9 November 2021 - Ordinary

Welcome everybody to tonight's ordinary meeting. I'd like to start by acknowledging the Darug and Dharug people as traditional custodians of the land of Hawkesbury and pay respect to our elders past, present and emerging. And I'll hand over to the General Manager.

Is the General Manager there still?

Mr. Mifsud, would you mind, in the absence of the General Manager, just running through the procedural matters? I think the General Manager is having an internet issue. Or if you don't have them, I'm happy to do that.

Yes, I can. Yes, I can, thanks. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest...

You've got an audio issue, Mr. Mifsud. I might just go ahead and run through those.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency...

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I'll just run through that, given the issues there. So I'd like to advise 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 may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, and the recordings are stored on Council's record management system.

For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you'll refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at the meeting. The request relates both to your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Finally, it was requested that if any person participating in or attending the meeting has a mobile phone that they either turn it off or put it on silent. So , do we have any apologies? I'm not sure if everyone's here or not.

I think that's everybody. Any declarations of interest? Councillor Garrow?

Yes, item 221.

Okay. Councillor Kotlash?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I have an item 221 as well and item 218.

Sorry, just get the type of interest, sorry, I have to get that up, Councillor Garrow, too. Not the 18, the type.

221 , significant non-pecuniary. Okay.

218, non-significant non-pecuniary, non-significant. Okay. And Councillor Garrow?

A less than significant non-pecuniary.

Thank you.

Okay, so we have the minutes of the previous meeting. Someone wishes to move those. Moved. Deputy Mayor, seconded, Councillor Rasmussen. All those in favour? Carried.

We have one item subject to public address, which is item 221. So now I'll get you both to read your address on the tape, sorry. Councillor Garrow first.

On item 221, Notice of Motion Warragamba Dam Raising Project, I declare a less than significant non-pecuniary interest. My dad is an executive on the Hawkesbury-Nepean River Flood Mitigation Action Committee, and I will be choosing to remove myself from this item.

Okay, and Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm a member of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area Advisory Committee, and as such have just become aware of their stand on the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall, so I will be removing myself.

Thanks, Councillor Kotlash.

Okay. So we have one public speaker, Mr Les Sheather. I'm not sure if Les is in the meeting.

You there, Les?

Sorry, I can see the name Les, but are you on the meeting?

Oh, here we go.

Sorry, Les, you're on mute.

Give it a moment.

Sorry, Les, we can't hear you, but if you're able to unmute, we should be able to— Yep , thank you.

Go ahead, we're ready for you. Thanks very much. Has there been any amendments to the motion tonight?

No, so with public speakers before the motion actually gets put, so do the first part of this motion. Okay

When I sent in the business paper, it was about the raising Warragamba Dam, and that's why I responded.

And this has been 35 years of my life, and a few others in the Hawkesbury that's worked really hard to get to the stage where we are. And I'd just like to touch on a few things

In the reasons why we've worked hard to try and get Warragamba raised for airspace.

Some of you would have read the report from the EIS and the EIS. This is the third one. There's one in the early '80s, one in '97, and this one. They've all come up with the same conclusion,

And the only way to mitigate flooding is to minimise the amount of water that comes into the Hawkesbury Valley. And they've looked at the Colo and the Grose and South Creek, all of them, and that's in the EIS. It'll tell you the percentages of what comes down those waterways, but there's only one that makes a difference, and it's Warragamba. And I'd just like to touch on a few things that maybe aren't in the EIS. We've lost three ferries in small floods.

The first one was in '61. They put the army on board, and they were going to sink it because they weren't going to allow it to go under the road bridge at Brooklyn, because they felt if it hit the pylons, it could take the road bridge out. Now we've got five ferries, and we've lost two since then, but lucky enough it's been small floods and there's been vessels downstream that's been able to cope with them. But if we have a big event, there is no vessels that'll tow them or put them ashore, so they're likely to be sunk before they get to the bridge. That's one thing. The other, we've got over 300 bed-ridden residents in our city that would rely on ambulance to have them evacuated out of our city.

That's impractical. When you're looking at catastrophic events, and I'm talking about one in a hundred year event or bigger, we're talking about nine-hour rain events and stuff like that, and to have those events, local flooding is going to frustrate our streets, as you'll all be aware of, and to get 300 people out, that's without people in hospital,

That can't work. We've got 23 service stations that at a one in a hundred year event are going to be underwater. Under the driveways of those service stations, they've got large containers that hold fuel and air. Both of them float. And I've been in concrete all my life. I can tell you that six inches of concrete will not hold those tanks down. And we could actually have a catastrophic fire event in the middle of a flood.

They're the sort of things that the small group of people and myself have been arguing for 30 years. And that's apart from all the benefits that minimising a flood event by having a dam there. This last event, it would have been kept down by three metres. Three metres doesn't sound much, but when you own property that's underwater by three metres, it's a lot.

So I understand there's councillors there tonight that have issues with Warragamba, and we've never argued that what's above Warragamba is not unimportant. It is important. But we've got all that same argument downstream, and we are not world heritage. And on top of that, we've got people and businesses and all the things that go with it. You know, you would have seen some of the devastation from what some would call a small flood recently. And to have it another four metres higher than what it was this time, you can well imagine the issues that we'd have in our community. And I can only implore you to, you

Know, to give support to this. I know there's issues that need working through, and we've looked at every avenue. There's no argument in 30 years, let me tell you, that's been put up that hasn't been looked at. Straighten the river, putting levees about. Back in the 80s, our council, we acquired some properties and lifted houses up. That was part of the deal that happened then. But all these properties that are there now, they've got rights and entitlements through consistent councils and state governments. They all had approval for their house, their business and the likes,

And they expect councils and government to look after their interests, and it's not a big deal. Mr

Chairman, your time's expired, so if you'll just finish on that thought.

Yep. Well, thanks very much.

Thank you. Happy to take any questions at this evening? Yes. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Mr Sheather, thank you for your remarks. I think the best question that I could put to you, as somebody who's been on this bandwagon for a very long time, both as a citizen and as a member of previous councils, is to reflect on the longevity of the view in Hawkesbury Council and its predecessors that we needed flood mitigation, and how different the current council's view is as an outlier. Could you remark briefly on what previous councils have held in relation to this issue?

Yeah, thanks very much for the question. When Councillor Stubbs was Mayor, there was a council employed a secretariat to do all the work that was required at the time. Councils did support it.

There were signs erected throughout our city that indicated where the 1867 flood come to.

There was one in front of the RAAF base, so that's how high it was. We try not to make a big deal out of it because we didn't want to— Didn't want to scare the community, but we were after a resolve, not to, you know, not to scare the community. So while the council for many years supported the direction or opportunity to look at flood mitigation, we relied on the state government to come up with an outcome, which has happened three times. So probably up until 2000 or so, I think it was about that time, the council not only supported it, they funded

A secretariat. Okay. Councillor, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Sheather. It is an ongoing issue. That's a long, long time. And would you acknowledge that the floodplain has changed significantly over that last 30 to 40 years,

Within the whole catchment, upper and downstream?

Yes.

It's been frustrating, I guess, when you look at areas like Blacktown and perhaps Liverpool, even Penrith to a degree, where development has happened. Hawkesbury has been very proactive in relation to non-use of floodplain, which is really, really good. But when you look at, like Penrith, for instance, Panthers, the club at Panthers is, next time you go past, you have a look, they've actually mounded that up to build their club. It's about a metre and a half high from the ground around it, and that was done to get above a floodplain. And that's not the sort of thing that we support, or certainly I don't, in any way, shape or form, and it only aggravates, you know, frustrates. If we have a catastrophic event, then those sorts of things will have a major effect.

Yes . Just another, thank you for that. Just another question, if I may, Mr Mayor. Liz, do you believe that Council should take a position on something that isn't a Council decision as such; it's a State Government decision, that we should take a position on that when there's big gaps in the information that we've requested and they haven't been provided to us by the State Government? Do you think that's a responsible way to approach decision making?

If you haven't got information, I think that's deplorable.

The committee I chair, we've always had really good access to anything that we've asked for. So that's frustrating that you haven't when you're the authority of our city.

Sorry, what was the first part of the question?

It was if you think it's a responsible way to approach decision making if we take a position without having that information that we've requested and which hasn't been provided.

Oh , that's a frustrating answer. I could probably answer every question that you ever asked. So, like over 30 years, there's not a question that hasn't been asked. But you people need to make a decision. And the information should have been forwarded to Council. And with all respect to Councillors, you know, this is the biggest natural disaster waiting to happen in Australia, and it will happen one day. It's not a matter of whether it's going to, it will . And that's why this committee that I chair we set up 30 years ago, because nobody was looking at the big picture of a catastrophic event.

I think we've potentially moved away from the question. I see other Councillors have their turn. Yes

I just have one more quick one, Mr Mayor, if I could just, it's just a yes-no answer. Mr Sheather, have you watched or listened to the experts who've been, or the representatives from other Councils who've been giving information at the parliamentary inquiry on this matter?

The Senate inquiry. I sat in at Windsor on that. I haven't heard any of the others, no.

The one this week. There's been one on this week every day. No, that's a no. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

Councillor Reynolds?

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I think Les might be in trouble, I think. Or Richmond. I think he's taken off. Yeah

Question.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, thanks for speaking tonight, Les. You mentioned what's required is airspace behind the dam. Is that right? Yes. Increased airspace. If

That airspace could be provided

By lowering the existing level of the dam by a suitable amount, and then another water supply, a drought-proof water supply provided by— Desalination, would that provide the same result?

With the most recent flood we've had, the water level would have had to be down 15% to hold the water back with the same result, down to 15%. And that's something that we've never argued. It's Sydney Water; it's theirs, they're entitled to it, they've got a right to it, and we've never argued that we should deplete that water supply to protect our city.

Yeah, but if a guaranteed drought-proof water supply came online and was available, the same result could be achieved, yes? If there's another water source, you know, yeah , yeah, yeah, okay. Thanks, Les. Good on you.

Thank you.

Councillor Carvet.

Thanks, Mr Mayor, and thanks, Les. Just a question. Many years ago there was talk about trying to help solve the problem at the other end by putting in tunnels under Maroota, etc. And I remember you famously saying, if we gave you enough dynamite, you could solve the problem. But whatever happened to that solution? Do you know why that fell off the table?

Yeah. To remove the water from the river, there's a whole heap of scenarios that were looked at. Through to Lithgow, there's issues with that. The rivers can't cope with a flood like what we'd need to put there. Tunnelling to sea, that was looked at. It's not really an option. There is a proposal, I think the one you're talking about was an area that I was looking at putting a causeway from Wilberforce through to Currency Creek. That would minimise it. It increases— there's problems with that. So all those scenarios were looked at, and none of them... Have any merit of any support, and EIS, to the states that they don't even discuss them.

Thank you.

Thank

You. Okay. Thanks . Being no further questions, thanks for that, Mr Sheather.

Mr Mayor, thanks very much for your time.

All right . Councillor Wheeler.

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

Seconded, Deputy Mayor. Would you like to speak to that, Councillor Wheeler?

Yes, thanks, Mr Mayor. I want to make it clear from the beginning that this isn't about Council taking a position on raising the dam wall. This is about Council taking a position on a submission about the EIS. They are very different things, and I think we're losing sight of what the purpose is at this point in time. The EIS is part of the decision-making process that will be taken by the state government, not by this Council, and will determine what happens. What we need to do is work out the best possible submission that we can provide as the impacted downstream, or the major impacted downstream community, because certainly there will be other communities putting in submissions who are upstream, Wollondilly, Blue Mountains, for example.

Last meeting, we debated one form of submission. This is an attempt to put together a submission that is arguably more balanced and deals with the impact in the Hawkesbury LGA. I won't go through it painstakingly, point by point, but I am willing to massage some of those points. I'm happy for this to be taken in seriatim so that we can come to some agreement around these points. And I'm also happy to add to it.

One of the things that's really concerning to me is the information that we keep putting forward through avenues like the Floodplain Risk Management Committee that don't ever seem to be picked up, and that concerns our infrastructure provision, particularly loss of power, telecommunications, lack of access to emergency services. That needs to be in whatever submission goes forward. The lack of flood studies for the tributaries into the catchment also needs, that point needs to be made clear as well. The inadequate evacuation routes and the building on those evacuation routes that makes it harder and harder for us to get out is something that the state government is going to have to get its head around.

They are the cause of this. They are releasing that land. They are pushing for development on that land, and it will directly and indirectly impact on us in times of flood. It is also a pretty fair statement to make that our residents experience significant traffic, particularly on Richmond and Windsor roads on a good day. We can't get our residents out in timely fashion on a dry Tuesday. How are we going to get them out in an emergency? Putting more and more people along Richmond Road at Marsden Park, it's self-flood affected. All of which drains into South Creek and drains into our LGA will have an impact, and that is not adequately considered. But what's really concerning about the EIS is the information that came out in yesterday's Select New South Wales Government Select Committee, and I'll quote Stuart Khan from the University of New South Wales.

The EIS does not adequately assess, quantify, or address risks to water quality. The EIS itself states it cannot do it. Now, this is— there's a more risky circumstance in terms of water quality and public health if the project went ahead. We've just heard from Mr Sheather about the problems with water, about concerns about letting water out of the dam for flood mitigation, and yet we're willing, it seems, to dirty the water that's in there that provides the water supply for Australia's largest city. And another— there's lots of talk in the EIS about water quality upstream, but upstream water is our downstream water flow, and we should remember that, and that impacts on the industries that live here and the water that we drink.

Also deeply concerning was the testimony of the ecologist, Rachel Musgrave, who resigned rather than put her name to this report. Dr Ross Crates, who said that there was significant editing of wording, it excludes a major area of impact, the offsets are not able to achieve what they say they will. Neil Perry, who talks about the cost-effective analysis. This isn't a cost-benefit analysis; it's a cost-effective analysis. It doesn't say how we should use government funds. He went on to say that there was a need for far more detail about downstream benefits. There is no way the benefits outweigh the costs. It is not the best use of government funds. We don't even know if this is the best way to reduce floods downstream.

And I'll leave it there for further debate.

Thank you. I had a few questions, if that's okay, Councillor Wheeler. Just around, just there's a couple. In point four—actually , well, it's not really a question unless I'm missing something—but I don't believe council has ever considered its support or otherwise of a government-based insurance scheme. I don't know what that looks like or where that's come from. So I'd be really unwilling to support something that is really up in the air like that. It seems to have come from nowhere in terms of council having considered a position. But it might be something there. It's

Been discussed—it has been discussed in the past on the Floodplain Risk Management Committee—that, in fact, we are now at the point where insurance is so difficult for residents to obtain, and it appears from the noise now coming out of the Insurance Council of Australia that raising the dam wall won't necessarily mean that these properties will become insurable, that a government-based insurance scheme is the only way we could avert an economic disaster. It's—the Floodplain Risk Management Committee has discussed repeatedly the economic impacts of having whole towns uninsured for flooding should there be an issue, and we know that from the experience of Lismore and other areas where their entire CBD has been wiped out without insurance. Recovery is extraordinarily difficult. That's certainly a circumstance that we are likely to face.

Thank you. And in regards to point six, concerns about increased development areas likely to be inundated, I imagine we're not communicating concerns with our own policies and LEP back to the state government. So what are we concerned about that the state government.

Well, we've got increased—there's still the possibility of increased density in some of those areas. We've had a couple knocked back by Gateway, but in all of those areas, you can put a granny flat in, perfectly legally. They don't have to be—you know, we're not allowed to have detached dual occupancy on rural areas because of flood evacuation concerns, and yet you can put a granny flat. You don't put your granny in the granny flat; you can rent that out to people who are not related to you. It doesn't have to be attached to the house. You could effectively—you could put a granny flat into every house in Bligh Park or in McGraths Hill quite legally under the current state government legislation. And rightly residents feel that that's ludicrous, that they can't put a detached dual occupancy on a rural block outside the flood zone, but you can happily put one in

McGraths Hill. Thank you. And in regards to points nine, eleven and twelve— sorry for going a bit fast—but is the intention that the submission would examine the effects both if the dam was raised and if it wasn't? Because obviously those two scenarios affect downstream water differently. Well ,

A good EIS should do that.

I agree. We're not writing an EIS, though. It was just the statement—the impacts, for example, on downstream important fishing industries. So we would be looking at the impacts of an unmitigated one-in-100-year flood event and a mitigated one-in-100-year flood event and see which one's better and worse. That's the.. .

And environmental impact statements should do both. It shouldn't have to be pointed out to the government that that's what an environmental impact statement should do, nor should it be pointed—this is a comparison. It's an analysis of both scenarios. So the current scenario, which is unmitigated, and a scenario where you raise the dam wall. So I feel that that's a tautology. I feel that's a given.

That's fair enough. That's my understanding too. I just wanted to make sure we were sort of saying something there. That was all the questions I had. Thank you. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to support this. You know, to say that this is not about taking a position on the project, but then spend the entire time talking about everything that's wrong with the project and what everybody else has said is against the project and why it shouldn't go ahead, I think probably speaks for itself. I'm not necessarily opposed to a government-based insurance scheme, but I don't have any information available to me to think that that's something Council should start advocating for today. I'm also not ready to start advocating to stop attached dwell occupancies in all these areas.

Again, that's sort of not a position this Council has ever taken before. This Council has, in fact, as you pointed out, in the past tried to extend attached dwell occupancies, so I didn't think that Council was inclined to start advocating against them in our urban areas.

And I think we're just, I do think we're being irresponsible here. We've got the biggest, as I said, I don't want to rehash the entire debate from last week, but we do have the biggest unmitigated flood risk in Australia. We've got a solution on the table that's come at the end of a process of working through all of the possible solutions. And the inclination here is just to be against it and hope it goes away. And no one's willing to put forward a feasible alternative. We had a lot of talk about desal, but we're not in a position to make a decision on desal, and no one's suggested we start advocating for desal, and that's obviously years and years away. So I can't support this. I did send around an amendment, a proposed amendment, noting that my position that I put forward at the last meeting was not supported by Council.

I would therefore, the next best thing from my point of view would be a balanced submission rather than a submission against. To me, this is not balanced. It doesn't include any information. About the huge risk that we have. You know, we haven't even mentioned the risk at all. We've mentioned other risks, but not just the general risk from flooding and how much of our community is in risk of that. And we haven't mentioned the fact that the other solutions examined by the government have not been found to be suitable, or disagreed with that assessment anyway, and pointed out that one of them might be suitable. We haven't done any of that. So this is, without saying we're against it, it's going to read like we're against it.

And the only other point I would make is that, you know, to say that this is not our decision to make, but then in point 15 is we're going to decide that the cultural and heritage impact statements are unsatisfactory. We're going to make that decision. We're not just pointing out things we'd like included or looked at. We're going to decide that we believe they're unsatisfactory. I don't believe that's our role. I think you can argue that it's not our role to be making this decision, but that is our role. So I can't support this, and I'll be disappointed if this is our submission. But note that we'll have a chance after the council election as well to relook at the issue if we want to. Councillor Reynolds.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. I'll just pick up on a couple of things you said . I think you said that other options have been considered, such as desal.

I think it's worth pointing out that the EIS does not properly consider desal. And the benefits it provides in a drought-proof context. No more water restrictions. And as Mr Sheather said, if we could lower the water level low enough in the dam, we would achieve the same outcomes. It's interesting that when Infrastructure New South Wales came and spoke to the Floodplain Risk Management Committee, they said that they were working with the Bureau of Meteorology and their now quite excellent modelling, so they would be able to predict when heavy rains would come, and so they would start to draw down on the dam before the rain arrived. And yet that seemed to turn into a bit of a disaster in March , where that obviously didn't happen.

There is a legislative issue where, you know, just by law, the dam isn't a mitigation dam, but the only difference between legal and illegal is an Act of Parliament, and that's easy to get around. The issue we have here is that you're basing your opinions, I think, Mr Mayor, on the EIS, and it has been shown in the last day or two that the EIS is flawed, that it was heavily edited by the proponent,

That scientists had parts of their reports removed and words changed by the proponent, and there was even murmurings during the Upper House inquiry ,

The inquiry, that, you know, this is something that's almost worthy of ICAC, where you have a proponent modifying what is supposed to be an independent report to suit their own agenda.

This is a very, very dangerous thing to go ahead with, where the full results are not known because the impacts are not known because they've been left out of the EIS. For example, in part of the EIS, they talk about early drawdown of the dam, say releasing water three days before a flood comes, and they say that that can't be done because it will increase water velocity in the river channel and cause erosion and perhaps riverbank collapse. Yet then they go to say that after they've raised the dam wall and they let the water out, it will increase the prolonged floodwaters in the channel between the riverbanks for 10 days, so more than three times as long, but apparently that's okay. There is just, I mean, the rampant hypocrisy within three or four paragraphs.

I mean, you have to sit there and go, hang on, there's something wrong with this. Just accepting it on face value because it's come from a government department or a government agency, private company as it is now, where we know they have edited the EIS, they've altered the scientific reports. We're entitled to ask questions, such as Councillor Wheeler has got here, and it throws a massive cloud over it. And it's even more interesting now that one of the dam-raising proponents , our friend the Premier Dominic Perrottet, is now taking steps back and saying we should consider more options. And just a little while ago, you yourself, Mr Mayor, said all the options have been considered. Well, the Premier doesn't think so now.

And I think we should take a leaf out of Mr Perrottet's book and take a step back and get them to reconsider everything, which is what Councillor Wheeler's motion seeks to do. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and I'll open with a question to you, sir. I was very hopeful that you would move the amendments that you circulated, and I'm in a bind because I'm in the same situation as you. I find that Councillor Wheeler's notice of motion has very many defects, and I was prepared to defend your amended version, so I want to implore you to put those amendments, and I will support them.

I'm the chair, Councillor Zamprogno, so I can't put an amendment or move an amendment. If somebody else thought there was merit in that and that was going to be supported

A conversation, then I'd be happy . Well, if that's the case, then the amendments that you circulated earlier, I would be happy to put in my name and seek a seconder.

Is there a seconder for that?

No. All right. Apparently not. Okay, then there being no seconder, then I'll speak to the motion that is before us. And, you know, without wishing to completely rehash our debate from a fortnight ago, can I just remind everybody here that the only thing that would be really unconscionable is our council representing the community that is at greatest risk of flooding in the entirety of the entire nation to not have something to say on behalf of our community. And that's why I was so disappointed when a fortnight ago, your motion, Mr Mayor, which purported to do just that, that we would make a submission and that there were things that we would need to be mindful of, and I thought they were fairly well considered.

And I took pains to point out that this was not a debate about whether we were generally for or against, because we well knew that there are people who are set on both sides of that fence. And it's so disappointing that we have lost a fortnight, considering that the submission process is only open until the end of the month. We've now only got three weeks to make a proper submission instead of five. And I'm glad that Councillor Will has brought this back to the chamber. But if she wanted the council to make a submission in a timely fashion, she should have supported the mayoral minute that came up at the previous meeting. It is not good enough for councillors who are opposed to this, intractably opposed to this, to continue to say, as the Deputy Mayor does, is that we don't have enough data.

They said previously that we needed to wait for the EIS, and the EIS is here. There is enough data in hand for us to make a considered judgment, but we're not even asking for that at the moment. We're simply putting the view that council should have a voice in that process on behalf of the people who are at risk in our community. We seem quite willing to weigh in when there are other issues that don't relate directly to council affairs, whether it's climate change or Windsor Bridge. We've passed motion after motion about those subjects, and I'm disappointed that people that oppose this, instead of saying that they're just against it and be done with it, simply just want to run out the clock.

And they know that if the hue of either the state or the federal government changes from Liberal to Labor, this will be taken back off the agenda and therefore effectively won. It is. Totally irrelevant for us at our pay grade to be arguing about things that the EIS goes on about at length. So, for example, that we should really be drawing down the permanent water storage level of the dam, when the executive summary of the EIS says on page 24 and 25 that if you lowered the permanent storage level by 12 metres, you'd save about 795 gigalitres, but you'd lower Sydney's permanent water storage by about 40%. And then you'd have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of additional money finding new sources of water to replenish what is lost.

And the desalination plant that we have costs us $190 million a year to run, even when it's idle, even when we don't need it. And the EIS also says that by 2041, the benefits of lowering the water storage level to provide that flood mitigation would be three times lower than if we simply raised the dam now. So there's plenty of data at hand, and to simply complain that we need more data and then repeat that as though that still sounds like a plausible way of, you know, being cautious just doesn't float at all. I only wish that this motion was a strident declaration of this council's support for raising Warragamba Dam, but it isn't. It's a request for council to make a submission. Now, Councillor Wheeler's proposal and the amendments that you circulated earlier, Mr Mayor, have 12 out of their 15 points in common.

I felt that the ones that you had omitted and then the ones that you had included generally improved that document. I would certainly endorse voting on this in seriatim, because I can't countenance a situation where we make no submission, and that we abrogate the responsibility we have to speak for the voice of this community, the community that is at greatest risk. It would be completely hypocritical, and I don't want the proponents of this motion to say, Well, there you are, we rescued this from the libs. There was an opportunity for us to make a substantive submission starting a fortnight ago, and they voted against that. I think that if we can take the best elements of the motion that's before us, I will support that.

I'll vote against some of them, and I'll request that we treat it in seriatim. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. Just to

Clarify, as the last thing I was informed, if you want to deal with something in seriatim, you really need to proceed your motion , and that needs to be agreed to. I shouldn't just be ruling on that. So if that's what you intended, you could move that now. I'll so move. All those in favour of voting on it in seriatim? In favour, Councillor Conolly, Councillors Napierno, against?

Everyone else. Declare it lost. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. And I think that perhaps Councillor Wheeler would consider changing some of the wording to make it perhaps a little bit more, less definitive, if that's your concern, because I do think it's important that we put in a submission. And I also think it's really important to reinforce that this is not about a position on the dam wall raising as such. And I think that this sort of idealistic thing from the 1980s, or whenever it was, that was always the decided-upon thing, is rather remiss of us to even be taking seriously. I don't doubt the passion of the people who've been involved and pushing for that. I think they're committed and I think their intent is good. But we live in a floodplain that is so much different to what it was.

We've got where we once had hundreds of thousands of acres of pasture land, we have hard surfaces. We've got people with allowed development in that floodplain, and we've allowed, you know, things such as Mr Sheather said, we've got service stations. We've got things that perhaps shouldn't have been there, but they are there. And so we need to deal as an absolute priority, and we've lost so much time on this because of this particular debate on how we get our people safely out. And at the current moment, we know that that is not possible, and that should be the priority if we really care about the safety of our people. And don't forget that in this very chamber at the start of this term, the Liberal councillors were prepared to pass for people living right in the path of the floodwaters at North Richmond.

So safety is an issue that I take very seriously, and maybe you weren't at the meeting, Councillor Tree, but the other Liberal councillors did that. I think that having listened, the original proposal was very different. You know, they weren't the houses. We know that climate change has changed the intensity with which the rainfall falls. So these really big inundations, they really change how the modelling, how predictable the modelling can be. And we saw a massive storm in Wilberforce yesterday where the inundation, the rain was so intense. And this is what's going to be happening all the time. So as the Premier said last week, and Councillor Reynolds alluded to that, that he has an open mind on the project and he believes it would be remiss of any government.

Not to consider the alternatives. And we agree, or I agree with that because the EIS doesn't give us the cost-benefit analysis of the raw data for those alternatives, and that's a really, that's been missing right from the word go. And we have asked and asked and asked for that, and it has not been forthcoming. And it should have been forthcoming because it's very relevant to how we can be approaching this and looking at it. So it would also be remiss of us to be taking any firm position without having all that information. And Councillor Zamprogno likes to throw out, you know, the same things every time he talks about it. But the thing is, we did say we were waiting for the EIS, and that was when the schedule around the EIS was to receive the regional land use study prior to it.

It was to receive the cumulative overland study before it, and it was to receive the studies of the other catchments in this area prior to the EIS, which would have informed it. And then, of course, there was a general expectation within the public that the EIS would itself be balanced and it would include the correct information and it wouldn't have big gaping holes, as we've seen come out in the parliamentary inquiry this week by the actual experts who are analysing what's in the EIS. So we still have those studies outstanding, which I would like to see because I think they are totally intertwined with what the future around flooding in this area is. We did see the CEO of Celestino speaking at the inquiry this week, and we know that there is a connection between development and flooding, and we need to understand that and what's going on around that.

The information about the potential impacts from the post-flood release of water is incredibly important. When we think about it, a massively raised dam, there's a lot of water behind it, and there's a requirement that the inundation upstream of the World Heritage area is only minor and very quick. So that means the water has to be released. So that, in turn, we need to understand what the impact of that post-flood release will be. We've seen a leaked report that says that our community infrastructure, infrastructure for which our ratepayers fund and for which we're responsible for caretaking, can be inundated by that water and damaged. We need the government to give us that information. Withholding that is preventing us from doing our proper obligation of being the caretakers of our ratepayers' funds and what they're spent on.

So we need that information to really inform ourselves of what will happen after the flood. The water is not going to evaporate. The water has to come out. It's got to come downstream at some point, and we need to know what that means. Will our growers have their crops underwater for longer? What's the actual impact? What's the economic impact, and what's the environmental impact of that? And we need to ask that. If we're not asking that and understanding that, we're not doing our job. So we're responsible for that.

Time has expired, Deputy Mayor.

Oh, okay.

All right. Thank you. Any further speakers? Not, we go right of reply. Councillor Calvert.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, I spent a lot of time talking to people about this issue, and I just wanted to ask a question to start with. If this notice of motion was to get through, Would it go through in its current format, or are we going to ask the staff to fill it in? For example, question

0.5, lack of water level monitoring and timely access, or number 9, concerns about water quality following inundation. Are we just going to say we're concerned, or are we planning to fill that in with more detail?

So this is a direction to staff to prepare a submission along these lines, yes.

So we're asking the staff to give great detail on things like the impacts on the prawn and fishing industries, yes, and to have that available in two weeks' time, yes. I don't think that's realistic. If you look at the number of things that are in this list that will require some really deep investigation, I don't think this could happen. I'm thinking that maybe all that should happen is that we should make a list of concerns and say these are the things we think we need to think about, and we'd like the state government to consider, and ask the state government to provide us with that information.

Also, I think that there's a little bit of mixing up here of what we're doing. I think we're supposed to be putting a submission about the raising of the dam wall, but a lot of these items here are not so much about the wall, but about flooding in general. Things like cost of insurance, the cost of infrastructure, those sort of things. I don't think it's tied to the raising of the dam wall. They are things that are tied to flooding in general. Now, cost of infrastructure, if we ask the staff to fill that in, that's going to take them more than two weeks. And if we're asking about number seven, inadequate evacuation routes, are we going to ask the staff to provide us with vehicle numbers and under this condition only this number of cars can get out, and under that condition?

I mean, that's a big study in itself. So are we asking the staff to pull that from other places? It's all, to me, not going to provide a very good set of questions or set of information. And I think we, at this stage, I don't think we're in a position to do any more than ask, make a list of concerns and say, this is what we're concerned about. We'd like information on these matters, please, before you proceed, and that we don't want the raising of the dam wall to be the only solution to this problem. There are other solutions that all need to be considered, and I've been saying this forever, they all need to be considered together as a holistic plan. To just say that the raising of the dam wall is going to solve our problem, to me, is unrealistic.

And to say that not raising the dam wall is not going to be a problem for us is also unrealistic. I think we need to look at how all the solutions can work together, including raising the dam wall, and that is what we should be submitting, not just these questions. Or if we are going to submit the questions, they should be in terms of, this is what we are concerned about. So, thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, did you want to ask a question?

I did have a question because it was something that I wanted included. And of course, this is a list of things that should be in the EIS and aren't, basically. Whoops, hang on, my thing. It was just to include specifically, I think in point 10, around point 10, with regard to the likely delayed drop in flood levels, to include around community ratepayer-funded infrastructure, if Councillor Wheeler would agree to that. Because, of course, all this information is available. The evacuation information is available, and it's all meant to be part of the one strategy, which it is. So it should all intertwine and should all be included together, I would have thought. But if Councillor Wheeler could do that, and perhaps with regard to point 12, with the prawn and fishing industries, we could either seek the information directly from Gary Howard — you could maybe put that — or just express it as a concern, as was just said, rather than actually analysing the impacts.

But it definitely is a concern that they should be a stakeholder, I would have thought.

The question is, Councillor Wheeler, did you want to include an additional, or extend the sentence in point 10 to include impacts on prolonged flooding on downstream communities, including ratepayer-funded infrastructure? Yes

I'm happy with that, Mr Mayor.

Okay. That change

Councillor Zamprogno , did you have a question? Well, it was going to be a question to Councillor Wheeler whether she would include some of the other points that were in your amended version that were... only there, and to see whether she'd be interested in including those, and I can enumerate them. If you could direct your attention to the proposed amendments circulated by the Mayor, number two to start with. Councillor Wheeler, would you be happy to include point two, the one that says, The estimated number of buildings and damaged buildings within the Hawkesbury River floodplain within the Hawkesbury local government area at risk of potential flooding in various design flood events, including one in five, one in 20, one in 50, one in 100, one in 200, and probable maximum flood, and the reduction of the number of buildings and damaged buildings that the Warragamba Dam Raising Project could potentially achieve.

Do you find that inoffensive?

It's not whether I find it offensive or not. It's whether I find it useful for building the knowledge base. I think it's superfluous. The state government has already got this in their documents. This is not about the EIS. This is about the government. When the government knows this, there's no point in us telling the government this. The point of the submission is to tell the government new information that we want them to consider. I know.

Right then. Point three relates to the small proportion of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area that would be affected by temporary inundation in the event of a major flood event. I would love Councillor Wheeler to consider including this because it does add new information in the sense that it invites the government to contrast the potential temporary inundation above the dam with the built environment downstream.

Councillors , obviously I agree with you, given that I wrote some of these, but I'm not inviting everyone to have a second go at debating. So if you wanted to ask the question

I'm pointing out the clause and asking Councillor Wheeler if she'd include it. Do

You want to include point three, Councillor Wheeler?

No, and I would refer Councillor Zamprogno to yesterday's Select Committee inquiry and the testimony of the ecologists involved, who strenuously dispute that point. All

Right then, and my last one, Mr Mayor, is would Councillor Wheeler consider including point four that recognises the need for a collaborative approach to floodplain management across the valley and demonstrates our commitment to providing up-to-date and relevant best practice controls based on consideration of flood hazard and risks. Yes , happy to include that. All right then.

So we've added that one.

Okay. So that point four from the proposed amendment document will become point sixteen. The seconder is happy, Deputy Mayor? Yes. Okay. Councillor Richards. Yeah,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I wasn't sure if I'd chime in on this one, and I was just listening to the, you know, other councillors who offered their opinions on this, and it's quite clear that we're not here tonight debating whether individually we support or do not support the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall. But of course, what should be the content of our submission from Council as an entity. Now, I can't support the submission that is in front of us tonight. I believe it does go too far. We are on a deadline of getting this information in. I think it imperative as a council to show that what happened to our community in the two most recent flood events that we encountered. But I think that this one goes too far, and almost instead of having a balanced approach on things, I do believe that this one contains political intent and political will, and based on some of the points that are in the submission before us, with that political intent, I won't be able to support it.

Suffice to say that I do believe it's fundamental we get something in, and I would be definitely concerned that if we get the wrong kind of statement through. I believe that this one has elements where there is the wrong kind of thing that we should not be saying as a council or demanding. But it's a shame that it would go through in this format, and I won't be supporting that format in front of us tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll go right of reply, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor, and I want to thank the other councillors for their comments. I think it's a shame that this is—I know that we haven't had a council position where we have all agreed across this council in this term, but I think it's a bit of a shame that this is coming to us so close towards the end of term because we are not necessarily at our best in terms of driving for consensus a month out of the election. And I do recognise that this is a political space, and we are about to go to the polls. Regarding the concerns about the level of detail in some of these points, much of this information has been well known to the council staff for a long time. There's nothing in here that is new to the floodplain risk management committee members in particular.

We have discussed these things repeatedly. We have had Prune Fisherman come in and speak to council staff and councilors about their concerns around this project and also other river health matters that are similar to the water quality concerns that have come up in the discussions after the EIS has gone on public exhibition. We don't have to fill out these to an extraordinary level of detail, but we should point out that they're not covered in the EIS. The role of the EIS, if it is done well, is to cover all of these both upstream and downstream impacts, and that's the point, that these impacts—and these are our residents and ratepayers and businesses. Have impacts that have not been covered by the EIS.

We don't need to go and find out what those impacts are ourselves. That's not Council's role, nor is it Council's role to put forward a feasible solution to this problem. It's our job as local government to highlight those concerns to the state and federal governments and have them do a good job in coming up with a solution, if there is one that's feasible and practicable and that actually works. We don't have the capacity to design a mitigation strategy for the most dangerous floodplain in the country. And I'm not sure that anybody else is able to hold back the power of nature either. The point here is that the EIS is deeply flawed, and it's flawed for us for all of these reasons. There's a difference between backing

Raising the dam wall and criticising the impacts on Aboriginal cultural heritage. We will not be the only group to criticise the discussion of those impacts. The New South Wales Government Select Committee has made a recommendation that the project not proceed without the free, prior and informed consent of the registered Aboriginal parties involved. They make the comment that the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment hasn't complied with the Burra Charter. This is not my opinion. This is the opinion of experts in their field and the opinion of the people who are who are impacted, and they have a right to have an opinion and to make that opinion known.

To say that this council has made statements on things that don't affect us, things like climate change, is frankly ludicrous. Climate change does affect this council. We are paying for it now. It also affects flooding. And I think, very interestingly, yesterday were Professor Stuart Khan's comments about the combined impacts of both flood and fire, particularly in this catchment, and the likely downstream impacts of that on water quality as well. I thank the Deputy Mayor for raising the issue of post-flood release impacts. It's incredibly important to us. The other thing that we've been asking for Infrastructure NSW to provide for literally years is the impacts of a double peak event, where the water is let out into a wet catchment and close on the heels of the initial flood event comes a second event, where the catchment, where the upstream area is still flooded, the downstream area is very wet, and that water is being released, and then we have a second event, and we still haven't got a satisfactory answer to that either.

So again, there are holes all over this document. We need a proper cost-benefit analysis. We need an analysis that takes into account all of the impacts on us, not just this idea that you might be able to hold back a flood.

Time has expired, Councillor. Just trying to wrap up when you can.

Thanks, Mr Mayor.

Okay, well, we'll put the motion. Just wait for it to come down to the screen so I can see, councillors.

So all those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillors Mpogna, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Ross, Councillor Rasmussen. Against? Councillor Richards, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Tree. Declare it carried.

Councillor Garrow and Kotlash absent for the vote. So I'll just wait for those councillors to come back in.

Next item is 216. Councillor— yep, you've joined. Draft Development Assessment Policy. Somebody wishes to move something?

I'll move that one, Mr Mayor.

Recommendation moved, Councillor Wheeler, seconded, Councillor Reynolds. Any discussion?

Gosh . Did you want to discuss, Councillor Wheeler?

Yes, sorry, Mr Mayor, I had a brain snap and couldn't find my hand. I think this is a good step forward for Council. I think the comments in the submission are particularly interesting . I think there's the comment that the Hawkesbury isn't alone in struggling with development application assessment workloads, and that the developer who made the submission says that he is struggling with lodgement, or experiencing delays in lodgement with DAs through a number of councils, and that certainty is more important than at the moment. And I think that's two key points, two key takeaways, I think, from this submissions process that is really interesting for councils. I think this is actually a really helpful document too for councilors coming into this space, and we will see significant turnover in this council because a number of people are retiring.

This is a, I think this is a really useful document for councilors to look at and say, this is how this process works. We are the often, rightly or wrongly, the first port of call for people when they've put in a DA and they want to know how it's going to proceed. And this actually is really useful. So you can pull this out and say to people, look, this is council's advice. Go to a pre-lodgement meeting. Get an idea of whether what you want is feasible or even necessary. So I had a resident contact, or it was a business owner contact me a few weeks ago. They've been having a few teething problems with their new business, and I said to her, look, I think you need to meet with our planning staff.

You might need to have, you might need a DA for this. You might need, they're relying on existing usage rights. You might need a DA. You might need a pre-lodgement meeting. You might need to do these things. They rang to book a pre-lodgement meeting, spoke to one of the planning staff who said, look, you don't need to do any of these things. I can tell you exactly what you need to do, and you're good to go. Didn't cost them any money at all, but just set them up for a positive interaction with council, and it got their problem solved. And that's the sort of service that we really should be providing. This sort of clarity and this easier to navigate way forward, where people know the steps and they know what they're going to get in, what they're in for, and what they need to provide upfront, I think is really important.

Development applications here are difficult. We have lots of constraints. If people are aware of what they're facing before they come into the process, that's better for both us and for the applicant, and hopefully will save time and money in the long run.

As Councillor Wheeler, I'll just speak very briefly in support of the policy. I've made no secret of the fact that this is a key priority for me personally, is trying to fix this area of Council's operations. It's an area that we very commonly have complaints about. It's a real source of frustration that we're perceived to be, for whatever reason, not easy to deal with in this sense. And I think this policy, as Councillor Wheeler just explained, this policy is setting out the expectations for both ends of that process so that people can have a smoother experience. And it's one of a number of improvements that we're trying to do in this area so that we can try and make Council easier to deal with. So I fully endorse the policy. Councillor Ross.

Thank you,

Mr Mayor. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, folk. This is not a policy at all.

It's something of a procedure, if you want to call it that. I just draw Councillors' attention to a document which you all received and considered in July, wherein there was talk about policy. And I'll quote from that document. The author quoted

Merriam-Webster defines a policy as a high-level overall plan embracing the general goals and acceptable procedures, especially of a governmental body. Then the author cited Wikipedia, in which the following is stated. Policy is a deliberate system of principle to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol.

I'll leave it at that. Now, this is nothing but a statement of procedure. If you want to call this policy, I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong end of the stick. The policy is the legislation and regulation provided by the upper tier of government, the state. They define the policy. We're here to adopt that, and what we're talking about are a set of procedures, nothing more, nothing less. And all the verbiage here goes to that. What this document does is, in fact, confuse matters and is going to result in further complication and difficulty amongst our residents and prospective ratepayers when they come to put in a DA. This is just absolute nonsense. I'll refer you then to so-called page seven of the document, which appears at page 23 of the business paper.

Related documents. Now, the EP&A Regulation 2000 is included as a result of community interest. But then below that, the following words: other relevant environmental planning instruments, codes and policies. Hello? A policy that needs to—it's got to refer to other policies. What a lot of absolute nonsense. This is just hopeless and should be thrown out, frankly. And apart from that in itself, the matter of what happens in the cases of refusal and reconsideration of development applications is Caesar unto Caesar type stuff. There is no separation. It's quite possible that the person looking at some form of review process may indeed be the person, or certainly involved in the original application.

That's hardly likely to win any friends in the community or any understanding that there is in fact good process being invoked. There needs to be far better consideration of the community and these referral and refusal processes than is being looked at here. And this set of procedures, frankly, should, in my opinion, have been put out by DPI on a statewide basis, or at least metropolitan basis, so that all councils are operating in a coded framework, and there are known ways in which and processes and timelines, etc., that are applied. This is just further confusion that is going to result in more dispute and greater angst and anxiety amongst the community. And we, as the Mayor has already pointed out, there is sufficient of that going around this area, and we all know of it, and we've all experienced it and heard of it.

And I'm sorry, but this is not a cure. I will vote against this, and I implore my fellow councillors to do the same in the interests of the community. Thank you.

Councillor Ross. Just very, very briefly, I think whether you would call it a protocol or a policy doesn't change the substance of this at all. It is clearly a statement of intent. I think the idea here is that we're stepping out with the community very clearly what steps will be taken and what things will happen when. And in terms of the review of determination, my understanding is that that procedure comes directly from the Act, and it's not something we could vary if we wanted to. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and I agree. It does have an attached protocol to it as well, which is in more depth. I did have a couple of questions around it, however, and one of them did relate to the section related, document section 7. And that was around how there's no reference to anything around the notification and the involvement of the community within this process. I'm just wondering, is that going to be included completely in the DCP, or we just know, and I know we spoke about it, about many people wanting to be alerted to these sort of things, particularly if they're major DAs very early on in the process and being aware of them all the way through. Is there what would be the relevant attached policy, I guess, that could fall under, which other policies?

But I'm just drawing attention to it because I think while we're doing this, it's really important that we address that at some point. Refer

That to the General Manager, our Director City Planning, sorry.

Thank you through you, Mr Mayor. So essentially anything in relation to notification will be included as part of the community participation plan. You might recall over 12 months ago, the State Government required all councils to develop one of these plans. We brought our plan to Council a while back, and all of the notification processes are included in that and no longer in the DCP.

Okay, so not in the DCP. So it would be one of the relevant related documents here that people may refer to. Maybe that could be listed. The other thing was, and this was just from reading it, was would someone give—it's for the public's benefit, if they were reading through this—would someone explain what assumed concurrency is in terms of being a planning tool? Because I think that people might read that and not understand what the notion of it is. Thanks.

Director City Planning?

Yes, okay. So essentially part of the process, as you might be aware, we need to engage with relevant state agencies and seek conditions as part of, you know, the approval process. We give them a certain time frame in which to do that. However, in some occasions that might take a while. So assumed concurrency is we basically say to them, this is what we're proposing, these are the conditions. We'll give you some amount of time to, you know, provide and concur with our response or edit or whatever. If they don't, then we assume concurrency. We assume that they're okay with what we've put forward. Okay,

Thank you. And I'd just also like to just quickly thank both the staff for doing this, but also the people who made the submissions. I thought they were valuable and interesting to see those. Thank you.

Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I want to do two things. I want to endorse the adoption of this policy while , like Councillor Ross, pointing out its many flaws and to state that I hope that this is only a small step on the way to a larger journey. And that's because we all know, as elected representatives, that the most common interaction we have with citizens in the area— Relates to a sense of unhappiness in their customer service interactions with Council, particularly as it relates to the processing of DAs. Now , that anecdotal evidence is backed up by hard data. We now know that the average DA determination time is 170 days, six months, and that that figure has worsened from a year ago, 147 days.

And when we compare that to some of our neighbouring councils like Blue Mountains, where the average is 85 days, and both Camden and Wollondilly, which have average DA turnaround times of 66 days, we see the proof of what we already knew anecdotally, and that indeed we have over seven DAs that have been in our system for over 700 days. So I see this as an aspirational document. I mean, it's all well and good for us to adopt a document that says that we're going to impose deadlines on applicants of 21 days to supply information, but then take our sweet time and take six months to determine a DA. No wonder people are cynical. And, you know, I don't want to pile on Council staff because I acknowledge that they are under-resourced and overworked, and we're grateful for what they do do.

But the thing is, we would be irresponsible as an elected chamber if we didn't pair this aspirational document with a really hard-nosed assessment of what resourcing, what additional resourcing, is needed in the planning department through our operational plan to make sure that they have what they need to get the job done. Because at the moment, we suck at it. And I know that at the beginning of this Council term, we set this as a priority in our community strategic plan to improve our performance in this area. We knew instinctively that it was a pressure point, and there's been abundant evidence since that's the case. So. The next chamber, I think, will have to augment this and not consider this as the finished product.

Thank you.

Thank you. No further speakers. We'll go right over to Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just a few comments . I'm happy if the Deputy Mayor would like, I'm happy to add to the recommendation that the Community Participation Plan be added to those documents. Can't add anything in right of reply, sorry. At that point we can change the motion. No one asked.

So it's clear, I think, that both the Community Participation Plan and the Customer Service Plan, which Council is currently working on, need to be added to this document. To Councillor Ross's point that just the mention of other documents makes this, weakens this document or makes it up, in his words,

We are a tool of the State Government and we have to refer to other policies. Otherwise, we'd be rewriting our policies every time the State Government made some planning change that we were subject to, and that has happened repeatedly in this term of government. So if we don't want to be putting staff resources into endlessly rewriting our policy documents, then we have to have clauses in the back of our documents that allow us that wiggle room. They don't make any difference to the capacity of the document. We have to do what the State Government tells us to do, but it does need to be referred to so that one document can build on the other. Further to the comment that this, and I think you answered this in part, Mr Mayor, that a policy should have a statement of intent.

It's very clear that this is a statement, that there are clear statements of intent in this document. are outlined in Part 2, the objectives of the document. But the real bones of the policy, I think, are outlined in Step 3, where we talk about the timelines required. And we know that this has been an ongoing problem for Council with lack of information within DAs. Until we sort this out, until we make a clear, until we clearly point out to applicants exactly what needs to be in a DA and the timeline that they have to get that information to us, we will always be on the back foot with comments that Council isn't doing its work in a timely fashion. Now, if Council isn't doing its work in a timely fashion, then we need to uncouple that, whether those DAs where we have insufficient information because applicants haven't given it to us, and the DAs where Council is the party dragging the chain.

If we put tight constraints on applicants, then we can clearly identify ourselves as the problem at the back end. And that's something I think that we do need to look at going forward. But this is, as I said before, this is not an easy area for DAs. We have flooding, fire, heritage, biodiversity , other ecological concerns. This is not as simple as chucking up a house on a greenfield development site in an LGA like Camden or Wollondilly, where they've got literally thousands of DAs coming at them for simple developments in greenfield development where all the work has been done and they simply have to conform to a specific DCP for that space. We are not in that space. So to compare their averages with our averages is erroneous.

And to compare any sort of—you're going to have to do, if you want to sit down and analyse the timeframes of some of our DAs, then you need to do a proper statistical analysis where you look at the outliers in that dataset and determine what those problems are. And only then can you talk about how we fix this problem going forward. This is the beginning. I agree we are not at the end, but I think this is a solid beginning.

We'll put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillors Progne, Councillor Humley, Councillor Lanes-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Richards, Councillor Carver, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Tree, Councillor Potlash, Councillor Garrow. Against? Councillor Ross. Declared carried.

Our next item is 217, the Local Heritage Assistance Fund. Recommendation, Councillor Wheeler?

The recommendation with an additional point that I have set through the staff earlier. Do

You want to read that out or bring it up on the screen maybe so we can get a seconder?

Yeah, I can't see it, I'm sorry. Yeah, look, I've got my notes, so there we go. So the motion is basically the initial recommendation, the business paper that we approve the funding, and then a second recommendation that comes from the Heritage Advisory Committee that we contact the New South Wales Heritage Office, the local member for Hawkesbury, Robyn Preston, and the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Rob Stokes, to request additional funding for this scheme, given the very high concentration of heritage items in the Hawkesbury LGA and the value add obtained from the program.

Second that, Deputy Mayor?

Yes, Mr Mayor, thank you.

Discussion, Councillor Wheeler?

Thanks. So look, firstly I need to begin by thanking the Heritage Advisory Committee for their work over the last four and a half years, and acknowledge both Councillor Reynolds and Councillor Zamprogno's input into that committee. The committee has been really effective at highlighting the need for better heritage protection and the greater valuing of heritage in the Hawkesbury, and that it's been really quite a remarkable turnaround. I also need to thank the staff for their tireless work here. We, until very, I think possibly this week, we haven't had a dedicated heritage officer on staff, which has made life extraordinarily difficult for our strategic planning staff, who have had to come up with all the heritage work without a dedicated person.

We've had a heritage advisor, and his work is now really valued. In the LGA, he tells us that five years ago people would duck indoors and close the curtains when they saw him coming, and now he is so tightly booked to give advice across the LGA that his time during the day is timed down to, I think it's something like the five-minute mark for getting him to different properties across the area. So the staff have done a remarkable job with this, with getting information out to the community. Four and a half years ago, when we ran this scheme, we were literally inviting people in off the street to talk about funding for the heritage item. Now we're oversubscribed. So that's a huge turnaround.

And what we've got here now is a $5,000 amount from Heritage New South Wales that Council matches by $40,000, which is an increase in previous budgets. And that, if you look at the sums in the table provided, leads to a $350,000 worth of work done to heritage items. Now the Heritage Advisory Committee is very keen for Council to ask Heritage New South Wales for some more money. And so councils who are seen to do the right thing by heritage all get $5,000. But many of those LGAs are small, and many of them have very few heritage items left. We have loads across a huge LGA, and we run the gamut from natural heritage, First Nations heritage, colonial era, all the way through to post-war heritage.

We have an extraordinary body of heritage, and a lot of it needs work to keep it standing, to keep it valued, to keep it beautiful as a tourist attraction, and as a thing we know from the Place Score study that we did early in this term of Council, something that residents see as a really valued part of their cultural identity as residents of the Hawkesbury. The Heritage Advisory Committee and I agree with them, believe that it's time for the State Government to cough up a bit more money. I'm always of the impression that if you don't ask, you don't get, and I don't think, at the very least, it hurts us to ask. The worst they can do is say no. So hopefully you will be able to endorse point two.

I also want to thank the owners of these heritage items for their willingness to pour their, not just their money, but their energy, their sweat and their love into these sometimes absolutely extraordinary buildings, from many of them very humble real indications of how we have lived in this space.

Thank you. No further speakers?

Okay, in which case we'll put the motion . Those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour : Councillor Linsbuckett, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Carvert, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Tree, Councillor Ross, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Potlash. Declare carried.

Next item is 218, and Councillor Kotlash has declared an interest.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I am employed by Sydney Weeds Network, which Council is a member of. There are often discussions and sharing of information about pesticides in

This regard, but these don't have any bearing on the content of the Pesticide Notification Plan, and likewise Council's Pesticide Notification Plan has no apparent impact on the Sydney Weeds Network. So I'll stay in the room. Thank you.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I would like to move a modified recommendation from the one that's in the business paper. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get that to the staff. I'll read it out, and then I'll type it once I've finished, if that's all right with you.

So that Council adopt the Pesticide Notification Plan with the following changes: phase out the use of Confidor by June 2022; phase out the use of products containing metaldehyde and replace with iron-based snail and slug pellets by June 2022; prevent the use of products containing diflufenican near any water source or stormwater drain; points two and three to remain the same; request that Hawkesbury Sports Council phase out the use of Grazon by June 2022; and point five, investigate alternatives to chemical weed control to be reported to Council by June 2022.

There a seconder for that?

Seconded, Councillor Ross. Discussion, Councillor Wheeler. Thanks

And I apologise that I haven't got this in words you can see. Just, I'm a bit concerned. When we discussed writing this plan , I raised these issues around some of these products and asked that we look at alternative sources, and it appears that that either hasn't been done or it hasn't been reported back to us. I'm concerned with some of the things that I've read in the report, but then I'm also concerned about, in particular, those three—sorry , those four pesticide products, or their use, and in particular their use near waterways. There's a comment in the report that Hawkesbury Sports Council had stored their chemicals in a flood-prone shed in Benson's Lane. Part of our pesticide control plan needs to be that the storage of these items—and this is a legal requirement—be secure.

If something is able to be washed away by flood, it is not secure. All of these chemicals, we haven't lost them, as the report stated. They've ended up in the river, and they will leach into the river or into the wetlands that they've washed into, and that is simply not acceptable for these chemicals controlled by a local government agency or the third party answerable to a local government agency, that this is the storage, that this is how we store these. I've got concerns about, and my concerns about specific pesticides . The product Bowen Arrow that council uses in parks, and I presume that we are using this as a slow-release means of controlling bindies and broadleaf killers, that's what it's broadleaf weeds, which is what it's listed for.

So Bowen Arrow is its trade name. It's, forgive my dodgy pronunciation, diflufenican, is hazardous to the aquatic environment. It shouldn't be used—sorry, that's my phone going off—it shouldn't be used anywhere that we have an aquatic environment. Sorry, that's the man on my phone, and I can't make him go away. I'm very sorry. Hopefully it's not a scammer. No, it's not. They've gone away. Thank you. Confidor is a neonicotinoid, which spreads to all parts of the plant and makes the entire plant toxic. Troublingly, it's most toxic to bees, not just European honeybees, but also a whole lot of pollinators and native bees. It's banned in the EU. It's being phased out in Britain. We need to stop using it.

We've known for several years that this product is problematic. We need to simply stop using it. It's not a very good product. It's terrible for the workers. It makes people really, really ill if they're exposed to it in a high enough quantity. And largely, it appears being used for things like aphids. There are far better means of controlling pests. Metaldehyde is the bog-standard blue snail pellet. Again, banned in the UK. It's been banned twice now. It's banned again from 2022. It kills dogs, cats, makes kids really sick, looks like lollies lying on the ground, kills birds and mammals, and is easily replaced with products containing an iron compound, ferrous sodium EDTA or iron phosphate products.

Really easy to get around that, and we should be doing that. And then my other concern is with the Hawkesbury River County Council, and I know they're a statutory body themselves, but the fact that they're using Grazon I find really concerning. So Grazon is a systemic herbicide, and it turns the manure of whatever eats the plant matter into a herbicide itself. And so people have lost their entire garden by using a couple of bags of contaminated horse manure, for example, because the horse manure is a herbicide. It's like spraying the garden with Roundup. This is not a product that we should be endorsing the use of either, and so we need to move past all of these. Sorry, I cut through the clock.

I've got no idea how I'm going for time. Twenty seconds. Twenty seconds.

Oh, I'll stop. Thanks Thank you. Councillor, for speaking, not for stopping.

Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Councillor Wheeler may have just answered one of my questions, and that is whether she was proposing for us to implement a policy that would be binding on HRCC. I presume she admits that it's not possible for us to pass a policy that's binding on them, but certainly that we should be engaging in a cooperative relationship , and if we have concerns over particular chemicals, is that we should be in a dialogue with them. Is Councillor Wheeler, is that her intention? That's what she clarified when she was speaking, yes. All right then. So here's the thing. I share many of those concerns, and they may be well founded. What I can't countenance is the addition— Of those additional prohibitions in an ad hoc way, I would prefer to see that come to a briefing, and I'd prefer to see somebody with expertise in this field brief us as to why what she suggested wasn't already in the business paper.

And if there was a good reason that balanced risk and necessity for the continued inclusion of these chemicals, I want to see that reasoning. So I can't vote for these additional prohibitions tonight , and I'd hope that somebody would move an amendment that just brings the original motion. Thank you. You didn't want to move that, Councillor Zamprogno?

I want to hear from others first. Okay. Councillor Richards?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I have no need to hear from others. I'd like to move an amendment that we put this motion to a briefing, please, because I would actually like to hear from an expert in weeds management from them. I would like them to tell us all about the different weeds here. We all bring our own strengths and weaknesses to the table here as councillors, but none of us, you know, we're not all experts in weeds, and I think that there's—I'm not comfortable voting on a motion that's so drastically changed when I don't have the background information on a lot of these weeds. So I'd like to move to a briefing, and in that briefing I'd like us to have someone come in who's an expert in these sorts of weeds, and then once we know a little bit more about them, we can try and formulate a way forward.

So the amendment is that the consideration of the matter be deferred

To a briefing— Yes,

A briefing session, seconded Councillor Tree. Okay. Any further discussion, Councillor Richards? No,

Thank you. It's not my subject matter, so I'd prefer it to go to a briefing where we can get the experts in. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. I'll support that amendment. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that we just do that off the floor without any warning or notice. I don't understand the effects of most of these, most of the herbicides and pesticides we're talking about. I'm an accountant, and I would need time to be briefed on this and to read and understand the consequences of doing that, what the consequences are for our operations and costs, and also what the necessity is for doing this before I went ahead and just agreed to it off the floor of Council. So I think the responsible thing to do is to defer that to a briefing. I just want to ask the General Manager, or somebody else if she wants to delegate that, as to whether there's any problem with deferring consideration of this for a few months. Do we need this plan to be adopted?

I might refer that to the Acting Director of Infrastructure Services, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. So we are required to review the plan on a regular basis. So the risk that we run if we don't adopt it is that we may get cautioned by the EPA or fined if we don't adopt it. And just also wanted to point out that the plan is about how we notify the use of pesticides, not necessarily the pesticides that we actually use. Thanks,

Mr Mayor. I could suggest, Councillor Richards, is the amendment that could it be that we adopt the plan, but then call for a briefing session on whether or not we should consider whether or not we should be changing the pesticides we're using? Yeah

Absolutely. Based on what the Acting Director of Infrastructure just said, the last thing we need is Council to get a fine or a caution or anything like that, or be breaking the law per se. So my amendment would be that we adopt as per the recommendation in the business paper and appoint to that we take this matter as a whole to a briefing where we can actually look at what Council's doing with its weed management and decide on further action from there. Thank you,

Mr Mayor. Happy with that change, Councillor Tree? Yep . All right. Any further discussion on the amendment? Councillor Ross.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Not. I have a number of questions which I'd like to put. The first is to staff in regard to the attachment number one. Is this the first time this document, or a similar document with this purpose, has been produced, or is it in fact a, if you like, a second edition of the document that might have been prepared as a result of the 2017 regulation being passed, please?

Through the Director Infrastructure Services.

So the Pesticide Notification Plan was reported to Council on the 8th of December 2020, and that's where we had the resolution that we publicly exhibit the plan, and also to provide the additional information that's included in this report. So

Is that the first iteration of this ever having us ever having a notification plan, or are we just reviewing our existing plan at that point?

It's reviewing it. So we are required to have a plan by legislation. In terms of the exact date when that requirement started, I may defer that to the Manager Parks and Recreation.

Yeah, good evening, everyone. Look, this would be the third plan that Council would be adopting. So we've had two prior to this one, so this will be the third one.

Thank you. Thank you for that, Mr Mayor and staff. The reason I ask that is I'd like you to refer to Attachment 1 at page number 12, Appendix C, and for that matter, page number 11, Appendix A. Now, Appendix A, I understand, does have some relevance in the context of the earlier parts of the document, but it is not referred to in any part of the earlier documents. So it's hanging out there

Unidentified or as being part of the document. So I question the preparation, and furthermore, then I turn to Appendix C. There is apparently no Appendix B. Apparently, Appendix C is just a copy of whatever went before, and I ask, frankly, I question the relevance of that document. As far as I can see, it's got no relevance at all to the main point of the attachment , and I think Appendix C should be deleted, and I also believe Appendix A ought to be tied in to the report to indicate the sort of material that should be made aware to the public. Then I'd like to follow with some questioning. In regard to the use, and possibly this would, if this briefing is going to proceed, could I inquire as to whether the... Council staff, when they're using particularly weedicides, add a colouration or a dye to the material emulsion

So that both the operator can see the area which has already been treated, and the public is also aware, as a cautionary note, by visual difference that there has been chemical applied. This is apart from signage, of course. Could I have comment on that, please?

I refer that to Mr Perry.

Councillor Ross, no, currently we don't put a dye in our broadleaf or Roundup at this point in time.

Thank you. If this goes to a briefing, I think that might be a point of consideration by all of us there. Then I'd like to put it to staff that this document, between pages 2 to 4 inclusive, indicates the types of locations where this council is involved, and I exclude the HRCC specifically because they're a separate LGA with separate reporting requirements. It doesn't affect them. These three pages deal specifically with our local government area. I wish to inquire as to why three areas have not been included, and the first is the nursery, the second is the animal shelter, and I also query what happens at RFS depots and installations and out in the field where they are using hydrocarbons.

I'll refer that to Mrs. Collier.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I may check that with the manager, parks and recreation.

Thanks.

Sorry, Councillor Ross, if I can just confirm your question. You just wanted to know why the RFS and the nursery weren't included in what chemicals were used, is that correct?

The nursery, the animal shelter, and the RFS depots potentially. I'm not sure about that. They may have separate reporting requirements, but nursery and animal shelter certainly come under our aegis.

Yep. So I can only apologise. The RFS wasn't something that I considered when looking at this report to put that as to what they use. The nursery was considered, and they did provide that feedback, and that is what is in the council documentation there.

So could you point to the page where that is referred to, sir, please?

I don't have the document in front of me, Councillor Ross, but it just included the Roundup and the glyphosate and the broadleaf that council use, and then we identified what products that council use in general. So speaking to the nursery, they hadn't actually used any herbicides that year. They generally rely very heavily on volunteers weeding and so on at that site.

Right, but there is a potential, is there not?

What do you mean, Councillor Ross?

A potential for use for some herbicide, whether it be a hydrocarbon or a formulation of glyphosate or some other material.

I'm not sure if Mr Perry is able to answer the question. I'm striving to follow the train of thought here in terms of what information you're trying to secure here.

Okay, Mr Mayor, I refer you to page 2 of Table 1, and then page 3 of Table 1, and page 4 of Table 1. They indicate, in general terms, the locations at which these agents may be used.

Now, I would put it to the staff and you, sir, that the nursery ought to be shown as ought the animal shelter,

As locations where these things may well be used in the course of the operations of the council.

Mrs. Galita, do you want to answer that? Thanks

Mr. Mayor. So the plan generally lists the notification, the places that are classified as public places. So this notification plan applies to notification given in public places. So those places that you mentioned, the animal shelter, the nursery, and the RFS, may not necessarily fall within these categories, but it's something that we can certainly review to make sure that we've captured everything. Thanks , Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, but I take exception to that because there are volunteers operating at the nursery, for instance, and there are certainly people at the animal shelter. And I don't believe Section 5 of the Pesticides Act, where the definitions are supplied to the public, such as myself and yourself, they apply equally, or the definition applies equally to agents used in treating animal diseases and such like. So they are— Also, pesticides, and I would very much feel that we need to do a bit of a touch-up on this document itself, please.

Thank you.

Councillor Cutler, sorry.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I just was wanting to know, on page— sorry, don't know the page number —in the report in the business paper, there's a comment that says considerable resources and effort has been invested in addressing Part 3 of this resolution. And I just wanted to ask staff , what was so considerable? Because I would have thought these things were audited and just easily picked off some sort of— I don't know. Can I just have a comment on that, please?

I'll refer that to Mrs

Galia. Thank you, Mr Mayor. So , as the report outlines, the two main pesticides that we use, we keep in stock. So essentially, we can run very accurate reports in terms of the usage, and we were able to get that information fairly easy. With the rest of the chemicals, there is a chemical register that we have, and records are kept, but they're very manual based. So these are not items that are stocked, so it was difficult to run reports that gave us the accurate usage. So we did look at ways how to get that information, but it would have taken a lot of staff time. So what we've learned through this process is that we need to keep those records more in the system rather than manually. That way we can keep more accurate records in terms of the usage.

So , yeah, that's an improvement that we've actually picked up. So what's taken time, in answer to your question, Councillor Cotledge, is I suppose trying to find a way to report more accurate figures, but it came to a point where we just said, let's just report what we have and then start an improvement process going forward. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, I would have thought that that was, yeah, something that we, yeah, we must do. I won't make that—I won't ask Councillor Richards to include that. I'll just take that as a given that's now in the pipeline. One of the things I also noticed, and I just wanted some clarification. It seems that the Sports Council in—and I'm talking about part three again in this, in the resolution, which is— which was to get a full list of all pesticides used by Council and its agencies, including the Hawkesbury River County Council and the Sports Council, including quantities used and the cost for the period of 2019-20. But what we've got, it seems, we've got some data from the Sports Council that says, has a list of their chemicals.

It has the quantities that they've used and the cost, and the cost comes to $33,653, which seems rather large. But then we go to the Hawkesbury River County Council, and they've provided a stocktake. They have not provided what we asked for. So was that— why do you have any insight in why that wasn't able to be provided in the same way that the Sports Council gave us quantities and costs?

Mr.

Mayor. So River County Council have the same issue that we face, where a lot of their records is manual. It's not sort of in an easy format that they can report to usage on. So that's why this was the best information that they could provide us with. Same issue that we have encountered.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So thank you, Ms. Leah. So when the , I just thought it was a little bit, well , a little bit odd that the Hawkesbury River County Council has stated that the cost of their pesticide use in that time was $1,664. So we compare that to the Sports Council of $33,000. So I think it's probably, I guess my point is that I think we probably need to encourage our third-party agencies to really keep much more, a much more transparent, you know, ledger of what they're actually spraying out there. And I just, I find that a bit mystifying. That's a very big difference, and I guess I'll just leave it at that. It'd be interesting when we have our briefing to delve into not only the pesticide use, which I think we're probably going into territory that even with getting an expert in to help us, I mean, all of these chemicals are regulated by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.

So, you know, whether we take them on or not is another question. So I guess in our briefing it would be very, it'd be good to find out how we can get these data to be more transparent. Thanks.

Councillor Ross, I note you've got your hand up there. You did speak earlier. Did you

Further question? I did, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much for your indulgence, and I'm sorry I should have mentioned this earlier. The council usage of glyphosate is

Not what one might describe as being

Sufficient in view of the tasks that I would suggest that council performs with these agents. Glyphosate is supplied in various bruise formulations, however you like to describe it, for various purposes. For instance, the use of some glyphosate in treating the detention pond here on George Street over in McQuaid Park , which does need some attention , would be rather catastrophic to some aquatic species, whereas other formulations of glyphosate would be less harmful. So I think these chemicals need to be expanded. Now, the list provided by HRCC would probably cover all manner of applications and incident areas that they come across in their dealings. And

I should also point out to the previous councillor that the activities of Hawkesbury River County Council will be surely the subject of their own reporting, and it's not an affiliated agency; it's an independent local government area, as we have heard through the course of this year and last year, and they have their own reporting requirements. So this is something that those folk will have to look at on their own account. And in regard to the Hawkesbury Sports Council, well, one may, apart from the question asked by Councillor Wheeler and the point made by her, which are perfectly valid , you might look at the cost of broad arrow at $111 a metre. So is

This a question

Councillor? Yes, yes. Still going? Yep. Thank you very much. It appears that we are unable to achieve any economies of procurement, as I would suggest to you there, and it then would be appropriate for the staff to consider bringing that all under the primary procurement of the council area. Could I suggest that to them, please?

Is that the question? Can you suggest it? Yes, yes. Yes, you could, but that was probably not very in the spirit of the ordinary practice, Councillor Ross. Councillor Richards, just confirm that you have the words on the screen.

Just looking now, Mr Mayor.

Councillor Tree . Give a second there.

That's fine. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Being no further discussion, we'll put the amendment then. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour of the amendment are Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Tree, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Rasmussen. Against ? Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Declare it carried.

Um.

Amendment becomes the motion. There's no further discussion on the motion. Go right of reply,

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, I'm really happy for this, for us to have a discussion about the use of pesticides at a briefing, but we have gone over this matter before. I'm a bit flabbergasted that we are happy to use products in this LGA, an agricultural area, an area with

An extraordinary wetlands and riverine environment that are banned in other countries, and yet we want to have someone come and talk to us at a briefing because we think we can sort that out ourselves. I would imagine that we would use the precautionary principle as a council and act on that. So I'm disappointed that we're kicking this can down the road again, but I guess I'm not surprised. There is, it's becoming a bit of a thing to sit here and condemn other council laws for their knowledge, and I think that's a really ignorant position for council to take. I'm a biochemist. I understand these chemicals. I understand what they do. I understand what they do in the environment. I understand how they hang around, and I understand what they do in the human body.

I am not bringing these matters up lightly. I find it deeply concerning that we are happy for our staff to use a product like Confidor and that we are happy to use a product like metaldehyde in an LGA like this, with such a high extent of biodiversity and people with pets. We are using these in public spaces where people walk their dogs, where people have cats, where people have young children. We are using these products on our sporting fields that kids roll around in. We need to do better.

Thank you. Put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Tree, Councillor Gurry, Councillor Calvert. Against? Councillor Ross, Councillor Wheeler. Declare it carried.

Is 219, road naming proposal in Jacaranda.

Do I want to move the recommendation or something else?

Moved, Councillor Wheeler.

No, I want to move something else, but I don't have any words. So I guess I want to ask that, I think I want to ask the developer to come back to us with recommendations that are more place specific.

Okay, you could

Something along those lines.

Something along those lines.

So we've got a preamble to seconded from Councillor Rasmussen. Might just ask the Director City Planning what we would do if that was Council's intention, how we should be handling this.

Okay, so I'm not sure if the manager designer mapping has a comment on this because we don't actually deal with the road naming in our section, but that's okay. But Chris, do you have a comment?

Thank you, yes, through you Mr Mayor. So the Jacaranda development, as the name states, is the theme they were looking at following. We did have discussions with them about just people that may have resided in the area and looked at some various other options, but they wanted, as a collective, to go with the theme Jacaranda and also the moon. So that's what they did. It was following in a similar manner to other developments such as Pitt Town and Redbank, where the developer came up with a suite of names to follow particular themes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Just a further question on that. Do we need the developer to come up with these names, or is that something that we can just do ourselves if we wanted to?

Generally speaking, with a development like this, I guess to some degree we're giving them some involvement with the names. That's quite a number of roads to come up with sort of specific themes, so it does follow other areas as well, not just in this LGA where they try and provide themes within a particular development site. So we do certainly give them that opportunity. That's been with many of our roads that we've had named in the past, Mr. Mayor.

So to help, to guide Council Wheeler's potential motion here, we don't need to go back to the developer. We could simply decide not to adopt these names—well, not to exhibit this or publicly advertise it and ask Council staff to re-examine the road naming.

We could start the process. So as part of this, in bringing this to Council, so we've gone through a process where they did actually have a much larger list of names. We go through the Geographical Names Board, GNB, in relation to putting these names firstly on their portal. They test that against various criteria through the addressing manual. So lots of names, they may be duplicated in areas within other LGAs or within close proximity. So it does take some time to get this number of names up, and that's why we've sort of stuck with these particular themes because it's not always that easy, because some of the names that do come up are already duplicated within the LGA, given its historical significance as well. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Councillor Wheeler.

I'm not really fussed who comes up with them. I just don't like these, is the short answer. I'm sorry to be so contrary, but none of these have... I get the purple theme. I get the moon theme and celestino. I understand why they've come up with these ideas. For me, they don't confer any sense of place for this development. And one of the things that we've discussed repeatedly when looking at this development, looking at the DCP, is integrating this into Glossodia as a whole and having something that's reflective of Glossodia. Purple is not reflective of Glossodia. I get that jacarandas have purple flowers. You know, Glossodia is named after a purple orchid that actually has had its name changed by the botanical authorities and it's now called something else that now escapes me.

Some of them are weird. Who wants to live in Mangosteen Drive? Some of them are open to some fairly selective pronunciation , I would suggest, without going into detail. They don't fit with our place, and I would like us to see something that does. Look, I'm not going to die in a ditch over it, but I think we can do better than this.

Were you moving something, Councillor Wheeler, because I did need a motion to start the debate.

I'm happy for the developer to come back to us. I'm happy for us to come back to us. I just...

Whatever's easier for the staff, I think, at this point, aside from taking mango seed.

Can I suggest that we just take that as, if there was someone who wanted to move something, we might just move on and let that be. If we haven't got anything specific to move, because potentially you're just speaking against the motion, the recommendation, and we could just let it lapse if nobody wanted to move it. Or if someone wants to move it, you can vote against it, or you could move something else. But probably need some more direction than that. I'm happy just to let others speak. Well

I'll put up that the council staff ask the developer to provide another list of names that better reflects a sense of place, or that has more connection to the local area

Seconder for that?

Deputy Mayor . Councillor Rasmussen had preemptively seconded that, so I'll let Councillor Rasmussen be the seconder. Deputy

Mayor . Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I'm the same. I don't really think it matters so much what streets are called, but I did have some questions, and I was hopeful that whenever we were doing anything new like this, that we would have some Indigenous names included in our, you know, going forward. That we had some reflection of our First Peoples in that area would be a very nice thing to have included. Perhaps that can be maybe to the developer, and I'm sure there's a purple word for it. I think Councillor Wheeler answered my question. I wonder what the significance of the moon was, but of course Celestino, very celestial. Maybe they could be named after some stars or something like that. And I just wondered, will the street signs in fact be purple?

Is it going to be a theme? Is there really a purple theme, or is this just names? I'm being serious in asking that.

I refer that to whoever wants to volunteer to take it. Yep, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. The street name blades will be in accordance with our DCP, and they are currently blue. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you. Okay

Councillor Garrow. Yes, I just wanted to make a suggestion, and I don't know how it would work if we were possibly change to Hawkesbury Plant name, and there's a lot of lists of our local plants around the place, so if we could make that suggestion.

Happy for that to be passed on if this passes rather than part of the resolution, Councillor Garrow, is that what you intended? Yes,

Thank you

I might just go against the grain here a little bit and say that I read the names and they weren't offensive to me. I didn't have a particular problem with them, and probably not something I spent a long time thinking about. I would be perfectly happy to have different names, but I'm also noting the advice from the manager that this is quite a process to get to this point, and, you know, I wondered whether this is the best use of ratepayer funds for us to go back and do this again , unless we had, just because something that is probably fairly subjective as to whether we like them or not . I'd probably be inclined to go with the recommendation unless there was some real reason, a strong reason not to . That's just me. Any further speakers

Councillor Wheeler, again . Just for right of reply, Mr Mayor.

All right. Yep. All right, we'll go right of reply, Councillor Wheeler.

So just to clarify, I'm not proposing that the staff do all the chasing around. I'm proposing that the developer does that. That hence our staff asking the developer to come up with another list.

I like the Deputy Mayor's suggestion that we ask them to look at some Darug names, but I think it's important that the Darug people are happy with that, that this isn't us asking that Darug culture be imposed on a place that is, at the end of the day, stolen unceded land. And I think naming of— and it's the same with local plant names. There's a bit of a phenomenon where you strip the biodiversity out of a space and then you name all the streets after the things that you've destroyed. And I think

That's a fairly bitter place to arrive at. Now this developer has been very good with working with us on areas of biodiversity, so that isn't such a great concern, but I wouldn't like that to necessarily be a precedent from this council. I think we need to look at the heritage of Glossodia, and Glossodia isn't something that just sprung up as a housing development in the '80s. It has a history that goes back to its use as the Wilberforce Common in 1804, and then subsequently as a labour settlement to provide a better life for people who couldn't gain employment elsewhere. Its name came into being in 1922. This area has its own history. We get very focused here, I think, on the history of the Macquarie towns.

We need—this needs to have a sense of space that belongs to Glossodia, not to this development, but to the whole town, and hopefully the developer can come up with that. Worth pointing out too that, I mean, it's a nice coincidence that Glossodia is named after a purple orchid, and jacarandas are purple . Jacarandas, while magnificent, are actually a weed across the Sydney basin, and so that needs to be kept in mind when we extol their virtues and enshrine them into names. Some of these names are just odd. Patriarch, really? And eminence. You know, I'm not sure that that's the message we want to be conveying either. So I think back to the drawing board

Put the motions, get this to come down on the screen.

Put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ross, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Rasmussen, Councillor Calvert. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Tree. Declare it carried.

Next item is 220, the emergency management charge.

Anybody wish to move anything here?

Moved, Councillor Kotlash, the recommendation. Yes, is there a seconder for that?

No.

Seconded, Councillor Calvert. Okay. A discussion? Any discussion?

I'll speak in Councillor Ross. Okay.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I find it rather curious, frankly, that this matter should come up in this fashion to this meeting. We haven't , since the 25th of May,

Learnt anything of any substance about this Council's finances and where it's at. And all of a sudden, without even a quarterly statement for the three months to September of this year, we now get a proposition that we want to have another $400,000 of income.

I think

It may be warranted, but I also believe that if the staff were playing fair and square, They would come forth with the QBRS for the September quarter, and let's see where the cards have fallen and the numbers have fallen.

It's obvious, and this is one of those occasions where it's not what is said, it's what is not said that is the determinant of what's actually going on in the background, behind the curtain. And the situation is, frankly, that this Council in this term is facing a very substantial deficit. And there may be all the squawks in the world that all of a sudden are going to be manna on the table and we can partake of it, but that's purely supposition. I believe that this matter should not be considered at this time. It should be considered when we have a proper quarterly budget review statement and be in a better state of knowledge as to what Council's actual financial status is. And I think the points that I made at the last meeting were relevant to that.

And there is also the question, of course, that there was a further revaluation of roads at the 30th of June this year of another 25-odd million.

So that also invites an extra depreciation charge, naturally . So that further clouds the financial situation so far as I'm concerned , and I believe that while this may be warranted, this is not the time and the place in which to discuss it. And let's see the numbers. We could have had the quarterly budget review statement prepared by this stage, I am absolutely sure. And staff have taken it upon themselves not to do so. So I say, I'm sorry, but not interested. Thank you.

Ross. Councillor Calvert.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I don't see a problem with this. It's a model that works elsewhere. And it's not as if we're trying to invent something that hasn't been done in other places. And it's been shown to work well in Blue Mountains, for example. And during the crises we've had over the last few years, and we've had a number of them, as we all know, our staff have been really stretched trying to meet the extra requirements. Their jobs, a lot of their work that they had to do in planning or other departments all had to sit there and wait till— because it was all hands on deck to help out with whatever the current crisis was. So if we're able to employ another, some more staff through this, then I think that is only going to help us.

And staff can be used for also developing plans and strategies, not just only when crises happen, but to be ready for the crises when they turned up. And all in all, we're looking at $15 per property, I think is the figure quoted. And of course, if people have hardship problems, we can work out how to waive that, but I generally don't think many people are going to have— Hardship problems with $15. So I see nothing wrong with this, and all we're actually doing right now is asking the minister if we can do this and see what her response is. That's just the first step. Now, if she says no, then we'll see what we can work out after that. If she says yes, then once again it comes back to council, I believe, and we would make that decision then.

So I don't think we're signing ourselves up to anything major here. We're just looking to see whether it's possible and see what the minister says. So I'm keen to make that step and see what happens. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I don't, I mean, I've raised this before and it wasn't supported a couple of years ago when the fires were occurring. But I think that the Blue Mountains model is quite different to what this proposes, and they do a lot of actual physical works with the money from that, and I don't know if this is what's intended. As well, we recently had— I raised about the money to be put aside for emergency situations and the movement of staff around to be redeployed to areas where they're required when there is an emergency service, an emergency situation. But I just really think above all else that a couple of weeks out of an election, when we're in a caretaken mode of council, we should not be agreeing to a charge.

This should be something that the new council does. I think it's far too late in the piece. There will be enough time when the new council comes in to still include it in a draft budget if it's deemed to be something that the new council chooses to do. I support having the emergency management officer, of course. I think that's a wonderful thing. But I don't think now—I think we just can't be making such a decision at this point in the council term.

Thanks, Deputy Mayor. I actually, I think the opposite is probably true. I was quite happy for this to come up before the election because I think it's important that if you are going to do something like raise a charge, that you actually upfront with people and give them a chance to decide whether they want that, rather than, you know, the week after an election decide you're going to bring in a new charge you hadn't told anybody about. I think that would be terrible. If it was more palatable, I'd be happy to remove—well, I would be happy to support a motion that removed point 2, which is just that, let's not agree to a charge per property, because as you said, that's not actually urgent. That can be done by the new council at any time.

However, point 1 does have to happen ASAP. If we're going to have the opportunity to do that, we need to write and start that lobbying now. The Blue Mountains is the only council in that regulation that has the right to charge an emergency charge. We are a very unique city council in terms of the natural disasters we have to deal with. I think the point of this is that the expectation of local government has changed. Each time there's a disaster, we're grant funded straight after it to provide these services. We then have to keep applying for grants to provide the planning that we want to do every time something comes up, and we are routinely funded. However, it's constantly uncertain. And yet when there is a disaster, as we saw very much in March, everyone's eyes turned to council.

It didn't matter the fact that we weren't operationally responsible for almost anything. We were still seen as the lead agency and the lead coordinator of all the other efforts happening, not so much in the immediate combat, but as soon as the flood started going, as soon as the water started receding in a little bit, everybody turned to us. And we're not funded for that. We don't have that. And yet I think it's one thing I have learned over the last six months is it's overwhelmingly the view of Hawkesbury residents that we should be doing that. Every time we have a meeting, it often comes up about disaster preparedness. We had meetings at Greens Road, and they're talking to us about, they expect that Council will be making plans as to what the RFS or the ambulances are doing in certain situations.

They expect that that's our role, whether it traditionally has been or not, whether it is by statute or not. There's an expectation that we're there looking out for them, making sure that these other agencies are ready and talking to each other. And so I think we absolutely, I think we have to do this. I think we have to have that role continue to be employed. I don't think now's the time we want to be giving up our emergency management coordinator role and letting that go, because that grant funding expires. Unless we're going to cut something else out of the long-term financial plan and just absorb this as cost shifting, then I think we have to look at how we're going to fund that. And I think, whilst obviously I've been very vocal about not supporting the special rate variation that added hundreds and in some cases thousands of extra dollars in rates, $15 per property on top of that is unlikely to be significant.

But if that's the stopping point, if we don't want to go and commit to that right before an election, I agree we don't have to. We can, I think I've voiced my intent now and had the chance to do so publicly that I think it's a great idea. If people don't want to commit to that, I'd be happy to support just points one and three, so we get the ball rolling and make sure we start lobbying for this so we actually have the opportunity to do it, and then the new council can decide whether they want to once the minister decides whether we can. So I'm not sure if . How others feel if anyone wants to move that.

Mr Mayor, I would move that because that's exactly how I feel. I have no intention of endorsing a charge at this point in the council term, but certainly I think it's something. So long as there's no commitment, I guess just writing to the minister is getting the advice, because there are also quite a few legislative things around it that I think we need to be aware of before a decision is definitely made. And the other thing is that I would ask you if you would put maybe a substitute point three, is that we need some sort of, not so much a review, but some sort of an actual list around what grant funding we got and what that was for and how that's all gone. So I guess like a sort of an acquittal of the whole grants process that we would see at the end of it all if, from what you're saying, the money has been coming and going, because without understanding all of that, we can't really move forward with emergency management to understand what sort of money we need and what's being spent on everything.

Can you or can a member of staff alert me to whether that sort of appraisal has been done of the grants received?

Just to clarify, grants that relate to emergency management.

Yes.

Yeah. Refer that to the acting director of infrastructure services.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. So with the grants, it's a bit, I suppose what the challenge is, is drawing a line as to when we have finished receiving grants. So we're still receiving grants related to the fire , and we don't know how long the grants associated with the floods are going to continue because every now and then some new grant comes up. So whilst we're happy at a point in time to say, you know, okay, up to this date, this is what we've received for the fires and for the flood, we can do that, but it may not be an accurate reflection of where we end up. As I said, we just don't know what grants are going to be given to us. They just keep coming. So, and also what is funded as well is different.

So with the flood, for example, there was obviously the funding of the waste that wasn't so much with the fire. So it's challenging knowing exactly and having any guarantee, I suppose, with a charge like this, if we were to proceed with it, there's a guaranteed income. With grants , inevitably if it's a big enough disaster, we do get grants, but there's no guarantee of what's going to be funded, what's not going to be funded. So it is a challenge. Yes, the answer is yes, we can provide a list, but, you know, with those sort of qualifications around the information. I

Think, yeah, and I understand that completely, but for example, it gives some scope of just the magnitude of what money had to be paid out, regardless of who actually paid it out. So we may have to pay it, but we may get a grant for it. But through all of this, I don't feel we have any real understanding of just how big the actual cost was in terms of what had to be provided to residents and then what burden that was on actual council facilities. And I understand it would only ever be an estimate, and it would also be something that didn't have any continuity guaranteed or anything like that. But I just think that if we're going down this path of setting a charge in the future, perhaps, then we have to have some real understanding of of what exactly Council might, and someone may have already done that to come up with $15, but we have to have some idea of what sort of scope of funding we are going to have to be contributing, even though we don't know grants are for certain, we need to have some sort of quantum of what sort of money the Council is going to be expected to be providing.

Do you have your hand up acting, Mrs. Glear?

Yes. So I just want to point out that the grants we receive, they're for the reactive expenditure, so they're generally funding fixing of the road and etcetera. A big part of what this emergency coordinator role will do is emergency preparedness and community engagement. We generally don't get grants for those types of things. So there is a sort of part of work at the moment that we haven't actually done to the extent that we would have liked to do because we didn't have the resource or the funding to do it. So there will be certain more done in that space if there was funding available. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Councillor Calvert, did you have a question?

It's just a question, Mr. Mayor, about point 2. It was said a few minutes ago by one of the councillors that we shouldn't be setting a charge right now, but I think, am I correct in saying point 2 doesn't set a charge that is applied now? It sets a proposal that goes in next year's draft operational plan in April and May, and then that gets put on public exhibition. Is that the process?

That's right. It's giving some direction that that should be included in next year's budget. I think it's probably a valid point that Deputy Mayor raised that us giving our intention might be completely irrelevant by the time we get there anyway. But I think it's important to have discussed it.

So , Deputy Mayor, you didn't—did you actually move an amendment? I just report my intention

Yes, I did.

Point one and three.

Point one and three, and I was—I'm not going to include the thing around getting the grants, but I just hope that's taken on at that, if at some point. And I understand how much work is on now, but at some point in our emergency management, we will have to have that as an actual overall thing.

Rather than—yeah. Sorry, rather than debating it all twice, are you happy if we just do it in seriatim? Would that work? What do you mean, one and three Vote on the original motion in seriatim, if you want to support parts of it and not others, not adding anything else in.

Oh, I don't—yeah, I don't mind.

Okay. All in favour of that course of action? So that carried. Okay, so we'll vote on in seriatim when we get there.

Did you have your hand up again, Deputy Mayor? No. No? Okay. All right. Is there any further discussion? If not, we'll go right up and reply Councillor Kotlash.

Thanks, Mr Mayor.

Well, I know I haven't spoken on this yet, but I'd just like to say that we're elected to make these decisions for people, and this is long overdue, and I think we really, really have to do this. It's so obvious that we need this coordinator role, even if the coordinated part of their responsibilities are to manage all of the different sorts of grants we get. I mean, it's a huge job, and we really are desperate for this person to come on board and to stay on board and for it to be something that we build on. It's really overdue. I don't think it's right for us to say, Oh no, we're in caretaker mode. Oh no, we can't make any decisions. That's what we're elected for. This is important stuff. I'm sure that there's—most of our community would appreciate that we've had— So many disasters and we really do need to put in a lot more work.

So I can't see that. I just, we have to make this decision, and it's well overdue. We, you know, we have to do it. And as we said before, we might be able to change the details a bit in the next term, or whoever's in council next term. So I think we have to take the leadership here and start this process and make it happen. Thanks.

So all those in favour of point one of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Tree, Councillor Calvert. Against: Councillor Ross. Declare point one carried. All those in favour of point two, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Tree, Councillor Calvert. Against: Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Ross, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Rassmussen. Declare it carried on the casting vote of the Mayor.

And all those in favour of point three, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Tree, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Rassmussen. Against: Councillor Ross. Declare it carried.

So that's our final business. We then got the questions with notice. Are there any questions on the questions in 222 and 223?

No. I declare the meeting closed at 9:07 p.m. Thanks, everybody.