24 August 2021 - Ordinary

Extraordinary meeting. I'd just like to begin by paying respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and note the Darug and Darkinjung people as traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. I'll pass over to the General Manager to run through the procedural matters.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to advise that in accordance with clause 5.18 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this means that 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 recording will be made available to other persons for such access as in accordance with relevant regulations.

The recording is stored in Council's record management system. For the benefit of any 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 to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. Do we have any apologies?

Struggling to see who's here at the moment. We've got, can't see Councillor Ross. Councilor

Reynolds has a problem with his audio. He's just coming back in.

Okay. And is Councillor Garrow in the meeting?

I think so.

Councillor Ross has just joined. So I think we'll, if we want to move, we'll note Councillor Garrow's apology for now. Moveed Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Zemprogno, declare that carried. Any declarations of interest?

Matters subject to public address today, and so I believe. And so the first item tonight will be item 162, the Mayoral Minute. So, Councillors, this Mayoral Minute essentially is just to correct what I think is an oversight. In the immediate aftermath of the flood in March, we met as a council and decided that we wanted to waive construction and DA fees and a range of other matters for people that had been impacted by the floods. And that was sort of, that's been interpreted as people who have, and I think was the intention, people whose properties were damaged, so they needed to have DAs and other planning matters to rebuild their properties or do something to recover from the flood. What has become apparent is that as we've had some very prolonged road closures that we're all aware of at Greens Road and Upper Colo, that other people whose properties may not have been directly impacted by the flood, or that might not be the direct reason of needing a planning matter, a DA, they've still been very much affected by the lack of infrastructure.

It's already cost them a lot more to do their DA or whatever they need to do. And so I think we should be, in recognition of the fact that they've been without that road access for so long and that the conditions are so changed on the basis of the flood, I think that Hawkesbury Ratepayers would also expect we would pass this benefit on to them. So the matter here tonight is just about formalising that, going out and saying that that's also eligible for a fee waiver. So I'll put it to Council. Any discussion?

If not— oh, Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just very briefly, I just want to commend you on picking up on this, and you are right, it is just correcting what is a small oversight to make sure that we're actually looking out for everyone in our community who's been impacted by a flood, whether the floodwaters actually impacted on their property or whether it's because of a consequence of infrastructure that's been broken and a delay in making sure that it was okay. So I fully support your Mayoral Minute, and I hope that it does help some residents of the Hawkesbury in getting their lives back together after such a traumatic event. Thanks.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Councillor Garrow, do you have your hand up? Yes

Sorry, I can't seem to be able to put my hand up on my screen. Sorry for my delay getting online. I am actually going to have to declare a significant non-pecuniary interest. Although this mayoral minute doesn't specifically name any applicant, there is an applicant that has been contacting several of us that I know that this applies to, who's a very close friend of mine. So I'm going to remove myself from voting on this.

Thanks, Councillor Garrow. So we'll just wait for Councillor Garrow to be removed.

So is Councillor Garrow just being put in the meeting room, in the waiting room, please? Thank you. Okay. Was there any further discussion, councillors? If not, we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour of the motion are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Richards, Councillor Rasmusson, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Tree, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Ross. Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds absent for the vote. Declare it carried.

He's on here, so I just had a note passed to me that we couldn't get him in

Okay. Next item is item 163, Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I'll move the motion in the recommendation in the business paper.

Seconded, Deputy Mayor.

Thanks. In order to facilitate discussion on this, it's a fairly large item with a lot of content, I would like to move a procedural motion that we move into a committee of the whole, which would then mean that we're not bound by each of us only speaking once for five minutes.

Okay. Yeah , no discussion. So all those in favour, put that motion, please raise your hand. Against? Carried. Go ahead, Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor.

I'll probably speak on each item individually, and I'll leave you to determine how you proceed with that. I do have a series of questions on many of the items, but just a bit of background as to, I guess, why we're here.

Much of this is outstanding business from the last twenty-odd

Months of this council term, and given that we are coming to the end of our run, the Deputy Mayor and I felt that it was important that we discuss these items before this council wraps up. And in fact, normally we would be wrapping up, we would be facing an election on the weekend, and we would already be in caretaker mode. And I think it's troubling to me, and troubling to a number of community members who have contacted me, that we haven't made significant progress on a number of these matters, particularly with regard to the emergency management plan and the review of the 2019-2020 bushfires. So this is — The point of this meeting really is to trigger a discussion so that we can continue to process these items before we move into caretaker mode in November.

It's already nearly the end of August, so we need to proceed. But what I would like to do is take each of these items one by one, starting with the status of Council's Emergency Management Plan.

Sorry, was that a question, Councillor Wheeler?

I guess it was a suggestion as a way forward, Mr Mayor

Okay. Were you looking for some information in addition to the note? Is that

Yes. Yeah. But I guess what I wanted from you was an indication that that was a way that we could, a structure that we could move forward with now that we've moved into Committee of the Whole, perhaps work through each of the six items and then wrap up at the end and consider where we are with the recommendations in front of us.

Sure. I think what I'd probably be looking for some direction from yourself and the Deputy Mayor on is, given that we didn't get any notice of what the motions were, the motion of the business paper in front of us is just to receive a note information. What is the direction we want to take and what is it being proposed? And maybe if you fill the notes by management leave questions unanswered, we could start off by asking those questions. Might be the way to go.

Sure. In which case, I'll start with questions on Item 1, which is the Emergency Management Plan. So I guess I'm wondering—

Why this has proceeded in as largely a background activity? The note talks about the M plan and how it is now gone for review. But I would have expected that we would have had some information about this plan and been asked, in fact, to either give some input or at least been briefed on progress. It is now , the M plan is supposed to be reviewed either every three years, well, ours was written in 2017, so it's a year behind the update requirement anyway, or following each emergency that it's had to deal with . We've had three emergencies , and we still haven't received a review of the M plan. I find that concerning. The community finds that concerning . I'm wondering why this has been an entirely background activity, and those of us, the people on the ground representing other people on the ground, haven't been either briefed or called upon for input.

And given that we have found our emergency management wanting previously, I'm wondering what happens in the interim while we wait for this plan to get through its next hoop.

Okay, I refer that to Director of Infrastructure Services

Probably to try and answer that question. So again, Council did receive a briefing from the Regional Emergency Management Officer previously. At which point we indicated, I think probably could have been made very clear, I guess, to the community that the M plan is not a council plan as such. It's council's role in, and I think outlined it in the note there briefly, is that we actually provide the support to the local emergency management committee, which is not a committee of council . And council's role is one of providing, I guess, I'll call it the secretariat service to that. The M plan follows a statutory process. It's got to have certain requirements in it, and the process, and a lot of the information in there is, I'll call it the confidential section.

It's not the term that's used in the plan, but that information which is not public, which goes to vulnerable communities and a whole series of other issues that are not generally made public for privacy or for security reasons . So that's never published in the public domain in any event . So there isn't an opportunity to disclose some of that information . The remainder of it follows a set process, and it's the agencies that actually prepare the consequence management guides that go with that , and they're signed off. But they've got to follow a set statutory procedure to do that. Unfortunately, there isn't a process there where council is briefed or there is any community input into that process.

I do understand that probably creates some angst or uncertainty with the community, but that's the process that it goes through. Can

I just ask as a follow-up, just for some clarity there, where is that process set ? I imagine it's by an active New South Wales Parliament. And who is on the EM Plan Committee? So the

LEMC comprises Police and Emergency Services, SES, RFS, Fire and Rescue, Council as myself on it as the LEMO , has agency representatives from Endeavour Energy , Sydney Water . Probably go through the full list, but yeah , that's basically all the, and welfare, St John of God, New South Wales Ambulance. So there's all of the people who have a role in emergency management planning and response are involved in that meeting. And it's basically the process, the forms governed through regulation.

Thank you.

Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, that's helpful. It still doesn't alleviate my concerns that we

Are now 20 months beyond the first emergency, and we still don't have an upgraded plan. Now whether that's our problem or whether we are the agency responsible or whether other agencies are responsible, that's still not a satisfactory way forward, considering that we have had two floods and a global pandemic since that time. This is not leaving us on— A secure footing, nor is it leaving the community well supported or feeling confident that they will get the support and help that they need when something goes wrong. My next set of questions relate to the evacuation centres, and we know that lack of evacuation in the 19-20 bushfires was of particular concern in the LGA because evacuations were not triggered, unlike other areas.

I'm not sure whether the location of these centres is part of that confidential information, but regardless, I'd like to know whether Council has, or the people responsible for preparing the EM plan have actually visited all of these centres. And I'd like some more information provided to councillors about how the audit of those centres was carried out. I think we also need to know if their council facilities, what works, if any, are required, when the timeline for the completion of those works, how we will fund them. And I would also like us to look at trialling some of these systems in place. It's not enough to have documents that sit on a desk that says, We will do this. We need to test these out in the same way that major emergency responses are trialled elsewhere.

We need to make sure that these actually work on the ground when something goes wrong, in order to have confidence, and in order for the community to have confidence, but also to know what to do. It's not enough for us to have these actions stipulated. They have to be communicated. They have to be practiced. If you want people to act in times of distress, then they need to understand what they need to do. It needs to be clear, concise, and obvious and practiced. And none of those things are happening to date.

I'll refer that again to Mr. Organ to make any comment on evacuation centres. So

To answer the first question there was, have they been inspected by the, as indicated by the members? So there's a very specific audit and requirements for any evacuation centre to be put on the list, and it's got to comply at that particular time, and it's also got to be assessed prior to it being opened.

There's many things that have got to go in there, and the process or the condition for our evacuation centres is also, there's a supplementary one that came out for COVID in terms of further restrictions on how those centres might operate. So the trigger for those, also the inspections all being carried out, the ones that have been included in the draft EM plan for ratification or assessment by the Regional Emergency Management Committee comply with those requirements. There is a check that's done prior to them opening. In relation to the point about training and drills and rehearsals, I suppose that's a critical part of emergency management, and it's one thing that is probably exercising everybody's mind about how to do more of those dry runs, so to speak, and potentially what the issues might be at those evacuation centres. In terms of

Each of those centres actually complies with the basics that are required for an evacuation centre. Again, they're not generally published because, I mean, without Each emergency is different, and the response is always going to be different as to where they go. And one of the things is to be able to identify the location in response to the particular emergency that's there. What we don't want is, for instance, in a bushfire, sending people to the last emergency evacuation centre that they went to, which may be under threat. So it's about getting clear messaging out, having the correct location, and then having the resources there. One of the key things that was learnt out of the floods, particularly , was the need for New South Wales WELFACS functional area for welfare to be on the ground at an earlier stage in the exercises.

But they need to be open and they need to be correct. There's a whole raft of information relating to vulnerable people and communities that needs to be dealt with. And again, moving people into safe, secure environments with the correct resources is paramount.

Councillor Wheeler, you had further questions or discussion?

Thanks. So can I just look back then. So I take it that our areas are compliant and that we don't require any works. Is that correct?

There's no additional works required for those centres. In terms, probably to answer it a little more generally, the Hawkesbury is not blessed with great numbers of large suitable facilities. We generally have clubs, some very small council halls. They're the primary ones. And again, particularly when we get to flooding, when we get to the regional or the major flooding level, evacuation centres are not in the Hawkesbury. They're outside of the area. One of the things that is actually being looked at in a more broad sense in terms of how evacuation centres are, or evacuations are managed, is the emergency hubs at that stage, where they may not fit all of the requirements of a full-blown, what most people would think is an evacuation centre, where there's beds and food and all of those things.

So evacuation centres can range from, as I've jokingly said, sort of the back of a police car with the boot open and taking the names of people as they move out through to a full-blown centre where people might be accommodated. So again, it's got to be the way the plan is written, and I know people want specifics, is that it's got to be general enough to be able to cater for all of those emergencies. Whilst floods, fires and storms are the key ones that people think of, we're confronting COVID and pandemics, and there's any number of other emergencies that that plan needs to respond to in an appropriate way.

Thanks. So what about COVID compliance for these facilities? If we were to have a flood next week, we do have, we do evacuate within the Hawkesbury. That's what we use the North Richmond Community Centre for in March. Can we provide — COVID-safe refuge for people at the centre that we have. If we're stuck in a similar situation where we are marooned on this side of the river, can we be compliant?

I guess the answer to that, COVID is a little bit of a moving feast at the moment in terms of the requirements and the regulations that are applying at any particular point. But there is a requirement for each of the evacuation centres to be operated in accordance with a COVID-safe plan prepared by welfare , essentially. They're the lead agency in managing the centres during the emergency.

Thanks. So my next question, I guess, relates to welfare protocols. And I take it that they're part of that confidential information that we can't see.

There's no welfare protocols actually written into the EM plan. That's a matter for the response agency. And so welfare have their own particular structure and rules and resourcing that they need to apply when they're setting these up, that they need to respond again to the particular situation that's there.

So what about when we get into situations like we had, say, in the last flood, where there wasn't, for example, on this side of the river, and we had clear welfare triggers for invulnerable communities, for example caravan parks. Do we have sufficient protocols within our own organisation to plug those gaps where those organisations can't be here but we are, simply because we're already on the ground?

So we have actually modified. So we actually have Council's Community Services, Megan, sitting on the Emergency Management Committee now as a full member of that, and that's an invaluable way of providing, I guess, the local knowledge and local resourcing to the committee, but also to support the WELFACS functional area. So that's how we've changed and responded to that, the Emergency Management Committee, putting that local knowledge into that system. Be conscious of letting the welfare area off the hook by stepping into that breach fully. Council doesn't have huge amounts of resources. What we can do is marshal and coordinate and provide them that advice.

Thanks. To hear that Megan Ang is on that committee does give me a great deal of heart , because she has certainly proven herself repeatedly to be both an efficient and a compassionate operator in this space. So I think that's—you know, there are gaps that form whether we want to take responsibility for them or not, and people look to us to fill them simply because we are there, and that's role Council fills as the closest organisation to the community.

Much of the stuff around evacuation and the community response and

Community information

I've got real concerns that the community here, and we knew this, it was discussed repeatedly on the Floodplain Risk Management Committee, that around two-thirds of the community has, and that obviously that figure has dropped now because we've had a flood, but about two-thirds of the community was the estimate, doesn't understand or didn't understand what it would be like to be flooded in for a week, and therefore didn't have processes in place. And what we saw was people lacking in some of the most basic facilities, good old toilet paper, although how anybody could not have an excess of toilet paper after the grand COVID buy-up is beyond me. Basic food, you know, just getting basic food provision to people occupied a great deal of time and energy.

There is clearly a hole with the information that we send to people, that people have about what it's like to live on a floodplain and what you need to have in place in order to be resilient. I don't know that any other agency is going to fill that void, and consequently Council has to. We need to have clear emergency provisions that people have on a printout on their fridge or on their filing cabinet that tells them what to do to prepare for a flood or a fire and how to proceed when that happens. We can't afford to have a growing population that relies on chopping in of really basic foodstuffs and nappies for when we have another flood. People need to be better prepared and we need to facilitate that.

We also need A local radio station as an information source. That didn't happen this time. And in fact, council still doesn't have— last I looked at the council website, we had reference to a single radio station, not the radio station frequency . We need to shore that up. There might be three radio stations, but they all operate off the same frequency. And something needs to be happening on that frequency in order for people to be able to access relevant local information. So I'm concerned that one of the roles that council needs to fulfil is as information provider. The dashboard has made a difference, but we're still not there. And we need to get this information out to people. Once people are prepared, they feel more confident and they become more resilient, and that's where we need to be.

I'll pause before moving on to item two. Thanks, Mr Mayor.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Councillor Wheeler has touched on a lot of the points around the first item in the motion. Just to reiterate, and to probably say the objective of calling this meeting was because of our concerns about outstanding issues around emergency management, which of course is such a fundamental role of councils. And I think that there's a fundamental flaw that exists here, which is that the state emergency plan is quite operational in many respects, but there is a really crucial part of it, which is that the first response for preparation and risk management rests at a local level. So it really is the responsibility of councils to be preparing and to undergoing that risk management around emergency procedures and so on.

And I think something gets lost here in the confusion about combat agency and the role of the actual council. So whether that means that we need better supporting plans around the issues, but something needs to happen because... The state plan is very clear that we have a role, and it's an important role, and it's one that has to step in immediately because it also states that the recovery phase begins at the same time as the response phase, which means that that can occur to eliminate the lag that does occur when, for example, after a flood, we're waiting around and waiting around to see what can happen to Green Waste or things like that. So the recovery really needs to be kicking in at the same time there's still an operational response going on, and I think that we could be falling short in that area.

Regarding the disaster welfare, that is actually a sub-plan of the state plan and has quite a lot of guidelines around it. But our trouble here is that we don't necessarily have all of those particular agencies operating on a local level in Windsor or whatever, if it's a large scale of a particular charity or something, they may not actually have an office here or be able to kick in so fast. I think that we do need to do some work around the supporting plans. That whereas the M plan is very much covering combat agencies, and that's a great thing, and they do a great job, and I think that's wonderful. But we have a role, and it's us that our community turn to when there's an issue. It's us that they contact because we're local and we're on the ground, and that's who they trust and have confidence in to be able to answer them.

So with the review that was being carried out, it was to address the role of councillors, and that's something that I think we really have to ascertain and look into and make really clear. We have seen with the Wingecarribee Council, with a bushfire review that was done there, that there were real problems around the roles of councillors and the failure to understand their role and the actions that could be taken, and a failed leadership in not briefing councillors regularly and so on around that sort of issue. With regard to the evacuation centres, and I understand that rationale, of course, for not publishing the actual addresses and saying this is a specific evacuation centre, but at what point do we really look at whether they're servicing what's needed, particularly, for example, evacuation of large animals, requiring the owners to stay with the animals, which is a fair enough requirement.

So if they're taken to the showground, they have to stay there. Where do those people sleep, and how do they access facilities, etc., if they have to care for the animal and if they don't have anyone else to overtake that? And what happens if there's someone who's left their home to bring animals and still have to fight a fire? I think there's still various issues around the evacuation procedure that... That we can either raise for whoever can fix it, but it's definitely an issue. And these are the sort of things that came out after the fires and the issues around that. I'm pleased to hear that there are COVID plans, because of course we could have an evacuation having to occur while we're still in lockdown.

And the other issue around that, and a question I had that was put to me was, what about our policy for extreme weather events during COVID? So we have a policy where we have extended operational hours of our facilities for people to access cooler conditions. If we're getting these 45, 46 degree days that we most likely will have over summer, if we're still in lockdown, do we have any sort of a process around how our citizens can access a cool space if they don't have cooling themselves, or if they feel the need for that? Perhaps that could be something that could be looked at to adjust our existing policy on that to cater for COVID conditions.

The other thing Councillor Wheeler mentioned, and I'll sound like I'm banging on about the same thing, Mr Organ, I think here she goes again, but I do have an outstanding council resolution about the emergency management guide, which I still firmly believe should be given to people in a hard copy format. We know with people losing communications that people don't have access to that information. And we also know that people who are in a state of crisis might not necessarily be able to be looking up and finding the information online. If people have something that's stuck on their fridge with a magnet on the back that they can just grab and see who they could either call or what they should do, and really basic information, because people who are stressed.

If you say to someone, you've got to evacuate, if there's a list of things that say turn your power off, close your windows, get in your car, drive off, whatever, that's sometimes the level of information that people need when they are in severe distress. So if we can continue with that outstanding resolution to get an emergency management guide done, that would be really, I think, appreciated within the community. It's come up in a number of reviews and places that I've seen, and I don't think it's an unrealistic thing to expect that we could be giving our community so that they have access to that information.

Okay. Director of Infrastructure Services.

I can probably just respond to some of those things, but if I start probably at the top, I guess , Council's role, whilst everybody is focusing in on the M plan, and as the Deputy Mayor's just indicated, that's basically the response phase of emergency planning or emergency management . That's basically continuum, probably is the best way to describe it, from the planning, the preparation, the response and the recovery are the four phases of emergency management. So focusing on the M plan, which is basically the response phase, is probably a little bit narrow. What Council is currently doing is we're writing a resilience plan, so that's your planning and preparation side of things . We have actually prepared an emergency management guide for the community.

As I said, the issue is the cost of distributing or printing, distributing and maintaining that in a current form, and we'll continue to apply for funding through any grant opportunities that might be there for that . So , yes, again , basically the whole focus is to start doing that planning and preparation phase, and as I said, we've got through the grant funding that was made available for the bushfires , the ability and the staff member now preparing that resilience plan, and that will also then feed into our preparation for emergencies

Thank you. Councillor Ross

Thank you, Mr Mayor . I endorse the comments of the Deputy Mayor, and in particular, I underline the reference made to the Windsor Carerby Shire Council Bushfire Response and Recovery Review 2021, which was published earlier this month. It runs to 100 pages, and the understandings there are vastly different to those which have been put to us this evening. And I would believe that it would be prudent, both from a staff and councillor point of view, to grab hold of that report, which is available on that council's website, and actually digest it, and bring it forward for more considered discussion at the forthcoming meeting of our own committee , please, because what I'm hearing tonight is, frankly, most concerning in light of that particular report, which is an external report, and I believe must be a point of engagement for this council and councillors. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Tree.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I agree with Councillor Ross. I think everything that's been discussed here is incredibly important and should be discussed at length. But I'm just wondering why we didn't have a briefing firstly before, when there were so many unanswered questions before we got to that point, because maybe we would have been able to arrive at something. You know, staff could have been able to have answers for us and to be able to not go through this really truncated process, which is not the usual way that we do business in council. So I'm just, whilst I completely and utterly agree that it's a really important topic, I'm just trying to figure out why we hadn't gone to a briefing to establish what we wanted to sort of get out of it, rather than to sit here and have a briefing for the community, it feels like.

It seems weird, that's all. But it's important, but it just seems weird, Mr Mayor.

Thanks, Councillor Tree. Councillor Reynolds.

Yes, thanks, Mr Mayor. Just a couple of questions through you. The Local Emergency Management Committee, the LEMC, for want of a better term, who is the chair of that?

Director Support Services.

I'm the chair and the LEMO.

And so that's the Emergency Management Officer as well. Is that right? So,

Yes, so the chair of the Local Emergency Management Committee and the Local Emergency Management Officer can be two different roles, but in Hawkesbury, I'm both the chair and the Emergency Management Officer. Okay

I find that interesting because in the Wingecarribee report, the chair of the emergency management committee is the general manager, and the emergency management officer is the police. I just wonder why that's not the case here.

So under the legislation, regulation, the general manager of the local council for that LGA is the nominal chair of the local emergency management committee, but that's been delegated through , can be delegated to another person in the organisation. In that case, that's me. The emergency management officer, so the police officer, police superintendent for the area, is what they call the LEOCON, the local emergency office controller . So he is not the— gets a lot of jargon in here, but the emergency management officer is a council-appointed person, and the police superintendent or commander of that area is the LEOCON, so slightly different terminology . When the emergency operations centre is set up, the police are then, they're in charge of that operations centre.

Right, okay. I just find it interesting that in Wingecarribee, the police were the LEMO. So anyway, I just leave that B for a tick

I think an important point I want to make here, and the community—

And the community, one of the things the community is frustrated about, which was brought to light

And incredibly highlighted in the Winjerie report, was that even though local government is not the combat agency responsible for all actions in responding to and recovering from natural disasters, local government needs to acknowledge they are the first and most important port of call for their community and must develop their skills in responding to and recovering from natural disasters. Council must demonstrate clear leadership and decision-making in times of crisis to instill confidence within the community. Now, in the bushfires especially, as councillors, we were told that council had no responsibility; that, for example, the RFS was in charge of this and the SES was in charge of that.

We were receiving calls from the community, and we didn't have anything really to tell them. I mean, people at Colo Heights were being evacuated, were told to head towards Wilberforce, and so we had people sleeping in cars along Wilberforce Road.

And so I think this is not something where the community doesn't really want to hear why we can't have a plan, or why we can't do things, or why they can't be told things. They want a plan, and they want it as soon as possible, because we could have a flood or a bushfire in the next couple of weeks. At the moment, we have nothing. We're still in the same situation we were 18 months ago, or even longer. And so I find it really troubling and really disturbing that even after

You know, the horrendous bushfires of 2019 and a major flood earlier this year, that we're still treading water, so to speak, as far as the community is concerned. This report that Wingecarribee, that was released earlier this month on Wingecarribee's response to the fires, was only commissioned in April, and they got it back, you know, it only took a few months.

And yet here we are 18 months later and we still don't really have anything. So I find that quite disturbing, and I know the community does too. And so I think we really need to, you know, get the proverbial out and get something happening as soon as possible. Not put things in the way or handball it to other agencies. And if those agencies aren't pulling their weight, then we need to get onto them and start yelling and screaming that something be done. But that's all I'll say for now.

Thank you. Thanks, Councillor. Just a question on that, because I think, like, we are trying to move our way towards a recommendation here. When you say that something has to be done and we've got to pull our finger out and do it, what is it? Just so we can note it for our recommendation , I wasn't clear from your discussion there exactly what you're asking, what you think Council hasn't done yet.

An adequate local emergency management plan, and the position of Council and responsibility of Council acknowledge the responsibility of Council within that plan to deal with the community, because as this report states, that Council is the first and most important port of call for the community.

So are you talking about a parallel plan to the local emergency management plan?

No, no, the same one, the same one. It's just that ours, Wingecarribee's, was a failure, and in some cases it was non-existent. That's what the report found. It was lack content and/or was non-existent in a number of areas. You know, I've got a fairly good feeling that ours is exactly the same, or would be exactly the same if we subjected it to the same scrutiny that Wingecarribee subjected theirs to. And this is the thing. There's some people in the community that I've spoken to who firmly believe that we haven't heard, we haven't had a forensic examination of council's part in response to the fires because certain people don't want that to be known. And that's, I hope that's not the case.

And I think we need to be completely open and honest with what happened and what we're going to do about it. And I think, and like Councillor Ross said, I encourage everybody to read this report. You can look at it on Wingecarribee Council's website or even a quick Google, it'll bring it up , because it's quite chilling. It's like looking in a mirror, actually. And so as to your question, Mr Mayor, we get our local emergency management plan sorted out as soon as possible so that if , you know, if the poo hits the propeller in a couple of weeks' time, we know what to do and we know what to tell the community, because at the moment we don't.

And we could put people's lives at risk. Thank you.

Yeah. So just to be clear, I think we've just got to keep this on track towards getting to something that we can recommend that council can influence. I note that the note by management says that the final draft of the M plan was already submitted to the Regional Emergency Management Committee, so it's not in council's hands to try and get that done faster, from what I understand from that note. So I think we just need to be clear on that when we get—

Sorry, sorry, Pat. I think— I think the end plan, as the director said, the end plan is like, is the response phase, and its scope is quite narrow. For example, one of the recommendations—we were talking about, the deputy mayor was talking about the evacuation of livestock and telling people where they could—we didn't know where they should go or where they could go or when they could go there. One of the recommendations is in Wingecarribee that issues arose with the evacuation centres and a large number of people with animals presenting for assistance. And the recommendation was council work with Resilience New South Wales and Department of Primary Industry to identify and support suitable premises for people with pets and domestic pets as an evacuation protocol. Why aren't we doing that? That's not part of the end plan.

So I guess that was my question to you. Are you talking about like a parallel plan to the end plan?

Perhaps, yeah, that might be something. Again, it's important to realise our position is we are the ones the community are going to go to, and we can't handball them down the road. We have to have answers there. And that's what we did in the floods and that's what we did in the bushfires. We didn't have the answers. We just kicked them down the road. And again, I suggest it's a shame that everybody hasn't read this report because, as I say, it's chilling but enlightening. And I think that we need to admit that we were deficient

And...

How do I put it? How do I put it?

The community doesn't want this to get bogged down in a bureaucratic way, down like a lead weight around the necks because of the bureaucratic process in determining what should and shouldn't be done. You know, they want it done. They want to know now that next time we're going to be prepared and we'll know what to tell them. And as the director said, sure, you know, things change from bushfires and floods and, you know, bushfires in different locations, but we know where the floods are going to go. You know, the levels may change, but bushfires are the important one, I think, because they can happen beyond people within a couple of hours, whereas flooding at least we've got, you know, 12 or 15 hours.

So we need to do something there, Pat. Yeah, perhaps a parallel plan. We need to consider a parallel plan. But I don't think we can put our hands in the air and say it's not our responsibility anymore.

Okay. Thanks.

I probably haven't answered your question, I don't think.

No, well, I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, it comes back to using that, it's probably a good example, evacuation centres. I don't know that we could have our own policy that's in isolation of the police around evacuation centres and then expect the police to direct people there on our say-so.

No, no. For example, the report, the recommendation at Wingecarribee was council should work with Resilience New South Wales and Department of Primary Industry to identify and support suitable premises. That's not something contrary to the police or the SES. This was to do with evacuation centres for domestic animals, not Homo sapiens. So I— There's no reason why we can't do that. We don't need police permission to do that, I don't think. I think the police would probably be grateful that we got off our backsides and did it. But that was a recommendation to Wingecarribee Council, and I think it's something we could also take on board, along with a whole pile of other recommendations that went through.

So, yeah , I think we need to step up to the plate here and take on the responsibility that we have, knowing that the community are going to rely on us for information and for help and support, and we can't, you know, point them to someone else in this regard.

I'll note the Director of Infrastructure Services has got his hand up, so I might just comment just very briefly. So I think if, you know, we are hoping to get to a point tonight where we have something that we'd like to resolve as the way forward. And I think I've heard mentioned also by the Deputy Mayor some support plans, I think she said, or supporting plans. Like, we need to, I guess, at some point name what those are and move towards a process of establishing the appropriateness of those. But I'll go to Mr. Organ now.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm just making a comment on the animal evacuation and animal holding facilities. That was certainly something that came out of the bushfires, and it's part of the M Plan, more broadly right across all M plans, to address that particular issue, whether it be domestic pets or for large animals, which is a particular issue for the Hawkesbury. So that's something that hasn't been overlooked in our M Plan in that, and how that actually operates in terms of both the animals and the people bringing them there. So again, from the bushfires, the core lessons learned there, I guess, and local land services are front and centre of having animal evacuation as part of the various consequence management guides.

So that's something that has evolved in the revised M plans, and we did have, obviously, the showground, and it's used for various emergencies. There are some issues, obviously, associated with if it's available or whether it's in fact itself under threat from the emergency. So again, this adaptability I've talked about. If I probably just also chime in, I suppose, a little bit. And in terms of the—that's why I'm making the point that the M plan is only one subset of that continuum of emergency management, where we're talking about potentially support plans. They're the issues I'm talking about in terms of preparing the resilience plan and more detailed resourcing for recovery and how we deal with those in a contemporary way.

So many of the things that have been raised, we've also identified. Council will also recall we had the inquiry , the report being prepared by Anne Ledbetter in terms of the recovery from the fires, and there were a number of discussions with Council and with individual councillors , subject to the point in notice of motion there tonight, be the intention to have and present that report to the next disaster and emergency committee meeting and go through those particular issues. If some of the stuff that's obviously in that Winger Caribee report is also about what the role of councillors is, and it's quite clear in that report and also in—and report —there is certainly a role for councillors in terms of being that face and communicating with the community out there.

So again, finding that very specific role and identifying that in a plan is one of the key things that, you know, we need to develop up better and have that clear briefing messaging going forward.

I would just quickly make the comment that the Winjekaribee report didn't refer to councilors; it referred to council as a whole. I'm

Referring to the AMLED Better report, so Council— All right, okay. —was identifying that there is a distinct role, because that was one of the things that councillors did express to the [unclear] Better, was, you know, that they're connected to the community, they want to be able to get out there. So better communications plan and a role for the council, so to speaking, with one voice in those emergencies, rather than everybody going around and trying to find information. But we talk as one council, and councillors themselves can play that role in that. Okay , thank you. Thanks, Pat.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just a few comments on that, and then I had a question around another plan. I think that we have had a lot of briefings on this. We've had multiple briefings on this, and we've got a number of outstanding reviews that are commenced but not completed. And so I think we have brought this forward so that we can propel this towards getting that actually finalised, because we have none of them finalised. And I think we've only had one meeting of the Emergency Management Committee in almost a year, and yet we've had a major disaster in that time. So I think that the longer we leave it between those meetings, the more we have to address at the meetings. And how can we possibly address all of this at one committee meeting when we can't even organise one of those committee meetings?

Because now they are subject to the availability of people from external agencies, and that's why we're waiting to see when we can have a committee, at least if we had scheduled meetings, which we should have, because the original idea of this was to have one every three months, and we've only had one. And so we are letting down our community by not having regular meetings to look at this very important topic. And I think we felt we had to bring this forward. But more to the point of what the Mayor is alluding to is what do we do? Well, what I would think we need to do is we need to get those completed reviews and look at those in line with also the recommendations from the Bushfire Inquiries, the Royal Commission, and so on, and the recommendations coming out of those, so that we can then actually formulate some plans.

And what I would think is that we have some sub-plans that are council specific. So whereas the M plan is based a lot around operational issues and combat agencies and has a really... really defined statutory framework around it. We need some specific plans that will show council's role and how we support our community to deliver what they need when there's an emergency. So we need our people to know that when something happens, you do this, this, this, council can assist. We could do that in the areas. We need to have something around temporary accommodation, for example, not our responsibility entirely, but that's who the community looks to to deliver that sort of thing. We could have an economic recovery situation that immediately deals with getting money to people who need money there on the spot to be able to continue to either operate their business or simply to survive.

So I think that whereas our role is, we need to define our role and then we need to put some sort of structure around that from a council perspective. It doesn't have to be like the template of the EM plan, which is so strict in what can be included and so on, and that can operate and then we could have our own sort of suite of plans and, you know, look at things like having a centralised point for where we operate during an emergency and so on. I did just have a question for Mr. Organ though, and that was around our role in the Northwest Metropolitan Regional Emergency Plan, which I looked at today and I was looking at the hazards and risk summary. So this is one that's for like Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Parramatta, that big area, and I think that was where the fellow briefed us from, was from that emergency management committee.

My question around that was how often do they update it and I had some concerns about our level of risk included in that, which I see as quite problematic because we are the only council area which, of course, has an extreme risk of terrorism threat. And I think obviously because we have a RAF base. Now, that's nothing to do with us specifically as a council. But if there was some event like an emergency like that, what is our role, and what would happen to all the facilities and so on if there's some sort of shutdown? Not that I'm suggesting that would happen, but it just highlighted to me what an extreme level of risk our local government area is at, and how we don't have information around that.

So the other thing was that we've got a very low risk of landslip, which I think is actually incorrect because we've had several landslips over recent times. So my question is: when is that updated, and do we have some sort of particular role in this particular emergency management framework that's called North West Metropolitan Regional Emergency Plan?

Mr. Organ?

Probably answered, in fact, a slightly different way. The council prepares—each local government area is a member of, in Sydney it's divided into the North West area , so we're a member of the North West REMC. We're part of that group. And then there's the Southern Region. So each local government area prepares its own risk profile, so we identify the various potential risks. They've been ranked, and then there are consequence management guides prepared for various high risks. So there's a matrix that's done that assesses whether something's got a high risk, and then there's a consequence management guide that's done for that. Off the top of my head, and I haven't got a copy in front of me of the EM plan tonight, but they're all the things, they're all listed and they've all been gone through, and then the probability of those occurring.

Many of the emergencies, if they get to a certain level, will be taken over at a regional, what we call a regional level, rather than being at the local level. So, yeah, with the flooding, that became a regional response rather than a local response. We stood up our local emergency operations centre. The decisions on various things are being done at a regional level because evacuation centres and so on elsewhere, if they need to be activated, would require significant resources. Also an event flooding that covered more than one local government area. So again, the call on the combat agencies and police and everybody else is significant across the whole of the metropolitan area in those events, and that's why they're managed at that level.

So, to answer your question, we are part of that grouping of councils, and that's where our, what I call the REMA, and I apologise for the language, but the Regional Emergency Management Officer, Phil, he addressed council and went through all those issues. So he supports our LEMC , but also he's the regional coordinator. Thank

You. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just to clarify, I think it's actually really useful for us to be thrashing something as important as this out in front of the community, so that they can see. This is a bit different to a briefing for us as well, in that the briefings are usually run by staff, with staff giving us the information that they think we need to make our decisions. This is about us discussing, as an elected body, what we want as a way forward, and I think that's an important distinction. I'd like to move on to item two, which is the bushfires. So my understanding from what Mr Organ said— A little while ago—sorry, Mr Mayor, I'll just jump in as well and say that I'm keeping a rolling summary of things that I think we need to address as additions to the recommendation in the business paper.

It's my understanding that when we get to the end of the committee as a whole, which this council has never done before, to my knowledge, that we make then recommendations to the council when the council moves back into the standard meeting, and that we then move forward on those. So I'm

Trying to do that. We could do that, or the other option is to avoid doing that twice. We just wait till we've all said it as much as we need to, and then we just move back into the council meeting without a recommendation to council. Well

I think it would be useful to have a recommendation at the end of this process, and there are some additions already to what we've got on the table. So I'm trying to put those together so that we don't then have to have a lengthy back-and-forth process to work that out. So I'm just flagging that I'm doing that in the background. So Mr Organ has indicated that we'll get the review at the next Emergency Management Committee meeting, which I understand is September. It's early September now, and we've now got the date for that, and I presume that will include the recommendations that council need to carry out. What I'm concerned about particularly is whether or not we will have the time and resources to implement the recommendations from that review before the start of the next fire season, which is the 1st of October. Could I get a comment on that, please?

Obviously, I might need to depend on what the recommendations were, but Mr. Organ might be best placed to comment on that .

Probably can, and more than that, I guess it probably would be helpful, you know , from tonight if there are recommendations, we can try and take those on notice. I'm conscious of talking and being defensive here at times, but if there's questions, we can certainly take those subject to the, will be form the basis of what you want to hear or answers that you would like at the committee meeting. We can certainly get more information than we put in the management note tonight.

Thanks, that's certainly my intention. So I guess we'll just have to wait until the beginning of September. I particularly want to make sure that we have time to resource this. I don't want to hand this— now we've had the election delayed, we're in this quite difficult position of handing over to a new council, and we don't know who, you know, how many of us will be left of this current council to deal with information in the middle of a fire season. We don't know the severity of it at this point. You know, now we've had some rain today, I think we're probably relaxing a little bit about that, but it was looking a bit hairy on the weekend. So

I think when those recommendations do come to us, I think we need to have sufficient detail in them so that we can act, and act quite quickly. We go into caretaker mode in early November. If the report comes to us, if the review comes to us in early September, that gives us a scant two months to resource and implement those recommendations before the next fire season, and that's something that I think we need to prioritise. I'm also concerned that we will be dealing still with fairly high COVID case numbers in the community, and that all of our processes therefore need to be COVID safe as well.

One of the recommendations in the Winter Caribee report was that staff have more input into reviews of processes like this. Did the review include interviews with staff?

Mr Organ ? Which review are we talking about ? The

Bushfire review . So the after-action review undertaken by the Bushfire Management Committee. Council staff did have input into that. And what that review— It's a combat, that was a combat response, though, but not a recovery response.

And what about the review by Anne Ledbetter?

So a number of staff did contribute to that discussion in terms of the briefing. A lot of the focus was in on what the councilor's role was in that, and the councilor's request for further input that we certainly did brief Anne Ledbetter myself, and a number of other staff did as well.

Thanks. I

Can address that and prepares the— gives the presentation to the committee

And I think it's important to note too that that meeting will be open to the public as well, which will be helpful. We had a number of staff who helped out in various positions. For example, we had some council staff who helped out in the... In fire control, answering telephones and things like that. And from discussions with them, many of them had some really interesting learnings from just seeing how the community works and how disaster works. So I know, for example, one of our strategic planners did that, and I had a conversation with them following that, and their comments were that they understood far more about the reasons for not putting some infrastructure, housing, the way we plan, because of disaster. Have we collected all of those learnings?

To

Answer that one, I'm not sure. I don't think we've gone through a specific trawl of learnings from individuals that might have been operating or working in fire control or carrying out other tasks. There were certainly issues that were identified during that in terms of process and improvements and who could assist. I think we certainly recorded those and resolved a lot of those issues as part of that. There's a specific debrief of whether somebody learned something more about their own role by being in there. I think the short answer is no, we didn't do those sorts of debriefs of those staff. There were some issues obviously associated because they were under the control of RFS while they were working in that environment.

I think there were some issues that RFS have taken on board in their after action review in terms of not just council staff, but the volunteers and so on that were used in that situation, having better training and mentoring and guidance for them.

Thanks, that's useful. I think that's useful information for us to hear as well. I know that the feedback certainly from members of the RFS that I spoke to was that those staff were incredibly useful in those roles and really took pressure off the staff, particularly the communication staff in the RFS, that having those people who could do things like just answer basic calls from the public meant that we could have more skilled, or more—not necessarily skilled, I don't mean to imply that the council staff aren't similarly skilled—but it meant that it freed up RFS staff to do their more specialist roles. So that certainly was an important contribution from council.

One of the things that has come up, I think,

Is the distribution of grants funding. I know council had a resolution in response to a motion that I put up about developing a list of projects for funding, and it would appear that out of a whole lot of this continued funding coming out of disaster management, that the more projects we have ready to apply for funding on, the more likely we are to access funding. Do we have a list of shovel-ready projects that we can apply for funding quickly when it comes up? It doesn't seem to come up with a great deal of warning. Do we still maintain a list?

We have basically a list of projects. I won't say they're all shovel-ready. One of the particular issues that we have is that every round of grant funding, whilst they're welcome, always comes with a new set of strings attached . Directions within them, where they're focused on. So we're currently dealing with the Black Summer fire grants, and they have some, you know, where we thought, oh, we can put that project in because it's on our list of things that we've applied for in the past. Yeah, that probably fits into the shovel ready. We find ourselves probably stretching and scratching and saying, well, how can we make that fit into the particular funding guidelines? Again, there were a number of other projects that came out.

You know, Council will call the stimulus funding for COVID projects, and they had very, very, from last year, had very, very short timeframes because they wanted to get money out into the business world or into the community. So again, they had their own particular things. The BLER funding that we'll receive some funding from , trying to shoehorn some projects into that. Some projects were unsuccessful. And again, the next round, which is we're dealing with at the moment, which is the Black Summer Fires grant , the $4.5 million for the whole of the Hawkesbury. So that's, we're working on that. And then there's potentially some much, much larger grants on the horizon. But again, we don't know the exact details of those yet, ones where it might be about resilience and of infrastructure, and possibly betterment of infrastructure.

So again, each of them will have their own subtleties and nuances about what is eligible and what can be applied for. But we certainly have a list, as long as your arm, of all sorts of things that could be done, but we'll tailor those to the particular grants.

Thanks. So it is ever the case, having been grant funded for most of my working life, it is ever the case that there is many hours spent applying in the hope that you might get some money. I'm probably finished with questions on the bushfire item , so I might jump off in case somebody else wants to ask some further questions.

Anybody have any further—I mean, we can sort of informally go down the list, but anyone can talk on any of those items at any point they want. But does anybody else want to particularly speak now about the bushfire matter ? No? Did you want to keep, Councillor Calvert?

Yeah, thank you, Mr Mayor. I just wanted to publicly thank Mr Organ for the work that he did during the bushfires. I was there at the emergency operations centre, and his input was completely valuable. The team, or the group that worked there, relied upon his local information and relied upon his understanding of the history in the area. And when people ask what is Council's role, I think that is one of our main roles, is to provide staff like Mr Organ to fit into that team and look at the whole way that we can coordinate our response. And the Council did provide a lot of assistance through such things as— As was mentioned, providing staff to the RFS headquarters , also through road crews that went out and cleared roads and water cartage, all that was coordinated through Mr. Organ and through that emergency operations centre.

I think what is not being understood is that Mr. Organ had all the answers to the questions that people have put up so far. But the main answer is that during that kind of situation, council is only a member of a team. Council is not in charge. And I really congratulate Mr . Organ on how well he worked in that team, and it put council in a really good position. And the other people that were there in the emergency operations centre did complement council on the way that it worked as part of a team. And that sort of thing, I think, is being forgotten in some of the questions that are being asked here tonight. I just wanted to show the other side of some of these things, but I'll reserve any further comments for later.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any further, Councillor Wheeler?

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I want to reassure Councillor Calvert that this isn't about— there's no blame here. This isn't about negative commentary. This is about getting council to a position where we can lead in whatever role we have as a part of that emergency management team. It's about us doing that job to the best of our ability, and to do that we need information, and that's what this is about. It's about us getting access to the information that we need. So I'll move on to Greens Road and Upper Colo Bridge and— Just reiterate that, particularly with Greens Road, the community there is really very anxious and quite traumatised by the events that have affected them since.

Excuse me, Mr Mayor. I wonder if I could just answer that.

Sorry, I might let Councillor Wheeler finish, and then I'll come straight to you. That's all right.

Okay,

Thank you.

Yeah.

So the community of Greens Road are still feeling— their trauma goes back to the beginning of the Gospers Mountain fire, where they were under threat. And also, now they're cut off, and their anxieties about fire and flood are exacerbated by their difficulties with access. Now, we've set some works in place. We've now got a works plan, and we've got a timeline and a community consultation meeting coming up. And I think that hopefully will allow the community an opportunity to discuss their concerns with us. COVID has made it very difficult for us to meet with the community again to discuss their concerns. They are struggling with really basic things. There's been an accident on that detour road.

There's been several near misses. Water until it's rained has been an increasing issue. They're struggling with COVID because they can't access the services that many of us take for granted, like delivery. It's just not an option for them. So there are real issues for them.

Upper Colo is similar, and again we've got those management plans in place. So I don't want to labour on point three. Clearly Councillor Calvert has something he needs to say, so I'll pause and let him do that.

Councillor Calvert. Well,

Thank you for allowing me to say something. I just wanted to point out I thought I was misrepresented there. I was not talking about anybody being to blame. I was not— word blame was never mentioned. I was describing the process under which Mr. Organ was working, a team process, and I just thought that whole idea of the team had not been stressed or emphasised, and I wanted to point out what a great team player he was, and that Council was considered also be a great team player, and that during the bushfires, we actually did very well as part of that team. And I just wanted to point out that a lot of the stuff I've heard tonight sounds negative. It sounds like we did a bad job. I just wanted to point out that we didn't do a bad job.

We did a really good job. But there are things we need to look at. Yes, I agree. That's why we're here. But I just want to keep that balance in mind, that we're not struggling as much as it sounds. We did do a good job, and I think we'll continue to do a good

Thanks, Councillor Calvert.

Councillor Wheeler, you still got your hand up. Did you want to keep continuing speaking?

I'm happy to move on to the Valley flood study, but I don't know if anybody else wants to talk about the previous items.

I think just keep going, and if anyone wants to, they can jump in.

Thanks. And look, I'm not, it was not my intention to verbal Councillor Calvert. I

Thank him for pointing out the role and the hard work of council staff in what has been an incredibly trying couple of years. The McDonald Valley flood study has clearly caused a great deal of concern with the McDonald Valley community, in that they had an expectation that this funded work would be available sooner than it has been. And I think it's useful to have this note from management about where the study is up to and the processes that we've had to go through, because I think what we've got here is a problem with expectation around this work now. And that really is best fixed by us being really clear about the process and where we are in that process. And I'm hoping that the information that has now come out has helped.

I do want to acknowledge the excellent work of the McDonald Valley community, both with their continued resilience and also their submissions to the public hearings, particularly the Senate hearing into the 2019-2020 bushfire season. If you haven't read that submission, I urge you to. It really is excellent. It's a very concise and well-articulated

Summary of the issues experienced by the St Albans community and the McDonald Valley community, many of which relate to other areas in the LGA. It is incredibly useful, I think, and it would be helpful, I think, if that was linked to— Or made perhaps, we could link it to the minutes of this meeting in order to have it on a record that council could refer to. Clearly it's on the public record as a submission to the Senate hearing, but it would be useful if it's more readily accessible to council.

One of the things that has come out, that comes out time and time again with the McDonald Valley community, is their problems with communications, but also with the localised emergency information provision, where they feel that none of the platforms that are available to them are covering their local area particularly, and that I think is of real concern. That should be a concern to us. Some of that information can be difficult for us to find. Certainly , because it's a small, fairly contained area and known as the Forgotten Valley, it gets missed. If you're relying on the ABC, you're unlikely to hear much about St Albans or the McDonald Valley, whereas we at least hear about whether Bells Line of Road is open.

They, I think, felt that they weren't adequately included in council's emergency dashboard. So these are things that we need to learn back from these communities. But I think we need to clearly let the McDonald Valley community know when this flood study will be available to them and why it's taking longer than they expected. Now that is probably through no fault of council staff. This is about, as I said previously, this is about expectation management. And it's expectation management that affects people's confidence, both in us as a service provider, but also in their own resilience. And so that's something that we need to manage. I'll pause to see if anybody else wants to add anything.

Councillor?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Can I say I found this to be a really valuable conversation, and I don't mind conducting it in this way. I think the community expects this. Certainly, there's, I feel a lot of resonance for some of the concerns that have been raised, particularly in the Macdonald Valley and its community about the delayed flood study. I do concede, and certainly I'm hearing this clearly from staff, that there's a lot of this that we want to have control over, but it's really statutory stuff that's handled on an operational basis. And it's good for us to be in the loop, and it's good for us to raise the concerns, but I don't want to overstep our bound. So that we can move this proceeding towards something conclusive and fruitful, would you be amenable to a motion for us to return out of Committee of the Whole and to whatever normal broadcasting is, and then put a motion?

If

You have a seconder

For that. Seconded, Councillor Kotlash. So it's a procedural motion. So the motion is to move out of Committee of the Whole. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Against? All right then. Carried. Thank you. So we move back into normal session, without a recommend— sorry, I think the General Manager needs to formally report on what happened in Committee of the Whole.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Whilst, to committee as a whole, the committee discussed a number of matters at length, particularly in relation to the status of Council's emergency management plan, a review of the 2019-2020 bushfire event, the status of the reconstruction of Greens Road, Lower Portland and the Upper Colo Bridge,

And, in relation, a status update in relation to the flood study for the Macdonald Valley. No specific recommendations of the committee made, so I think that's all I need to report at this stage, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. Councillor? Assuming that I still have the floor, so a procedural question first. When Councillor Wheeler moved her notice of motion and then we went into a committee of the whole to debate it, now that we've come out of committee of the whole, does that remain the motion on the floor, or am I free— Yeah, so the motion's moved. So if you unreasonably, else it would need to be an amendment. All right then. So what I've posted for the benefit of everybody in the chat window is a proposed motion, and what I'm trying to do is to be more directed than the motion that was before us, which was a lot of receive and note. And I think this discussion— So we better just get it on the screen and see if there's a seconder, I think, before we go too far. All right then. For those that can see the chat window, it is there, but we'll

Yeah, if anyone

Wants to second it

Based on that, so we can keep talking.

Can I just ask a question, Mr Mayor, on the motion? About what it means

If we have a seconder, if we have a seconder, I move to debate, yes. Is there a seconder for the motion that's in the chat box? Seconded, Councillor Tree. Okay, and Councillor [name unclear] can discuss it, and then we'll come to Deputy Mayor for questions. All right then, so if this is

Now an amendment— Amendment, sorry. Yeah. That's right. Okay then, so if this is an amendment, the motion that we commenced with, which was a perfectly functional working motion for us to begin the debate with, has a lot of receive and note. If I can suggest that this boils things down to the things that we can consider at a future meeting of the Emergency and Disaster Management Committee. I'd like to put that forward as a way forward and open it up to support or criticism. Thanks. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was just concerned by the comment of the bushfire review completed by ANLEC BETA, if it is available at the time of the meeting. I would suggest if it's not available, we don't proceed with the meeting because we are going backwards. And if we don't have that review, we have nothing to base what we are looking into if we don't have that review available.

So it's against the amendment.

No, I know. I wasn't speaking. I was just—I was asking, I was just suggesting a commentary around that, but I'll speak against the—

I'll let you continue now to speak against the amendment because I'm not sure what else I can call that. Yeah.

Okay. That's why I was asking before it went up, just to clarify that. Okay. I had some questions, actually. I've got questions, not speaking against it yet. Can we have an answer to what has been done to incorporate the McDonald Valley into the Bureau of Meteorology flood communication? This came up previously a number of times, had been raised by the McDonald Valley community, had been raised in floodplain committee, as well as the broken gauges and the missing things that Yarramundi for gauging flood. Is there an update on whether any of that has been acted upon?

Probably Director Infrastructure Services.

Through you, Mr Mayor, I know there were representations made through Bureau of Met and through— I've checked with the correct agency. I'll update that at the committee meeting, but there were submissions made for that, trying to attract funding in those agencies' budgets to implement gauges and/or telemetry to provide that support for better forecasting and measurement in the valley. But I'll need to follow that up and probably give a response through the committee

Can we take that on notice?

Thank you. Another question was, do we currently have a representative attending the Floodplain Management Australia quarterly meetings? Thanks

I think the answer is no, but I'll refer that to the Director as well.

Yeah, sorry, I'll answer that question through you, Mr Mayor. Yes, we do have a staff member that has attended those meetings or continued to attend those meetings.

Could I just follow up and ask if they're attending on Thursday, because they are discussing the New South Wales Flood-prone Land Package. The last meeting discussed the Hawkesbury-Nepean and planning in the valley, and this one has representatives from Penrith and Sutherland speaking about various techniques around engineering, etc., to do with that. Thank you.

Yes, a staff member will be attending that meeting this week. Thank you.

Did you wish to continue speaking against the amendment, Deputy Mayor? Yes

Very well, thank you . I'm not so much really speaking against. I've got no real problem with it. I do have a little bit of a problem with debate being shut down the way it was, but that's the way it is. With regard to, I just wanted to touch on, there's nothing there about the... I was wondering, would Councillor Zambrano add a point then around the review of the floodplain risk management study and the risk management plan and the Macdonald Valley

Flood study, which would be, again, to make an attempt, if Councillor Zambrano would be open to perhaps adding that we actually do set up a working group to a committee to deal with this various work

Okay then. So if it will garner the Deputy Mayor's support, I'm amenable to including it for the consideration of the larger committee, but I would be against the establishment of a working group . I think that this should remain the business of the whole chamber, considering that this is a committee of the whole of council

Well, that's okay. I'll speak against it because I believe that we can see from the nature of the complexity of what work has to be done around these flood plans that it will not work with having a committee that already has all these other reviews around bushfire and everything to do, to also be able to fulfil the role as the process is set out. It's taking away from our staff to have the input from the community members and expertise. It is not enabling. I don't know how we would have it coming back and forth to the committee as it has to be done through the process. And I think that for the people of the Macdonald Valley, we should be showing the support that we will be committing to doing this in line with the floodplain development manual and how it specifies that we should have a specific committee to deal with the implementation of these plans.

So I'll stick with Councillor Wheeler's motions. Some of these, we could have had a combination of the two, I guess. I don't think this covers everything that we were bringing up, but maybe she'll add something, or maybe we'll add something else to it

With your indulgence, Mr Mayor. Okay. Well, I was trying to meet the Deputy Mayor halfway in the sense that I was happy to add— The McDonald Valley matters to my amendment, just not to devolve it to a working group, because I believe that to be counter to the reforms that we've put through relating to the importance of emergency management and the proliferation of working groups and committees. So she can have nothing, or I'm perfectly happy to include the McDonald Valley matters in this amendment. Sorry.

It shouldn't be that we have nothing, because we actually have an obligation to do it, and we have an obligation to do it in a way that's set out in a manual that we're not obliging with, that we're not adhering to. So you can say we can have all or nothing. I don't think that the big committee has enough time or expertise, or in fact even has a meeting, enough time to deal with it. It's a complex process that needs to be done, and I just don't think it's going to work that way. But so be it. Okay

Thank you. Councillor—yeah, thank you. That's, yep, enough . Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Look, I have to voice my disappointment in what has frankly been a hijacking of the committee, of the whole process. We were having—we were having a discussion about how we—about ways of moving forward, and I flagged really clearly in that discussion that I was developing a recommendation to go back to the council as a whole when we moved into it. I had—I could have rattled through the rest of the items in that motion. That process has now been canned by Councillor Zampogno, who has moved a motion that actually misses. A good portion of the discussion that we have just had, that's really disappointing.

Just to be clear— sorry, Councillor Wheeler, I just need to be clear there on the procedural matters. So it wasn't canned by Councillors and prognos, a majority of Council that decided that this process should come to an end, just to be fair.

Fine. So the majority of Council decided that it didn't want to discuss any of these further matters. I don't care who decided this. That's frankly really disappointing. We are talking about emergency and disaster management for our community. I'm sorry if it's tedious for some people

I flagged that I was putting a motion forward, that I would put a recommendation forward. The reason that the motion here says receive and note is that the Deputy Mayor and I requested an emergency— requested an extraordinary meeting, and you pushed us to put a motion forward. It was very difficult to put that motion forward without any of the information that has come through in this report. So what we did was put forward motions that frankly didn't have a lot of substance because we didn't have the substance. The point of this meeting was to get that substance. What I have done now is put— I have a recommendation that I am happy to put to this meeting, but Councillor Zampronio has jumped the gun and has missed a whole lot of that information.

So I will have to vote against his motion, and I really hope that other councillors will follow suit, so that we can actually have a recommendation out of this extraordinary meeting that covers what we have discussed, that takes into account the information that the staff have given us now, and that particularly Mr Organ in a position to really understand what has happened on the ground, so that we can Now continue to move forward as we go into the Emergency and Disaster Management Committee and get the best outcomes for this community.

Thank you. Sorry, I've just lost who's got hands up. Sorry

Mr Mayor, so I'm afraid I wasn't clear. I want to foreshadow an amendment.

Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Can I just say before I start, I'm not sure if anyone else sees the screen the way I do, but if we've got nothing on the board, which we don't have, it's a black screen. Can we go to the full screen so we can see everybody? Otherwise, can we have the amendment up? I've only got a black screen. It

Might be your device, Councillor Richards, because the screen is actually shared with the motion on it at the moment.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I can't see it. It just says Minute Secretary has started screen sharing and it must have frozen. All right, no problem. As long as it's up for others, that's fine. Look, what I'm going to say, I'm going to say quite gently. It may upset some people, but I think that it needs to be said . Oh, good, my screen's just fixed itself . Quite frankly, this is a super important topic . I am approached consistently by people who want to know and make sure that Council is prepared for when another disaster comes. I think that in the disasters that we have had as councillors during this Council term, we have all participated in the best way that we can to help our community because the community does reach out to us as the names and the faces that are approachable to get things done.

The community don't go to the staff when they want things done; they come to us. So that is absolutely fundamental, that as councillors, we need to be across all of the emergency management plans and the procedures that we control. And I think it's vital that we stress this one here, that council controls. It is, we can only do, and the staff can only implement what is within our legal jurisdiction, what we actually have legislation to say that we can or we cannot do . I think that there have been times in this council term where political pressure has been applied to staff to do things that are outside what council can do. And what happened in that circumstance is we ended up with egg on our face.

So I think that the political pressure to staff needs to stop so that other councillors can go back to the community and say, Hey, we've done this. Hey, we've done this. But we're operating outside of our boundaries. So let's make it very clear that we operate within certain boundaries, and it is the state government and the federal government, predominantly in an emergency situation, the state government has management over those sorts of things, whether it be the SES or whether it be the police or whatever it be, whether the state government has to make decisions about funding evacuation centres, funding places for people to go and stay. They are decisions outside of our remit, so we cannot make those decisions.

And I think trying to be everything to everyone when we know we can't be, we have to say that to the community, Guess what? We don't have the power or the authority to make that decision, but I will absolutely advocate on your behalf because that's what we are. We advocate for people to the relevant authority or the relevant level of government who can make that decision. It doesn't always have to be the fact that council staff or council plans haven't been up to date, because every single one of us, as an elected representative or a staff member, we worked our butts off during all of these emergency situations to help our community. And I think, quite frankly, what happened in that committee of the whole process just then was basically a, it seemed to me like a trial of poor Jeff Organ and what had happened by a couple of councillors who wanted to put him on a stand.

And that's what it basically seemed like to me, whether you agree with that or not, that's my... Point of order, Mr Mayor.

What's the point of order, Councillor Riller

The point of order is that Councillor Richards is impugning our motives. That was not the motive. It was never the motive. This was about getting information. This was not about putting staff members on trial. I resent that allegation, and I would like it withdrawn.

Happy to withdraw it. That was just my opinion .

Sorry, you've been muted, Councillor. Yeah

Sorry, I don't know what happened there . So I want to make that— I don't know if you heard that. I said I was happy to withdraw it, but it is still my opinion that I'm holding on to there. So what I think is another super important way to move forward is not to spread fear amongst our community that Council's not up to scratch, fear amongst our community that we're not prepared, fear amongst our community that our staff members or our entity or our organisation is failing. I don't think that that's the right way to do it either. I think that in these circumstances, we have to put political stripes aside and work together. And I know that we all do that . When the going gets tough and we are in the midst of an emergency, we do all pull together and we get done what needs to be done for the people that need our help.

But we also can't stand here and project the image that Council is this fundamental failure of an organisation that isn't prepared, because we are prepared, and our staff have done a good job in making sure that they're meeting the demands of the community when they need to be met. So what I look forward in supporting the motion on the floor right now is going to the new committee, the Emergency and Disaster Management Committee, having the further discussions there that need to be had, making sure our plans are cemented and in place. And a lot of the information that was needed was in the further comments by the staff within the motion and the business paper there tonight. It was there. So let's have this further committee that we need, get the other organisations or the relevant agencies there that can attend and start making some decisions.

Now, what is needed tonight is a decision by Council to therefore go to that committee process. So I look forward to attending that committee meeting. I look forward to this motion being supported, and I look forward to Council getting on with doing the job they need to do. Thank you.

Thanks, Councillor Richards. Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Mayor . I'd like to just ask a question about the point four in the original motion and whether it should be included in this one that we are discussing now . And it's point four, which is receive and note the update and timelines for the McDonald Valley flood study. I just wanted to ask the staff, is there

Anything in the pipeline in that particular study that would need to go to the Emergency and Disaster Committee that we need to make some decisions on ? I read the notes from management on point four as being that the study— my impression of this, and this is what I want clarified—my impression of this study is that it's going okay. It has broadened a bit because the state government is now a bit more interested in it, and there is other things happening. So I wouldn't mind that it's attached to the motion that's on the floor now, but I need to be clear that there is something that we need to discuss and decide upon at that meeting. So

That to the Director City Planning

Thank you, through you, Mr. Mayor. So as the work progresses on the study , at particular key milestones, we would be presenting to the Disaster Emergency Management Committee for their information, for their input. Along the way. So as the study progresses, there will be presentations to the committee.

Thank you for that. I just wanted to know whether presenting that information, if that is the- what are you expecting to be the outcome of those, of the process? It seems like the process is going how you would expect it to go. I'm just commenting on this because the deputy mayor sort of suggested that because we don't have the flood risk management committee anymore, this has all gone a bit pear-shaped. My reading of this was that it was a very thorough study. It was on track, and it was going to be completed by December 2022.

I guess, is there any problems with this study that we would need to discuss in this next meeting of the Disaster Emergency and Disaster Committee?

No, I wouldn't anticipate that we need to be presenting it at the foreshadowed meeting in September. What I'd be saying is, as the study progresses, up until, you know, throughout this year and next year, we would attend this Emergency Management Committee to provide updates on how that work is progressing.

I make a suggestion, Councillor Kotlash, that if we wanted to, to avoid this having to come back to Council again, we could stick another point to this motion that Council refers the development of the McDonald Valley flood study to the Disaster Emergency Management Committee for advice as and when required in the future.

Thank you, that's where I was going. I didn't want to leave it off. Yes, thank you.

I am amenable to the addition of that point.

Thank

You.

Could I ask one more question, if I can, Mr. Mayor? Yes

The flood manual that's been mentioned, I think it was the current flood manual is 2005, I think, and it's at the moment being reviewed by the state government.

What about that? No, I'll ask the question a different way around. What differences would following the flood manual that's from 2002 make to the Macdonald Valley flood study?

What things in that manual would make any difference?

Is that to the Manager of City Planning or Director City Planning?

Probably, to be honest, at this point in time it'd be hard to answer that question, partly because I don't know what's going to come out of the flood study we're doing, and also I don't know what's coming out of the review of the manual. So we'd be keeping tabs on both. Obviously the study that we're managing, but we'd have input into the review of the board manual, know what's going on then, see whether the two may cross over and what we need to consider. But apart from that, I find it hard to know how to answer that question. Okay

No, no, that's good enough, because we keep talking about this flood manual and I can't see the point. I can't see how it makes any difference, so thank you.

Thanks, Councillor.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor .

Councillor Rasmussen.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to make a couple of points. The first one is that in terms of preparation for the oncoming fire season, One of the things that clearly hasn't been factored in is the fact that we lost a good eight months, a good eight months in our preparation from the last fire season until the one coming upon us now. Now, when you sack the head of an organisation that is so crucial to this area, that is council, then clearly you're going to lose an enormous amount of momentum and drive, and disruption is going to happen. That's obvious. So let's just keep that in mind, that we did that. We did that deliberately . Yet here we are saying, well, we did a good job. You know, it's all good.

Nothing's wrong. Nothing to see. Let's move on, and let's all be happy . There are lots of issues that need to be addressed, and Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Lyons-Buckett needs to be commended on the fact that they've taken this step. And this step hasn't sort of just arrived yesterday. They have been on and on and on about this issue for a very long time. They understand that we've lost a lot of momentum in our planning, in our detailed lower-level planning, not the M plan. That's for other people to get. We have an input to that, but the bigger overall plan and the driver of that is somewhere else. But our lower plans, our lower, where we hit the road with our community, our caring for our community, the things we do because we care for our community, those little things that need to be done, thought of, that people don't often think about because they're too busy trying to make a living, trying to get around COVID, trying to make a business.

Under all these restrictions, all those little things, we can help them. We can help them. But no, let's just crawl back behind the big brick wall called the end plant and say, Oh, that's the combat forces that need to be dealing with that, and we're part players, and it's not our responsibility, and we can only stand on a big hill and scream, or whatever we call it. I mean, that's just a ridiculous way of looking at how council should operate with its people. We need to be part and parcel of all of our people. That's what we're here for. Yes, we have to get out of our way, get out of our own comfort zone, and yes, we have to do things differently. And the reason we need to do things differently is because we are different.

This area is so different. Have you not noticed? Floods, fires, massive storms. I mean, goodness, not many areas have what we've got. So we are different, and we need to have different thinking. We need to have different plans. We need to do things differently. It's just, it's mind-boggling to hear some of the comments that we heard from people who just sit back and say, Oh no, let someone else deal with it. Look, I'm sorry. This is just too silly to almost to listen to seriously. So

Sorry, Councillor. Were you speaking in favour of the amendment or against the amendment?

Clearly against the amendment. And if I didn't make that clear, I'm sorry.

That's okay. It's probably a bit subjective. Deputy Mayor, did you want to have a question?

I did just want to clarify something about the floodplain development manual, if I could.

Is it a question for staff?

I can ask it as a question. Sure. Could we have clarification around what the notes from management were about in point four, given that my understanding was that it was about reviewing also the floodplain risk management plan and study, which specifically point one in the manual does say the establishment of a floodplain risk management committee. And could I suggest that if Councillor Kotlash hasn't read it, that she read it, particularly Appendix D. I don't know if you can see it there, but it's here. No, you can't see, I've got a green screen on, but it actually shows the process of how the floodplain risk management plans and studies are to be undertaken. So the Macdonald Valley study appeared to me to be included with those other two plans, so if we could have clarity around that, thank you.

I'm not sure that's really, I mean, I can refer the question to Director City Planning. I don't really know what the question was, but the Director is aware of what the question was.

Well, sorry, the question was, were the notes from management about just the Macdonald Valley, or about the review of the other two plans, or the other plan, the general council plan?

So no, the detailed breakdown of the steps is more in relation to the combined flood study in terms of the grant that we've got. But what we wanted to note was that while we're doing that work, we're also updating the overall flood risk management study as well.

Thank you. Any further speakers on the amendment? We'll put the amendment. It starts for it to come down off the screen. Yep. All those in favour of the amendment, please

Mr Mayor, Mr Mayor, I have indicated that I wish to speak, and I'm hoping that Councillor Zampronio will add additional points to the motion. Otherwise, I will withdraw my original motion and allow his to become the motion so that I can move an amendment.

That's not how the procedure works. You can't withdraw your motion. You can move another amendment. The amendment needs to be dealt with first. And I think you've already spoken on the amendment, so— So you're

Not willing to ask Councillor Zampronio if he's willing to add additional items? We've discussed a really, really important issue for an hour and a half. There is quite a lot of information that came out of the committee as a whole that is not reflected in the motion that we're about to vote on.

Yes,

And I think that's a real loss for the community.

I understand that. You have already spoken on the amendment. I'm not sure what's— nothing's changed since you've spoken on it, so I'm not sure why you want to speak again. I could probably— Again

Because I want to ask—

You could speak again very briefly, but we've obviously already been in committee of the whole where people have spoken multiple times, and they've already spoken on the amendment, so I will allow you to speak very briefly again.

I have a series of items that I would like added to the amendment, because I assume that this is going to go along the usual party lines, and that there are eight additional matters that we have discussed that need to be added to whatever motion goes forward, and I would hope that Councillor Zampronio would consider adding those. I have sent them to the staff. And hopefully it would be easier if they could appear on the screen, but I'm happy to read them out.

Yeah, if we can bring them up on the screen if we've got them.

It is obviously highly unusual, but we'll follow this through. So, Councillor Zamprogna, if you just want to let us know if you wanted to add any of those to your amendment, and then the seconder of the amendment would have to indicate that they accepted that, and then we can move forward.

So just to be clear, these are all things that you would— you've got at the top that Council—so are these things to be referred to the committee, or is this separate to that part of the motion?

I don't really mind where it goes. They could come in as, I think the motion was up to point—I forwarded this as a foreshadowed amendment, but it's clear that that amendment isn't going to be heard. So I don't want to lose this information. It's been a really valuable discussion, and this is the information that came out of the committee as a whole that then should have been referred back to the Council for further consideration. The way the process is going, it will be lost. So I would like, Councillors, I don't care what format this falls in, but I would like it added to the original motion because I think it's valuable.

Mr Mayor, sorry, I'm just trying to approach this in the correct procedural way. There's been—I moved an amendment, it gained the consent of a seconder, it was debated at length. This is very substantially additional to that. Mr Mayor, can I put it to you that if the amendment, as it was advanced, was passed, nothing precludes Councillor Wheeler from moving her seven points as a new motion, and we can proceed out of this meeting with

Several motions? No, that's not—I don't think that's quite correct. There's only one motion. Nothing would actually preclude Councillor Wheeler from putting this as an amendment, even if this amendment was successful. However, if there was no objection to these items, it would be much more efficient to add them onto the amendment that you've got up here so we don't have to go through the whole thing again. But that's up to Council and up to you now at this point.

Yes. Yes, I will—look, I will consent to that, but object to the way that this process has been twisted , in the sense that these are all very substantial additions, and I was aiming for simplicity.

Councillor Cutlass, are you happy with the inclusion of those eight points,

Seconder of that amendment? You're on mute at the moment, Councillor Cutlass.

Are there seven or eight points?

Seven, sorry.

Don't do my head in, please. I think it's a little—I think these points are all very interesting, but I think they are—point two, I think, is something that we were going to get anyway, so I can't understand why we— We're going to receive a briefing on something that we were always going to receive a briefing on, but anyway. Look , I think for the sake of everybody's nerves, we could just add it. I think I'd accept that, but I think that this is— Yeah, I think these are all things that we should have had, we should have discussed, we should be discussing in the emergency.

I've just also been informed, Councillor Kotlash, you didn't second this amendment. I

Thought I—I

Was questioning that. Councillor Three, do you have a problem with adding any of these seven points?

Say what I said. Sorry, Mr Mayor. No, I just, I just, I find the whole process tonight quite—

I was more looking for a yes or no, if at all possible. I

Know, but I mean, everyone else has had so much to say. I just find that this whole process seems quite extraordinary. As we, like, there's not one person in the room who doesn't think this was an amazing thing to discuss, but just the way it's done, really odd. It's really unusual, and I just don't see the purpose or the point to this degree. But yes, I'm happy to support it because I think they're important points. But just as Councillor Zambrano and Kotlash have mentioned, odd way to get here.

Okay. On the basis that the amendment has significantly changed since everyone's debated it, I feel like if anybody wishes to speak against the addition of these seven points, probably need to have the right to do so. Hoping nobody wants to, but I think I probably need to say that. That not being the case, then we'll add those points in and we'll put the amendment. All those in—I'll just wait for it to come down now. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour of the amendment are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lance Buckett, Councillor Ross, Councillor Richards, Councillor Gary, Councillor Tree, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Zambrano, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Rasmussen. Declare it carried . Does there need to be any discussion on the motion from anybody?

Or right of reply.

Councillor Wheeler, did you want right of reply?

Just briefly, Mr Mayor. Look, I want to say I realise that this is not a process that this council has gone through before. I will. Many councils use this process, this committee of the whole process, to reach decisions on important matters that require lengthy discussion in front of the community. It is perfectly normal. It's just that we don't do it. I hope that we can do it in the future because, as you've seen, it's really effective. What we've been able to do is work through a series of complex processes that the community expects us to discuss so that they can understand what we're doing, so that they know that we are working to the best of our capacity, not to lay blame, not to score points, not for political anything, but purely focused on the idea of doing what is the very best for our community.

What we have managed to achieve, probably through a process that could have been less messy had it been allowed to play out a bit more, reached a largely consensus position on moving forward with our emergency management. I think that's a really good achievement, and I think that's something we should be proud of coming to the end of what has been a really difficult term of council due to the problems, due to the various disasters that we have faced. I'd like to finish off by referring to the words of the McDonald Valley Association, if I can find the relevant bit of paper in the mess that I have now created. Where they refer to the stresses that have been placed on this community, and they're referring particularly to

Their area, naturally because I want it. Now, I can't find it ,

Where they speak really eloquently about the trauma that the community has faced, and the difficulties that that has caused them. And I think those words certainly apply to the McDonald Valley, but they apply to the whole LGA. This has been a really, really difficult process, and both this council and council staff have worked really hard to try and make sure that we can manage, and that the community can be better prepared. And that's all this is about. This isn't about anything beyond doing our very best for the people that we represent . Hopefully we can now move forward. Now we've got a lot of these issues out, we can now move forward and put some of these systems in place, because we do need to hand on to a new council, and that new council needs to be left with a plan in place and useful information.

The words of the McDonald Valley Association. There is no doubt that 2020 has been a tough year for the community of McDonald Valley. The results show that this community was greatly affected by droughts, fires, smoke, floods and COVID-19. Over 40% of the population report that they are still feeling the effects of these challenging events. Unexpected stress has been a problem for more than a third of the respondents, including serious illness, drop in income and death of a loved one. Those words don't apply just to the McDonald Valley. They apply to the Hawkesbury as a whole. It's our job as community leaders to have these robust public discussions so that we can move forward to the best of everyone's ability.

That, I think, is what we've attempted to do tonight, and I hope that this is the beginning of a more transparent and more robust process where we make sure that as these events are becoming more common and our resources will continue to be stretched as they are, we will not deal with this effectively if we are not open and transparent and we don't lead in these situations. This is part of that leadership. And so I thank you all for your participation. I thank the public who've contacted us with additional information to help us reach this point, and I hope that they continue to engage with us around Greens Road, Colo Bridge, and also at the next Disaster Management Committee, because this is really useful.

This is our job.

Thank you. We'll put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. In favour of Councillor Conolly, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lainsbury, Councillor Ross, Councillor Richards, Councillor Gary, Councillor Tree, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Zemprogno, Councillor Carver, Councillor Rasmussen, and Councillor Kotlash. Declared carried.

Thank you, Councillors. That was our final item for this evening. So momentarily I'll declare the meeting closed. Just want to say before that that we do have a briefing session after this meeting. We can stay on this current Zoom meeting. The live stream will be ended. I might suggest we have a five-minute break and reconvene for our private confidential briefing session at 8.50, and we'll now formally end the meeting at 8.44 p.m. and thank everybody for their attendance.