.

So, in those terms, this notice of motion is a total irrelevance. However, it has brought some good by-product, and the by-product is

No doubt worthy of everyone's consideration here today, and that is in regard to the evacuation routes, education, etc. Very valid. And if the state government were doing their job instead of out there grandstanding, they would have been committing funds to improvements to the evacuation routes and signage and education now ,

And not just sitting around having a little doodle with a business case.

That's that element of it. The proposal itself, the business case,

Is really building on a very

Flawed assessment . It has been previously looked at by a former government. They decided not to increase the height of the dam wall, but to introduce a rather large spillway.

The idea that Sydney should be garnering all its drinking water. From this area is very bad policy.

It's like putting all of your eggs in a basket.

The problem is, of course, if something goes wrong with the basket,

There might not be many eggs.

There must, there must be a greater diversity of water sources being sought, and shifting water from one dam to another is not what that entails. What it entails is, I would have believed, a greater reliance and utilisation of desalination and indeed recycling, as one of our earlier speakers suggested.

So from that point of view, even this business case, which the state government is touting it's going to spend some money on,

Is a very jaundiced ,

Poor approach to a multifactorial situation , as was alluded to by one of our contributors. The other factors, of course, to which some attention has been drawn is that we are already in the South Creek catchment suffering the adverse outcomes of added residential Occupation , causing an increase in the

Rainwaters not to be absorbed into the ground and then gradually work their way through natural forces into the stream itself, but to be unable to get the time to actually soak into the ground. It runs across the surface of the floodplains into South Creek, and we've seen twice in the last three years flood events along the Hawkesbury Valley Way between Pitt Town Road and the Fitzroy Bridge in Windsor, which have meant the closure of that road and the use of the Jim Anderson route exclusively, with the bridge still remaining open. And we can all remember the difficulties of fellow citizens trying to get from the Jim Anderson Bridge across

To the opposite side of the river, coming up through Windsor Township proper.

That's a reality. It's happened. The greater the development, as we're now seeing in Schofields, for instance, is

Purely going to exacerbate

That. There's been no consideration of that at all. Then we look at the Hawkesbury Nepean. Well,

Warragamba constitutes one element.

We've heard about the Macdonald River flooding. We also know that in the 70s, I believe it was, that the Grose River flooded and caused quite severe damage down this end. Didn't get near Warragamba.

There's the potential for the Colo to do the same. So

Whatever the state government is toying with here

Is not a conclusive answer to anything.

As I said earlier, we ought to be getting money spent by the state government on education and on evacuation routes and preparing people so that they know what to do in the event. And they also get some decent flood evacuation plans together. Instead of sending people to Parramatta when they're living on the western side of the river out of harm's way, they ought to be making sure that people on the other side of the river who are out of harm's way stay there. We've got access by modern transport to get foodstuffs in. There are health services and police and other services west of the river, and they can also be sent out there by aircraft in this modern day.

The plans that they have in terms of evacuation are 19th century horse and buggy stuff, just crazy. And that's been pointed out, and they still seem to be having cotton wool stuffed in their ears and being unable to listen and to comprehend or plan appropriately. If they're worried about the supply of electricity, for instance, well, they should be putting in the infrastructure to make sure you've got the fail-safe system. Quite simple and a darn sight cheaper than these billions of dollars that they're going to waste on this sort of nonsense. Now, in addition to that, let's just surmise what would happen if we go ahead with this. Well, we've got a change of climate. That's been acknowledged by everybody, including the CSIRO, and we've been warned that there is a drying element , that rainfall is not going to be as abundant , if you like.

It may come in irregular and unpleasant bursts, but generally the rainfall level will reduce, and I think we're noticing that already. We're seeing certainly

Unusual movements in our weather patterns. I mean, it's quite noticeable. I mean, in the last few days, look at the temperatures we've got at the moment. We've got— these are akin to more like February than this time of the year, and the same

Thing happened the year before.

I believe a better solution, if the state government is fair dinkum about a business case, is to look at leaving the dam wall where it is. And the reason I say that is that the structure of the dam is up in parts to 70 years of age, and that is coming

Into the area where such structures

Become liable to failure of one sort or another and need of great remediation within themselves. So a lowering of the water level in the current dam and seeking sources

Other than— That location for more water supplies, LRD cell, etc., should be actively being pursued now. And the safety of that area and I think the benefit to the river, because I believe also that lowering of the water level within the existing dam would also make available a greater degree of flow within the current stream, which the government might like to also clean up and improve the quality of these so-called either 32, 35 or whatever it is disposal points into the river from sewage plants, would clean up the quality of the water in the river, would improve the likelihood of good prawn catches and wonderful oyster product further downstream, and probably also improve the fishing capacity of the river and no doubt be better for the farmers who are working the flood plains and dependent upon drawing water from the river themselves.

So, there you go. And in addition to that, any thought about increasing the height of the water level within the Warragamba area is going to inundate further probably World Heritage ecological systems and areas, which again is going to exacerbate . The lack of greenery, if you like, and carbon absorption by Mother Nature occurring. It also may, because the huge expanse of additional surface area of water, may also lead to

Changes within the climate generated just purely by that. And I think that's a factor that they probably would find it very hard to measure as well. So I see that this notice of motion is totally out of place in this council. I'm quite supportive of the comments made by Councillor Calvert, and it would behove our body to be seeking money from the state government to do the current job that they're currently employed to do, which they seem incapable of doing in offering and getting on with providing decent evacuation routes and a full range of education to support that, so that in the event if something happens within the immediate future, while ever they're fiddling around in the back rooms, that people have got some state of preparedness beyond that which we've got now, which is nil. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Ross. Councillor Rasmussen.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think there is great merit in expressing from this council a very clear statement about support for mitigation. In the Hawkesbury, the number one issue in the Hawkesbury is flooding. The number one issue here is flooding. Most of us here know that. The problem is that , and as we know, the state government is very gun-shy on providing essential infrastructure that affects us here in this valley. So given that sort of scenario, and given the fact that we need a whole range of solutions , a suite of solutions to mitigate flooding, and given that we have on the table a proposal , and yes there is a business case to be made, and clearly there is a business case to be made for spending nearly $700 million of taxpayers' money, I think we ought to make it very clear to the state government that we will want them to proceed with this one of the solutions of this suite of mitigation measures.

The raising of the dam by 14 metres, in my view, would be one of the parts that would help mitigate severe flooding in the Hawkesbury. And if we don't give it a very clear signal and advocate for it, the state government may well lose its cool on this. As we know, they're not keen on building bridges or anything else in some places. Anyway, several other points I think are necessary to be made, and that is that we do need additional solutions for new water. We cannot keep adding, you know, another 800,000-plus people houses to Western Sydney without additional water. There is no more water to be gotten out of this river. It is down to a trickle now. You just cannot get any more water out of that dam or out of that system.

So there has to be other solutions found. Now, the obvious one is desalination. I mean, the transfer of water from one catchment to another is such a dumb idea. It is just a dumb idea. Anyway, there needs to be more water found. Now, on the point, and you've raised it, Madam Mayor, the local floodplain management strategy did stall for a number of years. You knew that, I know that, and it was a great consternation and frustration to me that it stalled for about three or four years, I'd say. Anyway, it is now back on track, and this council is making it move with the floodplain management committee.

Madam Mayor, you also raised a point, and a good point, I think, a very strong point, about the length of the construction of the dam.

Madam Mayor, I think we've got cameras being taken, photos being taken up back here. I think Mr Nicholson's gentleman here—

It's all right, I've noticed that. It's all right, I'll deal with that, thank you. Thank you. Continue, Councillor Rasmus. Thank you for

Interrupting my speech, right ?

I really appreciate that.

So, Madam Mayor, you raised the construction about the length of the construction, estimated about four years, and that is a real issue because what happens during that construction phase? It may go a bit longer, but what happens during that construction phase, particularly with the releases of water that is now essential water that is now being released from the dam down the river? Now, I've made some inquiries about that with the senior project people who are dealing with raising the dam wall, and I'm still waiting on answers for that. I just don't think they've gone that far into the— The whole mechanism of what would happen and how it would happen, and what would happen if, you know, they can't release water, and what would happen downstream, you know, water supply, town water, river flow, da da da.

So all of those things I think are necessary to be raised. But look, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we have got to advocate strongly and clearly for mitigation in the Hawkesbury. And the raising of dam, I believe, is one of them. And as we've heard, there are many others. And on this management, floodplain management strategy that we've developed now and moving along, there are many other issues there, many other essential elements that are on the list to be done. The problem with it is, as several councillors have mentioned, is the funding of it all. Who is funding it and how quickly will it be done? Because yes, if we do get a flood in the next two or three years or sooner, there will be serious problems for all of us.

So we need to get on with this. We should have got on to it many years ago, in my book, because it is the number one issue for the Hawkesbury.

Thank you, Councillor Russell. Councillor Tree. Thank you.

I don't

I don't see that there's any problem supporting this in principle at all at this stage. I think a number of people have suggested that , well, what's the harm, really? Like any reducing any risk or mitigating any risk, there's usually more than one approach. It's usually a multi-pronged approach. And so I think that when we had the briefing with Infrastructure New South Wales, they were very clear in their intent to improve signage and to improve education for evacuation and to improve evacuation routes anyway. They also clearly stated that they were committed to seeing the project to a successful completion. They also appeared to be quite committed to investigating the short- and long-term impacts on the fauna and flora upstream if they did end up having the water captured up there, the extra water captured upstream.

I tend to think I'm a bit pragmatic when it comes to weighing up between a little bit of inundation upstream for a period of time versus the loss of life and the loss of property. Property, you know, you can rebuild, I get that, but a lot of people are very attached to their family homes, and people can't get to work, people can't do their daily business. So the economic problems are very significant. It's not the panacea, it's not the silver bullet. Nobody's suggesting that because we all know that the catchment areas are varied and manied, and no one can accurately model what would happen in any one event because there'd be lots of different catchments impacting on that particular, or on any particular event at one time.

I've always been an advocate for raising the dam wall because I do see it as a potential measure to fix some of the, you know, foreseen problems that we do know that could happen. It's not like we don't know that it won't happen. I'm not going to, you know, Councillor Ross assured us that we're getting dry now, so we shouldn't really worry about it. But I just don't know if I'm going to feel comfortable with that suggestion. Another thing that Infrastructure New South Wales were very strong on was that this doesn't mean that we're going to be changing the heights for buildings, so it doesn't mean that we'd get any more development in our particular area. And I agree that the amount of development that's been happening in neighbouring LGAs is extremely problematic because I don't think any studies had been done to see what sort of impact that the flow of water would have on the hard surfaces.

I think that it's just, I think that it is a very worrying issue. So, you know, to sit here and say we want to wait for the EIS and to sit here and say we don't want to support this because it's a nonsense or it's just one thing and it's not going to fix everything, well, you're right, it's not going to fix everything, but it could fix something and it could prevent a serious event impacting, you know, more people in the future. So I think it's worthwhile saying that we're happy to support this, definitely in principle. Once the EIS comes out and if there are big issues with that, we can have a look, you know, we can say that then. But I think, I don't think it's the wrong time to support this.

And as I said, if you're weighing up the impact on fauna and flora upstream and the impacts on human life downstream, I prefer backing the human life downstream. So I'm supporting this notice of motion and thank Councillor Zamprogno for bringing it forward. Thank you, Councillor.

Any further discussion? Councillor Reynolds.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor.

I, first of all, Councillor Zamprogno noticed he said that he had a special interest because he lost an ancestor in the 1800s, and I too lost ancestors in the 1800s and in the floods, and we lost the family farm in 1956, and I lost friends in the '78 flood and in the 1986 flood. And so I know what floods can do. The recent report—I'm speaking against Councillor Zamprogno's motion, by the way—the recent report concluded there is no single or no simple solution and no single... Infrastructure option that can address all of the flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain. It said evacuation is the only mitigation measure that can guarantee a reduced risk to life. As far as flooding goes, and when I say flooding, I mean flooding where the river actually breaks its banks, not the freshets we've had come down in recent years.

We've had floods where the river's broken its banks and no water has come from the dam.

There is now proposals being put forward by people like Dr Stuart Khan from the University of New South Wales, who believes that lowering the water level in the existing dam can achieve the same effect, and the desalination plant fired back up to produce up to 15% of Sydney's water, remembering that the desal plant is costing Sydney residents $100 a year to keep it in mothballs. Each.

So all these issues will be addressed in the EIS. I find it interesting that Councillor Richards doesn't believe that signage and evacuation will save lives, when signage and evacuation is one of the nine outcomes detailed in the Resilient Valleys, Resilient Communities strategy.

Misrepresentation.

If it is possible to— Just clarify misrepresentation

Well, you can do that when Councillor Reynolds

I, for example, if there is a possibility of the existing dam being used for mitigation purposes and water can be found through desalination plants, remembering South Australia and Western Australia use multiple desalination plants for water supply. Then the adopted, then the $700 million—or it's going to be more than that, we all know that—could be put into building real evacuation routes, which as the report states is the only mitigation measure that can guarantee to reduce risk to life. And not only would those evacuation routes save lives during a flood, they would benefit the community every day of every week, not just in the event of a one-in-100-year flood or whatever. I also am mindful that the last time this council supported a proposal without waiting for the EIS and without waiting for the preferred infrastructure report was the Windsor Bridge project, and look what that left us with.

Thank you.

Thank

You,

Councillor Reynolds.

Councillor

Richards, your point of misrepresentation.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think that if you're going to say what someone says, you get it right. And Councillor Reynolds said that I said that signage will not save lives and evacuation routes will not save lives. That is not what I said. They were actually questions; I've got them written down. I said, Will signage be enough to save lives? Will evacuation routes be enough to save lives? That is what I said, and I did not say that they alone will not save lives. So I think that if you're going to say what someone said and quote them, best to get it correct and in context.

Thank you, everyone. Is there any further discussion? Right of reply, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and please let me extend my thanks to all the people for their contribution. I will try and unpack some of the things that have been said. Firstly, this is not—this notice of motion is not about the other things that have to happen as part of a comprehensive package of flood mitigation and our strategy to deal with the potential effects of a flood. Councillor Wheeler should know that the state government committed $13 million just in the last year and $58 million in the year before that towards signage and flood evacuation routes. So the briefing that we have received indicated that the government is committed to the three-pronged strategy: good planning, flood evacuation and readiness, and also flood mitigation.

Aware of that fact, I crafted this notice of motion to focus on what I regarded as the missing piece of the puzzle, which was flood mitigation through raising the dam wall. It is true that there are other parts of this catchment. Councillor Wheeler went on at length about the effects of South Creek, but if she had turned to page 17 of the Resilient Valley, Resilient Communities document, she would have seen a chart that listed a number of floods and noted that the contribution of South Creek to those floods was 1%, 2 %, 3%, and in 1986 a maximum of 10%. And furthermore, that the McDonald River and the McDonald Valley, although they do have their own issues with flooding, the confluence of the McDonald River is well downstream of the Sackville Gorges that form the pinch point that cause us so much grief here on the rest of the floodplain.

The 1 in 100 flood level is 17.3 metres here at Windsor, but down towards the confluence of the McDonald River, Councillor, correct me if I'm wrong, it's somewhere between 3 and 5 metres for the 1 in 100 level. Yep. So that is not a correct assertion to make. That this has not yet been fully committed to by the state government. It has been announced. It is the government's intention, and it is true that the stage that it is up to is to contemplate and approve the business case through Cabinet before 2020. But as we saw in the 1990s, this is too important for us to lose the momentum through a change of government. This is so important to our community that it deserves to have bipartisan support, and it would be a crushing blow for the second time in a quarter of a century for the project to get to a particular point and then to fall over because there was a change of government at state or federal level.

And that's precisely why we need to be advocating on behalf of our community. We are expected to lead, and if I can paraphrase the words of the mayor in her remarks, I think it would be the epitaph of any political leader to utter the words, It's not our job to advocate. But that's what the mayor has said. It's not our job to advocate, even though we stick our noses into the business of the state and federal governments.

Feel free, Madam Mayor. But we are expected to lead by our community, and it represents a lack of leadership to say on a particular issue that doesn't align with your shade of politics that it's not our job to advocate. The former occupants of your chair, Madam Mayor, were happy not merely to present this to the chamber to seek their affirmation, which they got, but to lead the local community-based organisation that advocated for it outside the chamber and in the public space. That was the kind of leadership that we enjoyed back in the 1980s and 1990s, and how far have we fallen? In 1974, it is true that there are other parts of the catchment, and that there were six floods in six months that did not result, that were not the result of a release of water from Warragamba Dam.

But the various documents do not suggest that this is a universal panacea, that it will reduce the frequency and the severity of floods, that it will reduce the loss of life and property by up to 75 percent, that it will play its role as part of a constellation of measures. And, Councillor Reynolds, I think it would be cold comfort if we didn't advocate for practical flood mitigation measures, and we simply said to a person, one of the 12,000 homeowners that would be inundated in the case of a bad flood, is that we resolved in our wisdom that the best suggestion was to just tell them to get out of the way, whereas we could have spent our time advocating for something that would actually stop the problem from occurring three-quarters of the time.

This is not, as Councillor Ross suggests, about Sydney's future water drinking needs. That is an issue, but it's not the issue that's dealt with in this notice of motion. It's true that the state Labor government left us with a desalination plant that costs $190 million a year to keep in mothballs. That was the legacy that the current government was left with. And even if that plant was operating at its full capacity, it would supply no more than 15 percent of Australia's drinking water needs, and was referred to by one expert as bottled electricity because of the costs of its operation.

It is true that when this Chamber has dealt with this before, I mean, the Mayor has referred to the efforts of the Flood Mitigation Committee, but that's the resolution of a particular committee. It's important that those resolutions make their way to this Chamber. And there hasn't been a resolution like this before this Chamber for nearly five years. Of course, when this did come before the Chamber in

February 2014, the resolution was specifically that the Council support the raising of Warragamba Dam wall. That resolution was passed 8-1. The records show that the only person that voted against it was the Mayor. And when this came, when the remit of the Flood Risk Advisory Committee came before this Council in only September of last year, we adopted, universally if memory serves me, and moved by Councillor Rasmussen and Councillor Garrow, a new remit for the Risk Advisory Committee that included, and I quote, that the committee assists the Council in advocating consideration of and implementing the strategies contained within the Hawkesbury-Nepean— Point

Of order, Madam Mayor. Yes, Councillor Wheeler, point of order. My understanding is right of reply doesn't include new information. We're now being presented with new notices of motion, with new motions that— Point of order upheld,

Councillor Wheeler. I was going to raise it myself, Councillor Conolly. Oh, you should have held it up when we had

10 minutes of

That.

Thank you, Madam— Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I will— Councillor Tree, I'll ask that you have respect in this Chamber, please. Well, use your microphone so you're recorded. Repeat what you said on your microphone, please.

Councillor Tree, I'd like you to apologise please, or I'll ask you to leave.

Councillor Tree is now leaving. Yeah. Thank you. No, please leave. Please leave. Thank you. Well, apologise or I will ask you to leave.

Apologise genuinely please, or I'll ask you to leave. This is a continual behaviour of yours to try and undermine things, and I'm not going to put up with the disrespect.

Councillor Tree, could you please leave? I'll adjourn the meeting for 15 minutes. So

I was so close.

So close.

Now, if everyone goes back to their seat.

Some councillors are still outside. Councillor Tree, could you please apologise? I apologise for my active disorder. Thank you. Councillor Zambrano, I'd ask you to continue, but as was raised in the point of order, to refrain from introducing more material, which you have been doing.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. In my defence, because a right of reply is a reply to the other things that have been said in the chamber, I reserve the right to remind the council of things that perhaps were not mentioned in my initial speech. The purpose of the initial speech is to put the positive case for one's motion. This is a rebuttal. That's a standard debating tactic. Anyway, I was nearly concluded, Madam Mayor, and I thank you for your indulgence. What I was saying

Was that when last year the Flood Risk Advisory Committee took on the specific remit of advocating for the flood mitigation measures that were in the Resilient Community, Resilient Valley document, and Madam Mayor, you are the chair of that committee. That meant that you became the chair of a committee that was resolved to advocate for its signature capital initiative, which is raising Warragamba Dam wall. Therefore, if you feel that you cannot give your support to a simply worded notice of motion that says no more and no less than this council should support raising Warragamba Dam wall, I feel that your role as the head of that risk advisory committee is untenable and that you should resign from it. That concludes my remarks.

Thank you, Councillor Zambrano. I'll just address the misrepresentation, and I will also just address that last comment, because I'll reiterate that we have adopted the Resilient Valley strategy, which includes raising the dam wall once the EIS is completed. And as I said in my speech, I was— Following the processes which were done under that. Anyway, I'm not going to breach the rules by doing my own right of reply, but I will just address the misrepresentation. So to say you said that I said it is not our job to advocate, but you forgot to say the rest of the sentence. So you cannot pick just a small phrase out of what I said and take it out of context. That's a total misrepresentation. I said it is not our job to advocate for that specific thing on its own.

I was speaking about us following a strategy, and that's what we're following. And the reason you have a strategy is so that you can have all those things fall into place one after the other, and we get the best result all round. Councillor Reynolds, your point of misrepresentation, please.

Trying to remember, there was that many. I think it was Councillor [unclear] saying that I said something like I will say to people in the valley, get out or drown or something silly like that. When I said that, I quoted the document, said there's no single infrastructure option that can address all of the flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley.

So you didn't say that?

No, I said evacuation. I said I quoted them. I said evacuation is the only mitigation measure that can guarantee a reduced risk to life. And then went on to say that we needed to wait for the EIS to come out and make a decision.

Thank you , Councillor Reynolds. I'll now put the motion. Vote with our hands. All those in favour for the notice of motion? One, two, three, four, five. Those against? The motion is lost.

Our next item, I think that was all our items with speakers.

I know we have one more notice of motion, two. We have one speaker, Michael Want. Thanks.

Thanks, Mayor and Councillors. I'm a member of the Hawkesbury Bells Line of Road Action Group. Now they have about a thousand members online, all within a couple of weeks. The State Government has driven a spear into the hearts of New South Wales residents with their proposed corridor for roads and rail.

I'm not directly affected, but our neighbours are, and in our community, if they're affected, so am I. I've spoken with a number of families who will lose their homes, some their livelihood. So we thank Councillor Garrow for a notice of motion tonight and any amendments that may be moved. All the families affected are stressed, upset and in despair. Compassion and political representation by the local member is urgently required. The predicament is diabolical. Councillors, let's walk in their shoes just for a little while. Some examples of the devastation to families affected. I just want to give you a few examples. The family next door to me bought a little over two years ago, part of their lands to go.

The family next to them just sold and a new family will move in this week, unaware of what's happened. Another built their home about 20 years ago. The same is happening to them. And Skillion Orchard, which John McGuire owns and his family, which a lot of you people would know, will just about be wiped out. Another family on Gracevale Road, their home will go. The daughter told me that she will be able to keep her bedroom. There are many, many more who are hurting.

I attended the consultation meeting at Kurrajong. It was a farce. Hundreds turned up, including some councillors and council staff. Consultation it was not. Receipt of informative information it was not. Consultation is exchanging documentations, allowing consideration of those documents, discussing those documents and hopefully coming to an outcome that is fair, just and reasonable. Consultation is not telling someone what you are going to do. The NRDCAA, Core, Richmond Main Street and Kurrajong Heights Action Association met with Transport New South Wales on 30 June 2015 with regards to the corridor. Ideas from the community groups were taken on board and Transport for New South Wales agreed they would come back to us within 12 months.

I asked one of the participants who was at that meeting in June what happened that no one came back to us. That person replied, The government wanted to hurry along the project, as they wanted to make an announcement.

That's pretty poor. Now, where's our local member, Mr Perrottet? He was not at Kurrajong meetings to support and comfort the community. They were in deep shock after the suits visited their properties to deliver the brown envelopes about two weeks ago. I'm not aware of any actions. Mr Perrottet has taken to date to support the communities affected west of the river. I’m advised correspondence to him from residents has resulted in an automatic reply, which passes the buck to others. That practice is not unusual for politicians in our experience, but it is insulting to those who correspond with politicians and expect a timely reply.

The proposed corridor is against the public interest and the common good, and not in accordance with the principles or vision set out in the West District Plan. Some suggested amendments to Councillor Garrow’s notice of motion. Firstly, we should call on Mr Perrottet to advocate for the interests of those affected in his electorate.

Secondly, we should ask Councillor Garrow to call on Mr Perrottet to organise public meetings in Kurrajong Heights, Kurrajong, Grose Vale and Grose Wold to listen to the electorate’s view, set up a working party with nominees affected, and then make the decisions based on consensus.

We’d also ask Councillor Garrow’s notice of motion to invite Mr Perrottet to visit the proposed corridor routes with the working party to ensure he appreciates the visual beauty to which we refer. This could be the Tuscany region of New South Wales, says John McGuire from his in-skillion orchard, and John’s been pushing that barrier for quite a number of years. The Grose Valley and surrounds is a jewel that should be cherished and protected by all of us. Just one little bit. From our point of view as our family, we emphatically reject the proposed Castle Ray Bells Line of Road corridor progressing any further than the southern side of the Nepean-Hawkesbury River. We would not object to a rail and road tunnel entry subject to genuine consultation on the southern side of the Nepean River and having tunnels exits at various locations along the route. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr Want. Are you happy to take questions? Are there any questions for Mr Want? Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr Want. Just for my own notes, can you please again repeat the group that you said you're representing? I

Didn't say I was representing anyone.

Oh, you said you were from somewhere at

The... No, I said that I am a member of the Bells Line of Road Action Group.

Action Group. Yeah. Is that an actual entity or an incorporated association or anything like that that has proper membership?

You'd have to ask them that. I don't know.

Or are you referring, just for clarification, to Facebook likes? Is it a Facebook page? It is. And that's the number of Facebook likes?

I haven't a clue. Oh

I'm just asking. You've just made that representation.

Their Facebook likes.

I think he meant the number of people in the group. Yeah, on

Facebook. Oh, they've said, the people have said they've got a thousand members online. Online. Yeah, or about a thousand members online. No worries.

Thank you,

Mr Want. I think

You can go

On with this public.

Thank you.

No questions. Thank you, Mr Want. Councillor Gower. I've

Moved an amendment to the notice of motion, if I can get that up, please.

Do you have a seconder for it? Who's seen it? Councillor Rasmussen Councillor Wheeler, have you seen them? Yep. Okay.

Can you see them?

Point of order, Madam Mayor.

Yes.

This is significantly different to the notice of motion in the business paper. I'm just wondering why it's been brought up with no notice, and if that's in order.

I just, I haven't read it. I'm just going to read it and see if it's significantly different.

I might ask the General Manager for a ruling on—I'm not quite sure of the gauge of how different it has to be to be eliminated.

I'm researching now, Madam Mayor.

Well, definitely number point one's definitely all right, because that's existing.

Madam Mayor, in a somewhat—

In a somewhat uninformed manner, I would say that the item is consistent with the item that was listed on the agenda. There are certainly elements of the revised motion that are in the original motion that was published. The purpose of the agenda is to give people due notice that a matter is going to be listed and debated. I think it's fair enough to say that people understand the issue that's going to be debated tonight that's been listed. It may have been added to somewhat through the amendment, and— There may be, you know, a reasonable ground for someone to say we could have had more notice of this. I accept that, but I don't think it's an unlawful process, more a difficult process perhaps, if that helps.

Councillor Connelly, is there a section you particularly object to?

Yeah, I mean, Madam Mayor, the original motion was about whether or not we should have additional meetings. This motion is about the current route, the reports that indicated it wasn't feasible. So I think point 6 is substantially different. Point 5 is quite different. I don't think either of those can be said to be related to whether or not we should have additional consultation. I don't think they're in order, Madam Mayor. I don't think we can put this up without giving anyone notice.

The second point in the original motion, though, is what is point 1 here , and point 2 is requesting another consultation. I can't see a problem with that, or a request 3 and 4. Do you mean 5 and 6, Madam Mayor? All right, well if we eliminate that, we'll proceed eliminating 5 and 6, which of course are points which people can raise or which can be written in letters anyway. So we're proceeding with the 4. Thank you, Councillor Garrow. Discussion? Okay.

On the 26th of March 2018, our community was hit with the news the M9 and the Bells Line of Road corridor announcements, an announcement that came with a complete lack of consultation, which not only blindsided hundreds of directly affected residents, but also our own Hawkesbury Council staff and councillors, not to mention causing major distress to our community. The Oxford Dictionary definition of consultation is to, one, seek information or advice from someone, especially an expert or professional, and, two, have discussions with someone, typically before understanding a course of action. And the words origin, early 16th century, implies a two-way conversation. Our community has seen nothing like what would be considered consultation.

Information and advice was not accessible at Courage on consultation due to the vast numbers of residents wanting information. The few consultants present were unable to answer many questions. Information at sessions provided on posters provided little more than corporate spin. Most affected residents found out via community social media forums rather than an appropriate official channel. One-on-one consultations by all accounts have provided little meaningful dialogue, with many residents left distressed and highly anxious. The new group, the Hawkesbury Bells Line of Road Corridor Action Group, was formed only two weeks ago and already has almost 1,000 online members, 991 to be exact, along with the Outer Sydney Orbital Action Group numbering 241.

The Hawkesbury people deserve proper consultation and to have their questions answered. It is for these reasons that I am looking to expand my questions raised at our last council meeting on the 27th of March 2018 in this proposed notice of motion. I hope that my fellow councillors will be supportive, and I look forward to your feedback. Thank you, Councillor Garrow.

Further discussion? Deputy Mayor.

The technical question, Madam Mayor. Would it be in order for me to move an amendment which includes points five and six that were just eliminated?

I can't see why you can't. People can argue against that.

I can't see why it would be allowed to be moved, not allowed to be moved in the motion, but allowed to be moved in the amendment. The same principle is

Applied. These things occur all the time, Councillor Connolly. I'll get another ruling. Can Councillor Deputy Mayor move points five and six as an amendment?

I don't see what— I'm still looking through the code, and certainly council's required to give notice of a meeting, and it's required to make available to the public copies of agendas and business papers and other things like that. It's silent, though, on whether that can be adjusted at the meeting or prior to the meeting. And as I said earlier, the

Motion is about writing to the local member, and it's about the Bells Line of Road, and the items under it are all to do with that particular matter. It's a fine line to say that some are less consistent with that and more consistent with that. So, and I'm still unable to find anything that says that we can't. We certainly— I don't think there's anything stopping us lodging an amendment that includes those matters. And if it's accepted by the council as an amendment, then it's voted on.

So is that an amendment, Councillor Calvert?

Yes, I'd like to move that amendment.

Are you adding it back to the motion, or are you moving—

The amendment is the four points up there plus the two points previously removed.

Councillor Garrow? I'm happy to add them to the

Motion if that is what you'd like to do.

I wasn't suggesting they be added to the motion because we've already had a decision on that. But I noted from meeting practice, if an amendment comes up during the meeting, then that can be done because it can contain new information.

Okay, you're moving an amendment. Do you have a seconder? Councillor Ross.

Enthusiasm plus. Okay, we've got a motion. Councillor Garrow.

Are you proceeding with your— I'll withdraw my motion, thank you. You're withdrawing your motion. Who was your seconder, Councillor Whelan? I'll

Save my talk for right of reply.

Okay, further discussion.

We see the current motion, Madam Mayor, on the board.

I'm sorry, we'll require five and six. Councillor Ross, you speak while it's coming up. Oh,

Thank you very much. My concern is that

These routes fail, as most of the other SSI-type operations, in fact all of them that have affected Hawkesbury City so far, and there are three, and they've all been total failures in terms of good public policy and deployment. Totally. This just adds to it. What we've got is a Stone Age mentality where everything is going to be carted by road.

Believe it or not, we're going to have a problem with fossil fuels and their availability. And what we're talking about here is just purely flying in the face of what one might call 21st century thinking. If anything is done, I would support Mr . Wants' suggestion of a network of tunnels out to the western plains to enable mass transportation by rail in terms of carriage of goods back and forth, and hopefully some form of fast passenger service, which would make also that area feasible as one to commute

To an already overcrowded Sydney Basin. It's a disgrace in those terms. It's also a disgrace in which the whole business was announced, and apparently , as I'm led to believe in apocryphal terms at least, that there are offers being made to affected people on the route that was proclaimed.

That's just absolutely extraordinary.

It's amazing . How can that happen in what is really a rural area? This is just ludicrous. It's, never mind democracy, this is the compulsory acquisition a la the worst possible model. And look at it. Look at it. Just look at it. What a disgrace. As is the local member, and the failure to even consult with them this and over it. He is a total disgrace, non-resident and— Point of order, Mayor. his comeuppance will come

In due course. Point of order, Councillor Sambroño.—

Over

This, he is part of this. Councillor Ross, I've taken a point of order from Councillor Sambroño.

My understanding of meeting practice is that it's unparliamentary to reflect negatively on a person in the way that Councillor Ross is right now.

Proceed, Councillor Ross. Point of order overruled. I don't think Councillor Ross is saying anything but giving an opinion on the local member.

Yes, that is correct.

Sorry. Well, nothing more than what Councillor Sambroño did in the last item. Oh,

Thank you very much. Yes, that's quite so.

The failure to represent our community in the way in which it is reasonable to expect to have been represented and to continue to be represented until the 2009 — Point of order, Madam Mayor.

Point of order, Councillor Conolly.

Relevance in the debate. The motion is about whether or not we should write to the local member, not about whether we think he's doing a good job

Relevance is not a point of order.

Point of order, Madam Mayor. Relevance is a specific point in the code of meeting practice. There's a whole section on relevance

In the debate. It's about writing— it's not only about writing to the local member. There's six points there.

And all of them are questions to ask the local member in a letter, not to reflect generally on the local member's performance.

Councillor Ross, point of order overruled. Councillor Conolly, when we discuss whether we'll write about something, we have to discuss what it is that we're writing about. And I know it might be a sensitive issue for you, but we're going to continue so that we all have our say. Continue, Councillor Ross.

Thank you. Well , the area isn't being properly represented by its local state parliamentary member. Simple. And you can take it back to them, and you can take it back up to the Cumberland Road too, as far as I'm concerned. This is disgraceful. To put compulsory acquisition in regard to this sort of thing in that area is just untenable. I wholly support the action by Councillor Garrow in raising this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Ross. It's Councillor Calvert's motion . Now, Councillor Conolly.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'd like to start my remarks with a long reflection on Susan Templeman and the job she's doing, but I might not, Madam Mayor. It might not actually be relevant when we actually think about it.

Well, if it was in context of a policy that she just — if it was something relating to her, yes, I'm sure you would. Continue, Councillor Conolly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I won't be supporting this notice of motion, not because these aren't important concerns, and I would have been happy to support it had it been worded slightly differently, and perhaps the way it was in the business paper. The problem I see is that in points five and six, we're making a number of assertions without providing any information to back them up. You know, this is not how elected bodies should make decisions. It's not good process that you just make assertions with no evidence or background information as to where you've drawn them from. You know, this is now going on the public record. If any of that was to not be completely correct, that's now on the public record forever.

I wasn't given any notice to go and check all of those things because that wasn't appeared in the business paper. I'm quite happy to take your word that it's probably correct, what you're saying, but I don't know. I don't know that level of detail on the project. You've not provided that information, and you've not given any notice at all that you were going to be making these assertions in a public meeting of council. So I don't, I think this council's got a problem with process. We keep doing this sort of thing where these things that are important come up with no information, come up at the last minute. So I would have been happy to vote for the first parts of the motion. You know, having said that, I don't even know if the local member, if point one is true or not.

I'm not sure how Councillor Garrow knows if point one is true or not, unless you've gone and inspected the member's diary to see who he's met with and what he's met them about. I don't know how you could possibly make that assertion. You could ask a question, might be more polite, but I guess that's not the point of this motion.

I've been told by residents of Windsor Downs that he met with them. No

No, not that bit, the second part of that, but not met with residents of any other affected areas. Unless you've known everybody he's met with, I don't think you can make that assertion. If what you're trying to say is he should spend more time in these areas, I think that's probably what would be better to say, rather than make the assertion on public record that he has not met with any of the other residents of any of those areas, because I don't know if that's true. And if you know that's true, you haven't provided that information for us to know that that's true.

So whilst I think this is a really important issue, I would actually be very keen— it's not an issue that I have a deep historical understanding of, like some people might. I think it's really important that I get to talk to a whole lot of people from that area and try and understand where they're coming from and exactly what is going on before I jump right in and take a position. This isn't taking a position. But it is stating out a whole lot of assertions that we don't know if they are facts or not. And that's why generally we should be either providing that information or calling for a report, rather than just stating those assertions as fact. And at the last minute, with no opportunity to check and hope everyone goes with it.

I also don't think, Madam Mayor, that it is good practice for councillors to sit here and bag out a local member, especially when they're pretending to be independents, Councillor Ross. But it's not good practice for this council to have that kind of relationship where we don't talk to people who are in important decision-making positions; we just come and bag them out in public. It's not getting us anywhere. It's not a sensitive issue for me, Madam Mayor. It's just that I don't think it's proper practice. I also disagree with your ruling that somehow his overall performance as a representative is relevant to whether or not we decide to write to him tonight or not. But you've taken that decision, and that's the precedent going in the future, I guess.

Thank you, Councillor Connelly. Further discussion?

Can I ask Councillor Connelly whether he wants to put up an amendment with the suggestions that he's made, because that sounds pretty good.

Councillor Connelly?

I'm happy to move points one to four as an amendment, Madam Mayor, and perhaps with a slight rewording to point one, which is instead of but not. And what

About the reports?

Yeah, yeah, happy to ask for those. Give me a minute to reword those into a report, into asking for reports. Can

I just say something before you go ahead? Council will, because this is out to public consultation, Council will be doing a submission. I'll just ask the general manager to outline how that would come about because I asked that today, what the process is for us to be doing a submission as the Council.

So we've got a meeting with RMS tomorrow at Penrith, and at that meeting we'll be then asking them to come and brief Council as well about the corridors. Subsequent to that briefing, we'll be preparing a report to Council which will include officers' views on the corridors. That'll go to a Council meeting in May, and then we will, based on that decision, most likely make some form of decision before the 1st of June closing date.

Thank you, Mr. Connelly. I

Think that's a much better process than perhaps going through all of this tonight. So in that case, I will move an amendment, Madam Mayor, which is points one to four of the current motion, with point one to be that Council would request the local member meet and consult specifically with residents of as many affected areas as is possible.

Thank you, Councillor Connelly. Do you have a seconder ? Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you. Further discussion? Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was happy to support Councillor Garrow's original motion, and I'm even more happy to support Councillor Connelly's amended motion. And I'm happy to support my constituency across the Hawkesbury . And of course, in Oakville, where I live, where people are absolutely ropeable about the announcement of the M9 corridor ploughing through their properties, ploughing through remnant Cumberland woodland forest, terminating at Morelia with no real prospect of that road ever being extended through Cattai and points north, coming hard up against the boundaries of a national park and through an area that was, and is not, part of the Northwest Growth Sector. I would invite Council, in considering its response, to give equal weight to the concerns of people affected by the M9 corridor as the Bells Line of Road corridor.

One seems to be getting a bit more media, but the concerns of the residents are equally valid. Particularly galling to people in my neck of the woods is the fact that the Minister and the Government material referred to the corridor as going through Box Hill, when it clearly does not go through Box Hill; it goes through Oakville.

I know that the consultation process Has only just begun, and not particularly well. And I join the calls of Councillor Garrow to insist that the State Member is as fully acquainted with the concerns of local members as possible. This is a kind of immediate and visceral and knee-jerk type response to something that poses a fairly existential threat to a number of Hawkesbury suburbs. And I think the Mayor and the General Manager are right in saying that there is a process that will result in a more considered response in time. Nevertheless, I'm prepared to support this tonight because we need to engage in that process now. Because if the close of submissions is the 1st of June, we have actually a fairly short period of time in which to mobilise communities through their action groups, of which I'm now part, and to do this logically, consistently, respectfully, and with the maximum amount of efficacy.

So, yes.

Thank you, Councillor Semproni. Councillor Rasmussen. Yeah,

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Clearly a big issue, clearly a divisive issue, and clearly something that just dropped out of the sky. And nobody likes things, big things like that, dropping out of the sky, particularly when their properties and their values and the whole family, the whole box and dice that people moved into this beautiful pristine area, why they moved here, and that would be devastating. Devastating. I can get that. And from that point of view, this council should take a big, strong lead on it,

On making very clear what the position is from this council, and gather as much information as we can from our residents and get their feeling as to what and where they are thinking on this issue. There would be obviously people out there in the community who would think it's a good idea. Those quite removed from the new alignment or the new corridor who would have perhaps greater and easier access to the M7 and the M9 and so on, and they would see that as a big bonus. Others obviously more closely and losing properties and so on would have a totally different response or reaction. That is natural and that is understandable. I'm just hoping now that given the Councillor Connolly and , is it Richard? Yeah, what's Richard? Was it Richard or Semproni? It was. I thought it was Semproni. Councillor

Semproni.

Yeah, okay. Has moved that, that we could now get— it would be really nice to see everybody jump on board and have a unanimous vote on this one, because that would sort of get out of the party politics and get down to the residents and the interests and the importance of the residents to this chamber. So get the politics out of it, and if we can all support that. Then that would be a really big signal going to our residents that we are going to fight and we are going to make sure that whatever best deal can be got out of this, in their interest, not party politics interests, but in their interest and the Hawkesbury's interest, will be done. So that would be nice to see.

Thank you, Councillor Rasmussen.

Just a typo in the motion.

Oh, a typo.

Just in point 2, it's got the honourary; it should be the honourable if we want to go that way, or we could just say Dominic

Thank you, Councillor Conolly.

Further discussion? Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm going to be very sensible and cautious in how we deal with this topic, and I think that—oh, please—I think that every time we deal with this topic, every single one of us should be very sensitive to people who are in the affected area and people who are certainly in the room tonight. And I do take on board what Councillor Rasmussen has said, and I do think that we need to make sure that we are treating people with respect and dignity moving forward. Something I do want to say is that what has happened here tonight with this motion is an example of what we've come to see a little bit in this chamber, and I really implore all councillors that we try and make things a little bit better.

I mean, this is policy on the run, ad hoc conclusions, amendments that deviate so far from what was on the advertised business paper, which is not just a disadvantage to councillors who now can't come into the chamber with the information on hand to be able to debate things properly, but to the larger public at whole, especially any who may have a personal position or reason to want to come into the chamber and register to speak if what is then put up is so different from what was in the business paper. So I think it's very important that we do make that point. If Councillor Connolly would allow me, I'd like to go through and maybe tidy up each one of the four points, if that's possible. I can suggest.

Okay. So point one's fine. Point two, request another consultation meeting. So that says one meeting, but then in affected areas. But I think we need to define affected areas, because where is that? That's limitless otherwise. So I think we need to tidy that up,

Because

That's

An open-ended

Just remember, because we're not doing this, we're just writing the letter. Yeah, we're

Writing a letter. I think it just needed to be a little bit more specific, I would assume. Just wait, I'm going through, because .

Oakville's got a meeting now. And request confirmation messages to be sent. Can we get some clarification on this point? Has that been a commitment made by Dominic Perrottet's office?

No, it hasn't. I think it's asking—where is it? Request. People have been ringing and being told that they would receive a text message back, and they haven't been receiving the text

Message. From Transport New South Wales or Dominic Perrottet's office?

From Transport for New South Wales, I believe. Or from both. From both.

Okay , we don't have any information on that, so it's hard—I mean, I know what you've just said there, but it's hard to— Well,

Perhaps that could be reworded to request that any promised SMS texts be sent to confirm

I'd be happy to leave it like that, but I would also ask, Madam Mayor, perhaps if there's an opportunity for council staff, someone to get on the phone and try and advocate for these people.

I did. I've called them, and there have been some more meetings set up and so on, but the SMS thing only came to light, and I think that's left some people in limbo who have rung, and they're unsure if they have a meeting because they haven't received the confirmation. So if we're writing essentially to request that Mr Perrottet would perhaps— ask if that's come from his office or from the other office that that would occur.

Okay, great, thank you. I was at the meeting at Kurrajong last week, and I will be at the meeting tomorrow at North Richmond. I do agree to point two, and I'm very happy to say that we do need a larger venue to cater for larger numbers. I think there was an expectation that the Kurrajong meeting wouldn't be as big as it was, and the fact that we had those sorts of numbers, I hope that we can actually make sure that another place can be found that can accommodate everybody who is interested. Perhaps we can advocate for one larger whole meeting in a venue such as North Richmond Panthers or something like that, that actually will be able to hold a larger number of people. I'm not going to get into right now the ins and outs of the benefits of the corridor.

We do all know, just briefly to say that we do all know there has been a corridor in that area for many, many decades, a proposed corridor. At the same time, it has to go somewhere if it does get built, but there needs to be some acceptance , when I say this I'm being delicate, an acceptance of an inevitability that the corridor will go somewhere, but we need to make sure it's going to go in a place where there is as least affected people as possible, and we need to make sure we are consulting with everybody in that area. I am happy to have people approach me. I want to hear your stories. I want to be able to listen to what you have to say. I want to be able to take that information and take it to higher levels of government and make sure that we do represent everything that you definitely want to say and that your voices are heard.

So I think that it's very important that going forward we all are on the same page with making sure that happens, especially in the consultation period that is happening right now. And I'm very happy to support, therefore, to support these four points in the amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Richards. I'll speak in favour of— of the motion is the one with the two points on there, which aren't there. And I'll just clarify what they relate to for Councillor Conolly questioned, I think, if there was any evidence of the point five and point six. So they arise from the previous consultations that were held in 2015, which had a specifically outlined process that was to be followed. The initial one being the meetings at North Richmond about the corridors, and there was a series of steps, and one of the steps was to prepare a short list of options, which were to then go back to the public. Now that step has been bypassed, and this is what has led to the unexpected and sudden announcement of the corridors, when you had people who had engaged in that process who were actually waiting for that step to come back and see a number of options about the corridors.

In speaking, that's point five. And so therefore that is just merely to question why, when there is a set out process and a timeline, why is that not adhered to? I don't think that's deviating from the content, and I don't think that—

I think point 6.2 probably isn't even a question that can be answered from the local member, but it's certainly a question that needs to be put. I don't agree that there's a problem with process in this chamber. I think what we engage in is robust democracy, and that we take up issues for people, and if that has to take a different shape when we're in there, then so be it. That's what happens because we represent the people. And this is something that has been sprung on us reasonably recently, and so we have to act now. There's a short time frame, and we have got to assist the people the best way that we can. And I think we're all on board with that, and we've seen the reaction, and we understand the absolute angst and the horror that people have had to suddenly find that they are being perhaps having their house devalued, their land devalued, the potential of a corridor that they had no idea was coming, and we can fully understand the way they're feeling, but also that there's been a consultation process that is not transparent and open, and it certainly hasn't been forewarned to people that this was coming.

Even though we know that there's been talk of corridors for years, and I personally believe that you do have to set aside corridors for the future, but you have to do it with the knowledge of the people it's going to affect. You can't simply impose it on them one day and expect them to be jumping for joy that their life's work is suddenly going to be consumed by something that may or may not ever be built. And that's problematic in that, you know, we really, there should have been a lead-in announcement. We, as Councillor Richards said, there has been a corridor, and lo and behold, the new corridor is a different corridor. So for people who chose to invest in an area that allowed for an existing corridor, it means that they've been stung now when they've moved and they've done the right thing.

And so all of those things, whereas they may inevitably, although I'm not a personal believer in it, but they may inevitably lead to the best route for future transport, they have to be done with the people who are being affected being involved. So I think people want to know all the other investigations. I'm a huge advocate of rail, especially rail for freight, and I think that we really, this should, I know the M9 is different. It has a freight corridor in with it as well, so it's a different setup. But when we're talking about one of the reasons being for getting produce in from the west into the ports, my question is why aren't they going to Port of Newcastle, Port of Port Kembla, and with the fast inland rail to Brisbane or Melbourne?

So there's many other factors. This is a long, long-term solution, if it is a solution. So there's the question of— I can't remember what I was talking about now because I turned around. There's many questions, actually, I guess. So we'll be doing the submission, and that will be the time when people can come in and they can tell more about it. If people have issues with what the council as a body comes up with, what the report is written about, at that point in time. So there's many issues, obviously, and there's many upset people, and I am very sorry that people have been confronted with this. And I hope that by engaging with us and for us understanding and assisting you in dealing with this process, that we can all work on this together, as Councillor Rasmussen said.

So I hope that people won't— if you come across people who are still having an issue with getting an appointment, they can ring one of the councillors or ring myself. I have managed to get some appointments for people, and tomorrow night I think if you go to the North Richmond, you can probably follow up with someone there and ask for the confirmation of your appointment if you've booked it but you're unsure whether it exists or not. There's been another set of one-on-one meetings put on for the 27th of April at the North Richmond venue, so there are some more opportunities, and they possibly may have to have more. So thank you, and I will be supporting the motion because I believe that we are owed an explanation of why there's been a deviation from the original process that was outlined.

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. Can I just— is there a line above the point one? No. Oh.

It probably says, probably says that, Councillor.

Thank you. Thank you. That answers my first question. I'm speaking in favour of the motion. So all six points. There does need to be a change in point two to the honourable and in the top line, so I think spell check has worked its magic.

I want to answer firstly a couple of points that have been made with respect to point one and the question as to whether there is any proof that the local member met with Windsor Downs residents. I attended one of those early meetings with the permission of the Windsor Downs, I think it's the Windsor Downs Homeowners Association, and I was allowed to attend but not speak. They surrounded me and later on asked me if I worked for AZO, which I was able to reply that I did not.

We've been accused here with point five and six of making policy on the run. Actually, point five and six are a response to what very much appears to be policy on the run from the state government, which is why we are left to put up and amend notices of motion on the hop in order to get a response back from the state government, which I presume is the point of points five and six. This whole process so far has been very poorly handled. So it began, it seems, as far as our residents and this council is aware, on the 26th of March when letters were issued with a 1800 number. So people People were approached on their properties or had letters placed in their letterboxes. Elderly people, people at home alone, given absolutely devastating news and then unable to get sufficient information, faced with a 1-800 number where the people at the other end of the line didn't have sufficient information to give them.

I had one woman tell me that she was so distraught that she couldn't continue the conversation with the woman who kept repeating to her, Are you all right? Are you all right? and then offered to ring her again in a couple of days' time when she had calmed down enough to have a conversation that contained some information. This is utterly disgraceful that people be treated in this fashion. It's appalling that a government would do this to its own people. Then they're slapped with four days of public holidays, no information, even less support, with neighbours left to inform and support their own neighbours, and they really are to be commended for the outstanding job that they've done in gathering the community together and informing their neighbours.

Many people who are about to have this large structure go through the backs of their properties or wipe out their views and their amenity haven't been given a letter because they're not under the corridor itself, so they've been informed by their neighbours about what's been going on. There is deep community concern and anger, some of it deflected to council because we've accepted DAs in this corridor, because we had no knowledge of this new corridor either, which looks remarkably like a kid with a red crayon has dotted it up, given that there seems to be nothing to justify why it is in this spot. People's whole lives are now placed in limbo. There's no money in the budget for this project.

They've been told that they can have a compulsory acquisition or that someone will buy their land. They've got developers circling, real estate agents were sniffing around taking names and phone numbers at the community information session like some sort of vulture squad. This is outrageous that this should happen to these people, and then the local member doesn't turn up.

We've been accused of not talking to people, just bagging them out. Well, if they'd come out and speak to the community, maybe they would have a chance to talk to them. And they shouldn't have to rely on a Liberal councillor to take information back to their local member. It's his job to engage directly with the community, not for them to have to use some sort of intermediary to get information. We heard in the previous item that raising the dam wall doesn't mean that we're going to get any more development in the LGA, but I tell you what, that M9 orbital certainly does. Where does that leave us? And I think the Bells Line of Road certainly tells us that something's coming. In fact, people were told at the Community Information Centre that there will be several red banks built along the Bells Line of Road corridor.

We also heard in the previous debate that people are attached to their family homes. Yes, they most certainly are. Wild rivers, pristine bushland, agricultural land, equine properties and family homes underneath both of these roads, or affected by them because they run up against them, or they will be affected by the noise, the sound and the pollution from the diesel fumes. This is a freight road. This is big, stinky trucks. It's 20th century thinking. Freight needs to be on rail. And that's not some big , fat, greeny, lefty ideal. Lindsay Fox, who's made his money out of road freight, outlined the last time we had this political brain snap that freight needs to be shifted to rail.

And I have to say, one of the most appalling things that occurred in this was the release of this corridor with no support and no consultation for our community. And yet we see the Central West community and their councillors and members of the National Party literally jumping for joy. And shared all over Liberal Party pages whilst our residents are left devastated. How disgraceful. Really, really poor form. We've already seen the consultation period blown out. We don't know when gazettal will be. There's no money in the budget. Developers are circling. Council needs a position, and to do that, we need the information that will be brought forward in points five and six. So that's why I'm supporting this motion rather than the amendment.

We need to make a submission. I'm pleased that the General Manager has outlined a timeline for that. I would like to see us follow Camden Council's proposal where they are making their submission available online to help residents prepare theirs. And I note that feedback is due by the 1st of June. That's not very far away, and we've got two weeks of school holidays coming up where a lot of people are away. So I'm happy to support this motion in the current form.

Thank you, Councillor. Further discussion?

Councillor Reynolds. Yeah

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I support the notice of motion that we have there.

There is something really wrong with this decision and this announcement, and I don't mean the obvious impacts on our local people. I mean, we're not making policy on the run here. The New South Wales Government is. Regarding the issues raised by Councillors Zemprogno and the M9, part of the corridor down south goes straight over the top of one Liberal MP's house. He wasn't aware of it. In regards to the Castle Ray section of the corridor, last Saturday the Member for Riverstone, Kevin Connolly, told us he was not made aware that that section of the corridor had been moved,

And that it now impacted on the homes and businesses and lives of people in Cranebrook and Castlereagh. I attended the consultation meetings in 2015. The corridor envelope was a purple smudge that spread from Yarramundi to Windsor, and since then we've heard nothing until two weeks ago. And now it turns out the corridor is outside that purple smudge and upstream somewhat. The Castle Ray corridor has been in place for 67 years, and nothing has happened. And after that 67 years, they decided to move it.

The only place this corridor has been widely advertised, as Councillor Wheeler said, with videos of national MPs jumping for joy, an obvious attempt to appeal to Nationals voters who may be tempted to vote for the Shooters Party. It's obvious this is just a political announcement. The draft environmental assessment says the reasons for this corridor and not upgrading the existing Bells Line of Road corridor is because the gradient of the Bells Line of Road corridor is too steep at Bell Bird Hill. Yet their corridor, they use a tunnel to overcome that problem, but they don't apply the same solution to the Bells Line of Road corridor. The corridor goes against the aims of the Greater Sydney Commission and protection of the escarpment. It goes against the aims to protect agricultural land.

This corridor simply lines drawn on a map to appease people out west and to try and win votes back to the Nationals. But the implications in the Hawkesbury are lives ruined and dreams destroyed, and I find it deplorable and quite disgusting. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Reynolds. Further discussion?

No further discussion. Right of reply, Councillor Calvert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, I'm very pleased to be moving this motion, which includes point five and six. I went to the Karajong meeting last week. I suspect there was at least 500 people there. Some people have told me there was 800 people. I didn't count all the heads, but I know parking was at a premium, so it could have been 800 people. And I didn't see any of those people saying, Hey, this is a great idea. I saw 800 angry people, very angry about what's happened to them and how it's happened. And I think that is the message we're trying to send with this motion. We're trying to tell the member for Hawkesbury that his constituents are very unhappy and we want him to do something about it.

I think that is a reasonable thing for us to be saying. Now, I'm going to try and stick, in my right of reply, to answering what people said, and that's mostly what Councillor Connolly said. I could go on all night, and I agree with the things that Councillor Reynolds and Wheeler were saying, but I won't repeat all that. But to answer some of Councillor Connolly's points, this has been sprung on us, and he's suggesting we need more time to digest it. Well, the fact that there's no time is not our fault. It was sprung by the state government. They gave us no time at all. So therefore, if this motion is not perfect, well, okay, I can see a few things I'd like to improve, but of course it's not perfect because we haven't had the time, and that's because the state government has just given us no time.

Yet we need to tell the state government through our local member that community is very unhappy. Councillor Connelly also said it's too early for us to be taking a position, or words to that effect. This motion doesn't take a position, it just asks for further information. It asks for us to write a letter to the local member seeking answers to those questions. And I think that's what he wanted. He wanted more information, and I think that's what the points five and six also ask for, more information. It's also been said that the motion directly criticises the local member. There is a bit of confusion there. I think one of our speakers directly criticised the local member, but I don't think the motion does.

I think the motion just asks for questions. Perhaps the criticism is calling him Honourable instead of honourable; that could be a criticism. Other than that, I don't think we directly have criticised the member in that motion. Councillor Connelly also said that we need to have a considered response. This motion doesn't preclude that. We can still have a considered response, and the General Manager has indicated the kind of way in which that could happen. So yes, there will be a more considered response, and it will be more strongly worded than this. This is just the beginning. It just raises a flag to say, Mr Perrottet, the people are unhappy and we would like answers to these questions. And the people that I've spoken to, really points five and six are the main things they want to know.

That is, how come we've been told all these years the corridor was here, and then overnight you moved there? Why did that happen, and how did that happen? And points five and six therefore are really important, and I urge you therefore to support the original motion rather than the amendment.

Thank you, Councillor Calvert. I'll put first the amendment, which is the

Seconded by Councillor Zambrano, or— okay thank you. So the amendment is the four points. The motion is the six points, so we'll vote on the amendment first. All those in favour of the amendment?

Four. Against? The amendment is lost. I'll now put the motion, the motion being the six-point one. All those in favour of the motion? Against? The motion is carried. Could I have someone move the item en bloc, please. Move Councillor Rasmus and seconded Councillor.

Wheeler. Our next item will go back to the start of the business paper, item 85. Someone to move that, please.

Move, Councillor Conolly, seconded, Councillor Kotlash. Or were you waving? Sorry.

We're on item 85, Floodplain Management. Move, Councillor Conolly. Do you want to discuss? It's seconded already. Yes. We take expressions of interest of who wishes to attend. I will be attending, but not missing the council meeting, going early the next morning. Councillor Wheeler also will be attending. Councillor Zambrano?

Given my interest in this subject, I would like to go, but I would gladly yield to people more entitled to do so through their membership of the Floodplain Risk Advisory Committee. I was informed today by the general manager of the Hawkesbury River County Council that they do not send councillor delegates to that. Okay

Thank you. No, well that's fine. We'll have the, that will be the three of us. So, for any further discussion? Councillor Wheeler.

I don't want to go. I don't want to miss the council meeting either, so

I don't want to leave

Until the next morning.

I'm going the next morning. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Any further discussion? Right of reply, Councillor Conolly? We'll vote on the motion and the recommendation in the business paper, and also that the three councillors attending will be, Councillor Garrow, did you want to go to the Floodplain Committee? No, sorry, the conference, not the committee. And that the three councillors will be Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zambrano and myself. All those in favour? Against? The motion is carried. Next item.

Was on block. So item 87. Move the recommendation. Move the recommendation, Councillor Conolly, and seconded by Councillor Wheeler. Can I just ask a quick question, though, as to why we haven't had these in place for the last four months?

Mr. Mifsud.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. The reason is that we contacted a number of organisations, including the police, to see whether we wanted to carry on with these zones. The police came back to us and indicated that they wanted to have an additional zone, which was the Kable Street car park, and because of that, we needed to spend some more time advertising and going out to the various organisations we do, so there was a delay in that.

Thank you, Mr. Mifsud. Councillor Ross

I think there may be an anomaly

In that in the grassed area of Thompson Square at the moment, there's some signage indicating that the area is subject to restriction in this regard. I do not believe that that location has been included in the council report.

Mr. Mifsud

Thanks, Madam Mayor. We'd have to check that signage. You are correct. That area of Thompson Square from the end of the mall to the other side of George Street is not included in these zones, and that's because it's not a roadway or footpath area of the Thompson Square area. It comes under another part of the legislation. However, that area was previously... An alcohol-free zone a number of years ago, but there was a number of objections to that because of the outdoor dining, and Council relaxed that, and that's why that's continued on from here.

Thank you, Mr. Mifsud. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. A question. I've always found alcohol-free, the idea of alcohol-free zones to be curious because of their specificity and the fact that they endure. Is there any evidence through our liaison with the local area command of there being a nexus of bad behaviour in the areas that these are being proposed for, or are these just being perpetuated heedlessly for years when there was perhaps no real need to do so? I have no objection. I'm just curious to know that the justification for these things is well grounded and ongoing. Mr

Mifsud.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I don't have that advice from the police. However, obviously we would go back to the police about these zones before we actually report this to Council, and they indicate to us whether they want those zones to continue. And in this case, they decided that they wanted all those zones to continue, as well as that additional zone in Cable Street. So I would assume that because of that, they have some sort of evidence or some sort of thing sitting behind that as to why they want those to continue

I was just going to say I have attended the Hawkesbury Liquor Accord, where all the licensees from— yes, I have, Councillor Conolly— and only tea was served. And all the various licensees and bottle shop owners and everyone like that, this wasn't specific about that, but it was very apparent that having these sort of zones are a part of the overall licensing and policing of that. And I would wonder if that's perhaps where younger people gather or whatever, I don't know. But there would be some very solid policing evidence, I would think. Councillor

Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. Just a question for Mr. Mifsud then. I presume that the reason Wilberforce Park isn't included in here is again because it's park rather than road. Space, because that is an area that could benefit partly from being an alcohol-free zone. We would get far less damage to our tables and chairs and a lot less glass. Mr Mifsud.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. This part of the legislation that this report is subject to is about alcohol-free zones within the roads and footpaths. Restrictions on alcohol fall in another part of the legislation, and that would include parks, and that's set up in a different way.

Thank you, Councillor. Sorry, can I just inquire, in regards to George Street, Windsor, why it would stop at Argyle Street and not go the full footpath all the way down to the boat ramp? Mr Mifsud.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Again, this has come from the advice from the police, and the police believe these are the best places for the alcohol-free zones based on what information they have available to them.

Thank you . Any further discussion? No further discussion.

Councillor Richards. Just very quickly, that four months, has that ever happened before where we haven't had the licences up to date? I don't think they're licences, they're signs. They're signs, are they? Mr Mifsud, just to confirm.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Not to my knowledge.

Would, if something had happened, would it have been an issue because there weren't relevant signage? Mr Mifsud.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I don't know whether I can answer that. Basically, it's the police that police these, so it's up to Council, obviously, to put these restrictions in and then the police police them. I would assume that if there wasn't that restriction in there, then that would more than likely prohibit the police from doing certain things. Just

To confirm, Council can't choose these locations? No . No, I just want to confirm, because there's nothing in Currajong or Bligh Park, so I was just wondering what that was about . Well-behaved people.

I was just wondering how the process works, yeah, because I just noticed there was nothing in those two, like precincts, yeah.

Something in Currajong. In the park, potentially.

Yeah, yeah, I understand that, but this is roads and footpaths, and I was just wondering, does it matter? No footpaths. No footpaths. All right, thank you.

Further discussion? No further discussion. Right of reply, Councillor Conolly. All those in favour ? Against? The motion is carried. Reports of committee audit.

Committee. Councillor Ross moved, Councillor Rasmussen, seconded Councillor Conolly. Councillor Rasmussen? Ah , no . Discussion?

No discussion. Right of reply, Councillor Conolly? Not

Councillor Rasmussen?

Probably no, no right of reply necessary, Madam Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. I'm sorry. It was just sometimes they're called up and I think that—not that you did that, Councillor Conolly—but I thought, okay, I'll put that motion. All those in favour? Against? The motion is carried.

Floodplain risk management. Moved Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Rasmussen. Discussion? No discussion. Right of reply, Councillor Conolly? Not necessary. All those in favour? Against? The motion is carried. We are on a roll.

Continue. That's time to go into confidential. Questions? Questions? Okay. We've got three lots of questions from three different meetings. Are there any questions on the question from the 30th of January?

It's the question about the bins at Colo Reserve. The bins have been installed, so I gather there's no question on that. Question on questions from the 13th of March, or the, yeah, the 13th of March. Councillor Garrow

Yes, I would just like to make comment that $14,750 of cost to Council for codes of conduct that found no breach is very excessive. Do we have a means of maybe governing these codes of conduct and whether we accept them or not if they are not going to show any grounds?

Mr Conroy. That's a lot of ratepayers' money.

We do have discussions with relevant parties regarding codes of conduct, and sometimes they proceed and sometimes they don't. So there's certainly been more discussions than there have been matters investigated.

Thank you, Mr Conroy. Questions on questions from the 27th of March.

Councillor Ross?

Thank you. It's in relation to page 65 of the business paper, question five.

Yes

That basically, that's okay. I notice there's a report coming, but in regard to question six,

I don't believe that the answer here adequately deals with the notice of motion.

And the notice of motion wasn't just purely talking about technology.

It was talking about EPA

And planning.

And I'd ask the staff to give more consideration to that.

Mr Conroy.

The response does indicate that there will be a report coming back.

However, the work that's underway at the moment

Looks as though it's going to make a significant contribution to the issue that's of concern to the community. We've arranged inspections of the property. Staff are in consultation with the operators. They are progressively commissioning elements of the project on

A regular basis, so that all the indications are that the new system will be in place and operational by the middle of the year. And we probably are of the view that that's the primary focus, trying to get the new system operational and removing all the amenity issues. Rather than perhaps focusing on a report that's still going to require a further report once that new system is commissioned.

Thank you. Questions for next meeting. Councillor Richards, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zambrano, Councillor Cotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Would we be able to get a statement about how we purchase our electricity, whether we have any power purchasing agreements, and if we don't, why don't we? What we're up to in that area. Thank you. An update on? Thanks. Thank you. Councillor Calvert, Councillor

Wheeler .

Thanks, Madam Mayor

I want to reiterate the need for the area of Macquarie Street between Hawkesbury Valley Way and Baker Street to be declared a clearway or a no stopping zone. I've brought this up before. We've not had any joy. It is now becoming beyond ridiculous. Some of the driver behaviour there is very, very dangerous. I sat in that traffic for 45 minutes a couple of weeks ago, one Thursday afternoon, and I watched people drive on the wrong side of the road because the two right turning lanes were blocked by traffic in the centre lane that wanted to turn left over the bridge. This is only going to get worse with more work being done in Thompson Square. If it's not possible to do this through the Traffic Management Committee, then I'd seek some advice about turning this into a notice of motion.

And another hopefully much simpler task: could we get Wilberforce Park mowed before Anzac Day? And if we can't do the whole park, can we at least have the bit up near the memorial done ? And if not, can you let us know so someone can get out there with the ride-on, because it's well above knee height at the moment and it's just not appropriate for an Anzac service.

And addition, that being Freemans Reach.

Additionally, Freemans Reach. Can we check that the parks involved in the memorial services are mowed to a reasonable standard? I think we'll draw the line at manicuring.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Reynolds. Huge bazillion bindis that might get it.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Yeah, one question asking on behalf of the Pitt Town Neighbourhood Watch coordinator. Is it possible, will they be allowed to put neighbourhood watch stickers on sulo bins? And what procedures do they have to go through? Or is it possible for them to put neighbourhood watch signs on the Pitt Town entrance signs? Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Garrard. Could we please get a completion date for the Governor Philip Park upgrade,

Please

Councillor Brassmassen.

Madam Mayor, this might have been answered some time ago, but the tunnels in the Thompson Square excavation, have they now been covered over completely, or are they still finding more?

Thank you, Councillor Ross

I wish to inquire in regard to elf mushrooms as to what the procedure is in regard to

Unpleasant nasal emissions

Currently emanating from the plant. Yesterday afternoon they were evident in Windsor itself, up near McQuade Park. In the early part of the prior week they were evident around..

Mulgrave Station, then McGrath's Hill, and I'm just wondering what is the

Remit of Council in this regard, please?

Thank you, Councillor Ross. Someone move that we go into confidential. Madam Mayor, Councillor Rasmussen, seconded Councillor Cotlash. All those in favour?

There's some people there.

Do you want me to? Right. Okay.

Mr. Misford. In regard to item 96, Council, whilst in closed session, resolved on the motion of Councillor Rasmus and seconded by Councillor Conolly that one, the tender submitted by Stable Brothers Nowra Proprietary Limited trading as Premier Pumpouts, option 2 for tender T0060, at a total cost of $8,463,488.71, excluding GST, over five years, be accepted. Two, the seal of Council be affixed to any necessary documentation. In regard to item 97, whilst in closed session, Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Rasmus and seconded by Councillor Conolly that one, Council agree to enter into a licence agreement with Tomra Collection Proprietary Limited. In regard to four car parking spaces in the cable street car park located at 1 Cable Street, Windsor, in accordance with the proposal outlined in the report.

Two, authority be given for any documentation associated with this matter to be executed under the seal of Council. Three, details of Council's resolution be conveyed to the proposed licensee. Together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of its resolution until such time as appropriate legal documentation to put such resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties. Four, any income received by Council under this licence agreement be assigned to town revitalisation programs.

Thank you, Mr. Misford. The meeting is closed at 11.05 p.m. Thank you, everyone.