28 September 2021 - Ordinary

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to tonight's ordinary meeting. I'd like to start by acknowledging the Dharug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of Hawkesbury, and pay respect to all elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first peoples of the country. And I'll hand over to the General Manager for the procedural matters.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd also like to advise that in accordance with clause 5.18 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this meeting involved the recording of personal information provided at the time of meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, and the recordings are stored on Council's record management system.

For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates 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 this evening? There's a few Councillors missing at the moment. I think we know that Councillor Reynolds is trying to get back on. Councillor Kotlash, I don't think is on, or Councillor Zamprogno is joining now.

Okay, so do you want to move those as apologies for the moment? Moved : Deputy Mayor, seconded Councillor Rasmussen. Declare that carried. Any declarations of interest?

Yes, Mr Mayor.

Councillor Richards.

Item 18.8, North Richmond traffic.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other declarations? No. Okay.

Okay. Somebody wish to move the minutes, the previous— Councillor Wheelage. So just moving the minutes, or — Sorry, you're on mute.

Sorry, I'm happy to move the minutes. Seconder? Seconded, Councillor Rasmussen. All those in favour? Declare it carried.

And

Then we've

Got a number of speakers.

Mr. Mayor, before we go to the items with speakers, I'd like to move an urgent motion. Okay. What's the urgent motion? It relates to DA 50818 for sand mining on Freemans Reach Road. It's urgent. It's a request for legal advice. It's urgent in that there may be a statutory limit in appeal or any action, and we need the legal advice to determine and allow us to act within the required time period.

Okay. I guess that would be urgent then. We'll hear it. So do you want to put the motion forward and seek a seconder?

Sorry, Councillor Wheeler.

I'll second it, Mr. Mayor.

Sorry, do you want to just detail what the motion is? Because I only... Yes, sure.

It's with the staff. Here it is. So it's a request for the general manager to obtain legal advice. As a matter of urgency, detailing any means of appeal gets the approval for the sand mine, DA 50818, granted by the Western Sydney Planning Panel, and that that advice be reported to Council by the last Council meeting in October. Any

Discussion? Councillor Wheeler,

Did you want to say anything else? Yes,

Thank you. So this is an application that has been really unpopular with the community. There are numerous submissions against the application, the overwhelming amount of community sentiment against the approval . It speaks volumes for what the community expects for this site and for what they expect for the DA. Council had a resolution in some years back against all sand mining on the Hawkesbury floodplain. This is clearly on the Hawkesbury floodplain. Council staff, the council staff submission and council report into this DA to the planning panel recommended that this not go ahead, largely on environmental grounds because of damage to the riverbank, the riparian zone and the river itself.

It's also believed to be the beginning of, or the approval of this is believed to be the beginning of further sand mining in the area, which will have a detrimental effect on both the amenity of the area but particularly on the environment and the tourism potential of large parts of the Hawkesbury, perhaps reaching down into the Richmond lowlands and the Yarramundi industry there. So I think this is one of those really awful situations where these decisions have been taken out of our hands and given to these unaccountable planning panels. So the two council staff members who sat on that planning panel, Mr. Organ and Ms. Clark, both voted against this application. The chair and two other members, who are not known to the community, who don't live here and are not accountable in any way to our community, voted for it.

So that 3-2 decision has meant that we are now faced with this application, which will have long-term deleterious effects for the Hawkesbury. And I think it behoves us to get legal advice so that we know what we can do in relation to these planning panel decisions, what rights we have, what rights the community have. And where we can go

From here. Councillor Wheeler, just before you go on, I'll just let the Director of Infrastructure Services, I imagine, would like to declare an interest. Just wave your hand up, Mr. Organ. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I need to declare an interest as a member of the Western Sydney Planning Panel that sat on that proposal, so if I can be excluded from the meeting. Okay . Thanks. We'll just wait for Mr. Organ to be

Excluded from the meeting, and then we can carry on with debate.

Okay. Sorry, go on, Councillor Wheeler.

That's fine. I'll wait till right of reply now. Thanks, Mr...

Thank you. Any other discussion on the motion? No

Okay , I might just ask the General Manager a question. I hadn't had the benefit of having seen this motion before right now , so it's very much on the fly. Unfortunately, most councillors haven't had a chance to consider this at all . But I'd just ask the General Manager or the Director of Planning, whoever's best placed to answer it, what is, you know, does Council have—obviously the motion is to get some proper legal advice—but on the face of it, does Council have appeal rights against decisions we don't like by the panel? Is that something that's commonly done

Through you, Chair. The only, I expect, and again without the benefit of full and proper legal advice, that the only way in which Council would be able to appeal such a determination would be of what's known as a Class 4 judicial review, i.e. if there was some sort of procedural failing associated with the assessment of the application. Typically, in these sorts of circumstances, there isn't any merit-based appeal avenue for either Council or any third party as a result of the decision. So we would certainly be in a position to get further legal advice on that , and then we would be in a position to advise Council as to whether this would be something that, I guess, advice on prospects and provide that back to Council.

And just a question for Councillor Wheeler, if it's okay. Just obviously, I get that you didn't like the decision, and this is Council's decision that we didn't want this to happen. Just wondering, other than not liking the decision, is there anything that we think wasn't considered or any procedure or failing that we think needs to be explored?

Look, I'm not a lawyer and consequently not able to make a legal determination about whether there is a way forward with this. I think these planning panel decisions are relatively new, and Council's powers within them, I think, are still not well fleshed out. It may come back that we have no legal rights in this instance, but I think we need a clear determination of whether that is the case. I don't think that that should be a particularly lengthy or expensive process for someone with legal standing to let us know. And I think that appears from the feedback that I've had from the community certainly seems to be a reasonable expectation from them, that a Council who has not approved and who didn't support this DA can at least get some legal advice as to whether we have any legal rights now in this instance.

It's also information, I think, that will stand us in good stead for further cases as well.

Thank you. Councillor Ross.

Sorry, you're muted, Councillor Ross.

Clear now. Thank you, Mr Mayor, for your indulgence. I wrote an email to the Director of Planning yesterday in regard to this matter, and I was advised in a partial answer that— The documents submitted by Council to the inquiry would be placed on the DA tracker system, I believe as from tomorrow, and that would include the conditions of consent in their entirety. There were further questions which I sought answers to that were not elaborated upon, but I will follow those up. And I just wish to also indicate that one of the requests I made was that the determination document, at least, which runs into a number of pages, be made available to the broader community on Council's website. And I didn't receive a particular response to that element as well . And I'm awaiting, as I'm sure all the other disappointed folk, to see what the actual conditions of consent comprise

So that the matter can be evaluated in our own minds. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Given we've had no notice of this, and I understand that's the whole point of an emergency or late motion that's on the floor, I'm trying to get my head around a few things here, and I've made some scribbling notes, and I give my utmost apology to the General Manager for asking you a couple of questions on the fly because I think we've been put basically on the fly with this one here. Now, before I continue with just my questions that are purely based on process, nothing else , we do have a motion currently, a resolution through Hawkesbury Council about this Council's thoughts on sand mining, and that sits on the record . So when I ask these questions about process, before any of the Greens, Labor, little hate pages go crazy about Liberals and sand mining, which is just an utter joke, and let me put that one on the record, the way they're carrying on, given the resolution we have from this Council , my questions just go to the heart of process.

Now, Again, concerned about setting a precedent that whenever a planning panel makes decision, does Council, I understand what you've said, General Manager, about there's probably only one avenue of appeal rights. My issue is the precedent this sets. But more importantly, the whole process of having planning panels was to take the councillors out of the decision-making on those certain DAs that trigger going to a planning panel. Otherwise, they're done through staff delegation. Now, if we go and get this legal advice and whatever that may be, who then decides whether we proceed with that avenue of appeal? So does that have to come back to the Council chamber for a resolution? Therefore, councillors are interfering, for want of a better word, in the planning panel process, or is that a decision that would be delegated to staff to decide whether to proceed with that appeal?

I know that's really on the fly, I'm sorry.

General Manager

My instinct is, councillors, that the legislative framework around the involvement of councillors in decision-making under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, effectively the regulatory regime that established planning panels to begin with , is not something, I don't believe, that would preclude Council from making a decision on whether it wanted to pursue an appeal on a particular matter , should it wish to do so. I guess what I expect the advice that may come back out of any legal advice that we would seek will, I suspect, and I don't know, tell us that, A, that we don't have a merit appeal right. So just because we're not happy with the decision, that's not good enough in terms of the grounds for appeal.

And there must be some sort of significant procedural failing in the way in which the application has been assessed or determined for there to be any avenue of appeal through the courts, through any sort of regulatory environment in that space. So my instinct is that, and I'd be certainly happy to get advice on this also, is that we would be open to councillors to make a decision to... To appeal that decision, if it wished to do so, on best advice. However, I suspect I'm tempering my advice on that, Councillor, with, I guess, the legal framework in which we're operating.

Yeah, I think the fact that this has come to us tonight with absolutely zero notice means we're all a little caught off guard, and again I'll reiterate on process and what we're allowed to do as councillors in interfering with that process since the introduction of those planning panels. My other concern, which I think everyone knows that I have made quite a vocal thing about over this term of council, has been the expenditure of ratepayers' money. And I would be very cautious to go and seek legal advice when we don't know how much that costs. I don't know if there's an appetite, first of all, to get a quote for how much that legal advice would cost, because I'm certainly cautious, considering the financial statements coming up later in this very meeting , about spending ratepayer money on something like this, especially if the presumption is to come back and say that we probably don't have any appeal merits.

And I'm very, very, very concerned about spending ratepayers' money on those type of things. Again, I'm not talking about sand mining in general, and I make that very clear. I'm talking about our process and the councillors' rights that they have in the whole planning panel process. So it would have been much nicer had Councillor Wheeler decided to maybe email this to us with a few hours' notice so that we could do our own investigations before putting it to us here on the floor . But I do have concerns about process and procedure. Thank you.

Yes, Councillor Richards. Councillor Kotlash

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm not going to speak to this because I actually, well, I think I know what we're talking about, but I'm sorry I was late to the meeting. I had some technical issues. I just have a screen in front of me that says the minute secretary has shared the screen, and I just wanted to find out whether everybody else was viewing something.

Yes, we are.

Oh, fabulous . Well, that even puts me further behind because I've just got a blank screen. I will investigate some more. I'm sorry if I'm popping in and out of this meeting. That's my contribution. Sorry.

Thank you. Perhaps somebody could, even just one of the staff there, just put the motion in the chat to Councillor [unclear] in the meantime, so she's aware of what we're talking about. I will get that sorted out.

Thanks.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I do support proceeding with getting some legal advice around this because I don't think it's interference in a DA matter at all. I think it's the level of uncertainty about who is actually the consent authority in this case is not clear. It hasn't been made clear to us ever, and I know that over the years we've had some questions since the panel system came in. Is the status of The local planning panel and the regional planning panel the same, and with regard to the right of appeal, it would probably, yes, be just under the judicial review class four system. However, if we were to get legal advice, that may make it clear that any third party objectors, anyone who had made a submission against it, that might clarify for them if they had a right of appeal.

A number of environmental groups and so on who also opposed and made submissions may so choose to take an action if they felt like doing that. Given this was a recent decision and we hadn't been advised formally of it and have not seen the conditions and so on, it is only early days. But I think to get the actual legal advice, which would only be a, you know, it's not a legal advice on making a case, it's a legal advice on what rights of appeal we may have, I think that we should do that given our strong stance as a unanimous, I think it was unanimous, decision against sand mining in that location. And also given it was a close decision in the panel, and we may just need to know a little bit more about it.

But the first step would of course be knowing what exactly, what exact rights we had. And I know there were changes made around these things late last year, which I'm not aware of what those changes were. But I think that getting that advice would then clarify the situation once and for all if we have other issues that come up around this as well, particularly decisions that are made by the Western Sydney Planning Panel, I think it's called, rather than our local planning panel. So I think that that would not cost a lot of money, and I think it would be really relevant and pertinent information for us to have, particularly for our community overall, and most of all for our better understanding in what is quite a system with many grey areas around it.

Thank you. I'm going to support the motion. I think, though, that I'd like the advice, if possible, to be , yes , about the same line, but also more general about this process, so that we're not setting a precedent we're going to go and do this every time. We're just trying to get an understanding of what the situation is , so that we know in future exactly what our legal standing is. I know in the past I've asked for documents relating to matters that Council had in court and been told, as a council that's outside your jurisdiction, you're not entitled to those documents. So I would be surprised then if the advice came back and said Council can direct staff to appeal certain matters. I would think that would be an interesting scenario, and certainly seems contradictory to the idea that councillors should have no role in determining applications and not be involved in individual applications.

So given we've had very little notice, I feel very unsure of it. However, I can see that if we're getting advice this once, because we need to clarify our understanding of an issue that's likely to come up in the future, I think that's probably a justifiable expense. But I certainly, you know , for the record, we've had 10 minutes to consider it , and certainly not an indication of what we might do regardless of what that advice says when it comes back. Just in regards to the comments that the Deputy Mayor just said, I just want to clarify, my expectation would be that any advice would be confidential to Council rather than published publicly. Would that be the case, General Manager, or would that have to be taken on advice as well

That would be the case

Just to clarify that we're not going to get legal advice and then publish it for other people to use . Councillor Reynolds.

You're on mute, Councillor Reynolds.

There we go. I think you just said everything I was going to say then, Pat. I think we , Council was unanimous in our resolution about sand mining in the Hawkesbury, especially on the lowlands. And I think we have an obligation to the community to follow this up and find out, as you said, exactly what the due process is , whether we have the right to appeal and whether that appeal is judicial or whether it is based on merit . As Mary said, this is all a fairly new process, this planning approval process, and this may well be a precedent where we have to find out, get legal advice on this. But there has to be a precedent sometime, and I think this is a worthy cause to break that ground, no pun intended.

So I support it. Again, I don't think legal advice regarding the legislation on whether or not we can or cannot appeal is going to be exorbitantly expensive. It's just a matter of, like, looking at the legislation. It's not the matter, it's not whether we have a case or not. It's just whether we can appeal and under what form. So, yeah, I support it. Thanks, mate

Question from the Deputy Mayor

Mr Mayor, sorry, I just wanted to clarify. I didn't mean that we would publish the information. I meant we would know then if the community could appeal or not. We'd just have it clarified what it was.

Thank you. Thank you . Any further discussion? If not, we'll go right of reply, Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor. And look, I do apologise that I couldn't give this to councillors earlier in the day. I have been consulting with the general manager and the staff for most of the afternoon, and I didn't get this back until just before this council meeting. And it's basically in front of us because we don't know what the answer to this question is. We think we do, but—and I actually, look, I hope that what we think the answer is, being that we don't have a right of appeal, isn't the case. This is a motion based on hope, unfortunately, because that is what we have left to us. But I think it's consistent with the community expectation. Just on this idea that councillors have been taken out of procedures or should have no role in planning decisions, that is not a role—that is not a position that's supported by all councillors.

It's certainly not a position supported by all the councillors on this council. Many of us, and many councillors across New South Wales—and that is seen by the voting patterns at the Local Government New South Wales conference and the position of Local Government New South Wales, our peak body—many of us deeply resent the now unaccountable and undemocratic development approval system that metropolitan LGAs now find themselves stuck with. And this is yet another example of what happens when planning decisions are taken out of the hands of elected representatives and given to unaccountable planning panels. If this comes back, this advice comes back to say that we have no rights here, then that's just a further example of what happens when you take councillors out of the role.

So I think, in fact, even this very discussion shows what has happened to planning law. Excuse me, in New South Wales, just because someone doesn't like a decision of various councillors on various things does not make them a Greens hate page. People are entitled to voice their opinion on Facebook, whether you like their opinions or not. We all deal with that. The Greens don't own all of those Facebook pages, nor do we control what people say. And you'll find many of them are not that keen on us either . I'm hoping that this gets sufficient support to go ahead. I agree with the mayor that it will provide a useful piece of information that we can use for future situations. I think that's something else that we are just going to have to deal with.

We're lucky that a number of the, for example, the concrete recycling plant planning panel decision went our way. I think that was touch and go. Another one not supported by the community but very nearly supported by the planning panel. We need to know what our rights are here because the community expects us to stand up.

Thanks, Councillor Wheeler. I'll just wait for that motion to come down. Thank you. So put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Richards, Councillor Ross, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Tree, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Rasmussen. Declare it carried. Did I read everyone's name out though? Councillor Lyons-Buckett was for. I don't think I read your name. Yep. Okay, declare it carried.

Just wait for Mr. Organ to be let back in.

Okay . So the next item, first item subject to public address is item 177, and our first speaker is Ms. Venetia Wilson. Just need to let into the meeting.

Hi, Venetia, we're ready for you if you're there.

Sorry, Venetia, you're on mute at the moment, but we're ready for you. Give

Me a minute, Bart, to press. Can you hear me now?

Yep.

Okay. My name is Venetia Wilson. Whilst not speaking for Council's Heritage Advisory Committee, I am a member of it and was also part of the Town Centres and various other working groups and committees prior to the structure change. I'm speaking tonight against the Mayoral Minute regarding named paver project for Windsor Mall.

Much in the way that councillors have been encouraged to support the Warragamba Wall raising without the benefit of proper scrutiny, they're now being asked to support a commercially initiated and managed signage project with virtually no detail supplied. I can only assume this minute has been raised tonight due to the draft wayfinding and signage strategy, which has been drawn up at great expense, being on the agenda for consideration prior to community consultation. However, it's difficult to understand where this private initiative fits into that strategy. Are they to be wayfinding markers, historical markers, decorations or simply advertising? As to there being no cost to Council, does that mean there will be no oversight of or planning of this proposal by Council staff?

If that is the case, what are the proposed guidelines and criteria for the initiative? If businesses are to be included, this can only realistically be considered as advertising. Therefore, proper oversight is essential to prevent adverse issues of a commercial nature. More generally, must a business be trading in Windsor Mall itself in order to be able to purchase a paver, or will this be open to any business either within or outside the Hawkesbury LGA? How many pavers will be allowed per business? What happens if a business shuts down, do their pavers remain? As to family name pavers, can anyone with $60 have their name in the mall, or must they be a resident of the Hawkesbury LGA? What constraints will be implemented around wording?

Will Council staff have oversight over the wording of the pavers? What is the maximum number of these pavers in total? Who will be responsible for paying to replace them if damaged or stolen? How will these pavers be differentiated from those proposed in the draft wayfinding strategy to avoid confusion? Will it be possible for someone to have a paver removed after its laid if they so wish? There have been similar previous initiatives in the Hawkesbury, such as the naming of pickets around Don't Worry Oval. However, this was done as a fundraising initiative to pay for the infrastructure itself. The repaving of Windsor Mall is being done using funds provided by ratepayers and two other tiers of government.

How does this proposal sit within funding criteria of public monies? I'm sorry, but this proposal appears to be counter to every guideline, criteria and constraint that community consultation around the liveability project has been subject to, and I'm fairly bewildered as to why the mayor considered this urgent enough to raise a minute over it rather than recommending that it be lodged as a submission during the public consultation process for the draft strategy. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Happy to take questions if anyone's got questions. Sure . Are there any questions from Ms Wilson? No,

Thank you. Thank you. So, Councillors, I'll put the Mayoral Minute forward for consideration. So I was approached by Darren Pead, who's the owner of several businesses in Windsor, with this idea, which is that, as you can see, it's all sort of fairly laid out well in the Mayoral Minute there, which is an idea that while we're doing this historic work, why not let people in Windsor be involved and take some ownership? I think it's certainly—my understanding was it's a fairly straightforward proposal. And what we're asking for tonight is Council to endorse this as a concept so we can write it out. Of course, there will be oversight by staff. There will be, I'm sure, there will be detailed guidelines that staff will use internally.

I don't think that's something the governing body of the organisation of this side needs to get involved in, given that we're talking about $60 papers in Windsor. I'm also not anticipating a rush of people from outside the LGA wanting to buy up all our papers. If we start to experience that rush, I'm sure we can do something about it at that point. But I don't know that that's that big a risk that we need to be aware to, but I appreciate that being pointed out so we can sort of keep an eye on that if that does happen. We don't want people from Penrith coming and taking all our papers. So I'll open that up for discussion, and hopefully it's something fairly simple we can all get behind, and it's something that's being driven by Windsor.

The business is there driving this forward, and I think it's just about Council supporting that rather than getting in the way . Councillor

Kotlash

Thank you, Mr Mayor. It was just a question. When I read this, my understanding was that the papers would really only have people's names on them. There wouldn't be messaging as such. Have I got the wrong end of the stick?

That's right. So the idea is that it'll have the name of the person or business on the paper, just to show that they supported the concept of the revitalisation of Windsor.

Right. So my notion of advertising probably would be if there was a business name and a lot of commentary as well, but just a business name is, I don't think that that's too much advertising on a paper. Anyway , yeah, that's the only question I had. I was a bit confused. I was thinking, like, we're talking about sort of little papers, aren't we? Yes, we are. Okay, not big slabs of— And

I think the point is there'll be lots of them, and they'll probably be special to you only. Whoever you— when you buy one, my paper will be special to me and probably no one else will care, sort of. Yeah

Yeah,

Yeah.

Okay. Yes, thank you. Thanks.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks. I am having a bit of a chuckle about people coming from Penrith to buy papers.

Mr Pead has been in discussions with myself and the staff for a few months about this. He's been really keen on this project, and I think his initial plan was to have a path of pavers stretching from the mall all the way down to the station, which is probably more enthusiasm for pavers than we are likely to get, I think, at the current time. When we met with him a few weeks ago and discussed this, the staff were very keen to make sure a few things happened. Firstly, that this project wasn't so large that it held up the rest of the revitalisation project under the livability grant, because we are really time constrained with that project. We need to act quite quickly in order to meet the funding conditions for that project.

We were also keen that it didn't take up a great deal of staff time and effort because we don't have a lot of staff time. And finally, that these pavers were quite discreet and didn't detract from the rest of the work done in the mall, the heritage of the mall, nor that they blended with the paving. So the idea is that they will be something that people come and look very specifically for their own in recognisable places. So around the seating, around garden beds, that sort of thing. You won't have to walk the length and breadth of the mall through a sea of large gaudy pavers. That's not the look we're going for. And so this is designed to be a discreet project that fits in with the rest of the mall.

It would largely function as a feel-good. It's not an advertising project. It's a feel-good and recognition of people's place in Windsor at this time and place, a bit like the anchor functions in Thompson Square, and rather than being

Something that really stands out, Windsor Mall itself and the buildings that make up Windsor Mall are the things that will stand out. These pavers are a recognition of the people who love and support Windsor, rather than being necessarily a huge event in themselves. So I hope that allays, to some extent, Ms Wilson's concerns about these being something that will detract from what's in the mall.

Thank you. Councillor Gary.

Sorry, just a question through you, Mr Mayor, possibly to Mr Organ. Just following on from a comment that Ms Wilson made, who would be covering the cost of the ongoing repairs and maintenance of these? I know that with the existing pavers that we have, the expense to Council over the years has been quite exuberant, and they'd just great that we get community members to pay the $60, the initial upfront $60, but then, you know, in 10 years' time when they need replacing, does that come out of our ratepayers' money, Mr Organ?

Yes, I refer that to Director City Planning as to whether we're going to replace the engraving if those pavers do get damaged in the long term.

Even the pavers generally, you know, if the pavers generally get replaced, they will need to get damaged, they'll need replacing if they cracked and broken and damaged in any way, whether they're engraved or not.

Yes. So in terms of the livability program, the discussion has been very much about ongoing maintenance of, you know, of all the works we're doing. We don't want to spend $ 18 million and then have it not be maintained. So that is a subject that, you know, that Council is aware of and is building into its own ongoing maintenance program. In terms of any pavers that are cracked or broken, yes, I mean, the intent, obviously, you know, we will have intent is that we are in a position that we can either fix them, depending on the level of damage, and/or replace them. We've deliberately tried to pick pavers that are, you know, generic, that aren't customised. In pretty much all of the works we're looking at, you know, limiting the customisation of, you know, furniture and pavers so that it is easier to, you know, maintain and/or replace.

In terms of these pavers, we've deliberately, with the names on them, we're deliberately putting them in on high traffic areas so that, you know, as Councillor said, it might be

Around

A seat

Or around

Planter beds, which doesn't, you know, does not have, you know, hundreds of people walking across them, therefore increasing the likelihood of the potential of them being damaged. So, you know, the longevity of them should hopefully last a bit longer. But the intent really beyond, you know, the initial getting in a paver, we're not going to be necessarily replacing all of them as, you know, in 20, 30 years' time. It is this point in time that we're doing.

Thank you. Councillor Garrow.

Sorry, I forgot to take my hand down. That's

Awesome

Thank you . Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I absolutely support this as a concept. And not only am I supporting it because I think that it's a worthy thing to do for our town centres, but I think that as a council— Especially coming out of a shutdown where small businesses haven't been able to operate, or in terms of the livability project that we have coming for our three town centres, we should absolutely be encouraging small business owners who have decided to set their businesses up in our towns and villages, which we know at some times could be something that they may struggle with, wondering if they'll get enough customers. Why would we be discouraging this initiative or these ideas from our own small business owners?

If we as a council were a body who just continuously said no, no, no to everything, why would anyone want to open a business and operate in Windsor or Richmond? Why would they want to actually sit there and take the time to think about ways that they could improve? Our town centres, because as we know, Council can't do everything. We need our local small business owners and our people who have invested and want to invest in our main streets and our town centres throughout the Hawkesbury to come to Council and feel like they are welcome to have ideas and that they will be embraced and that we will be supportive. Now , I actually firsthand have some experience of a paver sort of laying name situation.

When my kids went to Freeman's Reach Public School, for one of their birthday celebrations, families could purchase a paver, and it was quite a derelict area of the school where they decided to invest in this new paving and put all the names of the families and the kids in this area and really did it up. And I can tell you what, it made the space look absolutely stunning. And not only that, it provided the children and the families and former families who had attended the school a really exciting point of interest where they would run, you know, when it was first done, they'd run in and scramble around and try and find their family name. And that sense of ownership and excitement and almost that sense of permanency that they somehow belonged to that area and that they had their name there forever was something that was a joy to see in people's faces.

And I think that that sense of community and that sense of belonging is something that's really important and something that Council and councillors should get behind. So I applaud Mr. Pead for this initiative, and I do not ever want Council or councillors discouraging our community from coming to us with their ideas. And I think that embracing this, Mr. Mayor, in your Mayoral minute is a very worthy cause. Thank you.

Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think it's a great idea. That said, I agree that some of the concerns that Ms Wilson raised are valid. Looking toward this with a historian's eye, there are many worthy things that have been established in the Hawkesbury by public subscription. The Hawkesbury Benevolence Society was founded in 1818 by public subscription. The schools of arts in Windsor and Richmond were built in the 1850s by public subscription. As recently as 1912, there was a surgical ward added to the then Hawkesbury District Hospital by public subscription. So I think we have a long and storied history of supporting things and getting the public behind them. That said, I do agree that if we implement this, we flesh the proposal out a little more.

I wouldn't want this to be run on a for-profit basis, and I don't know whether the $60 fee merely covers the costs. If it's run on a for-profit basis, I think Council should take on the job itself and enjoy the revenue. I think that if there was any hint that it was going to be used for a commercial or advertising purpose, that there were constraints placed around that so that it was Hawkesbury families that were able to memorialise their support for a public space, and subject to those reasonable conditions being part of the implementation, I'm happy to vote for this. Thanks

Councillor. I can confirm it's on a cost recovery basis only. There's no profit out of the arrangement. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think that this, I think that incorporating something like this into the livability project is a really good idea. I think firstly I'd like to thank Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Garrow and the working group for that project, for all the work that they did over the months to liaise with the business owners in Windsor and to inspiring them the confidence, and the staff, of course, who've done the work, to inspiring them the confidence that this was really going to go somewhere so that business owners like Mr. Pead could have the confidence that he could put forward a proposal like this and get the support from the council that we can support it and go with it. I think it's, we have many people come forward with individual ideas and of course we can't always bring them to council just like that, but because there's a project that it fits in around, I think it's a good match for this situation.

And I know that people do like, I of course always want the community to feel that they have ownership of things within our towns and villages, and I think that people do embrace that concept and they do get involved with it. And I think, like Councillor Zamprogno just said though, we do need a bit more detail just about the exact, you know, where and whatever, and I think we probably all want to see more plans around what exactly is happening with the livability project anyway. So that's something that's upcoming and something that we can all look forward to. But I think that if it's been gone through with the people who've been working on the livability project and it's a suitable fit, I think that's a really good thing.

Thanks.

Thank you. Being over for discussion, I don't think right of reply is necessary. I don't think anyone actually spoke against it, so we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Gary, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Krotlash, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Ross, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Tree, Councillor Rasmussen. Carried.

Our next item subject to public address is item 188, the notice of motion 3. We have two speakers.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, can I declare my interest? Sorry,

Go ahead. Yep.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, it's a significant non-pecuniary interest. I've been part of the announcement for this infrastructure in multiple ways over multiple years, so I'll be leaving the meeting and not partaking in it. Thank you.

Thank you. Wait for Councillor Richards to leave.

Okay. So we have two speakers on the motion. Our first speaker is Mr. Michael Morris.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, councillors and staff. As I'm sure you're all aware by now, my name is Michael Morris, and tonight I am speaking for this motion. I'd like to thank Councillor Reynolds for moving the motion in response to continued community concerns regarding the inadequate responses of Transport for New South Wales about traffic modelling assumptions and outcomes. Transport for New South Wales has repeatedly been asked and has on multiple occasions given an undertaking to some community members to provide access to the traffic modelling data and input assumptions and spend time explaining their modelling process. As has been the case throughout the community consultation period, Transport for New South Wales has not followed through with commitments to the community.

Transport for New South Wales has clearly indicated that as part of the Richmond Bridge duplication, or should I say diversion project, that the planning of the Grose River Bridge, which is expected to accommodate 14 percent of projected traffic volumes, was a core planning assumption and was a key factor in Transport for New South Wales rejecting the southern bypass route. As Council is well aware, the Grose River Bridge project has experienced and continues to experience extensive delays. The project developer has admitted attempting to pressure Hawkesbury Council regarding decisions about this bridge through various public campaigns. At the outset of this bridge, it was a $23 million commitment by the developer.

As has been pointed out to Transport for New South Wales, based on a $20 million construction cost in 2014 and a 5% annual escalation factor, the current construction cost of this bridge is approximately $30 million, and in 2025 will be around $34 million. So, not including the other costs already sunk by the developer in the delays, this represents a $7 to $11 million deficit for the developer. The longer the delays, the greater the deficit and the greater the risk of the developer seeking an exit from the VPA. The Grose River Bridge and the Richmond Bridge duplication or diversion project are contingent on each other. The potential for the Grose River Bridge to not proceed is therefore a material risk to the assumptions and modelling of the Transport for New South Wales project, given that it changes the required capacity of other potential routes by 14%.

Transport for New South Wales have been directly asked if they have run traffic modelling scenarios without the input assumption of the Grose River Bridge existence. They will not answer this specific question. Yes

Councillor Rasmussen. Sorry, Mr Morris. Sorry, Mr Morris. The Grose River Bridge seems to be featuring quite heavily in these discussions, and I had no understanding that this was going to be an issue, so I need to withdraw because I do have a pecuniary interest in the Grose River Bridge. So I'm sorry about that, Mr Morris. So I need to leave the meeting. Thank you. Councillor Rasmussen, we'll put you

In the waiting room. Sorry about that, Mr Morrison. That's right. Thank you. As I was saying, Transport for New South Wales have been directly asked if they have run traffic modelling scenarios without the input assumption of the Grose River bridge existence. They will not answer this specific question. The production and display of pretty little graphics and tiny videos and dismissive statements from Transport for New South Wales project team that it makes no difference are of concern and should be a red flag to Council as it is to the community. The evidence in GIPA documents demonstrate that Transport for New South Wales' own preferred route was the yellow route, and the announced preferred route was politically advised, associated with the increased funding announcement.

This raises further questions of probity of the decision-making and whose interests are being served by Transport for New South Wales' reverse engineering of public statements and dismissive justifications to support the announced preferred route contrary to their own stated planning outcomes. Given the above issues, proper and thorough contingency planning needs to be carried out on the basis of an assumption of material risks such as the risk that the Grose River bridge may never be constructed. It is clear that Transport for New South Wales is unwilling to directly respond to community concerns about accounting for such a risk.

It is Council's role to advocate for the best possible outcome for the Hawkesbury community, particularly in light of a half a billion dollar investment in local infrastructure. It is prudent that Council's position should be informed by a thorough risk assessment and appropriate data to support determination of its positions. I would like to thank Council for responding to community concerns about the Richmond Bridge duplication or diversion through its previous decisions to amend Council's submission to Transport for New South Wales and seek greater transparency from Transport for New South Wales. This motion represents a further opportunity for Council to demonstrate its continued commitment to such a prudent approach to responding to the community and attempting to hold to account other government agencies whose actions directly impact on the amenity of this community.

Accordingly, I again thank Councillor Reynolds for raising this motion. I commend the motion to you, and I urge Councillors to support it. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr Morris. Any questions for Mr Morris? No, thank you. Our next speaker is Amanda Norton Knight.

Sorry, you're on mute at the moment.

Still on mute.

So sorry. Good evening. Thank you for having me. My name is Amanda Norton Knight, and I am a long-time Hawkesbury resident, an investor in the area, and a busy mother who is well aware of the traffic frustrations in North Richmond. I've prepared some notes that I'd like to read that have a particular focus on how the greenfield impacts North Richmond. As we're all aware, the entire social fabric of North Richmond and surrounding suburbs has changed dramatically in a few short years. This change will only intensify with the current planned developments that will see thousands of new homes built in Richmond, North Richmond, Grose Vale, Glossodia, Wilberforce, and beyond. It would appear that the critical infrastructure plan for the area is not only failing to achieve the key objectives of flood resilience and traffic improvement, but will have terrible unintended consequences for the town.

I find it astonishing that Traffic for New South Wales has admitted that they have not undertaken socio-economic modelling on the proposed green route. I also find it astounding that the largest infrastructure project ever to have been built in the Hawkesbury has been designed, funded and given the go-ahead without having been submitted to Infrastructure Australia. We can only conclude that the project is being driven by political reasons. It is not a piece of infrastructure that will deliver the best outcome for our rapidly growing community. To be very clear, the green route has been chosen against the advice of Traffic for New South Wales. It is not the best route. It's a route that will cause the most damage to residents, businesses and our community.

The options report does not consider the visual amenity impacts for residents near Hanna Park and the houses in Norfolk Place. It doubles the traffic noise footprint for residents north of the existing bridge. It's worth reminding Council tonight of Traffic for New South Wales' commitment—comments , sorry—in the community consultation session in 2020. They stated that North Richmond will not be bypassed, as it was determined that there would be a loss of business should that occur. It seems now that that has been conveniently overlooked, with the green route resulting in a road that will swing by residential houses, diverting traffic away from the main business district of the town. Should the green route go ahead, North Richmond will become a third-rate town north of the river.

Why has this established town been so overlooked in the whole process? With this rapidly expanding population growth north of the river, there should be a focus to strengthen and to revitalise North Richmond, making it a destination, not a ghost town. The project's website states that the green route will achieve, amongst other things, amenity and support economic development in the town centres of Richmond and North Richmond. Nothing could be further from the truth. The new shopping precincts planned and underway at Redbank, Kurrajong and Formapills Dairy site will suck all the business away from North Richmond. There will be little reason for people to travel down the hills to go there. There will be no reason to invest in North Richmond or to revitalise the town.

North Richmond will be collateral damage of this project. And then, of course, we have flood resilience. Despite initial promises, from what I understand was an objective of this project, residents will remain landlocked during most of the floods. The serious doubt now cast over the Grose River Bridge project also undermines even the current benefits of the green route claimed by the government in terms of both traffic modelling and the ability of residents to evacuate during a flood. With a 500 million budget, we now have an opportunity to return to the drawing board and create a truly flood-resilient option for the Hawkesbury. Moving from the current one in two to a one in five is reckless and simply not a good use of taxpayer funds.

Ironically, the Hawkesbury Valley and its towns have been hailed by historians and urban designers as a masterstroke in town planning , moving the residents to the higher ground while maintaining viable productive farmland on the floodplain. What is being planned today does not provide today, let alone the future. It debases what we currently have and holds so special in this area, and it only can be described as a total failure in both design and execution, the impact of which will cause lasting damage for the future of this area. Tonight , I urge you as elected representatives of this community to listen to the community and lobby on our behalf. The green route needs to be abandoned.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions, councillors?

No. Okay, thank you for that. So that was the conclusion of our public speakers, so go to Councillor Reynolds. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Do I need a seconder first? Yes. Okay . Seconded, Councillor Wheeler. Okay, thanks, Mr Mayor. I sent some slight amendments through to staff earlier — oh, sorry, this afternoon. I’m just wondering if they have them, and if they could put it up on the screen so everybody could see. If not, I can find it and put it out .

Do you want to just draw our attention immediately to what’s different to the business paper, if that’s okay? Yeah, sure. It clarifies that the notice of motion calls for a report regarding the cost. That was omitted. It shouldn’t have been omitted. It is to receive the cost. And also the reference to possible Hambledon Estate development has been removed because how can somebody, you know, study something that, you know, may not happen? So that was removed. So that's the motion as it stands. As I said, as it says in the discussion, this notice of motion is being brought on behalf of the community with the best of intentions. It's not intended in any way to create division, but rather to try to heal the divisions that are appearing in the community over this issue.

It's not intended to be for or against any one particular option, but rather to seek objective information based on cold , hard science and engineering.

It aims to help alleviate the growing suspicion being openly expressed by the community regarding concerns around transparency and clarity of the information provided about the new bridge. Thanks to our comprehensive traffic study, which we, I think we got the final report on that stage two, which I have here and I recommend it to everybody, good reading. I think we received that beginning of last year, just before COVID hit, or late 2019.

And it showed that, for example, that the Grose River Bridge would not provide the major benefit to Richmond traffic that it was promoted as being, and rather just more counted the impact of traffic from Redbank . Any cost in this, any cost involved in this will be minimal compared to the value of the information we'll receive and the peace of mind it will provide to our people. In the staff comments in the business paper, it mentions asking. Transport for New South Wales to do the modelling on our behalf to reduce costs. Now, I don't think, and the purpose of this motion is not to ask Transport New South Wales to do any modelling or take any part in this research. Transport for New South Wales, to their credit, has been quite open in stating the government instructed Transport New South Wales to work up the Green Route.

They were quite public about that. Now, work up obviously means make the green option look good or make other options look bad by comparison, and unfortunately that's exactly what happened in Windsor. So , why did the government demand that of Transport for New South Wales? We don't know. I don't know. But for some reason or reasons they did, and I don't think we should get into that tonight , because this is all about providing unbiased information about traffic benefits to the community.

It's the lack of transparency. As Mr Morris said, you know, the withholding of information that had been promised by Transport for New South Wales, being told by Transport for New South Wales to go and lodge a GIPA or a Freedom of Information request to get information that had been promised , the failure of some politicians to honour their promises to meet with certain people. It's created suspicion, ill will, and unfortunately, if we can't bring clarity and transparency and bring the community back together, I'm afraid that the people will be left With no resort but to create another Windsor, and none of us want that. So I’m hoping that you’ll support this notice of motion. It is a call for a report into the cost.

Most of the information and data required, we already have. The previous study that we did compared, for example, traffic flow with and without the Grose River Bridge. This is now just adding in information that Transport for New South Wales already have regarding traffic flow on their Green and the Purple route. And it also, I think point four, consider, you know, if the traffic consultants can, possibly consider the viability of a southern option that follows high ground and doesn’t impact on Redbank. That would be good. I mean, and that just goes to point out, for example, Transport for New South Wales saying that they were told to work up the Green route by the government. And so one way to do that is to run an alternative option straight through the middle of a housing development, when it’s quite obvious to anyone with, you know, Google Earth that that doesn’t have to be the case.

So I hope you can support it, and look forward to what you have to say. Thanks, Pat. Councilor, I’ll just speak to the motion. First of all, I just think we’ve got to be a bit more realistic than that. There’s no evidence at all that I’ve seen that the government instructed Transport New South Wales to make other options look bad or make the Green option look better. And if that was the case, I’m sure somebody would be an ICAC right now. So clearly no evidence of that on the public record at all. To say work up the Green route means exactly that: work up a Green route that looks like this, and that’s how all the routes should be developed. They should be developed with expert advice, but also with input from community representatives.

I'm not in favour of this motion at all. I'm very surprised by this motion, given that we've just been through quite a long process to get to a point of a submission, where we've considered the matter at multiple council meetings, had a number of informal discussions as well. I've had meetings with concerned residents. I thought we had a really good submission that was almost unanimous of what we wanted. We asked the government to look at Transport for New South Wales to tell us if they'd considered the impact of the Grose River Bridge and what would happen if it wasn't there. We asked Transport for New South Wales to go ahead with stage one, but we thought they should go and do more work on stage two, and we told them all our concerns with it.

That is the proper way to engage in this process. That's during the community consultation process. We haven't had any response from Transport for New South Wales yet on that input, so I'm not sure why we're now disregarding all of that and going again in another direction. It costs Transport for New South Wales, I think, seven million dollars between the two rounds of funding to come up with that options report. So the idea that we're going to be able to develop a better option for anything, for any sort of resource that we have, I think is fanciful. I appreciate that information has been changed, so we're just receiving a report regarding the cost, but the cost of us developing our own option will be astronomical.

And the reality is it's not our responsibility. There's no guarantee that if we develop this option that Transport for New South Wales is going to take any notice of it anyway, so it's a huge gamble of public money. So I don't think we should be designing our own option. I think for a council that talks constantly about cost shifting, the fact that we would volunteer to go and do this for them without it, when we've already asked them to do it and they haven't told us yes or no yet, I think is irresponsible. We're massively pre-empting the process, given that we've gone with preferred options report to consultation, there will be a response to that consultation, and we don't know what it is yet.

I think it would be really irresponsible for us to go ahead and do this. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look , what's vexing about this is that it's a report that asks for another report that we may or may not choose to act upon. And this is hard on the heels of, you know, our caretaker period. If I could ask a question to staff, I don't know whether this could be short-circuited in some sense. I mean, if we could have a ballpark idea of what it would cost to get a report with these parameters, if we knew off the bat that it was going to be twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars on top of the money that we've already put in to our mesoscopic traffic study, then, you know, that would allow me to work out whether it's worth even supporting at this juncture. So I'll start with that if I may.

So the question is, the cost for all four of these points, like the ballpark? Well, I'm wondering whether staff can provide any back-of-the-envelope guidance rather than asking for a specific report whose purpose is merely to give us the cost of. I just want to know how many zeros are after it. Okay. I'll refer that to Mr Organ.

Give us a quick wait.

That really will be dependent upon the consultants and the amount of work that's actually involved in this. As an indicative figure, when we were looking at other options in the initial traffic modelling study, some of those costs were in the order of fifteen to twenty thousand dollars per different option that would be selected. That depends on how much work is involved between, you know, an option 1A and a 1 option 1B, if there's some slight twists on that. Some of the work is fairly common. I would make the comment, and it's reflected in the management comment there, that the data from that is used, we would ideally like to have, if we're going down that path and consultants would, is what is any additional data that's being used by Transport for New South Wales.

So again, release of the traffic modelling and/or the full traffic study review would also inform the costing that any consultant coming in working up those costs is. So that's for each of those models. For the last item on there, option number four, that will also involve some significant engineering analysis as well. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess on the cost of doing that. It's purely aligned on a plan and a modelling exercise that fall into the category that I just described, probably around $20,000 to $30,000 for a different route. Again, it's highly dependent on the information that's being used by Transport for New South Wales as they've built on our model. Thank you

Okay then. So that being the case, for me the question becomes, how far are we obliged to go on behalf of our community to reflect the concerns that Council has particularly about this project, and at what point do we step over a boundary and seek to do Transport for New South Wales' job for them? Because we don't have the same resources that they do, and the only reason we seek to is because of an apprehension that they were lying to us or that they'd gotten something terribly, terribly wrong or that this was a political stitch-up. I did note that several of our public speakers Effectively implied that the green route is against the advice of Transport for New South Wales, and that's not my understanding.

My understanding is that the green route is specifically the recommendation of Transport for New South Wales, and in every briefing and public forum, they've taken great pains to point out precisely why it is the best option under the circumstances. So to say that secretly they hate the idea and that they've been shoehorned into it, I don't agree with that statement . So I'll be listening very carefully to the comments of my colleagues. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you. Councillor Calvert.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. If I could start with a question or two. My understanding of the motion is that we're asking for the cost of an analysis, or a report which gives us the cost of an analysis. Is that correct? That's the current motion, yes. And I was wondering, I know Councillor Sam Prodnay just asked about a ballpark figure for revisiting the options, but what would be a ballpark figure for just working out the cost of an analysis? We have an answer to that?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm not sure if the Director of Infrastructure Services, able to answer that.

If I can just seek clarification there, Mr Mayor. The analysis of the current proposed green route, and confirmation of—is it essentially what I'd describe as a peer review of that. If we had the data that was being used by Transport for New South Wales, or to go and redo that exercise ourselves, it would be two different things.

But Councillor Reynolds, I believe, is just asking for a report on the cost of an analysis. He's not asking for us to conduct the analysis.

That's right. I think Councillor Sam Frognay's point was if the ballpark was so out of the league, we wouldn't consider it. There's no point asking staff to go away and report on it for us, just when we already know what decision we're going to make. Okay. Secondly, Councillor Sam Frognay, you can correct if I'm wrong, but yeah .

My question, secondly, is the, when it talks about the options , analysis of the current new Richmond Bridge options be conducted.

As far as I'm concerned, Transport for New South Wales is only giving us one option, the green option. But if we're talking of the other options, does Councillor Reynolds include the original 2012 options in this, or is it just the green, yellow and purple route that he's talking about?

Motion's not clear, so we might need to clarify that if we go ahead with it. Yep. Councillor Reynolds, did you want to say something now? The intention, as Councillor Calvert stated, is to get a cost of , as the director called it, a peer review. It's not intended to develop a whole new option of our own, as you stated, Mr Mayor, that is not the intention. It's to consider the viability of, for example, a purple option that does not go through Redbank. And as it says, actually it doesn't say that, it should say it, to use existing road corridors, or it does, in use existing road corridors where possible. Now, it's just, it's not saying go ahead and develop it and do all the costing and all the traffic modelling.

The traffic modelling shouldn't be that different. It's all coming down Grose Vale Road, and it's all continuing along Grose Vale Road or going onto a Purple Bridge. This isn't, this isn't the big deal you're all making it out to be. Sorry, Councillor, and just a reminder, you're just answering Councillor Carbett's question. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, Councillor Carbett. No, it was not intended to include all the other options from 2012, I'm sorry. But do you want to put that in there? Yeah,

Thank you. Actually , Councillor Reynolds, I think it should be in there because basically I believe what we said in our submission was that we didn't like the green, purple or yellow routes and that Transport for New South Wales should start the process again. And if they are going to start the process again, which I believe is what we've asked them to do, then I believe we should go back to the original proposals from 2012 and put them back on the table because I don't think we've looked at them closely enough. And I know in the last council meeting I was waxing lyrical about the yellow route, but I was mistaken. Now, what I was actually trying to talk about was the 2012 routes, one of which I think in the original diagram is yellow.

I wasn't talking about the current yellow route. And it was those 2012 routes that I couldn't find a map of, but I finally found one. And they basically are to duplicate the bridge and the road straight across from North Richmond to Richmond. And I believe if we didn't spend all that money on Acquiring land over through the polo fields and the soccer fields and Southie Road and everywhere else, and poured all the money into a high-level connection straight between Richmond and North Richmond, we could have a flood-free bridge and flood-free road. Between the two centres. And people would say, but it's not a bypass. But I don't regard the green or yellow routes as a bypass, especially for North Richmond.

For traffic going through North Richmond, you may not go down the main drag of North Richmond, but you end up at this major intersection on the other side anyway, so your traffic journey is going to be about the same. The other thing is that traffic that goes across straight to Richmond now, over half of it, about 55% or so, goes straight ahead at the lights at Bosworth Street, because that traffic is going to Windsor or Richmond or the northwest like McGrath's Hill or Rouse Hill. And putting in a green route around the back of the soccer fields will not change that. Those people will still go straight ahead down through Richmond because they're not going over Richmond Way, over the driftway.

They're going to Windsor or places like that. And so one of the aims of this was to try and reduce traffic in the main centre of Richmond, and this green route does not do that at all. The only traffic that is influenced by the green route is the traffic that goes up to Bosworth Street and turns right. Now that traffic that goes up there and turns right, most of that then turns left up Lennox Street and then goes down Richmond Road. Now I've travelled that route for many years, and you go down Lennox Street and there's a couple of sets of lights with two or three cars in front of you. The lights change and off you go. I haven't ever seen a big hold up in Lennox Street. And as you go down through there past the TAFE and out to South Windsor, there can be holdups at the roundabout.

What the green route does is it bypasses Lennox Street , sends the traffic around and brings it back in on Richmond Road near the roundabout where the holdups are. So it bypasses what is not a problem and sends the traffic to where it is a problem. I don't think that's been thought through very carefully. And now that intersection at Bosworth Street has been widened and upgraded , to make that four lanes in right across to North Richmond would mean that in the afternoon traffic coming back through Richmond wouldn't have to then try and merge into one lane. It could have two lanes going straight ahead to North Richmond. And that would reduce the traffic flow through Richmond in the afternoons.

So I don't see the yellow or green routes as actually providing us with a bypass. It doesn't do much for traffic, and it's not going to address the flood issue. The only way we can do that, I think, is to go back to the 2012 options, put in a high-level bridge, high-level road connecting straight across from Richmond to North Richmond. And if we want to upgrade the Driftway, we can do that at some future date. I don't see the Driftway as solving any of our problems as far as traffic and flooding in North Richmond is concerned. So look, I'm very keen now for us to dig up the 2012 options and put them back on the table. So if Councillor Reynolds was to include the 2012 options in point one. I would seriously consider supporting this motion, but without that, no, I won't.

So thank you for your time.

Councillor Carver. I would point out it's a very good point that in council submission, we actually set out wanting to transport for New South Wales to look at an option that bypassed Richmond, but not North Richmond, which is something similar to what you're referring to, which is why it's so strange that we're now , next meeting, suggesting that instead we should be looking at a southern bypass option and redesigning at least part of it, if not the whole thing ourselves. I feel like it's a major shift in direction. We're only two weeks apart.

Deputy Mayor.

Did you want me to reply to that, Mr Mayor?

No, sorry, it's called the Deputy Mayor.

Oh, sorry, I didn't hear anything. You froze. You were frozen. I wasn't Well , you were on my screen. Sorry. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just a couple of questions. I'm just wondering how much of our traffic study data was requested by Transport for New South Wales in this process?

That to

Director Infrastructure Services. Through you, Mr Mayor, we basically provided all of our modelling and data to Transport for New South Wales, and they then utilised that in expanding and developing their own modelling using the same software.

So did they do any modelling specific to any of the options that they engaged with council directly about the information that we had?

We simply provided that information to them, and as I said, they haven't released their final traffic study or the modelling that underpins that at this stage. So it's difficult to know what they've done with that, hence my comments earlier about what additional data they've actually provided, because they did actually undertake further traffic counts themselves. Yes

That's why I was asking, because I do recall in the various community reference groups that they sometimes referred to council figures and sometimes to other figures. And I was just wondering, it's quite a shame that there wasn't the engagement, I guess, back at the start, which would have allowed, you know, the workings of all this traffic data to be put in and done in that way. But I do support getting the report about the costing of this, and I think that, you know, to have this reviewed, I don't know if it confirms that the Green Route is the best for all things, then that is one point. But I think it's something that we have to look at, given that we have asked for them to go back and start again.

So if we were lucky enough to have that granted in any shape or form, then this would be part of that process, is what I'm thinking about. And specifically the inclusion of that route that Councillor Calvert was just referring to, which I added into the submission, was based on the fact that Transport for New South Wales, I believe, would have costing of that route available, because originally that is what they said they were going to do. So probably not with increased flood immunity, which would be good to know the cost of having an elevated route there. But definitely initially they said that would be the route they would cost to compare the other routes to. So I'm sure that information exists, and I think that is something else that we will be trying to access the information about.

I just think that, yes, my main query, and I probably should have raised it before the submission, was about that engagement and interaction of the various sets of data around this. And it just seems that perhaps it hasn't interacted in the way that has, you know, been of maximum benefit to everybody to get the clearest picture. So I would like to see this proceed, and then we'll see where it goes from there, perhaps to tie in with hopefully a granting of relooking at it from Transport for New South Wales.

Thank you. Any, Councillor Wheeler?

Just wondering, first up, Mr Mayor, if we could see some wording from Councillor Calvert. I think he requested an addition, if we could have a look at that, and perhaps if Councillor Reynolds is willing to consider that addition.

So there was an amendment from Councillor Calvert. Councillor Reynolds, did you want to change anything? If Councillor Calvert was in agreement, if we could perhaps put a 0.5 in,

And that

The notice of motion also include a report on the cost of the study dealing with the options that Councillor Calvert referred to in the 2012 report. Take that away from point one, keep that as it is, and then put 0.5 in. So, if need be, when the report comes back, if the cost is over the top, then we can cull as necessary if we want to , if Barry is okay with that. So, does staff know what we're writing as a 0.5?

I'm okay in the concept. I'd like to see the words first.

Your words, Barry.

Well , I think you'd just ask the staff to write something for you. Okay.

I just wanted to add to point one, saying the current new Richmond Bridge options and those of 2012 be conducted.

I would rather see that as a 0. 5. 0.5, consider the analysis of... The options from the Richmond Bridge reports from 2012. Director, Infrastructure Services, did you want to input into this conversation?

Not into that part of it, but I think we probably need some clarification on, in point one, as to whether it's the current new Richmond Bridge option, because there is only one option. I'm a little bit confused. So is it, do you want the green route verified and modelled, or the yellow and other options that were canvassed within that report, and not the recommended option?

It would be—well, this is the thing. This goes to the core of the problem, in that Transport for New South Wales and politicians are saying that the green route is not locked in.

Now, if it's the case that we're only to analyse the green route, then indeed the green route is locked in. So no, we don't just want the green route; we want the green route, the yellow route, and the purple route , because that information has not come from Transport for New South Wales. So yeah, that's what point one's about.

Just clarifying, because that required—that will have a significant impact on the cost, which is what the report's on about, so several options rather than one option.

Yes, all I'm saying is the information, the data for the purple option and the yellow option is already there. It's just they haven't done the modelling. So that's what it's asking for, yeah. So to clarify, Mr. Auckland, that indication of 15 to 20 thousand that you gave earlier, that would be per option we analysed?

Is that how you meant it? That would be my ballpark figure. But again, I said we'll seek—if this motion is adopted, then we'd seek the cost from consultants to go through. But I just want clarification as to whether it was just the green option or the yellow and the purple.

Thank you.

So the motion as up there now, is that what you want to move, Councillor Reynolds?

Can't see Councillor Reynolds there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at— Oh, sorry. Yeah, okay. Yep, yep. We'll leave that in there. Seconded was Councillor Wheeler. Are you happy with that, Councillor Wheeler?

Yes, I am. I just want to clarify that that will be given, that this will be— can we get this as a breakdown, as a cost breakdown? Effectively, yes.

Okay . Further discussion, Councillor Wheeler?

Look , I think there was an interesting question posed earlier in this meeting that said from Councillor Zampragno, I think, saying, how far are we obliged to go for our community? I think when we're talking about the lives and livelihood, and certainly the property values and continued wellbeing of businesses and community, I think the answer to that is we're obliged to go as far as we possibly can. And I see this as contributing to our suite of information. It may not come back to this council. It may be something that's decided by the next council. But clearly, each time we debate this topic in council, we hear more information from the community about the negative impacts of the project or the unrealised potential of the project, particularly with respect to flood resilience.

So I think we need more information in order to go into that for the community that we represent. That's our job. How far are we obliged to go? As far as it takes, I think.

Thanks , thank you. No further discussion, then we'll go to Councillor Reynolds' right of reply. Sorry, Councillor Ross, did you want to say something?

Thank you ,

Mr Mayor. I just advise councillors, if you want to speak on a matter, can you just put your hand up and not try and time it in a particular way so we're all waiting guessing. If you just put your hand up at once, we know how many we have to get through. Councillor Ross.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thanks for your indulgence. Just a brief point. I think it was 2019, council obtained an independent report from an independent person

In regard to this matter in an abstract form, when we didn't have any options provided by the RMS, Traffic for New South Wales at that stage. Possibly that same consultant could be asked to consider if this motion passes, if you like, that this notice of motion being an add-on to the request that was initially made, and hopefully that would curtail the expense on council's part. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further speakers?

If not, we'll put the right of reply. Councillor Reynolds. Yeah, thanks, Pat. Let me just see if I can find my stuff here.

I'm really disappointed that this would try to be spun as some kind of— Political exercise, you know, it's, I think it's pretty poor form. What I'm trying to do here is bring clarity and heal division. Even though we have made our submission, and I support that submission, and I still support that submission, it's now clear that promises and commitments made to the community are not being kept by Transport for New South Wales. This is the problem. Transport for New South Wales is not being objective. Now, to answer, to go to Nathan's comment, the green route is against the advice of Transport for New South Wales. If you read their initial report, their option was the yellow option. They were against the green option for the damage it would do to North Richmond.

I was asking you to put just on the record what report you're referring to. It was the last report that came out before the preferred options report. I don't have it with me, but it's quite, it's publicly available. With half the budget, Councillor? Yeah, with half the budget. Yes, that's right. It doesn't matter the error. The problems with the green route and its impact on North Richmond still stand regardless of the cost.

Now, contrary to what the Mayor said, Transport for New South Wales, they said this in a community focus group meeting. They were directed by the government to work up the green option for the preferred option report. There is nothing corrupt about a government doing that. They do it all the bloody time. They do it all over the state. They did a deal with them too. They did it with WestConnex. They did it with Berry Foxground. They did it at Windsor. It stinks and it's wrong, but it's not corrupt. Now, also Transport for New South Wales said the preferred option report was delayed by eight months for political reasons.

So this notice of motion is not intended to go to the expense of developing another option. Councillors want to do that, then that's okay. We have to remember, and some of us still remember, that we don't represent the government. We represent the community. We're not here to stand with our backs towards the government and advocate for them to the community. It's the other way around. We speak for the community, and if the community is upset and sees a problem, and I can see the problem, then we are obliged. We took an oath.

We took an oath to represent the community, and that should be above any political party allegiances and any ties someone may have with the government of the day. And I think that some people really need to think whose side they're on here, whether they're on the side of the community or they're on the side of a government that, for some reason, has instructed an agency to develop one option over another. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor. Voting in our submission was actually unanimous, but I appreciate all those comments anyway leading up to the election. We'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor

Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds. Against, Councillor Conolly. Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Tree, Councillor Ross voted already. Absent for the vote were Councillors Kotlash, Richards and Rasmussen. Declare it carried.

I'll just admit now.

Is Ms Pratten in the meeting?

Yeah

We're ready for you, Ms Pratten.

Hi. Hi, thank you. Yeah, hi. My name's Sue Pratten. I'm a resident at Colo, and being a resident at Colo, I've experienced quite a couple of years. Four evacuations as a result of the Gospers Mountain fire, and then three months later, two foot of water through our home in this very lounge room that I'm sitting in. And then earlier this year, again another evacuation due to flood. Thankfully, our home didn't get flooded, but many of our neighbours did. So there's lots been going on, as we all know, in the Hawkesbury. I'm also the leader of a local singing group, Woman Song, and we sing at a lot of local events, community events and things. Anyway, I'm here to speak tonight in favour of the motion to change the zero emissions target from 2050 to 2030, and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Hawkesbury Climate Action Network.

Hawkesbury CAN, which is the Climate Action Network, is a coalition of local groups, including the Hawkesbury Environment Network, Macquarie Electorate Student Climate Activists, the Hawkesbury Community Unions Alliance, and the Hawkesbury Landcare Network, among others. Last year, Hawkesbury CAN made a submission in response to your draft strategy for zero emissions and water efficiency, and we're pleased to have another opportunity to advocate for more ambitious targets for our community. There are three reasons that Hawkesbury CAN supports the motion before Council tonight. The first one is simply: the faster we reduce emissions, the less it's going to hurt. As Councillor Wheeler has pointed out, the international scientific consensus is that we need to rapidly decarbonise if we're going to prevent catastrophic climate change.

And it's worth pausing just for a moment to take in what this means. It's not just coping with increasingly severe fire and floods. Catastrophic climate change means our climate becomes unlivable . Food and water will become scarce. Pressures on our infrastructure, our health system, roads, emergency services will overwhelm current capacity and lead to collapse. And this is a scenario that we need to avoid at all costs. It is a simple equation: the less carbon we emit, the less temperature will rise and the less unstable and unpredictable everything will become. So every tonne of CO2, or ton, counts. The second reason we support the motion, and this is good news, is that the Hawkesbury has the capacity for a rapid reduction of our emissions while at the same time building a thriving and resilient community.

As you know, almost 90% of the 780,000 tonnes of CO2 the Hawkesbury emits each year comes from just two sources: electricity and transport. So if we were to adopt more renewable energy and electric vehicles, we could have a go at 90% of the solution. You've already shown leadership by becoming one of the first local councils to be 100% renewably powered. Thank you for that. Western Sydney University did the same just a couple of months ago, and our community is ahead of the New South Wales average for rooftop solar. These steps not only reduce emissions, but also save us a fortune and free up resources for other important community projects. And switching to renewable energy can also benefit our community by providing local jobs and training opportunities, making isolated communities more self-reliant and less vulnerable to power outages, and making our businesses much more competitive.

So our third point, lastly, we believe Council is well placed to lead the Hawkesbury community more rapidly towards zero emissions. Local government has a very important role to play in helping the community to become carbon neutral. We applaud your efforts so far to reduce your own emissions, your declaration of a climate emergency, and your adoption of a zero emissions strategy. Increasing your ambition would be an important signal to the community that faster action is required. And this is not a radical step. Many councils and conservative governments are heading in this direction. In Sydney alone, five councils have already adopted 2030 zero emission targets or better. They include our neighbours, the Blue Mountains and Blacktown, as well as Randwick, Northern Beaches, and Canada Bay.

And so, in closing, together we can do this. The Hawkesbury community is worried about climate change. With clear leadership from you, the community will continue to rise to the challenge. We have to for ourselves and for our kids. So thank you for this opportunity to speak in favour of a more ambitious target. We look forward to working with you to create, in your own words, a healthy and resilient future for the Hawkesbury. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions, councillors? No, thank you for that. So, Councillor Wheeler, did you want to move the motion? Is there a seconder?

Yes, please

Seconded, Deputy Mayor. So

When you're ready, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. And thank you to Ms Pratton for her stirring words there. I think she's echoed, I think she's captured the spirit of this motion, which is to bring this to you as an act of hope, not of despair. I think we've had, even in the last few days, a radical shift in the national thoughts on climate action. This notice of motion is about us showing clear leadership, but also getting ahead of the game. If we don't act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of urgency, floods, fire and extreme heat will become more common for us. We'll continue to lose native vegetation and endangered species. We will lose the Great Barrier Reef, precious agricultural land, wetlands and biodiversity.

But if we do choose to act, we set ourselves up for a new exciting transition economy that we can be part of. We will make our LGA more comfortable. We'll have better tree cover, cooler streets, parks and houses, cleaner air, better places for residents and tourists, rich biodiversity, and a highly skilled workforce who will benefit from the change. The longer we delay action, and we've known about this for 100 years, the less time we have to act. The faster we start to act, the more time we have left and the less it will cost us to transition. The more people we can take with us. The faster we act, the better our buffer. And it's that buffer that we now need to buy, because the IPCC report shows us clearly that we are running out of that buffer.

And as that evaporates, we move to having to be far more reactionary, and we have far less choice in our transition.

Inaction will cost us about $3.4 trillion in the Australian economy and cut 880,000 jobs. And these are the figures from Access Economics. But a transition action on climate change will yield a $680 billion economic windfall and 250,000 more jobs. So we're now no longer at the point where acting costs, not acting costs. Renewable energy is the cheapest way to power the world, and we've already done that. So now we need to use our role as a facilitator to get businesses and schools renewably powered. Initiatives like Solar in Schools, the Solar in Schools program, we can help businesses, for example at Mulgrave Transition. That's a huge area covered with massive expanses of roofs, very connected to the Sydney grid, that could be pumping power back in and offsetting the costs borne by some of those businesses.

And some of those, as some of us know from going to visit them, are absolutely extraordinary.

We've already started transitioning the homes here, and that you heard earlier that we've been quite successful. We need to get food and organics out of our landfill, not just for households but for businesses as well, and drastically cut our methane emissions. We need to revegetate our riparian zones. So instead of concrete and turf, we need to be planting trees, grasses and shrubs to stabilise banks and provide filtration and habitat for birds, reptiles, mammals and fish. We can transition our fleet, both the equipment and our vehicles, to all electric with chargers available as well. When businesses and local government take up EVs, the community uptake is facilitated, thereby addressing one of our biggest emissions: transport.

We can shift our concrete and bitumen, the concrete and bitumen that we use in our road projects, to recycled content. We've got local businesses that can already produce this. We need to fast-track it. We need to foster regenerative agricultural techniques like Yeoman's Keyline Design, which dramatically sequesters carbon in soil and increases the water content, and as a bonus, makes it far more both drought and fireproof. We need to demand better design buildings so that everyone can live comfortably without paying a fortune in electricity costs. Western Sydney Uni has already embraced this. With an equivalent population to our LGA, they'll be carbon neutral by 2030. Their decadal strategy is really well worth reading.

It's vital to their success as an organisation, and we should be following their lead. As one of the LGA's major employers, they're leading the way. We too can do this. This is our chance to set an aspirational and inspirational target. We can drive the market. We can empower our community. We can choose a regenerative future over an extractive one. We can choose hope over fear and action over loss. This is a shared future for our LGA, and we can buy into it now. We either do it now, when we've got the opportunity, when we get to make the choice and we get to really benefit, and so do our residents and businesses, or we lose this initiative, and that would be a very great shame.

Thank you. I was curious about this motion. I guess I just have one question

For the staff to start off with, if possible, probably to the Director City Planning. How long did it take our work on the net zero emissions and water efficiency strategy take to get to the point of adoption, and how much did we spend on that strategy? Ballparking, it's okay, without any numbers.

Thank you. So in terms of the development of the strategy, it probably took about six to eight months, and in terms of the costs, we did engage a consultant, and that was about, I recall, sixty or seventy thousand dollars. I can't remember exactly, but it was about that amount.

Thank you. I would be concerned on that basis that so soon after adopting that strategy, we'd be ready to review it. I don't think you can just change the target without changing the strategy. That's obviously not going to do anything other than purchase signal. So if we were going to go and change our objective, we would need to go and rework the strategy to achieve that. So I think the first thing, if that is Council's intention, I'd strongly advise that we need to call for a report on the costs of developing a new strategy and also look at what that strategy might need to do in order to achieve that new objective. So I wouldn't be supporting the motion as it is currently. Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you , Mr. Mayor. So here's the thing. As a political conservative , I am happy to state

On the record that I believe in anthropogenic climate change, and I believe in the urgency for humanity to deal with this issue for the sake of the planet and for future generations. I am an evidence-based… And conviction politician, and I think that the evidence is fairly clear. And I think much of the social commentary and division that surrounds this issue is very unfortunate. This is not evidence-based, and I am an evidence-based person. I also note that only one out of the five dot points in the proposed motion requires Council to do any action. The others are notes the concern, supports the initiatives, and so forth. If this were presented in Syriatum, I could support four out of those five.

Point two for me is the problematic one, in the sense that the nation has not yet committed to net zero by 2050. So for us to go ahead of what is fiercely contested at much higher pay grades than any of us are at, without knowing what that cost would be, to take us to net zero within a decade, within only nine years. I mean, I want us to do everything that we can, but you do have to balance the actions that you take and the potential costs and opportunity costs to the community of moving more quickly than you ought. And because option two asks us to reduce something to be net zero by 2030 without any costing, then I can't support that clause. I look forward to seeing either some amendment, or for this to be presented in Syriatum and make that request.

Thank you. Councillor Richards. There

We are, I'm off mute. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

I would like to move an amendment, and I'll just get my wording sorted. I've been scribbling it down here crazy. I'd like to move an amendment that Council requests a report into the cost of changing our net zero emissions and water efficiency strategy and the likely changes required to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. Now, I'm not sure if the—

We need a seconder for that before we debate that. Is there a seconder for that? Councillor Trey. Okay. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm happy to email that through to the minute secretary in a moment. But in line with sort of what Councillor Zamprogno said, it's actually funny, I had written here, kind of highlighted and underlined frantically that the only action item in the notice of motion before us is the second line of point 2. And that second line of point 2 is crucial because it wants Council to change its adopted zero emissions target of 2050 to 2030 for the community, but it's not giving us how much that's going to cost. And, you know, you can be as aspirational or as inspirational as you want to be, but again, that tired old line: when we are custodians of the ratepayers' money, and as I said earlier in one of my— something I raised earlier tonight, we have a motion coming up later on this very business paper that does not have a bright or amazing financial status for the way our Council is currently running.

Now, when you look at the figures and you be pragmatic and realistic about what we are dealing with with this Council, we can't go out there and put some unknown target onto our ratepayers that we don't even know what it costs. Now, we've sat in this chamber many times and debated the fact that we need to get costings on things first. It's not saying no to the notice of motion. It's saying, let's actually do our job properly and call for a report, because I will not support any notice of motion where we are not actually putting a figure to our ratepayers. About what we are committing them to. I am really nervous about the financial position of this council. I'm nervous about us meeting our current obligations without saying to ratepayers, we are going to be aspirational and inspirational, but we can't tell you how much it costs.

Now, I am very aware that the New South Wales Government and the Federal Government are prioritising action on our climate. There is not one of us in this room who could say that looking after this planet and our Earth is an absolute priority. It is, and I'm glad the State Government and the Federal Government are getting it right. I'm glad that as a council, we are talking about it, but I'm also not going to tie all of our residents and ratepayers to something that we don't know how much it costs. Calling for a report is the sensible thing to do. Once that report comes back and we have figures before us, then we can have a proper intellectual and informed debate about what we will do as a council.

Committing to a target like this without any costings or any idea about what it's going to do for our council, for our staff, or where the money is going to go is a sensible way so close to an election when there could be a whole range of new people on this council post December. So I move the amendment in that spirit because I believe that is the right thing that we need to do, and I'm kind of shocked that this motion was put up without something so responsible being part of the motion and making sure that before we do anything like this, we have facts and figures before us. And I don't think that this should come to a shock to anybody on here tonight. I've been a consistent councillor in my approach about making sure that we spend ratepayers' money as wisely as we can and that we are upfront and transparent with the community about how we're going to be spending that money.

And I, in all good conscience, could not vote tonight for something that I don't know how much it's going to cost our ratepayers. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. Councillor Calvert on the amendment

On the motion, if we could, or are we on the amendment now? Yeah. Okay. Well, can I ask a question first? On page 111, Council Operations is the heading. It says net zero emissions by 2030 or earlier. Is that a misprint?

Yeah, Director City Planning, should that be 2050 or earlier?

No, we had a target for council operations and a target for community, so 2030 is correct.

So 2030 is the target for council?

Yes, Council operations.

Right.

That's what I was trying to clarify, and I'm not sure whether everyone speaking tonight is drawing a distinction between council and the community. And I think when I put the mayoral minute up originally, I was aiming for 2032, and the then General Manager advised me that he was concerned that council could probably make that timeframe, but wasn't sure that the community could, and we weren't in a strong position to make the community actually —like, we can't actually make people convert to solar power or make them convert to other kinds of transport. And so he thought that 2050 was a more realistic goal, but then I compromised and said, well, it should be 2050 or earlier. And listening to what has been said, or in the report from management, it looks to me like council itself is going to make the 2030 deadline easily , probably a lot before 2030.

And maybe the community will as well, because there's a lot of work going on , and many of the things, probably most of the things that Councillor Wheeler mentioned have already started . They're already in process. When she was speaking, she made it sound as if nothing is happening. She talked about the cost of inaction. There's actually a lot of action going on in this sphere, in our council and in the region and in New South Wales. And I don't agree with her that there's nothing going on and it's all inaction. Mr Mayor,

That's not what I said. That's a point of— Sorry,

That's not a point of order. As I've explained before, you're able to speak again if you claim— I

Didn't say it was a point of order. I said it was misrepresented. Well,

It's disorderly to interrupt somebody else who's speaking. If you claim to have been misrepresented, you can ask to speak again after you have the call. That's what the code of meeting practice is. It's not give you the right to interrupt anybody else. Councillor Calvert. Yeah,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. As I was saying, Councillor Wheeler made it sound as if nothing was happening and made it sound that nothing will happen until 2050. Now, she may not have meant to say that, but that's the way it is interpreted, that 2050 is going to be when everything happens. That's not the case at all. It's all happening already, and the council in particular, I believe, will make the 2030 deadline. Whether the community will or not is another question, and Councillor Wheeler hasn't really distinguished between the community and the council in her notice of motion.

And the point that keeps being forgotten is that the mayoral minute didn't say— By 2050, it really said before 2050, and 2030 is before 2050.

So changing the number from 2050 to 2030 will probably have no effect at all. It's not going to make things hurry up. We already got our foot on the accelerator. We're leading the way in terms of many councils in Western Sydney. WesRAP often quotes or cites Hawkesbury as an example, talks to other councils saying, You should be doing what Hawkesbury is doing. We are really out there in front, and I find it difficult to tolerate the implication that we're doing nothing. Now, whether Councillor Wheeler meant to say that is another matter, but that's the message that came across. And she also said that action is being delayed, and I can't see us delaying any action. Action is, as I said, we have our foot on the accelerator and we're pushing very hard.

And we as a council have chosen to have a net zero emissions strategy, and we were quite early on in doing that. Not many councils had it going when we started it. And back in those days, two or three years ago, there was uncertainty about how quickly it could be done, and that's why 2050 popped up. It's another reason why 2050 popped up, and it is the same date that the state government has now endorsed as well. But over the last few years, it's become obvious we can do it much more quickly, and we will do it much more quickly. But there's no need to now turn around and change the date and change the targets, because we're going to make it by a long shot anyway.

As I said, I find it difficult to support this motion because, as Councillor Sam Progro pointed out, there's no action in it. There's a lot of things in there about feeling concerned, but the only action is to change 2050 to 2030. I don't see that that's very cost efficient. I don't see that that's going to get us anywhere when we're already working on this flat out, and we're making an impact, and we are leading the community. We are leading Western Sydney. Why would we want to muck around with these numbers? That's not going to change anything, and it could be a quite expensive thing to do. So I want to see how much it's going to cost to change that one little number, because that money could be better spent on making the projects work, making things happen.

That's where we should be spending our money, not on quibbling about whether it says 2050 or 2030. That is not productive. That is just divisive. What we should be doing as a council is getting behind staff. They're doing great work in this area, and I therefore would like to see the cost, and I would therefore support the amendment. Thank

You. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I believe we're speaking about the amendment, not the motion at the moment. Is that correct? Yep. Okay, so I'll speak against the amendment. I don't think it's necessary that we have a report about that, because as Councillor Calvert just says, we're probably going to make it anyway. So I don't know why you'd need a cost about changing that. I mean, we don't have to change our whole strategy. We just can accelerate the actions within that. And I don't know why you think that's funny, but I know some of you in the room are new to all this sort of climate change stuff. I really appreciate the shift that has taken place since we debated the climate emergency, where of course we had some people who were totally opposed to taking any action on climate.

But as we've seen at all levels of government, there's been a recognition that we have to take action, and as anyone knows that I have been speaking about it for the last nine years, non-stop just about, I'm very pleased to see that shift taking place. In particular, I think that putting a target, and the original target for 2030, if people will recall, we came up with that in our community strategic plan, so that's been around for quite a while. That's not a new thing, and that's about the council operations, and we have been doing well in that regard. And setting aspirational targets for the community is a really good sign of leadership, because it's by leading by example, and this is why we've raised things in the past about trying to get electric vehicle chargers, about trying to have an electric vehicle as the mayoral car, things that show that we're committed to this, and that's why we would be heading down that track.

It's—I'm speaking against the amendment—so I think that we don't really need to have a report. I think that we can just... There's so many ways we can do this, and the two main fundamental things are simply to reduce the emissions, particularly in the transport sector, and I just think that we have strategies already in place that can be moving along towards that. I think Councillor Wheeler's motion, the first point, is very, very important, that we notice that warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. This is a really important report, and when I speak on the motion, I'll speak about that. But in terms of having to go through another layer of cost, unless perhaps the Director of City Planning can give us an idea of how much of an adjustment she thinks that would have to make, I'd be interested to hear if anybody could give an idea of the cost of that

I was about to ask that question. Is it possible, Director City Planning, to accelerate the actions and the strategy without incurring a cost?

Yes, so I've actually just been quickly scanning the actions. Drawing, intents and purposes, a number of the actions are underway, such as EV charging, and there'll be a briefing to Council around that particular project. In terms of the target, if Council resolved to change the target to 2030, the strategies that are in the net zero and water efficient strategy would just continue as they are, being progressed. It wouldn't necessarily incur additional costs over and above what we've got underway. It just means that the target's different, and that's what we'd be reporting on and monitoring on.

So we're saying, just to clarify, Director, we can do it faster than we are now without incurring any additional costs, in which case the question might be, why haven't we already been doing that?

So in terms of the work that we're doing, we're progressing the actions as planned. In terms of the strategy, what we're monitoring is how we're progressing against the target of net zero by 2050. If we were to reach that target sooner, then we'd be reporting that. But ultimately, if Council resolves to change the target, we would just be reporting against an amended target and how we're progressing against that target.

So just to clarify, to pass this motion won't change anything in the strategy. We'll continue exactly as we were.

We will continue the work as planned. It's just more the monitoring and reporting against the amended target.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Wren. I think that in terms of costing around this, we simply cannot overlook that the cost of doing nothing is going to be significant, and by significant, I mean it's going to be enormous. And so we should be doing whatever we can to be pushing forward, putting the target there. A target is something to strive for. We're already on the path for doing that, and I think that we should be just pushing forward. We don't need another report into the cost of changing the strategy. We've just heard that the strategy can continue as it is, and what we should be doing as civic leaders, we should be taking every single opportunity to be out there to the community, encouraging them, making them understand of the consequences of not doing everything that we can do, and simply leading by example.

That will be the best way that we can help our community to reach that target and to reach that target ourselves.

Thank you. I'm going to listen to the debate now. The answer from the Director of City Planning might have changed my mind a bit. I was expecting that this actually required some action, but if it is just purely virtue signalling with no change to strategy, no change to planned actions, no cost to anybody, and nothing's actually different, in which case it kind of seems fairly benign. We might not be worth our time discussing it at this length if all we're doing is putting a different target on it and changing nothing else. But I'm not sure that was necessarily the intention of the mover of the original motion, so I'll just sort of wait out and hear what other people have to say. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Mayor.

I feel that there's a few things that need clarifying following on from some of the points that have been made. Again, I join with the Deputy Mayor in congratulating those people who, a couple of years ago, raved and ranted and carried on and made actually some really outrageous statements about the young people who were demanding action on climate change for their future. And it's good to see that they have followed the Prime Minister's lead and adopted the science behind climate change. I will refer you to point one, which refers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their warning, what they have termed a code red on climate. That's been the change. That's why the target needs to change. Even the Prime Minister

Sorry, sorry, just pointing out, at the moment we're just talking about whether or not we need a report or not. Yes

I'm aware of that, Mr Mayor.

You can come back to speaking on the rest of the motion after that.

Sure.

The reason that we need more than a report on the cost is because this is about getting ahead of the curve now. I think we have our answer to Councillor Richard's question, really. The cost is non-existent. The cost of changing the target is non-existent. This isn't virtue signalling. It's about driving change. By changing the target, we work towards greater change. It's the same as if you go on a diet. If you decide you're going to lose 10 kilos over six months, you don't have to lose as much as if you decide you're going to lose 10 kilos in 10 weeks. That's what we're doing here. We are cutting our— we're going on an emissions diet, and the window that we give ourselves is how fast we're going to have to move on this.

So getting a report is just kicking the can down the road. We know we have to make this change. We know we have to make this change rapidly. What we need to acknowledge is that there is a greater cost of delay than there is of acting. Acting comes with benefits and opportunities, and that's what I want this council to embrace for the community that we represent.

Thank you. Is there any further discussion on the amendment?

No. In which case we'll put the amendments. I'd just ask the secretary to take it off the screen for a moment so we can vote, if that's possible. So put the amendment. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. Favourable, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Free. Against ? Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ross, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen . Declare it lost . Councillor Cotterlash was absent from the debate.

So then we go revert back to the original motion, which only Councillor Wheeler has spoken on at the moment, I believe. So if anyone wishes to speak on the motion.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Deputy Mayor.

Oops. Sorry, thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, and I support this motion, and I hope that everybody understood what Councillor Wheeler just spoke about, which was, of course, about the reason for bringing this forward in light of the IPCC report and the absolute dire projections that came within that report. We are on track in some ways, but we know the urgency now with which we must act. We've pushed the climate into unprecedented territory in terms of extreme weather events, and this is intensified by human impacts. We've seen that pattern here. We've witnessed the pattern firsthand, and we know it's not going to go away. This is something that we simply have to be on the front foot about. The disasters unfolding, of course, in the Northern Hemisphere with the extreme heat waves—I mean temperatures of almost 50 degrees in Canada and places like that—the intense rainfall in Germany killing people and knocking out villages that have withstood, you know, centuries and so on.

It really is unprecedented, and we've really got to act. And we can do this in a positive way by having our strategy in place and moving forward with everything. As we have been doing. So, unfortunately, we have lost a lot of time over the years, but we can pick that up, and we have been picking that up. One of the most important areas, of course, is around heat waves, and heat waves kill more Australians than any other disaster. Part of the country will become unlivable in temperatures if temperatures exceed 50 degrees, and that includes areas in our locations if we don't do something about it. The Climate Council has reported that the impacts of climate change will be felt most acutely at the local level.

And as caretakers responsible for community infrastructure, it's local government that much of the risks and subsequent costs will be borne by. The damage to council-owned assets gives rise to risks of increased insurance premiums and increased liability risks, with more people non-insured and underinsured. Each time we have a disaster, there's a heavy reliance on our community to deliver support at these times and to pick up the pieces and to be there to fund a lot of the recovery. So this, over time, will become a burden on local government as we have to replace more damaged infrastructure and so on, as we have more of these extreme weather events. So we simply just must be prepared for any of these disasters and ready to deal with whatever comes our way.

And to do this, we must simply reduce emissions as quickly as possible. And we must support our community to reduce emissions and encourage economic development opportunities around this, which are capable of boosting the local economy. And there's many of those that exist that we're yet to embrace, and that's something that I hope we'll really take up on. We also have to be mindful of the increasing administrative and tort law cases that are emerging around climate change, and how much we have to be mindful of our decisions and how we factor in climate change into our decision-making and so on. This is through our planning. We have to look at all options around combating climate change and encourage as much as possible, potentially through our upcoming planning instrument review, to address the increasing temperatures, which are going to be of such an issue across Western Sydney.

Today, for example, I heard a podcast about innovative 3D printed houses, which are aimed at addressing design to make housing with higher thermal efficiency. And this is just one example of the many things that can be done to improve airflow and so on and reduce temperatures and so on. On that podcast, Dr Kim Loo, the chair of Doctors for the Environment, said that she believes there's a direct relationship between thermal efficiency of houses and how well a person lives. So keeping our community well means that we have to look at the design and how we better ensure that people are combating the impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, there's no regulations for landlords in New South Wales requiring minimum standards for rental accommodation to protect people from the impacts of climate change.

But I'm hoping that will change as well. We're doing some positive things, but there's a lot more we can do. The cost to us is going to be enormous if we don't act. And I hope that we will revisit our pledges that we made as part of the City's Power Partnership in transitioning across our equipment and our vehicles to electric as soon as we possibly can, whenever there's a replacement of any particularly outdoor and mowing equipment, to get electric. Electric versions will make it cheaper and, of course, will reduce emissions across our organisation as well. There's just so many things we can be doing, but I'm really—

Just know the time expires a while back, Deputy Mayor, so.

Oh, sorry, I didn't think we were having clocks tonight. Sorry. So, all right, well, thank you.

Thanks. We have clocks every night, Deputy Mayor. Oh,

Well, sorry. I've heard some very long speeches so far tonight.

It might have just sounded long because I watched the clock. Councillor Calvert. Yeah,

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to repeat some of the things I said before when I was speaking on the favour of the amendment. Look, the Deputy Mayor is talking about the cost of doing nothing is enormous, and she said that two or three times just then, and I totally disagree with that. We're not doing nothing. We're doing everything. As I said, our council is well out in front, and as the Director of City Planning pointed out, council itself is really going to make the target of 2030, and the question then is, how do we get the community to make the target? And I haven't heard anything from the speakers here to say how that's going to happen. All I've heard is that by going to 2030 we're going to encourage people to act faster.

I don't see that changing that number is going to have any effect, and neither does the Director of City Planning. Now , we keep talking about a target of 2050, but the target we have for the community, as I explained, is not 2050, but before 2050, as much as we can before 2050, and that could be 2030. At the rate we're going now, the rate that the state government is now taking on board and the regional focus on this issue, I think the community will come very close to this by 2030, and changing the numbers around is not going to change anything . We're not sitting on our hands, we're not doing nothing, and I haven't heard any extra actions being put forward here. I mean, I think this kind of debate should be about what else can we do and what can we do to hurry things up, and I'd be very happy to be part of that kind of discussion.

But that's not the discussion we're having tonight. The discussion we're having here is let's change the number. Changing the number has no effect whatsoever. And I believe that no one in the community now doubts the urgency of this matter. We're all looking to solve this problem. This council, in particular, has embraced it. We're working very hard on it, and what we need to actually do is get on with it, not sit around quibbling about numbers that came up two or three years ago, but actually get on with it. And what we're discussing here does not add anything to the fight against climate change or the fight for zero net emissions. Let's throw this away. Let's forget about dates or numbers.

Let's get on with the issue. Maybe we could put this to the environment committee to discuss other ways that we can improve our strategy. Maybe that's the way to go, but not to sit around wasting all this time saying, Oh, we should say 2030, not 2050. Firstly, we didn't say 2050, we said before 2050. So look, I can't really support this motion because it does nothing. All it does is divide and doesn't give us any way forward. Thank you.

Councillor Carvet, Councillor Ross.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm very disappointed to hear the negative comments from the previous speaker. I'll supply you, particularly the previous speaker, with two concrete actions that Council could embark upon almost immediately, should it have the desire and the courage. The first is to do something about the gas flaring at the driftway waste facility. WSU have recently indicated that they're involved in some sort of intensive agriculture in confined space, possibly under glass or whatever, in which case the gas is being emitted as a result of the flaring. of the methane that we're currently doing could be used as a source of heat for agricultural use as well, as a by-product of the actual flaring.

Or the gas could be cleaned up and used as a fuel . Then, in addition to that, I pose this question to the previous speaker: why doesn't Council get on with doing community education which actually curtails the amount of red bin waste going to disposal that we currently have? Now, it's not a council-only requirement .

The community has to become involved, and this is where we need education and action. The community needs to be educated that the separation of waste into a greater number of streams of waste is going to be absolutely a core requirement to get down to these levels of lower emissions. In other words, we separate these, if you like, plastic films, etc., that should go off to our supermarket supplies, whoever that might be. We should also get rid of all of our metals and glass into separate areas, apart from the normal recycling thing. Then we've got to do something about composting with worms or FOGO, again separate from the disposal of material into a landfill. Now , that requires education.

It requires action. And Council could start off with not only conducting education into trying to have a community understanding of these new requirements, it could also move in replacing the current red bins with lower volume bins for the same purpose, because there is a lesser requirement. If you really analyse it, probably about 5% or 10% at most of the red bin waste that we've got at the moment

Is only valid in that circumstance for disposal in that fashion. All of the other 95% has other means of homing and reusing and getting into this circular economy. There's plenty of options for us to take and adopt and do and lead the way. We don't need some other level of government pulling us along by the nose. We can be sufficiently of a mind to have our own initiatives and inform our own community, educate them and get them into working with us, which will save them money. I mean, we're spending a million dollars on opening up a new heavens

And the life of that is expected at possibly 6 to 7 years. Maybe that can be extended to 7 to 12 years. So overall, everybody is contributing, everybody is saving money, and we're achieving the ends which we're requiring. I put that to you in all sincerity. Thank you. Thanks

Councillor Ross.

Being no further speakers—well, actually, I might just add, yeah, just to reiterate from before, I think that the other comment that probably won't be a surprise for anyone, because I've been saying this for nine years every time a motion like this comes up, is that it's not up to us. I don't believe it's our place at all to be writing to the Energy Minister to try and change federal government policy. Nobody has elected us as their federal representative. They have a federal representative. Susan Templeman. It's not us. So we're in no position to be representing anybody to the federal government and asking the federal government to change its policy or to do anything on behalf of the Australian government.

That's not our role, and I'm not going to get involved in supporting that. Similarly, you know, requesting that our local federal member signs a community protection pledge, again Susan Templeman's elected by the electorate of Macquarie, not by us. It's not up to us to take concerns to her via a conduit. She's perfectly capable of receiving those concerns, those representations from the community herself and making the decision on whether she wants to take them forward. Nobody elected me or Councillor Wheeler or anybody else as their federal representative. Nobody voted for me because they thought that I would represent them on federal issues better than their local federal member. That's not why I'm the mayor.

It's not why any of us are councillors, and I don't think it's our role at all. Similarly, I'm still—I'm concerned with point two in particular, though, which is that either we're suggesting that nothing is going to change, that we're just changing a number and it's just virtually signalling there is no change to the strategy, or more likely that there will have to be some change to the strategy to meet that figure, if we intend—genuinely to meet it, in which case there will be some cost to council, and we don't know what that looks like yet. So with the information currently before us, I'm not willing to support the motion.

Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just to make a very brief observation and then a request. I just wanted to counter something that Councillor Ross said. If there is indeed any kind of gas flaring at a waste facility, the gas that's being produced there is probably methane. Methane is 28 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide and the water vapour that would result if that was burnt off, so small dot point. And if this is about to come to a vote, may I request that it be presented in Siriatum. Part of reply,

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I'm happy to have this come in Siriatum if that makes Councillor Zamponio feel better about voting against a 2030 target for the future of both the community and the planet.

Just to respond to a few of the comments that have been made. This isn't all about spending money today and that money going down into a black hole and leaving Council in a bad financial position. The choices that we make now cost us long into the future. What we know about climate change, not just from our own experience, but from all the modelling and all the expert advice, is that the longer we delay, the greater the cost. Now that delay is either not doing anything now or being really slow in what we do. The faster we transition, the more time we have, the less it will cost. We know this very, very clearly now. How do we know? Because we've been buggerising about for about 40 years. That's why we know that it's getting expensive, because the rubber has now hit the road and it's getting expensive.

You heard from the speaker that she has now experienced six evacuations in two years. These are due to climate-related disasters. Part of the reason that our financial statements are not as rosy as they could be is because of, excuse me, three disasters and a global pandemic, all of which are in whole or in part related to climate change. You think this is going to be expensive? Just you wait.

The Australian Local Government Association passed a motion declaring that we are in a climate crisis. There are no climate deniers in local government at that level anymore, because we're carrying the costs. We know the impacts of this already. The game has changed. The declaration from the IPCC to a code red means that the game has changed. This is about getting ahead of the curve. If we want to benefit from transition, not just mitigate, but really benefit, we've got an LGA full of tradies who will really benefit from changes to building design, road building, transport, changes to vehicles. They're going to cash in on this. We can support them in that. That is our role, supporting our community to thrive.

I didn't say that nothing was happening. There are , I have listed things that this Council is doing in the background to the notice of motion. Several options have been raised by people here, including Councillor Ross talking about matters that the waste committee was actively pursuing before it was disbanded.

There are loads of things that we can do. Changes to our waste management around household waste, but also business waste and particularly building waste. Sorting, reducing, separating out food and organics and using them as fertilisers improves the methane coming out of the tip, but it also functions far more effectively as a fertiliser and means that fossil fuels aren't used to produce fertilisers to grow turf and agricultural products. Changes to transport, use of chargers, shifting our fleet to EV, that all flows onto the second-hand market and makes it easier for members of the community to buy electric vehicles. That's when the real change starts, when normal people who can't afford to buy a new electric vehicle can choose a second-hand electric vehicle.

That's the point that we need to reach in the market for EVs to really take off. Massive changes to our housing so that they're liveable, so that they're not expensive tents like they are at the moment. Procurement as a market driver, that's our job as one of the largest organisations in our LGA. That's a responsible move for us. Education to the level that Blacktown and Parramatta Council runs on sustainability initiatives, making people's lives more comfortable, cheaper, safer and more efficient, and far lower in emissions, more sustainable and more resilient. That's what we should be doing. If the community is ready, and I hear from Councillor Calvert that they are, then let's measure against a real target, a 2030 target, the target that our community can hit and should hit for their own benefit.

It's not because it's some feel-good, virtue-signalling, greeny thing, but because it's what's the better option for our community right now that can be achievable. It isn't going to cost us any more to change the target. What it will do is change our measuring. It will change our goals. And we know from everything else that we set goals and targets for that when you put in a target, a meaningful, aspirational target, you are far more likely to hit it than if you just go, look, we'll just drag our feet to 2050. She'll be right. Hopefully we'll hit it earlier. It's not going to be all right. We know it isn't going to be all right. We've got this. Let's inspire the community. Let's inspire ourselves, and let's do this now.

Sorry, just had a message from Councillor Richards just trying to get back in, so I might just give her a few seconds. I don't know if she's in the waiting room. An IT issue. Oh

Actually I can't see her in the waiting room. We may have to proceed to a vote. If I've read the room correctly, I'm going to put points one, three, four and five together and put two separately. If nobody objects to that as a way forward,

In which case we'll go points one, three, four and five. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmusson, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Garrow. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Tree, Councillor Richards with … for the vote. Declare it carried. And then we'll put point two. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Lyons-Bucket, Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Garrow. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Tree, Councillor Richards.

Back up to item 178. I'm not sure if someone can get in contact with Councillor Richards and see if they can help her get back in . If we go to item 178, the communication engagement strategy.

Anybody wish to move anything here

No . Councillor Calvert moved something .

Yes, sorry. I don't know what's happened to Councillor Kotlash either. She seems to have dropped out.

Oh, so she indicated she was unwell and

Wouldn't be able to attend the rest of the meeting. Oh, okay. Didn't

Read that out, sorry, I thought... Yeah

Well, I believe that she was going to move that this matter be deferred because the report has a lot of

Inadequacies and hasn't been thought through properly, and I was relying on her to give us all that information, and I don't have all that information. But I did discuss a few things with her and based on what I remember, I would like to therefore move that the motion be deferred.

So consideration of the strategy be deferred for a briefing session or just for future time?

Well, I think probably for a briefing session, yes.

Okay. A seconder for that? Councillor Ross seconded. Okay. Any further discussion, Councillor Calvert

Not really, just to elaborate that it is a communication strategy and it has a few errors, and the one that really stood out to me was that there are sections in there talking about community involvement and... Having relations with the community, but it, as far as I can see, doesn't mention our committees. And our committees are based, the structure of our committees now is based on the assumption that the whole community is invited to participate. And I think that would be a basic, a very basic way of communicating with the community. But it doesn't seem to be in there, or maybe if it is there, it's not highlighted as anything major. So I think we need to go back and revisit that one in particular. And as I said, Councillor Kotlash had many of these inadequacies, but that's the one that stood out to me. Thank you.

Any further discussion? Councillor Ross

Thank you, Mr. Mayor . In seconding this motion of the previous Mayor, I'm doing that because this is a communication that was manifestly a failure

How can we consider seven responses

A successful round of community consultation? It simply isn't. I'm sorry, but it's not. And then when you look at the commentary that has come in from the more distant parts of our LGA

It's quite clear that they are very

Unhappy with the modes of communication to which they are able to gain access at the moment. Now, some of that is beyond our control. I quite agree. However, the task of council is to find the appropriate modes and means of communication and actually

Firstly try them and see if they work , and keep on trying and finding alternate means and modes to ensure that there is communication. Now, in the McDonald Valley area, as I understood it , people were accustomed to receiving

Printed information that came through a publication called Living Heritage, which is

Often available to us councillors and has certainly been supported by other local government areas and some of our parliamentary members. Now, this council had an association with that publication, as I understand it, up to probably three or four years ago through either our community services arm or Peppercorn or both. And council contributed some funds to ensuring that that publication remained open and operational . I believe that somehow or another terminated , and the operator of the

Bulletin or newspaper, or letter, whatever you want to call it , was none the wiser and, in fact, has been deeply offended by that. But the reason for raising that is that this apparently was a document and a newsletter, if you like, that circulated up in those more remote regions, with it being available initially around about the Wyzans Ferry area and then being carried on from there up into that part of the world. Now, it's not beyond our wit and wisdom as a council, surely, to go out there and find out what the means of communication are. We also have mobile education activities going on, even with, I think, HCOS and other NGO groups. And even if they have to be used as a means of furthering communication, I'm sure they would be involved because they're of a community mind as much as we are.

I honestly believe that this whole thing has got to be sat down, looked at again, and to have the word noted put against a community comment, I feel is totally disrespectful of the community. I don't abide by that. I think it's up to our staff to shake a leg and get out there and find out how we do communicate in an effective manner and make sure that we implement it and get feedback on it, so these folk in more distant areas feel part and parcel of the community and not like lost souls in the middle of a desert or a forest. It's just untenable in this day and age. Thank you.

Thanks, Councillor.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just a quick question more than anything. If we defer this, what sort of timeline are we looking at? I'm just acutely aware that we have a month left before we go into caretaker mode. So could we get some idea on whether this could be passed while we're in caretaker mode, and when we're likely to have this come to a briefing session. If it's not possible for this Council to deal with it, is it something that's reasonable to hold over until February or March next year for the next Council, who will probably require some time to get their heads around it as well? And can we continue without it in that case?

Okay. Question in four or five parts. The General Manager

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Noting, you know, if Council was of a mind to defer it at this point, and we were to then brief the current Council , taking on board that feedback and any revisions that would be required, I don't think it would do it justice to return it in the current term of Council. And that would be my preference at this point, to hold it into the new term. Can

I have a supplementary question, please, Mr. Mayor? Supplementary question So does that pose a problem that we won't have a communication strategy or an updated communication strategy between now and probably March next year?

Is that for the General Manager or the Manager?

I'm happy to ask the Manager of Communications. My assumption is that we're continuing on as we are at the moment, but I'll pass to her

Mr Mayor, yes, that's correct. We would just continue on as we are . A lot of the things that are included in the action plan are things that we are doing

To consult with the community, engage with the community anyway. Thanks

Councillor Tree.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I just recall last meeting when we were having a bit of a discussion and some suggestions were being made . I made one about— it might not be the right document for this sort of level of detail—but I was assured that it'd be considered, but the model of deliberative democracy, which I think is a really valid and very authentic way of engaging with the community. And by that I mean by, you know, a broad cross-section of the community, not just the same five people who usually get involved because they're very interested in their local community. But it gives the opportunity for people outside of that group of five to be able to have a say and to contribute meaningfully to decisions made by council.

I'm just wondering, is there any—is it—where would that appear in a document, or what type of document would that appear in? Because I note that other councils have had some things mentioned here. Just a question, I guess, really.

That to the Manager of Corporate Communications.

Yes, that was included on page 20 under Empower in terms of the levels of public participation. But you're correct in that it would be further explored as part of the action plan when we look at the different options for engagement, and that would be one of the options that we would call up there.

Okay. All right. So if this gets shuffled along, is it possible? Oh, it doesn't matter. All right. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I think that, you know, I think there's some good things in here and I think there's some things that can be expanded on. I do think deferring it to the new council is the best way to go because I think that a fresh new council will want to look at those things anyway. And I guess with a strategy such as this, it's always evolving because a lot of it is intertwined with technology and so on. So it's got to be updated as things change. In case staff will be working on it in that interim, I did have some feedback, and I do echo what Councillor Ross said, because I was also surprised that even after direct contact and follow-up phone calls, that there were only seven out of 25 submissions from community groups, which I think is a shame.

But a couple of things that I've come across with just collecting feedback lately around this is that even though council does do a lot of engagement, is that many people in the community don't feel that they're there at the start of the journey for a particular project or an upgrade. They think they're coming too late to it when they're getting the information. So if there's something happening in a local area, and I do take on board that there's the inclusion of town reference panels and so on, which I think was one of the original suggestions when we first started out in this term of council, I think that's a really good thing. So a couple of people have said to me that we only found out about it when it was too late to make any change.

So I think taking people along on those journeys, and I think we've done it reasonably well around some of the park upgrades, maybe not all of them, but some of the ones where we've put the plans out early and people have really felt that they were a part of getting that done, I think that's been really good. Of course, there are. There is a huge reliance on social media, and I think that that, whereas it has a part, I still think that evaluating how meaningful that is is quite difficult, particularly, you know, if council social media is, you know, it might be something like a recruitment for farmer wants a wife, and that might be really, really popular, but that isn't really giving any information about council's core business or anything that's really relevant around that sort of thing.

So I think when we evaluate how effective that is, I think that that's a little bit flawed if we're taking it just on numbers of who engages. The other area was around youth. I don't think we're getting to our youth, and by that I don't mean the school leadership project, whatever program. That's great for those kids who are leaders within their community and who come along, they're in their school community. We have many children that won't be exposed to that, but we also have that group of kids from about 16 to and beyond who may have left school and they sort of are in a bit of a void, particularly around what council might be able to help offer them. So they may have issues like access to transport to get to job interviews, or they might not know where they can go to get some sort of socialisation if they're out of school and other various issues like that.

And I think that we can probably seek from our youth, and I don't know what happened to the youth summit. The last one was in 2017, and we did have that, and it was a valuable resource for engaging with youth of that age group. So I think that that would be really good. Targeting specific groups with particular information would be really good as well. And I think that we've come such a long way in community engagement and encouraging our community to participate over the last five years. It's been a real improvement and people have noticed it. So I think taking a bit more time to work on this and then getting the new council to put it forward is the best way to go.

Thank you. Noting the tone here, I wonder whether, if that's the case, if there's an appetite to look at potentially adopting this with a six-month review. So we're not operating—so we can tell the community about how we're currently operating, given that this is the strategy we're just going to keep operating to anyway, but giving the new council a chance to—not a chance, but requiring the new council to review this early on in the new term in six months, so that we don't—it's not the forever strategy, but we're also not operating without one. Just a suggestion if anybody felt that was appropriate. Councillor Tree, you've still got your hand up, or is that again?

Councillor Tree .

Sorry, I was just going to say that what Councillor Buckett was talking about is exactly what deliberative democracy is, where everyone gets in at the very beginning of the process, not once a decision's sort of been made and then there's a bit of lip service and community engagement. So yeah, great.

Councillor Rasmussen.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, your suggestion that we adopt it tonight for a six-month review I think is a good, sensible way through this. So that's, mop it up by doing that, in my view.

Thank you. Move an amendment, if there's a seconder for that.

Yeah, I'll move that amendment. Seconded

Councillor Wheeler. Any further discussion on the amendment or the motion?

No? All right, well, we'll go right of reply, Councillor Cowett.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I understand what you're getting at with your six-month extension or till a review, but if we send this to a briefing session, we can still make that decision at the briefing session anyway . I don't think we should make that decision right now. Many of the councillors who spoke have found inadequacies in this strategy, and I don't think we should therefore let it go ahead. And I think other councillors have said the same thing. We're not desperate to have it go ahead right now, and what we should be doing is looking at really polishing it up and handing it over to the new council in pretty good condition so they can then finish it off and then start their new term with a communications policy that actually works and is up to date.

So, in as much as I do understand where you're coming from, I think the better option here is to just defer to a briefing session. There were a couple of other things in the strategy that I wanted to point out, and the Deputy Mayor pointed out about the fact that youth don't seem to be mentioned much at all. And I've always been trying to get youth involved in council for my 22 years on council, and way back in 2000, I used to have primary school kids coming and listening to our meetings and getting them involved, and I— Would love to be able to get back into that in a constructive way. And also in the strategy, it talks about technical

Experts. So in one of the right-hand column where we answered submissions , it says there that technical experts will still be able to come to the Disaster and Emergency Committee and the Heritage Committee. But technical experts will come to all kinds of all the committees as they're needed, and that's just an inaccuracy. I mean, there are lots of these little inaccuracies that need to be addressed. Therefore , I don't think we can let it go ahead at this stage. There is another inaccuracy in there which I've just been looking for and I can't find, but it says something about Council being the gap or filling the gap between emergency services and the community. And I forget the actual words, but it made it point out, it seemed to indicate that if there's an emergency on, Council will somehow communicate what it wants rather than what the emergency services are telling us should happen.

And I think that needs to be really ironed out and really discussed because that's not the way it is. During an emergency, we are supposed to sing from the same song sheet as the emergency services. So there's little things like that in there which are incorrect and even could be dangerous to proceed with that at the moment. So I don't think we could. Make this go for six months and then review it. I think we really need to stop it now, have a good look at it, and polish it up for the new council. And I think that would be the responsible way for us to proceed. Thank you.

Sorry, I've just realised, Councillor Calvert, I've made a procedural error there. We didn't actually put that amendment before your right of reply. So the first thing I need to do now is put the amendment. If you wanted right of reply again, probably could have it, but I don't know how popular you'll be. So the amendment is that we adopt—here it is here on the board—and I'll just reiterate that the advice from the general manager was that if we were to go to a briefing session, it would be not the preference of staff to bring it back again this term, which was the reason the amendment was put up. So if we can all see that, if we could take it down so we can vote on it, please.

So all those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Richards, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Tree, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds. Against ? Councillor Ross, Councillor Calvert. Declare it carried. Any discussion on the motion now that it's a motion? Just death stare. Good. Right of reply required, Councillor Calvert?

I just wanted to repeat that I think it's a mistake to let this report go ahead. Even if we are going to review it in six months' time, it has too many errors and inaccuracies in it, and we should be doing a better job than this. And I think it's unfortunate that we haven't just deferred it.

Okay. I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Richards, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Rasmusson, Councillor Tree, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgna, Councillor Garo, Councillor Reynolds. Against? Councillor Ross, Councillor Calvert. Declare it carried. Given the time and how much business we have left, I might just suggest a short adjournment so we can reconvene in 10 minutes at 9.35. Thanks.

Given the time and how much business we have left, I might just suggest a short adjournment so we can reconvene in 10 minutes at 9.35. Thanks.

All right. I think that's enough to get going. So the next item are the items on block. So items 183 and 185 are on block. If somebody wishes to move those. Moved, Councillor Calvert. Seconded, Councillor Reynolds. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Conolly, Councillor Tree, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Richards. Against? Councillors Ross , Garrow, Lyons-Buckett, Kotlash. Absent for the vote. Declare it carried.

Yeah.

Move the recommendation, Councillor Richards. Seconder for that, Tree. Any discussion?

If not, we'll go to a vote. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Tree, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Richards, Councillor Garrow. Against?

And Councillor Ross and Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Councillor Kotlash absent for the vote, declared carried. The next item is—

Item 180, the draft Western Sydney University scholarship. Moved Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Zamprogno, the recommendation . Any discussion?

Councillor Wheeler?

Yes. Oh, sorry.

Yes, Councillor Wheeler would like to discuss it. Yep

Well, Councillor Lyons-Buckett moved it, I think, so she has precedent. That's okay.

Fine, I'll go ahead then. Just firstly, a question. In Table 2, when referring to eligibility, it says an Australian citizen of permanent residency. I presume that should read Australian citizen or permanent resident, rather than of, because if you're an Australian citizen, you have residency. So that seems to be either a typo or a tautology . And just one other issue that I think we probably need to cover is I think we need to have a contingency plan if Western Sydney University shifts the course that the student is enrolled in so that it's no longer available on the Hawkesbury campus. This is a university that does rearrange its courses depending on student numbers and whether, and so sometimes whole degrees have shifted recently, but sometimes classes that students expected to be available on one campus are only available on another, simply because it isn't worth, the university can't offer them to a limited number of students.

It's one of the functions of being a multi-campus university, I think. So I think it's probably reasonable to continue to support the student if the university has made that decision and the student hasn't. The student shouldn't be penalised by the university's decision. In fact, the student will probably be already having to shell out more for travel costs if they are required to shift for a semester also. So could we get some... Could we perhaps insert that as an additional clause, or at least have a contingency plan available

Might just refer that to Director City Planning as to how we might tackle that

Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor. Yes, we could insert that as a clause or as a note, just to highlight that the student wouldn't be disadvantaged if the course was moved by, as a result of the university changing their

Location.

Thank you . Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm really pleased to see this continue. I think this is a wonderful program. I was going to raise what Councillor Wheeler raised, because that was an issue that happened with the last recipient. She changed campuses and it had to be clarified whether that was the same, whether the scholarship continued. I'm not sure when we would have to decide on this. When is the scholarship decided upon?

Further to the Director?

City Planning

I might refer that to the Manager, Sue, if she's aware of the time frame. Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor. The next scholarship will come into play in the next calendar year for the university, so

Early next year.

Okay. Well, I assume we've just picked that in the new council term then, the councillor to be representative on that.

Deputy Mayor, just on that point, can we just be happy if we just change point four to say Councillor nominee to Councillor as a representative, at the time that it's selecting, or what's committee representatives?

Yes.

Yes .

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I was going to suggest that. Yes, so I've been really fortunate to meet a number of these recipients, and I think that being granted a scholarship is very welcome within the community. And especially given the cost of education these days, and I really welcome the addition of the involvement in some of the community events, particularly with the council-based youth programs of any description. And I really encourage the uptake of the mentorship suggestion. I think that that should, rather than just being optional within it, I think that should be one of the requirements of it, because that would be really beneficial to a student in that position. So, yep, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion? No , I'll put the motion. I write a reply. No. Put the motion. All those in favour? So we've changed point four to note that we're going to nominate that person at the time of the committees. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Richards, Councillor Tree, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Ross , Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Carver, Councillor Reynolds. Councillor Kotlash is absent for the vote. Declare it carried.

Next item is 18

Upper

Colo Bridge. Move the recommendation, Deputy Mayor. So you're on mute at the moment.

Yes, move the recommendation with an additional point four, which I sent through earlier today.

I'm not sure, I know Tracy isn't here, if the minute secretary got that. Yes, that was the additional point four, which came obviously after point three, as point four generally does. Oh, sorry, Mr Mayor. Seconded

Councillor Garrow

Sorry , Mr Mayor. I'm just trying, I've came back in from the adjournment and my iPad's done something odd. I'm just trying to find my business paper. Apologies.

The amendment's on the screen, or the addition.

Yes, I need the first three bits, but I'm happy for other discussion to go ahead while I just find my place. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Councillor Ross

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I wish to raise a number of questions

The first of which is:

What is the flood immunity of the proposed new bridge, please?

Do you mean the height, or

Yes. Well, apparently it's , according to this report, was rated as one in five, or maybe less. I don't know. I'm just wondering what's the intention? Councillor, thank you

I refer

That to the Director of Infrastructure Services. So through you, Mr Mayor, the current bridge is around about somewhere around the one in three. It's not a modelled level at that point . It's around about the one in three to one in four year level. We're intending to raise that by the maximum that we can with the approach roads, which would be around about another metre, which should provide around about the one in five year level . We'll need to confirm that with the detailed design. The report tonight is basically to recommend we continue to proceed with that. Thanks. Councillor Ross

Second question is in reference to sand deposition in the flood stream itself, and I preface that by comments that were made at the June the 5th, I think, meeting on site at which you attended, sir, where members of the community indicated that there had been substantial deposition of sand in that region to the extent, and I don't know whether this is just apocryphal, that in previous years it was possible to ride a horse beneath the bridge without colliding with the understructure of the bridge. Now, if that's the case,

What

Consideration has been given in this process to that, and is there any information, or is it intended to get any information in regard to the level of future depositions, please?

Through the Director.

Look , I guess what's occurred there over many years, as I said, the Colo River used to be partly navigable to various areas within that zone. But there's been substantial erosion and sedimentation over many, many decades that has resulted in the sand beds that are there at the present time . That was further exacerbated by the erosion during the following the fires, and we had substantial deposition of sand right across the upper Colo area and the roads . At this stage, we're not intending to remove any of that sand or carry out any works within the streambed area itself as part of this project . The significant flows coming down the Colo are certainly well above the impact of those sediments. But as I said, there's been no modelling done on the Colo itself in terms of whether that has any impact and whether that sedimentation will continue to occur

Thank you. Any further questions, Councillor Ross

No. When it's appropriate, I'd like to make commentary on the matter. It's

Appropriate now, Councillor Ross

Thank you, Mr Mayor . Well , firstly, I'd like to comment that the consultant, Oricon,

And council staff should have provided a , if you like, an overview or a brief— Summary report, and have had that tabled as part of this process this evening. I find that unfortunate that it is not here.

The report is very much, if

You like, set on a predetermined course.

For instance, on page 34, the words, where frequent inundation occurs. Now,

Frequent means something rather than irregular .

I'll leave it at that. Then I refer you to the answers just provided in regard to the deposition of sand and the thoughts about what height the bridge should be. There's no indication of any planning or consideration of what the future proofing and resilience of this structure ought to be. Now, presumably this edifice, when it's built, will have cost council something in north of five million, possibly up to eight million, I don't know, but in that region. And we've got absolutely no idea at this stage of its capacity in terms of resilience. If we get another significant flow of sand and erosion, as is likely to occur with these climate changing conditions, As we've had in the last two years, it's likely that the so-called one in five immunity will be one in nothing.

It might be just a forwarding of the crossing and we're no further ahead and we've got no resilience. So I think that there has to be some better and more constructive thoughts given to the height of the structure. And I think they should come to Council with propositions of a different height to that which has been spoken of this evening. It certainly can withstand that on the southern side and probably on the northern side, or the western side, however you want to describe it, it could well withstand that as well because once you're out of that stream area, there are inclines on that other lesser populated side of the bridge before there's a road jutting off down to the camping area. So I think this report and its apparent manifestations at this stage are not capable of support.

And I leave it at that, sir. Thank you.

Councillor Ross. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I take on board what Councillor Ross is saying, but it was my understanding from the various presentations that we had and the Zoom sessions that we had with the community that this was going to be a bridge that was somewhat increased in resilience, hence the decision to go with the concrete structure as it is. I think that it's been good to see the level of engagement with this community that has occurred subsequent to our initial engagement with them and a somewhat slow start-off, I guess, to get the process going. But I think it's definitely been welcome that the community has been involved and their input has been taken on board, and certainly around the moves to retain the original timbers in some way within the structure and to include the historical interpretation as part of the project.

The proposed amendment that I've brought forward is not necessarily directly related to the project as such. However, these are issues that have arisen because of the broken bridge that is there in part. Some of them existed anyway, but because point three does say that to undertake regular reporting to the community on progress and any issues or matters of interest as they arise, I've brought forward these issues that have been raised within the community. In that area, which they refer to as the car park, which is the side where, Mr Mayor, where you were standing when the meeting was on, and where Councillor Wheeler and I had to wade across to join you from the other side. So we'll call that the northern car park and the other side, because what's developing around there is what the locals are saying.

Of course, even though the reserve is closed for camping and so on, a lot of people are still going to the area, and as with other areas where people can swim and gather once lockdown is finished, we're going to have an influx of people coming out to those areas more so, because there aren't any bins in that car park. The locals are requesting bins. So I've included some of these points there, but I'm hoping that there will be ongoing discussions. It's not meant to be a big anything around all of this. It's just this community wants a few things out there that they can have to make their lives more bearable while they're quite inconvenienced by having a broken bridge and having to drive the long way around.

Many of them have had to go to considerable cost to deal with their garbage while they've been unable to have collections during COVID, and some of them are travelling much longer distances, as the Greens Road residents are, to access their employment and so on. So they're just wondering, there's some very, very unsavoury and not nice situations around there because of the lack of toilet facilities when people are gathering there. If we can investigate the provision of some sort of toilet, some sort of amenities in that location, it would be really good. They're having to deal with picking up human excrement and various things that isn't nice, and there's children down there. They've been doing a lot of rubbish collection down there, but then there's not a receptacle to put— The rubbish in when it's collected, and somebody then has to deal with that.

These, I'm raising these because I'm not suggesting that we as councillors can solve them, but we can definitely get the discussions going with the staff, and they can, you know, deal, let us know with any costs around it. The parking issue, I imagine, was probably a parking issue before, but there are people parking on that approach to the bridge, to the broken section of bridge, and that's becoming very dangerous. So perhaps there could be some sort of signage or some sort of barricade or something to control the parking. The locals would be the best people to tell the staff what exactly the situation is. An issue of safety is around the barricade on the broken bridge, which apparently keeps being removed or vandalised and so on.

I don't know if there's a method for strengthening that, but it would certainly, if it's possible, that that could be strengthened in some way that would make it easier for them—not easier for them, would make it safer. And also the community is still hoping for some sort of a temporary solution. Now, I don't know if those avenues have been exhausted, but if that's a temporary solution for a crossing there in that location, if those issues could be raised with the community, or if we could know the cost of perhaps putting a skip bin in the car park, I don't think it would be excessive. But I am putting these in here in the hope that they're supported, that the staff can engage with discussions around those for the ongoing safety and cleanliness in that area for the Upper Colo residents and visitors who are already coming but will no doubt increase.

Thank you,

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Mayor. Firstly, I want to thank the Upper Colo community, who have been really pragmatic, I think, in their approach to this. So when we first went out and spoke to them, it was very clear that they're very fond of their old bridge, and they certainly are very fond of the look and feel of their old bridge. When presented with the information around the differences, particularly the difference in timeline, I think that was probably the big sticking point for most people, is that they would have to wait significantly longer for a timber bridge to come in. They've gone with the concrete option. I think they're still hoping for something that in some way fits in to that environment.

One of the things that I, and I want to applaud their pragmatism here. It's commendable , I think, but it also is indicative of just how difficult it is for them to go the long way home every day and the impact that it has on the community. I would like us to flag that we won't use bitumen on this service. I know some of the photos that we've seen and some of the briefing stuff that's come to us has discussed the use of bitumen. It's not an environmentally sound road covering for an area like that, firstly, that's going to experience inundation, but also sits in a river with sensitive environmental land around it. Bitumen is not inert. It has really high pollution potential, both from oily hydrocarbon runoff and also from particle pollution.

The Colo River is extraordinarily clean for a river so close to a major global city. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to keep it that way. And in fact, that has been, I think, one of the standout... Characteristics of the timber bridge, while not as resilient, has little to no pollution potential because it's a biodegradable product to begin with. We need to do as—we need to—I know the environmental reports are still to come, but we need to do as little harm as possible in this space. Regarding point four that the Deputy Mayor has added, we really need urgent action on this. This is becoming— it's disgusting, frankly, what the local people are dealing with in there. And they're passionate about this area, they're passionate about the environment, and they're going in and cleaning up after people who, frankly, should know better.

It's fine to get caught short, but if you do, you need to clean up after yourself. Could we also use Council's comms to run some posts on taking your rubbish with you, the fact that there are no toilet facilities at these places, and if you do get caught short, you need to take your things home. We know that this is a problem in many areas of the LGA. We've had similar reports about dirty nappies and things thrown into people's yards at the boat ramp at Pitt Town. We really need to get on top of this. I think we've been telling ourselves that it's not the residents of our LGA that behave like this, but we know due to the public health orders that the stuff that's happening now, they are residents of the Hawkesbury because nobody else is supposed to be here.

So consequently, hopefully Council's comms can reach some of those people and give them a bit of a heads up.

Thank you. Any further discussion? No, we'll go right over to reply, Deputy

Mayor.

I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Tree, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Calvert. Against: Councillor Ross. Councillor Kotlash was absent for the vote. Declare it carried. Next item.

Use 182, drain induces at Pitt Town.

Ready to distribute everything there.

Recommendation moved, Councillor Zamprogno. Is there a seconder for that? Seconded, Councillor Tree. Any discussion?

Yes, Mr Mayor. Just to recognise that Councillor Richards raised this matter within the last few months. It's pleasing to see this report come back. I do see that it will take some investment of funds to assess the area properly, but I think that the cost is modest and that the recommendation to approve this for consideration in a future operational plan is a wise step. Thank you.

Thanks. No further discussion. We'll move to a vote. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Oh, sorry, Councillor Ross. As I mentioned, if you can please just put your hand up as soon as you know you want to talk on the item, so we don't have to go back after I call for a vote, which I'm not supposed to do, but we'll go Councillor Ross.

Thank you. I'd like to enquire in regard to the adjoining development in Ivy Avenue Street, whatever. It's apparent from the visual representations that we've been provided that that appears to have occurred between

1998 and 2003. I'd like to ask the council officers ,

In the grant of the development of that area in Ivy Avenue , whatever,

What engineering considerations were given to the adjoining road reserve at that time, and what was Agreed upon, if anything. And did it involve the developer of that site,

Please ? Thanks, Councillor Ross. It would be a good question to have emailed through because I imagine it's going to be taken on notice, but I'll refer that and see if the Director's got a really, really good knowledge of that back then. Director City Planning? No

I'll probably track it this one. I think part of will need to be taken on notice in terms of any consent conditions. However, as indicated in the report, this has always been road reserve at this location.

There are actually two subdivisions. So the most recent one, as you've indicated, I think was 2001, and the earlier part was, I think, around 1990. So the more to the right-hand side of that, as we're looking at the various plans. So all of the drainage from those areas drains to the west back to South Creek. So the drains have had no impact on those areas there. As to whether there are any conditions imposed on grading and levelling those areas, that's the section we need to take on notice.

Thank you.

And it's a shame we don't have that information. I thought it would have been considered as part and parcel of this document tonight.

Thank you. Thanks

Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just a very quick comment to say that I appreciate that this has come back to Council so swiftly from the notice of motion actually going forward. I just want to ask Mr Organ, if it's possible, the recommendation says to consider the allocation of the funding, and again I think that that funding is quite a reasonable assessment to therefore make a decision about what we do with— The land there, where it says Council consider the allocation of funding, is that just wording because it will be in the budget but needs to be adopted? Or how do we make sure it's in the budget for Council to adopt? Or is that just a word you always use until a budget is adopted?

Through you, Mr Mayor, typically what the process that we would follow through there is that we'll list that now for consideration when we're developing the next operational plan and budget. Where things such as this have been pulled out of or resolved by Council to consider, we'll bring those back to Council as part of that to say, yes , we've included it, or it's been incorporated into the staff's draft budget for consideration by the Council, or it hasn't been included for financial reasons or other aspects, and that's the opportunity then for Council to put that back in. But generally we will take that from this meeting and say if we can accommodate it within the operational plan, that would be the process from there on. Okay,

Thank you. So, yeah, the reasonable expectation is that it will be part of the budget for the next Council to consider, or if not, there'll be a reason why. Yeah

That's correct.

Right, no, thank you. That's wonderful. And thank you for getting that information back. I know that the members of the community around that area will be super impressed that we're actually doing something about it and getting on with it. So thank you very much.

Councillor Zamprogno, do you want to reply now?

Not necessary, Mr Mayor. Okay. So I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favourable, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Tree, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Calvert, Councillor [unclear]—sorry, against. Councillor Ross, Councillor Kotlash was absent for the vote. Declare it carried.

Is 1 .84 financial statements. I'm just going to ask the CFO to give us a really brief introduction to this item. Thank

You, Mr. Mayor. So I'll just give a brief overview of the results and what they mean. So for the financial year ended 30th of June 21, Council's net operating result before the grants and contributions was a deficit of 25.5 million. The flood has had a significant impact on Council's operating result, with 3.1 million in flood expenditure that Council had to incur and an entry for asset impairment of 19.4 million. In relation to the flood-related expenditure, it is anticipated that most of that expenditure will be recovered as a result of claims, and this reimbursement will be reflected as income in this financial year. In regard to asset impairment, asset impairment reflects the reduction in value and impact on usability of flood-impacted assets.

The 19.4 million reduction in asset value is somewhat of a temporary reduction in value because the assets are being restored as we speak . However, the way we need to account for things, that restoration of assets, we won't be able to reflect that in this year's result. But the impairment in this financial year, the June 21 financial year, has to be accounted for. Another main contributor to the result for the 21 financial year is the depreciation expense. So as a result of a revalued asset revaluation in the previous year, that has resulted in an increase in the depreciation of 6 million on top of what it had been. So that's something that at the moment we are looking at trying to address.

It's important to know that the financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting standards and the Local Government Accounting Code. These requirements include non-cash entries such as the asset impairment that we just talked about and the depreciation. These requirements need to be taken into consideration when using the financial statements to evaluate Council's performance against its annual budget. As shown in the attachment to the report, Council's bottom line result, in terms of if compared to how we budget, would have been a deficit of 1.7 million. So that doesn't include things like the asset impairment. That 1.7 million is predominantly a reflection of the additional costs in regard to the March 2021 flood, which, as we said earlier, was 2.1 million.

Without this event, Council would have achieved a budget surplus of 1.4 million. So it's just important to understand those results and what they mean and what actually reflects Council's performance against budget and what's simply an accounting entry. So happy to take any questions on that.

Thank you . Okay . Somebody, anybody wish to move anything on this item?

Anybody want to move the recommendation

Recommendation moved, Councillors and prognosed. Is there a seconder for that? Seconder, Councillor Tree. Any discussion? Councillor Ross

I'd like to raise a question with the financial officer. Okay . There was a, I believe the statement was made that the

Recovery. .

Of some of the impairment costs that have been reported of 19.4 million may be forthcoming in next or future years. And would the officer like to comment on the treatment of that, in that, as I understand it, whatever recovery is made

Those funds will not be offset against the impairment as reported here, but will enable either part or all of the capital works that may be involved in reinstatement of those assets or parts thereof to be conducted, and that they will in fact be treated as if they are new additions to the asset base of this council at that time. Would the officer comment?

If I could just also add to that, just to be 100% clear, is that treated as income for the purposes of the operating result, or is that treated as capital, that recovery?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, in accordance with the accounting code, when it comes to impairment, there's some things that we can run through what we call the revaluation reserves through the balance sheet, but there's a part that we are not able to do that, and that is the 19.4 million. So we are required to take that as an operating loss, as it's been reported in the statement in the year that it occurs, so as at 30th of June . When those assets that were impaired are restored , unfortunately we are not allowed to account for that as income. So where the change will be accounted for is in the balance sheet. So the value of the assets, obviously as we replace those assets, will be reflected in the balance sheet. So now, unfortunately, it will not be treated as income and we cannot offset it in any way. It's just the way the code is written, unfortunately.

Thank you,

Mr Mayor.

Councillor Ross.

Thank you. I'd like to raise some further questions

Staff were kind enough, and I thank them for this, to provide me with a detailed listing of both the impairment in terms of the amount being offset against operating income and the impairment as affecting Council's reserves . My question is this

Has there been

Provision by any body or bodies outside of Council of funding which has already impacted upon the level of impairment hereby recorded, please? Do you mean since 30 June ? No , I mean prior to

30 June , sir.

Refer that to the Chief Financial Officer.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. So the process of claim, it's ongoing. It's still ongoing. So pretty much started straight after the flood, and it's been an ongoing process where we have captured all expenses related to the floods. We made sure that we captured all those, and then we have been looking at all the funding available under the Natural Disaster, and there's new funding. There's just been new funding announced recently as well. So there's funding coming. When that funding is coming, we continue to assess whatever we couldn't claim under one thing, we try and claim it under another. So it is an ongoing process, and it's not complete as yet. But in terms of the repairs, they're ongoing as well. So essentially, we don't wait for the funding to undertake the repairs.

We've undertaken the clean-up and the repairs. We are working through that. As we do that, we put the claims through the relevant funding body.

So I think, if I get the question right, the question is: as at 30 June the impairment was 19.4 million. Is that after we've already recovered some of the total impairment, or was that the total impairment? If we've had assets that were damaged and have been fixed again prior to 30 June, are they included in that 19.4?

Yeah, it would be the position as at 30th of June, so predominantly. Maybe I'll ask the Deputy Chief Financial Officer to elaborate on that if she can.

Yeah, it's the state of play as of 30th of June. So if anything was restored, then there shouldn't be an impairment, therefore.

Thank you. Councillor Ross. Thank you, Mr Mayor. In that regard, I have three specific questions. What is the status of Terrace Road and the Redbank Creek Bridge crossing, which was certainly impacted in that flood event and appears not to have been provided for in this impairment document, please

Not sure who to refer that to, General Manager, whether that's a question for the Director of Infrastructure Services or if it's a question— Yep. Yeah, financial officer doesn't want it, so we'll go there.

Through you, Mr Mayor, I can answer the completion question. So in terms of the work that particular crossing Councillor Ross is referring to was restored within a short period after that damage was occurred to make it safe. That fitted under a particular class of the flood damage, so the immediate repairs that we undertake. I'm not sure whether it showed up as an impairment in the accounting sense or whether it was purely one of immediate make-good works. I can answer that question. We'd need to take that on notice.

Yeah, I mean, if I can add to that, Mr Mayor. So, for something to be accounted for as an impaired asset, its functionality needs to be significantly reduced. So just purely being damaged is not automatically mean that it is an impaired asset. So perhaps , yeah, that road wasn't damaged enough to justify it being accounted for as impaired.

It was significant damage, however, it was repaired relatively quickly to get it back to safe trafficable standard.

Thank you. Councillor Ross, you have two more.

Yes, I do. Just in relation to that, my comment would be, I think it would be advisable if Councilors were advised as to what the accounting treatment was of that expenditure, because the road was reduced to single lane operation and there was 24-hour-a-day traffic control over that section of road. That's a comment in regard to that. Now further, I point to Freeman's Reach Road, which was substantially washed away, as we've all seen in various pictorials, and yet that doesn't appear in this statement either. Could I have some clarification as to what's happened there, please?

Mr. Organ. So, yeah, so Freeman's Reach Road was repaired as a matter of priority. It will fit under the restoration of essential public assets, and we would— as I said, I can't tell you whether that has been claimed or paid as yet. However, the works were certainly carried out prior to the 30th of June.

So they won't show as potentially some not the accountant here, but it won't show necessarily as an impaired asset because it was completed. But the funding will come in when we get that funds back from the State Government by Transport for New South Wales. So again, there's often a lag between when the works are done, we make the claim and then the funds are paid.

Thank you. The third element of my question in this regard only is in relationship to Benson's Lane. Now, in contrast, I point to the fact that Cupid's Lane, which runs parallel to Benson's Lane but at a different part in the landscape, there has been an assessment of $1. 02 million impairment as part of the $19.4 million . The condition, as I have seen it, of Benson's Lane is equally deficient in terms of the trafficability that now operates as is Cupid's Lane. I agree, well, I agree that Cupid's Lane is also traversed by two water passages , which would no doubt have impacted somewhat on the cost. But again, why is there no impairment being shown for Benson's Lane, which is in an absolutely horrendous state of repair?

Mr Mayor, admitted.

Basically, to be eligible for the funding is that we need to provide before and after conditions. So Benson's Lane is probably going to be one that is difficult for us to justify as being significantly and permanently damaged as a result of the flooding, other than for the initial make-good works that have been done. Cupitt Lane is significantly damaged and continues because of the damage to the whole of the road formation. So at this stage, it's showing as an impairment probably because we've made the claim , we'll be making the claim under the restoration of essential public assets, and we won't commence work on repairs of Cupitt Lane until we actually receive an approval for that. It's one that we believe that is eligible for funding, but we will require Transport for New South Wales to essentially assess that application, and then we will carry out the restoration using state, the disaster funding dollars rather than our own.

But as I said, much more difficult for us to justify Benson's Lane as being the flood damaged site.

Thank you. Councillor Ross.

Thank you. I appreciate the comments of the officer. However, that road is being traversed every day by trucks and dogs

Involved on two sites which I've already reported to Council, one of which allegedly had a stop work order placed upon it, and of course those trucks and dogs are impacting on what is a country lane only.

And the serious damage has occurred since April.

Now, moving on from there,

I'm very, just to make comments on the answers provided, I find them totally unsatisfactory as a councillor, and they're totally unacceptable in terms of providing clear and concise information for myself as a councillor or for ratepayers.

And I don't know how this can go to audit in this fashion. I'm also, as I have in previous years, completely— Expressed my disagreement with the Council, with the compliance of this Council, in regard to three sections of the Local Government Act, namely sections 377, 378, 409, about which I've raised in a briefing session a number of months ago, about which staff told me there was, and I think the Mayor, you did so yourself, indicate that there would be some legal advice sought or gained on that. Nothing has come to light on that. And furthermore, I take great exception to the section dealing with the depreciation stance taken by staff. I find it totally unconscionable that this matter has not been brought to Council's attention at any stage up till now.

Last year's revaluation and increase in depreciation of six million dollars was not reported until the third quarter of the financial year just gone. Not in any previous quarterly report. That is untenable. And the statements made here regarding APV and whoever they are completely misunderstand the purpose of the depreciation and the basis upon which depreciation ought to be adduced . Firstly, it appears that Council don't recognise and haven't recognised in their asset management. That we have increasing traffic volumes right through the LGA of somewhere between 2 and 3 percent annually , which are, of course, a compounding impact on the asset and the lifespan of an asset. Secondly , there's been no apparent appreciation or understanding that the costs associated with road construction have been escalating well above any CPI measure over recent years.

Instead of council staff trying to tell the public and councillors that depreciation is an expense and it's terrible and all we have to do is change our, just change our shares or change our mind and we'll reduce it, is completely at odds with the reality of the situation which we face. We also have the impact of climate change, and I can well and truly show you that on the lower sections of Terrace Road, as I pointed out to this council previously, the commencement of the 70k zone at the end of the industrial structures in North Richmond down to Redbank Creek, that road has, over the last two floods, deteriorated seriously, and it is quite visible even to the naked eye that there is no foundation under the road, that the surface is breaking up gradually, but nevertheless it is breaking up.

All these situations point to a total lack of understanding about asset management, a lack of understanding about what depreciation means, and it's about time this council was consulted as representatives of the public about these matters because they have a serious long-term ongoing financial impact. And can well result in this Council becoming unmanageable . And the lack of roadworks carried out, despite the SRV and all the rest of it, is absolutely untenable. And I cannot support these accounts going through audit under this fashion, and I'll certainly not support the outcome unless there is a substantial amount of change. Thank you.

Thank you. Potentially this is a question maybe for Councillor Rasmussen if he's going to speak anyway. It's just curious as to what happened at the audit committee, whether this was debated and whether there was any dissention in that forum. Councillor Rasmussen, if you don't mind. Mr Mayor

I was not able to attend that audit committee. That was held on the 22nd of September, and I'm sorry, I missed that audit committee.

Sorry.

I might just ask the General Manager, was there any debate at that audit committee meeting, or somebody who was there?

I passed that over to the Chief Financial Officer. Certainly my recollection of it was that there was certainly a degree of consideration and appreciation and understanding of the challenges, particularly around impairment, but that the audit committee had endorsed that the financial statements be referred to audit. Does the Chief Financial Officer want to add anything further on that?

That's correct. Pretty much the same overview was provided to the audit committee. There were some questions asked around impairment, so that was explained. Yeah, there was no real issue. It was just said this was more understanding what this impairment is all about, which we did explain.

Thank you. Sorry, Councillor Rasmussen.

Sorry

Okay, I've got the—

Yeah, you got the call. Sorry about that.

The call. No, that's all right. Thank you very much. Yes, it's just a simple little question regarding the

1.7 million deficit. And

I do want to note that for the first time in a very long time, we are now facing a budget deficit in this council, which is not the way I would normally like to see it. But anyway, the 1.7 million, is that none of that is claimable? Seems to me that if it's related to floods, maybe some of it could be claimable, but maybe we turned over every corner and every leaf and nothing of it is claimable. So I'm just wondering what it is that 1.7 million comes from and why it's not claimable, if that's the case.

Thank you. Thank you. I think the report says that we expect to claim most of that $3.1 million back, but I'll just refer that to the CFO.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. So yes, so the financial statements are a position and the result as at a point in time. So as at 30th of June, explained simply, the expenditure was bigger than the income, therefore the deficit of 1.7. However, the expenditure, most of it will be claimed and will appear as a reimbursement in this year. So obviously that claims process doesn't neatly line up with the 30th of June. So as I explained earlier, there's a lot of claims in process at the moment. I can certainly assure the council that we are turning every leaf to try and claim under every possible thing, and it is likely that those operating costs, the majority would be able to be claimed, but they will not be able to be claimed as at 30th of June because they were still in progress. So hopefully that clarifies.

Thank you. I just thought that there was mentioned in the report. That what had been claimed, or could be claimed, had been claimed. And this is what the residual that we were left with. But maybe that was my misreading of the report. Thank you.

Can you further speakers? Councillor Ross, I know you've got your hand up again, but you did speak for a very long time, so unless you had a question arising out of what Councillor Rasmussen addressed, I don't know that we would entertain it. But

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I just wish to clarify for your ratification and fellow councillors, because I was present at the Audit Committee meeting. The information that I have in my hand now was not available at that meeting. I specifically asked in regard to the Colo Bridge and the level of impairment that that caused, and I received a less than, if you like, adequate answer on the occasion. It's only since the bringing forward of this matter to Council that I've had this information with which to raise questions. It was certainly not available to the Audit Committee, and again, that might be seen as a failure of process.

Thank you. All right. Being no further speakers, we go right up for reply. I think Councillor Zamprogno.

Not required. Okay. Put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Tree, Councillor Rasmussen. Against? Councillor Ross, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Wheeler. Declare it carried. Councilor, sorry, did you vote, Councillor Gary?

Against or in favour?

Sorry, my hand keeps getting lost in my screen

Oh, again. Against.

Sorry, my need assistance there. So it was Councillor Conolly, Zembrogno, Richards. I believe that's failed then. In that case, Councillor Kotlash, I declare the vote declared lost

Sorry, Councillor— sorry, the Mayor, the votes were two. There was six for and five against, and Councillor Kotlash not present.

Sorry, declare that carried then. Can I just— could you maybe potentially just read those names again to make sure we've got that right?

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Voting for the motion were Councillors Conolly, Richards, Tree, Zembrogno, Calvert and Rasmussen. Voting against the resolution was Councillors Ross, Garrow, Reynolds, Wheeler and Lyons-Buckett, and Councillor Kotlash was not present.

Thank you. Declare it carried. Next.

Item is item 186

That's motion

One. Four Lyons-Buckett.

I can't find my hand. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll move that.

I'll move the substitute one that I sent through to councillors and to staff this afternoon earlier today.

Seconded, Councillor Wheeler. Do we have that on the screen? We don't, but could we have that on the screen, please?

Discussion, Councillor Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, this is something that's quite ongoing, and I think it's hard to deal with in terms of part of it is around simply just wanting to fix some issues we've got around litter and lack of services, lack of provision of receptacles, and we've already looked at the Upper Colo earlier today. This has been brought to my attention by a number of people, by some people at Bilpin who have been doing community clean-ups and have identified the lack of receptacles for the litter that's generated there with the influx of people. And again, I think, as Councillor Wheeler raised earlier, this around Upper Colo, this is still continuing even with the Public Health Order and even without the influx of people from out of area.

So I think that as we anticipate we're going to get a lot more people, the first section of this is really about just being able to address some of the problems that are currently around the lack of bins and signs, and I think that's probably best done by simply the waste education officer or staff or somebody just speaking with the community. I do have a list of places where they've suggested bins that can be put, which I will send in. And I think that where it's outside of our jurisdiction, we can probably write to the agencies. We've already approached them about the wildlife signage that we've- That we've given to, that we're hoping we can have put on Bells Line of Road. And I think this is the problem with the litter as well.

It's gone. The third point, sorry, I'm just finding it on here. The third point—well, that won't be right because that's the old one. Anyway, the third point, I can't see the motion, but basically it's—thank you, if it comes back, thank you. The rest of the long-term strategy, and I'm quite mindful, as in the note of management it says, we've got so many strategies on the go, we've got so much stuff being done, that really this is a plea to have it incorporated in one of those strategies or through the committee whenever it can be done. But I think it's something we simply have to look at, and we have to have better protocols or better engagement around, because there's been various strategies over the years and none of them seem to have resonated to the point that we can eliminate this issue or even in fact control it.

The last point I've just put in, and I know this is a real bee in my bonnet, and it's been raised by a number of members of the public, and often it isn't our staff. I think often it's whoever's doing along the sides of the main roads. But that is that the mowing is done without the rubbish being removed, which means that the slasher or whatever chops it all up and it's dispersed all over the place. So it's really just to have it said very clearly to the people doing the mowing that they should pick up the rubbish first, if that's possible. Because it's about pride in our area and having our entryways and our roadsides clean and free of litter. It's around educating people so that they won't be throwing the litter out all the time, which is a very bad way to behave.

And in some instances it's about directing people through signage of where they can actually access the proper litter bins. So either— If they go to a recycle bin or another bin. So I can send in the list of where the suggestions have been made by the community. We've got a really great untapped asset out there, and that's our people who are willing to volunteer to do things, and we should engage with them on that. Another thing is around, and I can't, I don't know how I'm going for time, Mr Mayor, but I'm trying to rush through. Another thing is around the main source of litter in our tourist areas, where people go to eat and to picnic and so on, is disposable coffee cups. And a number of years ago we did the Responsible Cafe program, and the Hawkesbury Environment Network approached 70 cafes, and we had a really good sign-up of people, and we seem to have dropped off that radar.

I know there was another program called Green Caffeine, which I've been aware of for some time, and that's a good program too, but it hasn't really taken off here. I think we've only got five cafes signed up. And so, and in COVID I don't think it would be very popular because it involves depositing your cup back and then taking another cup and so on. So I

Think— It's not even hasn't expired though, if you feel free to finish up.

Oh, well, I'm just about finished. I mean, I think you get the gist of it. It really doesn't need explanation. It's really a plea to do something before we have an influx and we have areas that are inundated with rubbish when they don't have enough receptacles there to be putting the rubbish in, and they don't have frequent enough collections. Thank you.

Thanks. Councillor Reynolds.

Yeah, thanks, Pat. I raised this, the issue of litter signage at the Local Traffic Committee with the RMS officer. It was there after forwarding him letters, emails I'd received from members of the public at Bilpin regarding litter on the side of the road and the fact that community members up there walk kilometres of Bells Line of Road picking up the rubbish. The community wanted signs, anti-litter signs,

Installed. However, the RMS officer said that signs cannot detract from the task of driving . Between us, I don't know whether he's ever driven down Parramatta Road, but I think if we're going to look at signs, perhaps we can talk to Transport for New South Wales about putting signs along with the town signs as you enter the town. There used to be signs, for example, for Rotary meetings, Apex, all that kind of stuff used to be on the entrance to town. So perhaps we could ask them for signs to be located

With the town signs. I don't know that we're going to be able to get other anti-litter signs in other locations because of the distraction from driving, but I'm hoping that staff will be able to liaise with the officer and we can get a good outcome up there. Thanks. Okay,

Councillor Garrow.

Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to make a couple of comments. First of all, I was wondering if there would be any appetite with Deputy Mayor to possibly add in here some sort of a mechanism in the signage of allowing residents to know who to contact when bins are overflowed and how to get, you know, I think people just automatically think council are just going to have all their eyes and ears everywhere and see the bins overflowed and turn up and empty them. I know the other day, and thank you to Mr. Organ, I gave him a phone call after I think it was the first day of the friendship bubble of all the kids, and the bins in Windsor were completely bubbling over everywhere. And within five minutes there was staff on the ground cleaning it up.

But, you know, people just don't know who to contact when this is occurring. I think as we are emerging out of COVID lockdown as well, this is going to be an ongoing issue. So if we can somehow get some sort of signage to incorporate who to contact when this is occurring, rather than just expecting somebody else is going to do it. And to encourage the community pride as well, you know, we need to encourage and educate our community to have pride in their parks and their streets and their areas. I mean, I see my neighbours walking around cleaning up Governor Phillip Park after everyone's been there on the weekend. And yes, there's bins everywhere, and yes, they still leave nappies and rubbish and crap everywhere.

And, you know, if we encourage community pride to clean up after, to keep the place clean, then if you're going to a place that is clean, you're more inclined to leave it clean when you leave at the end of the day as well. But I also want to make comments to another thing that Deputy Mayor pointed at, and that is the mowing over of rubbish on the verges of our roads. One that highlights to myself is the McGraths Hill flats. I don't know if anyone's done that walk from Windsor to McGraths Hill, and it's dominantly Macca's wrappers and things that are thrown out the windows that completely encompass and litter the gardens and the walkways along there. Most of them have all been chopped up into tiny pieces.

So if we can take some action on making sure that whoever is responsible for mowing the area does a clean-up before they chop one piece of rubbish into a hundred pieces of rubbish. Yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you. I think potentially that could probably be incorporated into point three, the suggestion that's probably able to be looked at by the committee, based on the current motion, I think. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. There's quite a lot in this, I think . We need to be more proactive with how we deal with rubbish along the sides of the road. While it isn't council who's put the rubbish there, council is probably the only body that is going to pick it up, apart from some—we've got some fantastic people who walk along the sides of roads and pick stuff up, but they're not everywhere and they don't have a responsibility to care for the area. It's great that they do, but we are the responsible—well, we are the agency that is likely to do this stuff. So I've been conducting a little experiment on a pile of household linen. It's bedding that has been sitting on the side of the road. Since before the floods in March, it's on Kermond Road.

It's probably between five and 800 metres from the council depot, and every week I drive past it, and every week it sits there. But every week our council crews drive past it as well. In fact, we've mowed that area. We've even done roadworks in that area, and no one has picked up—someone concertinaed it all together—but no one has taken it away. The signal that this gives the community is that if you throw your crap into the bush, it's just going to sit there. So, and what we're signalling is that it's okay to dispose of waste like that. There's a strip on Terrace Road at the top of the hill, and I, a couple of years ago, I spoke with Mr Organ, and we had this cleaned up a couple of times. And no sooner do we clean it up than the rubbish is back.

People are throwing whole shopping bags full of household waste out there, and now the roadside is completely strewn with it, and it's rolling down into the bush.

We've got all of these people who think that it's okay to chuck rubbish out the window. Part of the reason they think it's okay is because someone has gone before them and done it, and we haven't ever removed it. So we need to change the way we deal with this stuff. We need to tidy up the place in the hope that everybody catches on. We also— we used to tell ourselves that these people came from somewhere else, that they were tourists, that they were people passing through. But we know now, after three months of lockdown, that these grubs are us. So it's the same as the people who are defecating at Upper Colo Reserve. These are members of the Hawkesbury community. We need to be more proactive.

We need to start calling this behaviour out. We also need to—we need to praise the people who are doing the right thing, picking up litter on their walks during lockdown, that sort of thing. But we need to start cleaning the place up so that when someone does throw litter out the window, it stands out and people are shocked by it. At the moment, people are just accepting it, and that's not good enough. We also need post-COVID, and I know that this has been very difficult with COVID. I think COVID has undone a lot of the messaging around single-use plastics and use of disposables and things. We had great success with the Responsible Cafe Program. The Hawkesbury Environment Network worked really hard going, and I think the Deputy Mayor was mayor at the time, and went to visit lots of those businesses.

I think we had something like 76 cafes signed up for the Responsible Cafes Program to phase out single-use coffee cups. COVID has got rid of all of that. Everybody is now dependent on disposables, and we've introduced a whole other set of disposables, the trolley wipes, the masks, all of those things. We're going to have to work within that COVID framework for a while longer, but we're really going to have to clamp down on some of the single-use stuff that we see. We need to implement our sustainable events management policy. It's been in place since 2013, and yet we still have events that generate huge quantities of landfill. We saw the Dinner by the River event where those of us who basically spent our evening bathed in bin juice while everybody else was having fun, reduced the waste from that event down to a really, really tiny fraction, less than a full wheelie bin, I think we got to.

But we did that by using a community group working for free, and that isn't sustainable over the long term either. So all of the way we deal with litter needs to start changing, and the best place to change that is at source. Some of the things in item three that the Environment Committee is directed to explore, we'll start to look at that, and I hope that that happens because we're We've lost ground, and we really need to desperately reclaim that space, and work out how we do this in a now, in a COVID world. If we think we've got a problem with litter now, once we hit December 1st and we start to reopen, we are going to be absolutely inundated, and we simply aren't ready for that. I like Councillor Garrow's suggestion.

Sorry

Councillor, time expired a little while back, so if you don't... Okay Thanks.

Thanks.

I don't think anyone's spoken against, though, so that should be okay. Any further speakers? If not, we'll go right of reply, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And just briefly, just to take on board, I think your suggestion of incorporating Councillor Garrow's suggestion into point 3 , I think that that would fit in there in those points there, particularly around the ways to facilitate and support volunteers. I think that sometimes in remote communities we need to encourage our volunteers to be given a little bit of, you know, reward for doing what they do, and giving them a bit of framework around how they do it. So I think that also in there around the signage, that that could contain contact numbers on that. But I hope that we can certainly get on with point 1 to address an issue before it emerges as a bigger issue and get some more bins out. And I will send in the list to staff of the various locations, which include Kurrajong Heights lookout and various places at Bilpin and other reserve areas. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Put the motion before us. I just make sure I have to come down off the screen. Sorry, so I can see.

Put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Mayor, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Ross, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Tree, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Kotlash is absent for the vote. Declare it carried. Next item is 18.

Seven, noting that we've got both the notice of motion before us and the supplementary management note in the business paper. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor

Seconder? Anybody? Seconded, Councillor Rasmussen.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for whoever it was that sent through, I saw it on the hub, a supplementary business paper around the particular report that's mentioned in the impact assessment of infrastructure flood mitigation option report. This motion isn't about looking at whether or not we support the dam. It's not about the dam itself. It's about the process around a major piece of infrastructure and the various outstanding information that we've requested and we have not received. I'm— I'm quite mindful that we could simply not be taking a position on this without the information. So that's not what this motion is for . With regard to the information that came today, and I brought this forward after reading media reports about a leaked document, which explained potential impacts on community ratepayer-funded infrastructure and on our lowland residents and farmers.

So this is what I'm seeking clarity around. Now, in light of this being presented that this is a confidential document for the government, which isn't available at that link, by the way, I had a look and I couldn't find anything about it. In fact, I can't find anything about the post-flood water releases anywhere on the Infrastructure New South Wales site at all. But then we did only get this late today, so I only had a look at that after then. Perhaps we could modify the request, because I understand the confidentiality around perhaps the whole report, but I can't see why we can't request the information around post-flood water release. So I would suggest a change of wording in point one to request a copy of the section of the report relating to post-flood water release.

That way, if the rest of the report is confidential, that means that they wouldn't have to re-release that. Now, I think that we're quite within our rights to request this information. I know it was a media leak that said that, but given that point two is about previous requests that we've made to the government around this project , I guess in that we could also eliminate resolution 338, because I believe the environmental impact statement is coming out tomorrow. So the fact that we weren't included as a stakeholder in that is quite concerning, but that would be redundant as well, given that's coming out. However, the other information that has been sought, which is around the data of the other options, I believe we should be being provided with that still.

It's still relevant to any position that we will eventually take after we consider the environmental impact statement and at the other point, which was around the various studies that are being done. So we haven't had any updates from Infrastructure New South Wales as such since we haven't had the floodplain management committee. But it was very good back then to be able to question and ask when these various studies, how they were progressing and when we were likely to get them. So the regional land use plan, which we definitely— is very pertinent to any considerations around this, was due to be out, I think probably two years ago now. I'm not sure. Someone else on the flood committee might recall that, but some time ago, and we get to see that, and yet it's a very important document in this whole process.

The cumulative overland flood studies as well are very relevant, given the amount of development that has taken place in the Blacktown and Hills local government areas and any of those impacts on the flooding. We need a complete picture to be looking at this, and this motion seeks For us to be given this information on behalf of our community, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of transparency around infrastructure projects, particularly where we have residents who stand to be impacted significantly. And we hear transparency as a buzzword in here about lots of things, so we want to see that extended, particularly to major projects like this. We know that there will be some, there will be impacts from this project, and I think it's quite within our rights to seek whatever information we think could potentially have a detrimental impact, particularly on our assets that are funded by the ratepayer and also on any of our agricultural industries.

Now, if there's no issues around that, then there should be no problem giving us the report and the modelling that shows that . I think that as custodians of ratepayer money, we really must protect the assets that they fund, and we've already been sidelined from the EIS, so we have to make our best effort to get as much information as we can get. Good decision making means that we should be provided with all the information that we need to even take a position. And again, I reiterate that this isn't a debate on whether it's a good or a bad project. It's a debate on whether we should pursue the information on behalf of our ratepayers

Any further discussion

No, in which case we'll put the motion . All those in— oh, sorry, I have called for a vote, but Councillor Wheeler.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Mr Mayor, I was struggling to find the hand. I've upgraded my iPad in a desperate attempt to get a background, only to find that my iPad isn't up to it, and so now I can't drive Zoom properly. Sorry . Just in addition to a point that the Deputy Mayor had is regarding the regional land use study, it would be, if we get a chance to talk to Infrastructure NSW about that, it would also be really— I'd really like the opportunity to discuss how long the resilient valleys, resilient communities strategy is likely to hold based on changes to land use around Marsden Park. So one of the things that that study is based on is the likely evacuation times, but they are increasingly blowing out because of that additional development along Marsden Park.

So the residents of Marsden Park are fine to get to safety, but those of us who sit on evacuation, who need to get out using those evacuation routes, are increasingly likely to find them clogged from the residents who live along them. So it mightn't be flood-affected land there, but it has a knock-on effect to the residents who need to evacuate through using those areas. And a reiterate a concern that I've raised previously, that

While we talk a lot about the impact of flooding and infrastructure damage west of the river, the majority of the communities west of the river, bar some isolated pockets of people who tend to be quite resilient because they know they're isolated, most of those residents can get to high ground quite quickly. We might be cut off for a week, we might face the loss of sewer, power and water, but we are high and dry. It's the residents of the towns east of the river, in particular McGraths Hill, parts of South Windsor, Bligh Park and Windsor Downs and Pitt Town. Who really do need those evacuation routes to be open, reasonably fast flowing and safe. And that's the argument that we need to be taking to the state government about evacuation.

If we can't get people in and out in a timely fashion on a dry Tuesday, we are not going to be able to shift them in a flood. And I think we talk a lot about holding back the water. We talk a lot about people east, west of the river, but we forget about these incredibly vulnerable communities, some of whom have experienced their first flood impacts. And they are uninsured. They're now, in many cases, uninsurable, and they are likely to experience significant impacts going forward.

Thank you. Any further discussion? I'm just, I would say I'm happy to support the motion. I feel like we potentially, with a couple of them, maybe jumping the gun in that some of this information hopefully might be in the EIS process, and I understand we'll be being briefed on it shortly, but at the same time , it doesn't stop us from requesting it now, and there's no harm if we do so and we're getting it anyway . So on that basis, happy to support it . Right of reply, Deputy Mayor? Sorry. Sorry , so now that we've had other speakers , you should be offered it.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Not really necessary, but it may be in the EIS, but I'm suspecting that not a lot of the information from that first report will be. So I think we should be still seeking to get as much information around that as we possibly can. Thank you.

The motion. All those in favour, raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Ross, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Tree, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Carver, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Collash. Absent. The vote declared carried . Motion to go.

Past 11 o'clock, if we want to. Moved Councillor Reynolds, seconded Councillor Wheeler. All those in favour? Carried. Next item.

Next item is 189, Notice of Motion 4. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks,

Mr Mayor.

Seconded, Deputy Mayor.

Sorry, go ahead, Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Smith. This notice of motion seeks to highlight the concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and call for an increase in the current intake of Afghan refugees into Australia. There does appear to be some movement from the federal government on this matter, which is really good news. Hopefully, with greater support from various levels of government and communities across Australia, the federal government will act in a similar fashion to the way dealt with Syria, with the Kosovo refugees, and with previous refugee intakes back in Australia's past, to provide some safety for people who are fleeing what is now appearing to be an increasingly dangerous and frankly terrifying regime.

We've heard from defence members, some of whom have served at Richmond, that they hold grave fears for Afghanis who served with them in Afghanistan. Most of these people have, if they haven't been able to escape, and many haven't been able to flee, are now in hiding because they fear retribution from the Taliban. Defence Families Australia, the organisation, is calling for support for the immediate needs of refugees from Afghanistan, including housing, health costs, homewares, and welcome and assistance from communities like ours to say that people are welcome and can be supported should anyone need or would like to go and have a look at a list of resources that they can either donate to or that they can use if they need or they know of people in need.

Defence Families Australia has an excellent list of resources on their website. One of the really terrifying things we're watching emerging on the news is the real concern for women now living in Afghanistan. Women are burying clothing that shows that they've participated in activities that the Taliban frowns upon, for example, sporting clothing and equipment. Women's sport is now banned, and prominent sportswomen are in hiding. We've seen the Afghani Olympic team has received asylum in Australia following the Olympic Games. Schools are now open for boys only, which denies girls an education. Women are banned from university campuses currently because the Taliban has decided that male and female students can't be educated in the same lecture theatre.

So the solution is for women to be told to stay at home. Women are now restricted in where they can work and what jobs they can do. Working women have been told to stay at home by their own government. Women's shelters are being closed, pushing rape and domestic violence services back to their abusers. There's a report of an eight-year-old girl being handed back to her 30-year-old drug-addicted husband. She's eight. No one who's eight should have a husband. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has been replaced by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Women who protest are beaten, whipped, tear-gassed and shot at, and the government is all male. We're back to the 1990s.

Australia's got a really proud history of taking immigrants from war-ravaged nations post-World War II: Europe, Korea, Vietnam, China, Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Syria. All of these people have contributed to the fabric of Australia and the Hawkesbury. I was contacted today by a member of the community to say that the people who run one of the local Gloria Jeans, I think it was— Windsor or Richmond, I can't recall, are from Afghanistan. Many of the WSU offers scholarships for Afghan students, and so some of the students studying in the Hawkesbury have come from Afghanistan. They need us to signal that we are supportive of both their needs and particularly their need for refuge at the moment.

Canada and Britain have taken 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan each. The U.S. has taken 15,000 already, is about to take another 18,000, and is very likely to increase that intake. Australia has taken 3,000, is currently likely to take another 3,000, but this is a drop in the bucket of the 2.5 million Afghan refugees who are now desperate for somewhere safe to go. If we don't act on—if we don't open up pathways for people to come to Australia, Australia has closed its embassy, for example,

And the most likely passage now to get asylum is to go to the border of Afghanistan and move into another country where people can seek asylum. That's extraordinarily dangerous, requires people to carry papers which basically proclaim that they are attempting to flee and seek asylum, and those border areas are heavily patrolled and in some instances are really dangerous. We've heard the Prime Minister say in relation to— I'm sorry, I can't see a clock. We've heard just— could I have an extra minute, please?

We've heard from the Prime Minister that freedom is always worth fighting for. Freedom's also worth sharing, and that's what I'm asking Council to commit to tonight. Every year we stand at citizenship ceremonies and celebrate the freedom and privilege that comes from being in Australia. We sing about boundless plains to share. Let's practice what we preach. Let's call on the federal government to share some of those boundless plains with these incredible—

Thanks, Councillor. Any further discussion, councillors? I'll reiterate my point from before, which is that whilst this is a—whilst on a personal level I can totally agree with point one, it's a horrible problem and it's awful to watch and it's very difficult. And in regards to point two, I think all refugees are welcome to settle here. I don't think we single out which races are welcome. All refugees are welcome here in the Hawkesbury, and we're already a refugee welcome zone. Same with point three, I think we've acknowledged that again. You know, we need to acknowledge that all refugees and migrants make a good contribution and, of course, regardless of race, they should have our support.

Point four is where I have a real issue, is that, you know, I'm not elected as anybody's federal representative. I don't have the information that the federal government has. Nobody's asked me. Nobody voted for me at the council election because they thought I would have the right stance on the Afghan refugee crisis. That's not why I was elected here. I was elected here to be one of the custodians of council's assets and to set the strategic direction for Hawkesbury City Council, not because people thought I'd be good at leading the way in dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. So I'm deeply uncomfortable with sitting here and talking about especially problems like this that are actually incredibly complicated, of course, and have trade-offs all over the place, you know, in terms of which refugees we take and where they come from and how many.

It's not that easy. So I'm not going to vote for something where we're just expressing a sentiment and calling on a different level of government to do something differently when I've not been elected to do that. It's not my job or my role, and I'd be speaking very anti-democratically to do that. So I'm not going to go there. Councillor Richards? Yeah,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to move an amendment. Okay. I would like to stick with the portion of point one that expresses its deep concern about the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the particular at-risk status of women and Afghans who worked with Australian forces. I'd like to draw a full stop there, and I'd like to do a point two, which I'll have to email to the staff, that Council accepts all refugees regardless of their origin. Sorry, I'll just flick back to my screen. Regardless of their origin, as part of our commitment to the Refugee Welcome Zone, and acknowledges the positive contribution that all refugees make to establishing a rich and diverse multicultural society. So I think that it is important, based on what's in front of us tonight, we do acknowledge the issue in Afghanistan.

And I have a very deep and personal family history with Afghanistan, with my dad serving over there. I've been very vocal and very public in a lot of my domains about my father's service in Afghanistan and the fact that it has left him with terrible, terrible PTSD. So I feel that deeply. My dad has been significantly traumatised with how things have played out. So I don't think, in the light of the things I may be about to say, that anyone can dare, with any other military who have served overseas, especially living in a military community here in the Hawkesbury, for anyone who has served or for anyone who has been a family member of anyone who has served, they're very deep and very personal things.

And I know that Council will have touched on the fact that there are a lot of defence personnel in this area. So the notice of motion isn't just about refugees. It's obviously about acknowledging that there are people in our community who feel they are connected to it in some way. That is why I'm moving the amendment, that we acknowledge that that has happened, but that we accept all refugees under the agreements that we have and that we accept the contribution that they make. My concern here, and I am speaking as an elected councillor, before anyone tries to put words in my mouth about anything else, I'm an elected councillor right now. And what the Mayor has just said is spot on. And I've done a bit of research, and I know that I can't ask another councillor a question or demand that they answer it to me.

But there have been other councils where Greens have moved similar motions, and my concern is that this is— is this, I'm asking this question, rhetorical maybe, is this a template that Greens councillors have been asked to put to different councils? Because I've done, as I said, my research. It's been moved across other councils. I note the Inner West has moved a similar kind of motion. It's not exactly the same, but there's a similar intent. So I found some other articles on what the Greens are trying to establish by using their locally elected Greens in councils to dictate federal government policy. So I am deeply concerned about the direction of that. I have quite a few other notes here.

I mean, as a councillor, you are able to decide yes or no on what you want to do on anything. But we've had councillors here tonight not participate in or vote in council policy and things that we're elected to do without even a verbal comment, but start dictating federal policy here tonight. So I want to move my amendment in that regard, that we acknowledge what's happened in Afghanistan, but that Council keeps ..

Commitment . You've actually asked for ... part of that. Okay. Seconder for the amendment. Seconded, Councillor Zamprogno. Sorry, just realised that.

Thank you. As I said, none of the 12 of us here have been elected to that sort of thing. Like you said, Mr Mayor, it's an extremely complex thing and we probably don't have all the facts in front of us. My concern is that this is a Greens move that's been put on Greens councillors to do across Greens councils in New South Wales. I don't know if it's broader than that, and that's why I'm moving an amendment that we reaffirm our commitment to accept ... All refugees, regardless of their origin, welcome the contribution that they make to the Hawkesbury and to society in general. Thank you. I'll just email that through. I haven't done that yet. Thanks.

Councillor Reynolds on the amendment.

I mean, the amendment, the amendment has merit.

I think the issues that you've both raised here about not being elected to deal with federal issues, that you were both elected to represent the LGA and advocate for the LGA on issues such as welcoming refugees, especially those from Afghanistan at the moment,

Who are in immediate danger because of the sudden change of regime in their country. And as Councillor Richards said, most of us, or a lot of us, have friends and family that served in Afghanistan, and a lot of them served with these people. And that's why this is important. We have local people, friends and family who served with these people who are in trouble. And it's got nothing to do with bloody Greens or anything. It's just decent humanity. I don't know why you have to put a political spin on something when it's just being a good bloody person, being a decent human and caring about people. There's no hidden agenda. There's no pro forma bloody notices of motion. It's just being decent human.

And I found those last two comments, I won't say disgusting, but I found them really disturbing. As for the amendment. If it's going to go through, yeah, I'll support it. I had no problem with the first one, but, you know, you really should have a look in the mirror, you know. Thanks.

Thanks for those highly politicised comments, Councillor Reynolds. Any further speakers? Councillor Tree.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I was happy to support the original notice of motion personally because I think it is the right thing to do. However, for Councillor Reynolds to sit here and disingenuously say that it's not politically motivated when it is actually coming from the songbook, whether it's a good thing or not a good thing, you can roll your eyes all you like. It's a statement of fact. But that's the sad thing about this particular type of issue, is that here we are having a fight about whether we should support being decent human beings to other human beings. So I think I'll support the amendment, but I would have been happy to support the motion, and I will be if the amendment doesn't get up. But to suggest that it's not part of a campaign, an organised campaign, is actually really disingenuous, and you know that.

Thank you. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks. This is part of an organised campaign. You'll be unsurprised to know, not led by the Greens, but led by an Afghan refugee organisation who found that the Greens were one of the political parties who were willing to sit down and ask them—sorry, sit down and listen to their request for help. So that's how this comes about. Not because we run around trying to find things that go in our songbook or ways to dictate to the federal government, because we have a very, very clear social justice pillar that we take really seriously, because we have a refugee policy that's based on compassion, not on stopping boats. So we are an easy target for refugee organisations who are frankly terrified for the people who are trapped now in this hellhole of a country.

Sorry, Councillor. I just get you to direct your comments to the amendment, rather than just generally talking about how you feel about it, it's whether or not the amendment

Well, I thought these comments came about the amendment, and there was a question asked about whether this was a template Greens motion. It has been passed in Brisbane, not a Greens council. It was been passed in Ryde, moved by a Labor councillor. It's passed in councils in Victoria. Yes, it's going to councils across the country because the Afghan organisations are asking us to do this, and that's how this has come about. The key difference between the amendment and this motion is that this is about Afghanistan. This isn't an either/or. We can single out desperate Afghanis for refugee status, to be taken into this country and given safe passage without — we're not saying that other people aren't worthy.

We're not asking the government to choose. What we're asking them to do is increase the intake for Afghanis in the same way that they did for Syrians, in the same way that they did for Kosovars when those crises hit hard in those countries at that time. We have a history of doing this. We can do it and do it well. We can bring people to safety, and at this point these people are incredibly needy and they don't have a means of safe passage. So that's why I can't support the amendment, because this isn't a dictate for the federal government. This is a request for the government. It's our job to represent. It's our job to ask the federal and state governments to do the right thing. That's what this is asking for.

We can't dictate to the federal government. We don't have the power to dictate to the federal government. That's a ludicrous notion. This is a clear plea for help for Afghani people. This isn't about choosing them over somebody else. We can help both people. We can help two lots of people at once. We have that capacity. We are an extraordinarily safe, wealthy and lucky country. We need to share that wealth and luck.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Like others, I mean, there's nothing really that's wrong with the amendment, except, as Councillor Wheeler just articulated, it's this particular point in history and this particular point in time that the Afghan people are the ones that we are specifically speaking to, even though that doesn't detract from any other refugees or migrants that may come to the Hawkesbury and may want to live here. I think Councillor Wheeler pretty much said what I was going to say, but it's about showing support to the Afghan community specifically. We know we have an obligation because of our being part of the Allied forces in Afghanistan, so we do have an obligation to those people who are now fleeing because of the new regime.

And I think that the Australian people acknowledge that connection and that obligation. And I think that in asking the federal government to review the intake, we're simply asking them to because I would think that there are a clear majority of Australians who would happily accept Afghan refugees coming to this country. Anybody who has seen the images of people fleeing and so on and understanding what they're going through, and not to forget that we still have people from the Tampa, of course, in offshore detention, many of whom were Afghan asylum seekers. And if we want to be a good global citizen in terms of taking our share, I think that we do need to review the intake. But if the federal government decides not to review it, then that's up to them.

But we can certainly ask. A review is a review, and I think most people would want that to be looked at.

Any further discussion on the amendment?

Okay, in that case, we'll put the amendment. Just wait for it to come down on the screen.

All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Tree. Against: Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Collash absent for the vote, declared lost. So we go back to the original motion. Was there anybody who wanted to speak on the motion? Hasn't already.

If not, we'll go right of reply, Councillor Wheeler.

Not necessary, Mr Mayor.

Put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Carvo, Councillor Tree, Councillor Garrow. Against : Councillor Conolly, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno. Councillor Kotlash is absent from the vote. Declare it carried.

Next item is 1.9, questions on notice. Any questions on those questions?

If not, does somebody want to move we go into confidential?

Moved Deputy Mayor, seconded Councillor Rasmussen. All those in favour? Carried. We'll go into confidential, [unclear] to stop live streaming.

Okay, just pass over to the General Manager to advise on the confidential session.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. In regards to item 192 regarding Steve and Jane's Harvest Trust Pty Limited shop 12 Wilberforce Shopping Centre, whilst in closed session, the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Ross, that: 1. Council

Agree to enter into a new lease with Steve and Jane's Harvest Trust Pty Limited in regard to shop 12 Wilberforce Shopping Centre, in accordance with the proposal outlined in the report. Point 2. Authority be given for any documentation regarding this matter to be executed under the seal of Council. Point 3. Details of Council's resolution be conveyed to the proposed lessee, together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of this resolution until such time as appropriate legal documentation, such a resolution into effect, has been agreed and executed by all the parties. The voting record on the matter was: in favour, Councillors Conolly, Lyons-Buckett, Richards, Zamprogno, Tree, Calvert, Wheeler, Rasmussen, Garrow and Ross, and Councillor Kotlash was absent for the vote. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. That was our last item of business, so I'll declare the meeting closed at 11

Hi, Mr. Mayor, sorry, just if you could just humour me for a moment . I just wanted to draw to attention that I think today is—this is Mr. Organ's final meeting, if I'm not mistaken.

That's a very good point, Councillor Garrow. Sorry, we almost— Oh, I

Just wanted to say thank you and enjoy retirement. Yeah

No, I think that's very fitting, Councillor Garrow. We should have done that at the start of the meeting. Sorry, Mr. Organ, but we should acknowledge the long years and how much you've helped us all, so we really appreciate it, and good luck for the future. Thank you, thank you very much

Looking relaxed already

Thank you, Jeff. That's the length of the Council meeting that you've given tonight. It was great.

Have you been partying, Jeff, or have you got an allergy? Because you've got a bit of a pink—have you got an allergy or have you been partying? You've got a bit of a pink nose

Thank you for all your assistance over the years to all the councillors, and it's been a great ride in local government. I'd just like to say that, and yeah, it's been actually 44 years of serving

Four

Different councils, so— Longer than some

Of us councillors have been alive, Mr. Organ. Oh

Is there? So yeah, again, it's been a pleasure to work with the—in the Hawkesbury and, yeah, make some small difference, I hope, to that. So thank you very much. Definitely, thank you.

All right, we'll declare the meeting closed at 11.30. Thanks, everybody.

Good evening

Council.