Innovation and Partnerships Committee Meeting - 9 February 2021

Welcome to the Innovation and Partnerships meeting for the 9th of February. My name is Patrick Connelly, I'm the Mayor and a member of the committee, and the other committee members with me today are Councillor Sarah Richards, Councillor Nathan Zamprogno, and Councillor Randall Flash.

Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Dharug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land, and we pay respect to all Elders past, present and emerging. Committee members and staff attending the meeting in Council chambers 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 warden. I would also like to advise, in accordance with clause 5.18 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of Council committees 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 committee 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. The recordings are stored on Council's record management system. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the committee, 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 the meeting and any answers given in response to questions from the committee. As a courtesy to others, it is requested that mobile phones either be turned off or turned to silent.

Okay, are there any apologies? No apologies. Any declarations of interest? No declarations of interest.

So the committee will deal with the items that have registered speakers at the start of the meeting. Committee meeting attendees who have registered to address the meeting have a time limit of five minutes to speak. Committee meeting attendees who have not registered will be asked by the chairperson at the end of hearing registered speakers if there are any further speakers that wish to address the meeting, and may speak for a period at the discretion of the chairperson. When called, please speak clearly. At the end of your submission, please remain available to permit the committee to ask questions. And the first item on the agenda is the election of chairperson, so I'll hand over to the acting general manager. Thanks

Mr Mayor. I will act as the returning officer for the election of the chairperson for the Innovations and Partnerships Committee for the period from February 2021 to September 2021. Could I call for any nominations for the chairperson, please?

Nominate Councillor Richards.

Nominated Councillor Richards, seconded by Councillor Kotlash.

Do you accept that nomination, Councillor Richards? Thank you.

Any

Other nominations?

In the case of no other nominations, I declare that Councillor Richards is the chairperson of the Innovations and Partnerships Committee for the period from February 2021 to September 2021.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and thank you to my fellow committee members for their support in nominating me as Chair. I appreciate that. Okay, we now move on to item two: arrangements for meetings concerning telecommunications matter. Will anyone like to move anything, please?

Should we first ask for speakers from— Oh yes,

Thank you. We have no speakers registered, but is there any attendees today who are participating in this committee meeting online who would like to say any— have any comments, please?

I think the protocol for those speakers, I probably forgot to mention, is they could raise their hand or mention it in the chat box if they wish to speak.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. All very new technology with this. Is there any attendees who would like to speak? Please do so by raising your hand if you have the intention.

Take that as a no. Okay. Would anyone like to move anything, please? I’ll

Raise my hand.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

So I’ve got a motion to move slightly different to what’s in the business paper. I have forwarded it through to the minute secretary, but I’ll just read it out while we’re waiting for that to be brought up on the screen. So I’d like to move that, one, the Innovation and Partnerships Committee hold its next meeting at Bilpin Hall, Bilpin, to discuss adequate telecommunications, and the question to the meeting should be: should Council lobby Telstra to provide the emergency backup infrastructure being requested by the Bilpin community?

Number two, the meeting should be subject to a COVID safety plan, be open to the public, be limited in numbers to meet the requirements, require members of the public to register to attend, not be required to be webcasted, but be recorded and available later. Three, that the local community be notified of the meeting and arrangements be made for inviting a representative Telstra and Susan Templeman, and that we delegate to the Chair to work out that date and time based on the availability of these stakeholders.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Do I have a seconder for that motion?

Councillor Zemproni, are you happy to second? Great,

Thank you. Any comments, Mr Mayor?

Look, I think it was fairly clear from the council meeting where this was brought up, there was a strong intention from council that we try and do this in Bilpin if possible. The people of Bilpin have raised their concerns in the media and directly to us that they need this infrastructure, and I think we do have a coordination role to play in bringing this to light. So I think that we should try and have the meeting in Bilpin despite the COVID issues. I put a number of things in this motion. The hall obviously has a COVID-safe limit, so I think attendees will have to come in. If there's too many attendees at once, they'll have to come in, speak and then leave once they've made their submission, but we'll just have to manage that.

Obviously it's difficult to have an audio-visual meeting or have it live streamed from Bilpin given the issues. So suggesting that we, rather than livestream it, we record it and make the podcast available later. And I think as per council's direction, we should be inviting the member for Macquarie and the relevant representative from Telstra.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Is there any other committee members who would like to make any commentary?

Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree that this is a good recommendation. I think the question maybe in point one might be better I'll turn the question to the meeting should be, should Council lobby Telstra to provide emergency backup to the Bilpin community? I'd probably change that to how Council could lobby, because I think that we, I think that it's incumbent upon us to lobby for our community. How we go about that, that's the thing that is going to be something that we need to develop. So could we just change that tiny little word?

Mr Mayor, are you happy to do that? Yeah, the mover of the motion is happy to do that, Councillor Kotlash.

Excellent, because that's the thing. Now I think we have to get stuck into how we might do that, to what extent we do it, you know, whether we have any resources or capacity to help get that to happen. So that's really what I'd like to see from that. The rest of it I think is excellent, and I'm happy for that to happen soon so we can really start getting on top of this issue, which is a big issue for the people of Bilpin. Yeah, so happy to support that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Kotlash. Any other comments? There's only one other committee member, Councillor Zamprogno.

No, no, I'm happy with it, and I'd just like to echo Councillor Kotlash's remarks . I think it's obvious that the answer to the first question would be yes. Obviously the community wants us to do something. I tend to think of Council, since it isn't our tier of government that's directly responsible, as being a— it's merely an advocacy role. If we could provide some... central point for which all of those anecdotal stories of poor service to be collected and collated so that we've got, for example, something coherent to present to the federal minister, for example. That is something that Council could do. It's largely a question of organising and collating and contrasting the need with the apparent lack of service. I don't know that there's anything more that Council could do, but I'm sure that will become apparent when we hold that community meeting.

Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno. I'll just add my own quick remarks to the debate. I am clearly in support of the motion. I think this is a great use of our new committee structure to be able to listen to our community, and I thank the community of Bilpin for their advocacy on this issue and raising it with all levels of government. And Council, as an advocacy role and also in a coordination role, is able to deliver these sorts of things through this new committee structure and also to our community. I think that having the meeting in Bilpin is vital in this instance because it is such a remote community on the outskirts of our very big LGA. So I think it's important, not as a matter of precedent, but as a matter of course in this specific instance, that we take this issue to the people of Bilpin.

I think the motion is very self-explanatory on what we need to do. The only question I have is what we need to do now is set a date, and I'd like to refer to the Acting General Manager about whether we set the date in today's committee meeting or we will advise later down the track.

Thanks, Chair. I think that probably we could set that date later on. I think initially what we need to do is establish when the representatives from Telstra and Ms Templeton can attend, and then we will sort out a meeting date from there. Okay

Thank you. And for the sake of transparency, will that coordination of availability of those representatives be conducted by the staff?

Yes, they will.

Okay, great. So how will we then advertise that, or we will talk to those representatives, set the date, and then can the public expect through our usual social media channels, website, things like that, that we'll advertise that date? Will there also be some level of engagement directly with the Bilpin community?

Yes, there will be. Excellent. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, right of reply, Mr Mayor.

Not required, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, I'll put the motion that's on the floor to the vote for all of our committee members. Those in favour, please raise your hand.

I'm in a car, so I'm yes, thank you.

Isn't a great participation on the move. Okay , those in favour are Councillors Zamprogno, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, and Councillor Conolly. That's four in favour. I declare the motion carried. Is there any—

Is there any other business? No? I think that's everything. And thank you very much to the attendees for tuning in today, to the Council Committee members for their participation, for the resolution so far of this issue. And I thank everybody for their attendance here at the first committee meeting of Innovation and Partnerships. Thank you very much.

Meeting closed at 4.15. Efficiency. Thank you.