25 January 2022 - Ordinary

Good evening everyone, welcome to tonight's meeting. I'd like to start by acknowledging the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of Hawkesbury, and pay respect to our elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first peoples of this country. And I'll just hand over to the General Manager to mention a few matters.

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

For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. I don't think we have any apologies or leave requests. Any declarations of interest?

Yes, Mr Mayor.

Councillor Richards.

Items 009, 016 and 024. Thank you.

Okay, Councillor Wheeler. Sorry, I'm

On mute, Councillor Wheeler. Sorry

I'm learning to drive the laptop and yes, my background is backwards and I shall go and fix it shortly. Item... Background's okay. 02, sorry.

Background's okay.

Okay. 020 Notice of Motion 3,

Pecuniary interest. Okay . Any further declarations? Not. I'll get Councillor Wheeler and Richards. I'll make a note, but do try to remind me for stuff matters . Confirmation of minutes. So we have two sets of minutes, one from the 23rd of November first, moved Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded for that. Seconded Councillor Zamprogno. All those in favour? That carried.

Can I just—there's a mistake in the minutes, sorry.

Okay.

Sorry, Mr Mayor. On page 11, item 229. Sorry, I'll just find it.

It was from the 23rd of November. I left the meeting, but it says that I was for the motion.

Okay . I have declared that carried, so we'll fix that as a typographical error.

Oh, that's okay. Just as long as it's fixed in the record, thank you.

And there's a second set of minutes from the 11th of January. Somebody wish to move those? Moved Councillor Richards, seconded Councillor Lyons-Buckett. All in favour? Declare it carried.

Okay.

So we have two items subject to public address. The first item is the Mayoral Minute, and we have one speaker, Mr. Michael Want, who we'll just let in now.

Are you in the meeting, Mr. Want? Sorry, connecting now.

Hi, Mr. Want. We're ready for your address now.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor and Councillors, at the Council meeting of the 11th of January 2022, the minutes recorded all councillors solemnly and sincerely declaring and /or affirming that they will undertake the duties of office of the councillor in the best interests of the people of the Hawkesbury City Council local government area, and that they will faithfully and impartially carry out the functions, powers, authorities and discretions vested in them under the Local Government Act, or any other Act, to the best of their ability and judgment or words to that effect. Councillors, just to remind you, solemnly and sincerely, you took the oath and affirmation that you will undertake the duties of the office of councillors in the best interests of the people of the Hawkesbury City Council local government area.

How is it then, Mr. Mayor and Councillors, the previous Council resolved that further answers, information— was required on the Warragamba Dam project before an informed decision could be made. That further information has not been received, to my knowledge. If you were making a decision in the best interest of the people of the Hawkesbury, you would wait for the information from the state government, then consult widely with the community via public meetings to ensure the decision council takes is in the people of the Hawkesbury's best interest, not developers. What's the rush? Councillors will be aware there were 2,067 submissions on the environmental impact statement. 1 ,930 expressed objections and 45 were in support.

That's about 98 out of every 100 objected or were critical of the project. That is nearly unanimous. Certainly overwhelming. Some of the criticisms were from the Liberal state government's own agencies. Councillors, on those figures, we can say with authority there is little support for what the Mayor is proposing tonight. Does this council currently constitute, have superior expertise to the state Liberal government's agencies, or the Insurance Council of Australia, or the heritage body and the other professional bodies? I don't think so. If this is supported by the Liberal-aligned councillors, how is that practicing impartiality, Mr Mayor? Tonight there is the mayoral minute, precision motions and other notices of motions that ignore previous decisions, that change policy or direction from previous decisions, and the mayoral minute is certainly not impartial, as it is Liberal Party policy.

I request, Mr Mayor, you explain to the people of the Hawkesbury tonight how you or other councillors believe your mayoral minute is impartial. The same can be said, say, for example, of the Hawkesbury Local Environmental Plan. In referring to the review of the Hawkesbury Local Environmental Plan— Sorry, Mr

Want, we'll just stick to debate on the Mayoral Minute for the moment.

Well, this leads into it. So

We're not going to have

Discussion of any other items of business paper during this address. That'll be for later. Okay.

Generally, on the political process, if you want a particular decision, you send it off to a reference group nominated by the council. In this case, this is ideology over good governance, councillors, and must be opposed if you are fair dinkum with your declarations and affirmations. What is the point in taking oaths or affirmations if you don't carry out your duties to act in the best interests of the people of the Hawkesbury local government area? Mr Mayor, do the right thing, withdraw the Mayoral Minute, and wait till you are fully informed, and then make the decision in the best interests of the people of the Hawkesbury local government area. The same should happen with Item O16, if it pleases.

Thanks, Mr Want. Are there any questions for Mr Want?

I'll take questions if anyone's got them.

No questions. Thank you. Okay. So Mr Want was only speaker on the item, so I'll put the Mayoral Minute. Councillors, this is about being a strong voice for our community. As Mr Want actually indicated, there are many people and many interest groups around the state that are both voicing their opposition to this project, that are not waiting for further information, that are already reaching conclusions and lobbying the government against putting the safety of our community first. This is about saying to the state government , we do deserve to be taken seriously. We are the most important stakeholder in this discussion, and we do want to see this project progressed. We don't want it delayed.

We don't want it influenced by other lobby groups and interest groups, and we want to make sure there's a strong voice for the people of the Hawkesbury Nepean Valley in this discussion as well. The previous council spent a long time debating this and couldn't really reach a unanimous position. We put a submission in that detailed some of the reasons you would do this and some of the reasons you wouldn't, and also what else we'd like to see in the flood mitigation space, which was the best that that council could do at the time, given its complexion. Since the council election, more councils have been returned that would support, I believe, and I'm testing it tonight, that would support this position, that do believe in this project and the safety of our residents and protecting lives and property.

So I'm putting forward that we should. It is our role as councillors to put our community first, make sure our community is represented and has a voice in this discussion. And I'd like to keep it very simple, as I have, and just put forward to the government that we are here and we want to be taken seriously. So I'll open it up for debate. Any discussion?

Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor, and I want to thank you personally for bringing this. This is a moment that I've hoped for for at least the last five years, and it comes against this historical context. Hawkesbury Council, or its predecessors, had been advocating for Warragamba Dam to be raised for flood mitigation purposes as early as September 1974. That was the first reference that I was able to find on this, and successive chambers and successive mayors took it as an article of faith. That of course, representing the area most at risk of flood, that we should beat that drum the hardest. Mayor Stubbs, in October 1996, brought a mayoral minute confirming Council support for raising the dam by, at that time, 23 metres.

And I might add, Rex, whom we miss very much, led the community by chairing a body called DAMIT, which was a key part of the public advocacy for raising Warragamba Dam. It bears remembering that it was only when the previous Chamber was elected in September 2016 that this Council's unbroken support for flood mitigation wavered. And I am glad that the complexion of the Chamber has now, hopefully, changed so that we can reassert on behalf of the community who are at greatest risk, the imperative need for us to raise Warragamba Dam. Thank you so much, Mr Mayor. Councillor Zamprogno. Councillor Sheather. Mr Mayor, thanks , Councillor

There's been three ERAs done in

Relation to raising Warragamba Dam: one in the early '90s, one in the mid '90s, and the one most recently. The one in the mid '90s I was involved with on the committee; Bob Carr was Premier.

And there was a small group, as Nathan just indicated, that, when I was first elected to Council, no one was talking about flood mitigation over the local government areas that we have party. We looked at house building and things like that in a one-in-a-hundred-year event and things, but nobody was looking at a regional thing. We talked the government into the time to assess that, which they did. They come up with the proposal to raise the dam by 26 metres. The EIS that was done in '97, the outcome was the same. Only the dam was never going to be built, but the information is available there, and it is in this EIS that's been done most recently. Excuse me.

For people to say they're not aware or they don't know what's in it, 35 years I've been involved with this, and I didn't declare an interest because I've very

Much separated myself from all these since I've got on council. I can't sit in two camps, and I've had to leave the ones I've been present for many, many years , so that I can speak on the matter and advocate your notice of motion. And thank you.

We, as the speaker said earlier, are responsible for our city and the people in it, and the businesses in it, and the land in it, and the animals, the vegetation. We're responsible for that. And the EIS is all the information, and at the previous council meeting when these questions were asked, we need to know this and that and all the rest of it. Because you're new boys in the seat, as I am today, and I won't debate things that I don't understand. I'll look to you people with more insight to that and take some professional advice. But I can tell you the questions that were asked at the last meeting

Have

Been there for 30 years. They haven't changed. And to suggest that because they haven't read a document or the like and they don't know, that we should hold it off. We have floods regularly, and we've been lucky the last 15 years. Well, lucky is probably not a good word because when something doesn't happen regularly, we forget about it. But we're going to have floods again. It's not a matter of if, it's when. And we as a city need to be prepared for it. And raising Warragamba is the only avenue. People say, Oh, we've got to look at different opportunities. There hasn't been one that hasn't been looked at over those 30 years. We've looked at putting it through the Lithgow. We've looked at putting it out to sea.

We've looked at straightening the river up. We've looked at causeways. We've looked at levee banks. In the 80s, we lifted houses up. We can't buy all the properties. That's impractical. There's 60,000 people that's in danger here. And the only thing that's practical to fix that, or to minimise it, is to raise Warragamba. So, Mr Mayor, I thank you for your motion, and I know the amount of people that didn't send in submissions because they expect us to do what's right and the government to do what's right. The people in the community, they just want to get on with their lives, and they expect us to do the right thing. The studies have been done, and with the environmental issues behind the dam, we know there's environmental issues there, and we don't want to destroy that.

We've got the same environmental issues downstream, except on top of that, we've got families and businesses and homes and livestock and protected species and animals. We know that, and the studies, and I would strongly support that those things that have been looked at are dealt with properly. But our residents come first. Mr Mayor, I thank you again for the motion.

Thanks, Councillor Sheather. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look,

I'm speaking against this motion, unsurprisingly. We've just heard a couple of quite interesting arguments. One, that we take this as an article of faith. I thought we were in the business of evidence, not faith.

And further that we've had a series now of arguments from hyperbole that in fact raising the dam wall would be better than straightening the river. I would imagine it would be better than straightening the river, seeing that's a complete impossibility. What we've got here is a proposal that overestimates what it can achieve. And it does that in part because it has not properly looked at all the studies. It hasn't done it. The people who are proposing this haven't done their jobs properly in terms of presenting the benefits and risks to the people of New South Wales who will be paying for this project. Now that's not my opinion as a Green. That's the opinion of renowned experts in archaeology who describe the EIS as manifestly inadequate and not meeting the SEARS laid out by the government's own legislation.

The archaeologists who have reviewed this say you cannot make an informed decision based on the information to date. Heritage New South Wales and ICOMOS both say that this fails to meet guidelines. Now Heritage New South Wales is a government body.

What I find most objectionable about this mayoral minute is point B, where it states that this is the option with the best cost-benefit ratio. It became very clear during the New South Wales Upper House inquiry that the cost-benefit analysis doesn't actually exist. What we have is a bit like Windsor Bridge. We've got this little special beast that's been enacted and used to justify this state government project that doesn't do what it's supposed to do. This isn't a proper cost-benefit analysis. It was done in 2015. The analysis that was done was an economic analysis. It was done in 2015 dollars. It has not been updated. The New South Wales government has been unable to provide updated costs when asked, and it's been asked repeatedly.

It doesn't take into account biodiversity offset costs required under the Liberal state government legislation, which are estimated to be currently $1.34 billion. So the total cost of this project is currently looking upwards of $2 billion. The lack of transparency around the cost-benefit ratio has been raised since 2018 by the New South Wales Parliament Standing Committee, which recommended a full cost-benefit analysis of alternative measures be released. The government supported this recommendation and failed to act on it. It took a Freedom of Information application before the information was released, and the economist, Neil Perry, who spoke at the Upper House inquiry, stated clearly, If assessed using New South Wales Treasury requirements, this proposal would not be economically efficient.

So if you say that point B is correct, if you vote to support point 1B, you are saying this is a lie. This is a lie that has been brought out by a government inquiry and is clearly documented as a mistruth.

Then there's the fallacious idea that this will keep us safe. It won't. It may keep us safe sometimes, but this won't fix flooding. And to tell people that it will is to lead them up a really dangerous path. What it does is put all our eggs in one basket. Dr Keys, Dr Chas Keys, the former Deputy Commissioner of the New South Wales State Emergency Service, a man who probably knows what he's talking about in this, says, The raising of Warragamba Dam wall is beguiling. It makes a kind of popular sense, but is not necessarily highly productive of mitigation, especially in rare, genuinely big floods, which will be the most consequential. The pressing need, I think, is to stop the problem of community vulnerability from getting worse.

And he goes on to list a number of things that we should be doing. This is backed up by Professor Jamie Pittock from the ANU, who says the same: Provide alternative flood storage. Stop putting people in harm's way. Improve evacuation routes. Relocate the most flood-prone, not everybody, not 60,000 people, the most flood-prone. That's backed up by the Director of Resilience Program of the City of Sydney, Mr Kearnehan, and also by the Insurance Council of Australia, those renowned Greenies at the Insurance Council of Australia. This is a flawed project. For this council to back it as a panacea is wrong.

Thank you. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and I thank you for bringing your motion to the chamber tonight as a matter of importance in the first meeting back where we of the new term, we are getting on with the job of actually doing what our community wants. And it's refreshing to see that this time around the community has voted that they want to see things, a whole series of, hopefully, change for the better, and I look forward to getting on with that tonight. I'm glad that this is one of the first items that we are debating, and of course we're going to see other councillors and people in the community with very passionate and conflicting views on this particular project. But my personal opinion on this one has never changed, and after we have been through the last couple of floods over the last two years, and the way that the New South Wales State Government have invested a significant amount of time, money and resources in studying the effects on the Hawkesbury..

. And then also educating the community in a whole suite of ways, be it online, virtually, advertising through our newspapers or vehicles driving around. There's been a lot of time and effort put in to ensuring that people are aware of the flood risk. But when disasters do happen, that's another whole kettle of fish for people to see how the devastation actually takes place and how traumatic it is for many people. I fully back your notice of motion, Mr Mayor. I think it's imperative that we write to the people requested in your notice of motion , the position of Hawkesbury City Council as one of the biggest stakeholders in this, in terms of a voice in this project. I think that that's absolutely important.

I also believe that my opinion on this has never changed. This is about protecting people and about protecting property. And all those people who are, you know, you see it on social media carrying on about more development in the floodplain. Well, there was a ton of development done in the floodplain well before we were all elected to government, and quite frankly, well before all of us were even born. And that's what is needing to be protected. So that's where I sit on that, Mr Mayor. I think the point that you make in point four, for me, is one of the most important points, and is the word of delay. I think over the last few years we have seen, particularly with the Windsor Bridge project, a small number of people politically motivated to delay projects that have made an immeasurable and significant difference to the lives of people in the...

Hawkesbury and also to the visitors to our region, and I think that I'm just over the politicking of delay. And I think we just need to get on with the job of protecting the residents of the Hawkesbury, not worrying about what the loud voices might say on social media. But I make my judgments clearly by talking to people out in the street and listening to the community that don't buy into all of that kind of thing. So thank you, Mr Mayor, for your motion tonight, and I'll be supporting it. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Lines-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I just had a question first, if I may. Have we received any of the outstanding information that was requested, or any answers to our questions that were raised in the submission which was sent last year?

I don't believe so. I'll just refer that to the Director, City Planning. Thank you.

Thank you through you, Mr Mayor. No, not at this stage. Okay. There was a series of questions, just for the public's information, around outstanding information that we had repeatedly requested. Just addressing a couple of things that were said earlier, it was very different in 2016 to 1974 around the dam issues because in the last council elected, the studies were being done, and it became very apparent once they were being done that there were some large gaps and some issues around what was being put forward. So that was very clear. And we're not holding off on the decision because we're not the decision makers. In fact, we're just one stakeholder that hasn't even been treated by the government bodies as one of the major stakeholders because we requested to be involved in the EIS as a major stakeholder, and that did not occur.

So we're not the people making the decision. We're not the people causing the delay. The current delays have come from the various departments within the government expressing deficiencies within the EIS, and that is what's actually happened. When Councillor Sheather says we need to do what's right, doing what's right is looking out for our people, who are taxpayers and paying billions of dollars to a project. We require the evidence and the facts before us, because without that we would be irresponsible to be taking a position. And despite this notice of this mayoral minute, rather, not actually saying anything, I mean, I look at it and I'm not quite sure what it's actually trying to say. I think it would be more genuine if it had actually just made a statement of support for the raising of the dam wall.

But it's sort of a convoluted gathering of statements that we know, which are in the strategy anyway about being the largest flood risk. We know that. We know our communities at risk. We're not delaying it. So, you know, maybe we should be writing to the Department of Planning or the government bodies that have called for more information. And Councillor Wheeler has already addressed the cost-benefit ratio issue. What I would like to know is, Mr Mayor, if you have this cost-benefit ratio information, could you give us a link? Because I've tried to find it, and all I can find is a cost- Cost effective analysis, which is of course much different. A cost benefit ratio analysis would actually give us what the long-term projected benefits of the project would be, whereas the cost effective analysis is just a comparison of options that are put forward to see which of those is the most cost effective.

So it's a very different thing, and it's quite misleading to have included that wording in Part B. But if you send that to the government, then I expect they know they haven't done a cost-benefit ratio, so so be it. I do think, though, that sending this message, I just think you should have been out there with the community and said, you know, this is a support for that project. Instead, this doesn't say that at all. This just says what the government's told us and said we don't want any further delays. But those, of course, are beyond our control. So the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Heritage New South Wales and the Department of Environment, Energy and Science have all made significant criticisms of the project.

The Premier has stated that all the options should be looked at. If that wasn't, you know, if that wasn't in the motion, it would be more palatable, albeit very cryptic. But yesterday we heard an announcement around a promise of $33 million to make a plan about doing some works in the floodplain on evacuation routes, and that is, of course, welcome. However. Back as far as 2012, I've read reports that had actually identified the works that needed to be done with those evacuation routes. And if the primary concern is the safety of our people, then that work would have been done, and that would have been funded by now, because that really is a priority. And I'm someone who have pushed to have these evacuation routes done.

We need them done, and we don't need a plan to tell us how to do them, because I've seen documents where they're identified. So we should be just getting on and doing that, because the way we can keep our people safest is to be able to get them out. Having a flood, we're still going to have issues about post-flood water release. That water still has to come down in the valley at some point. So we have to be able to get our people out. That's the most crucial thing. It's clear there's big concerns in the valley around flooding. You only have to see the size of the latest detention basin they're building out near the Marsden Park development to see how concerned some people must be that there's a lot of water going to be accumulating in that area.

So we've got all these various factors contributing to our flood risk. I think we still need the information. I don't think this mayoral minute will make any difference because it doesn't make a clear statement about anything. I won't be supporting it until we get other information. Thank you.

Thanks, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Yeah, look, I know that the people who are supporting your mayoral minute, I have no doubt about their sincerity that they wish to look after the welfare of our community. But I think we need to realise that those councillors— Who oppose this mayoral minute, or who will vote against it, also care about the community. And I think a few people have been putting it up as though if you don't want to raise the dam wall, then you don't care about the community. Well, that's not true. Those of us who do oppose this mayoral minute really do care about the community. We want something done. And when the Upper House inquiry came out and visited us, and I was in the mayor's job at the time, I spoke to the Upper House inquiry and pointed out that raising the dam wall has become a little bit of a panacea.

Many people think, well, all you've got to do is raise the dam wall, everything's fixed. Whereas that's not true at all. And what it would do is lead to a very false sense of security. People would think, okay, it's all fixed now, we can go ahead and build whatever we want to build and live wherever we want to live because it's all fixed. Whereas history shows that's not the case, not the case at all. And many of the floods we had in the past, Warragamba didn't even overflow. So there's a lot more investigation that needs to be done. And to say that, you know, that raising the dam wall was the best cost benefit under an analysis also means that maybe we're not looking in the right direction.

We're looking at costs . We're looking at how much money it's going to cost, but we're not looking at what's best for the community. And this false sense of security means that if you went ahead and raised the dam wall, you're not actually protecting the residents at all. Many of the people and the properties will still be at risk. And I'm not convinced that what the state government has done so far in terms of looking at escape routes and flood mitigation, I don't think that has been a thorough investigation by any means. I think it's just been a- A bit of a whitewash to say, look, we've done that, but we raised the dam wall because it's the best. And I think there's a lot more analysis that needs to be done in that area.

The other thing is, Mr Mayor, that people , some councillors are making it sound as if we are the ones raising the dam wall, that council's going to build it or that council is delaying it, when actually all we can do is give an opinion to the state government. And regardless of what happens to this Mayoral Minute, the state government will do what it's going to do. And I don't think we should give them any oxygen in this case and say, yeah, raise the dam wall because it'll save everything. I think as a community, what we need is put more pressure on the state government and say, well, if you decide to raise the dam wall, then there are many other things you need to look at to save the people of Hawkesbury from this flood situation.

So for those reasons, Mr Mayor, as I said at the beginning, I don't doubt the sincerity of you or the people who support this, but I can't support it because I think it could lead us into a very dangerous situation.

Thank you. Councillor Veigel.

There are two things in the motion, Mr Mayor, so I'm going to support this motion. There has been cost benefit analysis that goes back to when it was first proposed to take the dam up for around about 23 metres of headspace. That's going back a few years, but the cost benefits on the Molino Stewart report identified some significant, well, significant cost benefit to the community, both tangible and intangible. I take the point of view it's about risk. Now, I'm not prescribing this should be any development in the floodplain. I think it should be. I mean, I can't go back to the number of years when they put on a bill below the 19 metre mark. My own home is at about 21 metres above the 100, but their own council maps have taken up the probable maximum flood level around about 28, and that in turn is impacting costs on the community.

But foremostly, for the councillors, in my opinion, that people matter; their homes matter. That's where they brought their families up. There's memories. You have to start with something that's going to mitigate, okay, and that's a safety issue with me. And I grant you there's a whole slew, a couple of councillors talked about there are other things to do. There is a suite of mitigation projects you can do to push the flood routes out of the place and a whole lot. So I'll keep it brief. I will be supporting the motion purely because of the safety net. You have to start somewhere. The 14 metres headspace is at least something. It's better than probably nothing. I suppose as a community in Australia, if we said no to everything based on a cost-benefit ratio, we wouldn't be doing anything.

I mean, I can throw out two projects that I know of, and one doesn't stack, but I support with some reservation, and that would be Snowy 2.0. That doesn't stack up as a cost-benefit ratio, but we're doing it. And the other thing was the desal plants, which a lot of people and politicians said it was a bottle of electricity. Still is. It's not efficient. So thank you again, and that's my position.

Councillor Michael. Being no further discussion, I'll make a few remarks as right of reply. Just to address... Some of what was said. I think the key point that I took away from that debate was that there's a feeling that if we advocate for raising the dam wall, we're therefore giving up our right to advocate for anything else. And I think that's a silly notion. I don't know where it comes from. Nobody's suggesting that if we support the raising of the dam wall, we can't also be in favour of better evacuation routes. If you look at our flood plan, there are a series of actions, many of which have already been started, some completed, around community awareness and education and community resilience.

We've already done a whole lot of stuff. As was mentioned by one of the speakers, there was yesterday announced $33 million from the federal and state governments to begin the process of flood evacuation routes for our valley, which as a council I think we should be welcoming. But all of those things are a separate discussion. There has been a cost-benefit analysis completed. The summary is in the Hawkesbury Resilient Communities Report, and there is details there to the full analysis. It's a cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure options, net benefits, cost and benefits of infrastructure options. The only option of all those assessed, to Councillor Calvert's point, that had a better benefit than raising 14 metres of Warragamba Dam, ignoring the cost side, was raising it by 20 metres.

All the other options assessed actually had either a lower cost and a lower benefit or a higher cost and a lower benefit. So I don't think anyone proposing to do that, if we take Councillor Calvert's approach of just looking at what's best rather than ignoring the cost, that would be raising it by 20 metres. The government's looking at raising it by 14 metres. The idea that we could relocate the most flood-prone, I think, is a silly and dangerous idea to be putting out there. There's 5,000 to 12,000 properties impacted in the biggest floods. Even if you could do it, even if you could get all the logistical and cost implications of doing that, imagine the social disruption of moving 5,000 to 12,000 people away from their community forcibly.

I think the idea that that's ever going to be even remotely possible is just not worth entertaining, and it's probably just being thrown up as an excuse not to support the measures that are currently before us. We're not putting all our eggs in one basket, but we are saying that we think— and I'm sorry if Councillor Lyons-Buckett didn't read this as a statement of support. It's certainly, from my perspective, as a statement of support for the project. We're saying that, you know, we've got this risk. This is the solution that's been identified as working, and we're saying to the state government, we don't want you to delay this project. We want you to go ahead with it. So it should be read unequivocally as a statement of support.

That's certainly how it was intended. And I think this is about pushing the government to move ahead, keep the process going, not bow to the pressure, but keep— go ahead and do the right thing by our community. And we need to have a voice in this, so I hope to have the support of the council. So put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Feigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno Against? Councillor Calvert, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Cottles, Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Dogramaci, did you vote?

Yeah, I'm against it. Against. Councillor Dogramaci against. Declare it carried on the casting vote of the mayor.

We have another one other item subject to public address, which is item 16, decision motion. We have one speaker, Barbara Tanowski.

Sorry, Mr Mayor, can I declare my interest only? Yes, please.

Thank you

I'm declaring a significant non-pecuniary interest. Members of this reference group worked with my partner restoring a heritage item, and for the avoidance of any doubt, my partner was originally chosen for the reference group by other councillors, not by me, and has now resigned and is no longer a member. Thank you.

Thank you. So you'll be leaving the room, Councillor Richards? She's gone. Okay. So first speaker, Barbara Tanowski. When you're ready, Barbara, we're ready for you. You

Are on mute at the moment.

Okay, we're ready for you, Barbara.

Okay. Can you hear me at all?

Yep, we can hear you now.

Right, okay. I don't know whether you can see me, but that doesn't matter. Okay, so I just wanted to, because I was in the reference group, I've just got a lot of interest in making sure that— The new draft LEP and DCP are really good documents. I've been dealing with Council for over 30 years as an architect, and, yeah, I just wanted to just raise a few issues, and I must apologise, I didn't address anybody correctly. So, Mr Mayor, General Manager and Councillors, I

Apologise

So, as I said, I was invited to join the reference group, and it was a group of professionals, and we worked with Council planning staff over a number of meetings just to review certain new parts of the LEP and the DCP. And there was a few smaller breakout groups where I was joined in with the heritage section as well. So, when I saw the draft LEP and DCP, I had a read through, and I found that there was a few significant issues, and that there were parts that are really unworkable and ambiguous. Just as an example, there's just a few issues that I'll just raise as an example. So, within the LEP, in the proposed land use table, there's a number of uses permitted with consent. So, some of these uses are artisan, cultural activities and research station.

Some of these uses have no definition within the standard planning instrument, and some of these uses are inappropriate in some of the zones. For example, artisan. There's no definition for artisan, but it's permitted within all zones except for the business zone. So, within the standard instrument, there is a use referred to as artisan food and drink industry, and this is only permissible within the business zones. This is also a common use within the rural zones with fruit and vegetable products, farm gate sales and beverages, and, you know, like the cider factories, and I just wonder why. The artisan food and drink industry is not included in the rural areas. Another one is cultural activities.

Once again, there's no definition in the standard planning instrument for a cultural activity. So these are permissible in all rural and residential zones. So a cultural activity, to me, could mean a motorcycle club, a dance studio, or a cult. We don't know what that actually means. So, and then another one that I've flagged was a research station is actually permissible within general residential. So these are just possibly errors, but I just really wanted to just raise these issues. So there's a lot more of these examples within the land use table, and it probably needs to be reviewed. Another area of concern is the housing diversity and the local housing strategy. So housing diversity. The residential strategy seeks to have a mix of housing throughout communities.

So within the business zones, it seems to appear that Windsor has been designated as a place for higher density housing within the new B3 zone. However, Windsor is not capable of higher density due to flooding and heritage constraints. However, Windsor is the only place targeted for higher density housing, with a new zone accompanied by the statement, Windsor has no flooding or other constraints. That's actually in the document. Windsor does have flooding and constraints. Another one was secondary dwellings in all rural zones. This will increase the population significantly on the western side of the river. The impact on infrastructure and the demands on local business zones needs to be considered as well, and these need to be improved.

The idea of a secondary dwelling is welcomed because it's detached instead of attached, but there's a constraint that's been put in of a 20 metre separation between dwellings, and this is supposedly to provide a better impact. But separating buildings on a site— It's probably better to not have a constraint because the second dwelling might be better in a more thoughtfully placed position, which has less impact than 20 metres away from it. So those are some of the issues. The other one was the floor space ratio and heights. Now, this one is very tricky. Floor space ratios and heights are determined by zoning and not by specific centres in our LEP.

Sorry to interrupt you. Just note that we have time has expired, so I'll just get you to wrap up on that board, if that's okay. Is

That five minutes? Sorry.

Yep.

Okay. Can I continue quickly?

Just if you want to finish up on the point you're on, that's okay

Yeah, okay. So the floor space ratios. So in one zoning, over the, like a B1, the floor space ratio is one to one. So North Richmond has been given an FSR of one to one. There was actually a consultant planner that was engaged by Council to prepare place plans, including one for the North Richmond Business Zone. These consultants did not have any knowledge of what was in the new draft LEP, and they actually did the test of the one to one FSR, and it doesn't work with a 14 metre height limit. So we have a number of major issues with some of the floor space ratios in certain areas, which need to be reviewed as well. Okay. Thank you. I'll have to

Interrupt there, if that's okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

Thank you for that. Are there any questions, Councillors? Councillor Zamprogno. Yes.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Barbara, I just want to thank you for your work as part of the reference group. I'll take up some of the other issues that you've just raised later, but my sole question to you is to ask you what your expectation was about the role of the reference group, and whether you felt that there should have been some expectation that the reference group would eventually present. To councillors, or that your role as part of the reference group was merely staff facing to provide some third-party guidance about the drafting of the document?

Yes. So we were—the reference group had its last meeting in mid-November, in mid-2021, and then we were told our next session was going to be with the councillors and staff for a joint briefing so we could go through the draft documents for review and assessment. So unfortunately, none of that occurred. So, you know, that's why I've looked and suddenly seen these—the draft LEP and DCP—and went, well, we were actually meant to be part of the group of doing a briefing specifically to councillors and staff. So that was something that was extremely disappointing because we all put a lot of time and effort in. None of it was paid, which no one minded because we all have a genuine interest in improving the Hawkesbury and making it a lot easier, not just for us to put an application in, but for the staff also. It just would be very helpful to make it correct.

Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, another question as well. Yes,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thanks, Barbara. I'm just wondering, have you discussed this with the others in the group, or have you discussed the concerns that you had

Yeah, I have, yeah. So there's—because it sort of came out just before Christmas, it's been very hard because a lot of people are on holidays to get people to, you know, comment. But a few people have commented and, you know, have said that, you know, it was quite disappointing that we haven't had that opportunity to come back to speak to the councillors

And just a follow-up, if I could quickly, Mr Mayor. Of those things that you mentioned, for example, the floor space ratios and the heights and so on, did you not have opportunity to feed into those when the reference group was going? Because I'm just reflecting on what we as councillors were able to input, and they were certainly things that we addressed in the session. So there was nothing about any of those?

Yeah, we did go at length with floor space ratios. We had a breakout group where we spoke about it. We did quite a lot of modelling, actually, to present different scenarios of what a floor space ratio of one to one would be with a height of 14 metres and things like that. But I don't know why those ratios have come as they are, because that's not something that we really settled on or really discussed. But , yeah, so it was—

Okay. All right. Thanks for that, Barbara. Thanks.

Thank you, Barbara. Okay, so Barbara was our only speaker on the matter, so I will put the rescission motion and seek a seconder.

Seconded, Councillor Sheather. So just for clarity, councillors, especially for the new councillors, we'll first discuss—we're discussing the rescission motion, which is just to rescind the motion of Council. There is in the business paper a substantive motion, which is a suggestion for what I would suggest we replace it with. But at the moment, we are just discussing and voting on whether or not we're going to rescind the motion. So I'll be very brief because it's all in the business paper. But essentially, I believe that when this came up at Council last time, we were premature in sending it straight to the State Government. We resolved to ask for advice from the local planning panel, and if we didn't get any significant changes from them, we'd send it straight in.

I think it should have been, and I sent this back at our workshops quite back in April or March, whenever they were, that we needed to have some community consultation before we got right to the end of the process, and after it comes back from Gateway, we weren't presented with an opportunity to do that. And then I had some contact later from members of the reference group who indicated that— They didn't have an opportunity to see the final documents before we did, and they hadn't had any ability to give us their advice. And I personally very much value that advice from people who use the document all the time, to have any issues like Mr. Stenowski just mentioned, you know, things that might have been errors or oversights or things that just don't quite work, brought to our attention before we finalise the documents and send it to Gateway.

And we'd be under significant pressure when it comes back from Gateway not to amend it. I think we just probably rushed that part of that process, and I think we should rescind that and do something like I've suggested in the substantive motion business paper. Councillor Sheather.

Sorry, you've just

Muted yourself. Yep. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Mr . Mayor, as I spoke to you prior to the elections, one of the concerns of mine was some of the planning issues. I don't know how to go about fixing them, but after speaking to you and quite a few people in the community who have had issues, that it certainly needed reviewing and looking at. And since then, the speaker that we had here and other people have contacted me, and that there was an opportunity for professional people to work with council staff so that there could be the best outcome that we could achieve. I was disappointed that it did go at the last meeting of council. Again, I spoke to you about that, that leading into a new election and with new councillors, changes the LEP, at a very minimum, the new councillors, I believe, should have been briefed prior to that going up.

And this motion that's brought forward now gives an opportunity for that to happen. And those people that were involved before, and that some of those things that could be resolved with those discussions.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, so I support the rescission motion and hope that some of those things can be reviewed by the professional people in our community that deal with these with our staff on a regular basis.

Thank you. Councillor

Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will support this rescission motion. I think it's a good idea that we get our documentation as correct as possible. But I would like to ask staff just to remind us about the timing of this.

When do we need to get this done again? Sorry, it's just not in the business paper and I didn't have time to look it up.

That to Director City Planning.

Thank you.

At this point in time, I would say the time frame is Council's time frame. The State Government did have a, you know, this be done within three years. We've passed that deadline. We let them know that. We let them know that we've been impacted by other natural disasters in terms of, you know, work requirements. Ultimately, though, we do want to get this work done because, as everyone knows, the LEP is old. There are a number of issues with it which we've been trying to work through. So, and at the end of the day, we will continue working on this process and trying to get it done as soon but as effectively as possible.

Well, that's good to hear because I think we should take some more time and get it right. We have had a tendency in the past to send things off to the State Government and they haven't been, they've been too drafty, and I think we should really make sure that we don't do that again. So happy to support this and happy to get stuck in and make this document, you know, a really good helpful document.

Thank you. Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I was a little bit mystified by this because I was recalling when we debated this previously, and the councillors that voted against it were very much of the mind that the community should have been consulted. And yet this motion has nothing about the community in it. It's specific to a specific group, which was involved in the process. And what that motion had outlined last time was that we would have a process for coming back. Since then, I'm, you know, I've— the motion doesn't include for community consultation. Rather, it calls on a group that was involved in the workshops to input into the draft document to give the feedback specifically to councillors. I think that would be a very delayed process, and we all know some people don't like delay, but, you know, I'm happy to have this document right, of course.

But I can't see that the issues that Mr Nasky just raised couldn't be simply submitted to the council for consideration. I don't see why we need to go through another prolonged process about it, because anyone can submit about these things at any time. And if the working group or the reference group had specific things, then, and if they have been meeting, as she said she'd been speaking with them, then they could submit these things to be included or to be delivered to us so that we can get on with this process. And of course, we have the document coming back after it's been to Gateway. We know how Gateway works, how it goes in, goes to all those other bodies and gets the feedback, and so we may have to make changes based on what the agencies say anyway.

So I know that we're going to be making some changes, but I'm just wondering if there's actually some big changes or something significant that really people want to have happen, and I think if that's the case, then that should be being told to us as a community. That there's something big that needs to be changed. If it's things around definitions or omissions or so on, then that could just be delivered in that sense, I think. I'm not quite sure how the group was structured and how it worked, because we didn't have a CM meeting of it, but I'm assuming they had differing opinions, and I'm wondering how they would come up with something to deliver to council, given they've probably got broad-based opinions around things like definitions and so on.

So I'm just not sure what the value is of it unless they've prepared something to deliver to us, which is a significant change or something. Otherwise it would just be up to the individuals in that group to submit, to make submissions around it. I'm a little bit troubled by the selective nature of when further engagement is required and when it isn't. I suspect the next motion that comes up is going to see people want to pass something with absolutely no input from the community or from any experts, but I think we need to have a consistency around this. We can't pick and choose when we're going to listen to people, but I'm happy to hear what this group has to say. I just think that we could still proceed with the process and we could still filter in their opinions as we go along in the process, because we will have to do more work on this document.

We know we've got a second stage of the document, and we know that we're going to have things from the government that come back and that will dictate that we change specific parts of it anyway. We've got our local planning panel to give us input on it, and that may well lead to some changes. So I'm happy. I don't see that we have to rescind the motion and go down a different path. I just think that that group could feed into what we've got, and we could look at that when we're looking at anything that comes back from the planning panel.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I'll give a brief right-up. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Look, my misgivings about this relate to the optics of further delay. One could put a construction on the way that people voted at the election in December, and that many people elected what they hoped would be a get-on-with-the-job council , as indeed Councillor Richards suggested earlier. And considering how extremely delayed the LEP has been, and that we were promised, effectively at the beginning of the last term, that the process would be completely concluded and that the new LEP would be enacted within the last term, and of course that proved not to be the case. But what we're inviting here is a kind of open-ended process that may get away from us, and I'd like to ask either you, Mr. Mayor, what your expectation is, or through you to the staff, what it would take to have the kind of additional feedback that you're proposing.

So, for example, if there was a dedicated workshop with the reference group, fair enough, but if there were other suggestions that required the deliberation of staff to kind of come back to us and to say, well, these suggestions have these implications, then we could be looking at a delay of a number of months before we even decide that we're ready to send it to Gateway. Could I get a sense of what your prepared to countenance in this regard?

I'm not totally sure I understand the question. The proposal in the substantive motion is to hold a briefing session with the LEP DCP reference group. Given the draft document, have a briefing session to get the feedback directly from there. It's then obviously up to Council whether we're comfortable with the document as it is, it needs minor tweaks, or we want some more substantial work done. And that's obviously not for me to answer, but it's for the Council to decide.

See, and it's the vagueness around precisely that answer that is the cause for my misgiving. If we were talking about hearing from the reference group, having a chat around the table, that the tweaks were minimal, it was just general and small types of housekeeping, fair enough. If it results in a delay of a number of months, the people whom we made particular pledges to at the election, relating to pushing through particular initiatives that are contingent on the LEP going through, like secondary dwellings, granny flats, ecotourism, and all the other nice things that represent real improvements in the LEP, are simply yet again put off to the never never. So I'm listening carefully for reasons to support this, but at the moment I'm unconvinced. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Mayor. I won't be supporting this motion. We've heard from a member of the reference group, and I understand that that group did have an expectation that they would be able to meet with Council and address us on the issues that they felt were important to them.

Last year was a particularly difficult year, I think, in having those broader discussions. This year may not be any better , but I think we have to ask ourselves, who does this document belong to? And who is supposed to have the leading input into this document? I would assume that would be the elected representatives of the community, Council. The staff and the community. What we've got is a bit of special pleading, I think, from a group of industry experts, developers, architects, real estate agents, and heritage experts who have had input into this document. The people who haven't had input into this document are, in fact, the community. And the longer we sit faffing around with this process, which is actually delay. We were accused in the last item of the politics of delay. Well, here we have another delay.

The people who, if we get this to the state government, and there are many and varied agencies, all have a bit of input, and in the meantime, we take that feedback on board. We can reach out to the members of the reference group and ask them for their feedback. We can begin that tweaking process. Once we've got the information back from the government agencies, we're in a much better position to tidy up this document, make those minor tweaks if that's what indeed they are, and get this document out for the community, who will be the end users of this document. It's their properties that this document will determine the future of. That's who we're elected to represent, not developers and real estate agents and other industry experts.

They've had their say. It's time for the community to have its say. It's time for us to get this document out into the hands of the community. Our current LEP isn't fit for purpose. We heard that for five years on the last council. We have worked hard with the financial and resourcing limitations of the previous council to get this document into the state that it's in. What I find particularly disappointing is that some of the people who would hold this document up now are the people who failed to turn up to the workshops that the staff put on for councillors to have input into that document. Can't have it both ways. Can't be enthusiastic this time when you weren't last time. Let's get this document moving.

How much longer are we going to put up with an LEP that isn't fit for use by the community, that doesn't give people reasonable use expectations for the properties that they live and work on, and that doesn't give them— A secure expectation of what can be done with those properties. Why, why on earth are we going through this process?

Thanks, Councillor Wheeler. Just briefly, I'll write a reply. Just first I'd like to say, just on behalf of Council, and I'm sure the majority of councillors, to Mr Nowski and other people on the LEP DCP reference group, I don't think that most of us feel that you're here giving up your time or have given up your time over the last few months because you're a special interest group wanting special treatment. I don't think that perhaps came across the way it was meant to come across, so I just apologise if anyone's taken offence to that. But certainly I think most of us really value the input and the fact that we've got people who normally charge out a lot for their time working for us for free for a long time, so thank you.

I just wanted to point out a couple of issues there. The idea that the community is going to get input after it goes to Gateway has always been very troubling to me. We've seen this over and over again. It'll go to Gateway, the department will recommend some changes, no doubt. It'll come back, and then the pressure will be on this exact same conversation will happen again. Ignore the community because let's not delay it again. Let's not send it back into Gateway, wait another year and have it come back again. That'll be the exact argument that gets used if we leave all the consultation to the very end. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. And that's, as I said before, what I raised back in March when we had our first workshop, that the community needs to be consulted before it goes in.

People need to be across, and we need to be confident that it's a workable document and that we're broadly happy with it before it goes into Gateway. There's no point waiting till after it comes back and then saying, and that's when we'll take on all the edits from the reference group, because it'll be too late. And if we do listen to the community and the reference group at that point, it'll just be an even longer delay than if we just get it right in the first place. It was quite useful having Mr Nowski speak tonight. Some of those issues, a couple of them I didn't know about, and the reality is we're not likely to pick those up as councillors, as people who don't work with the document every day, that there's a use in a zone that doesn't make sense and it's not going to work.

We would not have picked that up, and that's exactly why we set up this reference group. So I think it's, you know, this is not a huge delay. This is just saying, let's take the time to get the document right. As Councillor Wheeler indicated, the 2012 LEP has lots of problems. But it was, it was, you know, at some point councillors made the decision, no, let's just get on with and adopt it, thinking that they'd review it in five years, and here we are in 2022 still talking about its replacement. So I don't think it's, you know, if we spend another month or two getting this right, I don't think that's wasted time. I think that, you know, if we have to live with this document for potentially another decade, we'll be glad that we did it.

So I'll put the motion. All those in favour ? This is a rescission motion. Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Kotlash. Against? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Stent, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Dogramaci. Declared the rescission motion carried. I'll now move the substantive motion if I have a seconder. Moved Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Kotlash. It is, I feel like we've broadly discussed it, but if anyone wanted to discuss it again, they could. If not, I'll put the motion. Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Mr Mayor, I've just got a question around process. How do you intend to do it? Because is the reference group going to meet and decide what they're going to address us on, or is it going to be a free for all? How would, given that briefings generally have to have some sort of time limit on them, I'm just thinking, I don't know how many are in the reference group, eight or ten people. Mr Nowski, how many were in your reference group? I

Believe there's more than that. It's close to 15, but not all. Okay

So if there's 15 people and there's 12 of us and there's staff, I'm just thinking how is that logistically going to work, that's all. And how would that occur? I just think it's problematic in how it's being put forward, but, yeah .

Is it a question or a statement?

I think take it as a statement because I don't know that you would have an answer, or you would have put it in a motion, I guess. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Is it possible to have a time frame on this?

A time frame on how we have to hold the reference group meeting?

Yes, and when we're likely then to get this to the next step.

I hadn't discussed with staff the timing around the briefing, so I'd be a little reluctant. Certainly the intention is to do it as soon as possible and within, certainly within the next two months, so hopefully sooner than that. I might refer that to the General Manager if she's aware when we might be able to hold that briefing.

Certainly through you, Mr Mayor. It would be, my expectation that, first of all, it will depend on the circumstances regarding COVID. But in ordinary circumstances, I would imagine that we would be able to arrange a joint briefing between the reference group and Council, probably in, you know, late February, I would have thought was realistic. What is a little bit more uncertain, Councillors, is the reporting back time frame, given, I guess, the uncertainty at this point about whether there would be amendments required to the document taking into account feedback provided by Councillors and the reference group at that particular meeting, I guess.

Thank you.

Can I continue, Mr Mayor?

Yes.

One of the things that troubles me about this motion—there's two things that trouble me about this motion. Firstly, there's still no consideration of when this goes to the community and what input the community has. So I would really like to see a motion that, or at least some plan for next steps if we are fair dinkum about putting this to the community, about how we do that. Because at the moment, all we're doing here is getting a report back and then sitting on it. I'm also a bit concerned if we're going to do this in February, and I agree that it needs to be done as quickly as possible, that —and I fully appreciate that newly elected councillors want to have input into this document. I would too, in your position.

What I'm concerned about is that those councillors may not be aware of the magnitude of work that is involved in this document and the difficulty in getting head around, firstly the planning speak, and then secondly the information and the huge volume of information that is in there. I've got stacks of this LEP on the floor that are this high. That's what you're signing up for in going through this in minute detail again, and it's a big ask. We did it in batches. I don't know if the intention is to do that in batches a second time. That would be incredibly time-consuming for the staff, but this is a huge amount of information. It's one of the reasons why the last council was anxious to finish the task in front of us, to finish the task that we had started and get it off to Gateway so that it could be processed.

Because I can't feasibly see how we're going to turn this around in a couple of short months.

Thank you.

So I'll just make a couple of brief comments as I reply. I just would like to point out that the motion we just rescinded had absolutely no provision for community consultation at all, and that was the motion that some councillors just voted not to rescind. So I think it's probably not logical of the next argument is it's not enough community consultation in this motion. I haven't put in the next step after it being reported back to Council for advice, because that largely depends, obviously, on whether there's any amendments and how significant they are as to what we would do next. As I've indicated several times during this debate, my intention is that the community gets a go at this before it goes into Gateway, because if we wait till after Gateway, as was really proposed by the motion we just rescinded, it'll be too late and it'll be so much pressure just to get it done that we might change anything and we won't take it seriously.

Yes, I agree with Councillor Lyons-Buckett, the meeting is likely to be a lively one without many people giving their opinions. Certainly not intended that they get together and put a PowerPoint together or anything like that. The idea is just to organise a meeting where these people, the ones who are interested, in telling the councillors what they think are the problems, have a chance to sit down with us and do that. You know, if Councillor Lyons-Buckett is worried about how long that will take, you don't have to stay for the whole thing. Stay for as long as you want. I'll stay to the end. But I don't think it's impossible. I don't think that this is, you know, as big as we're beating it up to be.

It's just a meeting. So hopefully, with the support of Council, look forward to having that meeting. I'll put the motion. I did forget to mention before the rescission motion that both of these are planning decisions. I think we knew that, but I'll just put that on the record. So all those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Over to Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Kotlash. Against ?

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Zamprogno Declare it carried.

So our next item would be the items on the block. Somebody wants to move those. Moved, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Zamprogno. All those in favour? Declared carried.

And our next item, therefore, is item 8, the Local Government [unclear] Special Conference. Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, this is fairly straightforward. We've had quite good success— Yeah, seconded. Oh

Sorry

We've had quite good success in the last few years with Council putting motions to the Local Government New South Wales, several of which have already been acted on by the State Government, which is nice to see, including motions that went last year. So this motion asks for a similar approach to flood recovery that's allowed in bushfire recovery. So it calls on the State Government and

The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and affected councils, of which we are one, to refine the approvals process that's used for flood recovery in a similar way as is done for bushfire recovery, so that people don't need to go through that particularly difficult multiple process of filling in and providing multiple reports to allow them to rebuild. So either there's a more refined approvals process, or that the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and the New South Wales Government pay for place-based planning documents that are required, things like flora and fauna reports, asset protection zones, fire and flood reports, koala habitat assessments—the things that people tell us cost them a lot of money—in order for them to now submit something through the State Government's planning portal, which is a requirement.

So these— Often council is blamed for wanting all these additional reports and for being really difficult around this process, where in fact it's just the basic requirements now of putting these DAs forward for rebuilds. So this is for replacement structures on sites with previous approval. It's not for new builds. It will hopefully save people money, but also streamline the process so that it can be done much faster. There would also be great advantages across the LGA if we had some of these reports funded by the state government, these place-based planning reports, particularly around flora and fauna, koala habitat and asset protection zones. So in some ways it's trying to get a little bit more for our ratepayers out of this process.

Currently it's just expensive and onerous, and it holds people up, and it makes it much more difficult for them to get back into their businesses, their homes, or their supporting structures, you know, shedding on the river, that sort of thing.

Thank you. One speaker in favour. Anyone against? Not further speakers in favour. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

You're on mute, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I

Wasn't before, now I'm back on. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I just thought I'd just say this is a very timely motion, and I expect it will be very widely supported by the other councils at the conference. And just to give a brief explanation to the new councillors, perhaps, or to the public, that these motions go to the conference and they feed into what becomes the advocacy for the Local Government NSW body to take things to the state government. So you'll see from the list of things we've brought previously that were all supported were around the need for improved community engagement by the state government on major infrastructure projects. And repeatedly over the last several years or so, we have joined the calls for the rating review to be released, and finally that was last year.

So I know that says 2018, but I recall us calling for the rating review. Les is looking there, Councillor Sheather, maybe they were doing it in his previous term of council, but we certainly were doing it around 2013 as well. So happily that rating review has finally come out. But that's just what these motions are for. They go to a big conference, people discuss them, and then we vote on them to become things that the association advocates for on behalf of all councils.

Thank you. Any further discussion? If not, put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand . Favour of it: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Vaiagel, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Novakovic, Councillor Marci, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards. Declare it carried.

Next item is item nine. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Sorry, can I declare an interest? Sorry

About

That. I'll be declaring a significant non-pecuniary interest. This is a federal government grant and I am a candidate. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

To be leaving the room? Yes, please.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll move that motion, the recommendation in the business paper. Okay.

So, seconded for that? Seconded, Councillor Sheather.

Mr Mayor, I did have some questions, but I think they were answered sort of in our briefing or our thing we had last night. So I just had one question, and that was just around Comleroy Road. I was under the impression previously that Comleroy Road was a state-funded road. Am I incorrect on that, or a jointly funded road? For

That, to the Director of Infrastructure Services. Through you, Mr Mayor, I have to double-check, but my recollection is that it's a regional road, so we do receive some state government funding for it, but it is one of our assets. Okay,

Thank you. I was just checking on that. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Vaigel, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Read, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Del Brollo, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, with absence from the vote. Declare it carried.

Councillor Richards back in. The next item is item 12. Councillor Kotlash, call that one up.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to begin by saying and, well, thanking the Audit Committee for— Be

Put

Oh yes, could I move the recommendation in the business paper, and I have an amendment that goes with that that I've sent the staff.

Get that up on the screen, please.

Thanks. We'll just wait. I'd just like to ask a question, if I could.

Wait till we get that up and get a seconder, and then we can move on to that.

Is there a seconder for that? Feel free to call out because I can't see everyone anymore.

Seconded, Councillor Calvert. Okay, go ahead, Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you. What I first will start with a question, if I can, is the structure and the layout of the Audit Committee's annual report dictated to us by the state government, or is that something that the Audit Committee determines? Refer

That to the Director Support Services.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. The Audit Committee's charter, which has been adopted by both Council and the Audit Committee, sets out that the Audit Committee must prepare an annual report each year on the activities of the Audit Committee during the previous year, and then that annual report in turn is presented to Council.

Okay. Thank you. That's good. One of the things that, when I was reading the report, and again I'll thank the audit committee and staff for the work they've done on this, what I found was that it was very, it was, I guess , overly, it overly contained things that we already knew and was a little short on the outcomes of the audit committee. Now, I know for sure that the audit committee has done lots and lots of work. So this amendment to the motion is just to call on the audit committee to just review the next year's annual report, just with a view to making it a little bit more focused on the outcomes of the work that they do. As a councillor, I want to read a document that has things that cause me to be comforted, that the people that are doing this work are giving us this advice and they give us, you know, the advice based on their experience and they present the reasons for this.

The annual report just had a lot of lists of things that they did. Now, since the audit committee only meets four or five times a year, I think that it probably wouldn't be onerous asked to get them to think a bit more about how they might present their annual report to councillors so that it was really easy and a really go-to report for us to be able to quickly go and check about all of the things that they've considered and why they have given us the advice they have. I don't want reams and reams. It's just, it can be still high level, but I did think that that was a bit of a shortcoming in the report. So that's it. It's quite simple. I'll leave it up to the audit committee to, you know, come up with some way of doing that.

But just the focus needs to be on outcomes rather than, you know, how many people were present at a meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion?

Sorry.

No discussion. All right, with the motion, we can just take the— yes, thank you. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Connelly, Councillor Carver, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Bygell, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Reid, and Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno. Declare it carried.

Next item for discussion is

Rescission motion 2, 17 .

So I'll move the rescission motion, if there's a seconder for that.

Seconded, Councillor Dogramaci . So again, councillors, we're voting first on a rescission motion, and then if it's successful, we'll put the substantive motion. This is quite a simple one. I advocated very strongly in the last term of council that we should be respecting the rights of rural landholders who know what's best to protect their property by opting into the Rural Fire Service's Rural Boundary Clearing Code. The Rural Fire Service drafted this code to enable rural landholders to better protect their properties. For some councils, they were automatically included. For other councils like Hawkesbury, we had to opt in. The previous council decided not to opt in and instead go down a road of community consultation and then looking at resourcing and other issues.

And I was quite strong at the time that we should in fact opt in and let those rural landholders respect the rights of those property holders and respect their ability to protect their own properties. So given

There's a new council

I still feel very strongly this is the right thing to do, so I put this rescission motion. Any discussion? Councillor Lyons-Buckett

You're on mute, Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Sorry about that . Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll speak against the rescission motion. I think, as just mentioned in rescission motion one, there seems to be a very different approach on how due process and fairness in enabling community input and councillors to be informed as operating in this council. There's not consistency around that. I can't support this rescission motion. The previous motion on this matter was thorough in pursuing further information relative to the code and, as you said, we weren't put in the code when the Rural Fire Service did it. The councils that were included in the code were the ones that the code was designed for. The councils with a lot of rural properties where they're protecting fencing on big properties, and we weren't included in that, and therefore we had to decide whether to opt in.

Our previous motion had required us to ask for quite a bit of information around that to help inform us and to have some community consultation around that. We have people, you've just said landowners know best how to protect their property, but I would argue that property protection from bushfire is also a lot of what the Rural Fire Service does, and they are the people with the expertise around that . I think we have received a submission on the matter from two members of the Bilpin Rural Fire Service outlining their opinion on it, which is that they oppose the introduction of it, and that in fact a much better tool for assisting the control of fire in the Bilpin area is the multi-million dollar project which is about to commence, which will see an extensive network of trails in the area running between cleared bushland and the bush.

This has been designed, and this has been a long time in the making because I remember when I was on the Bushfire Committee they were discussing it, but this has been designed to run along a safe and logical contour and is more suitable than limiting vegetation removal to property boundaries. So we must listen to those who work in this space, who go out and who fight the fires and who know what's best to do in this situation. They've got the knowledge and the experience, and their primary goal is the protection of lives and property. Why would we go blindly into implementing a code which doesn't fit our needs, or we would have been in it in the first place, and about which we have little or no information or advice from experts.

We don't have an official opinion from the RFS. We have sought that, and we've sought the mapping and so on, and we don't have that. In our last motion, we wanted to have the opinions of people who we considered experts, and everyone was keen for that. Here, people are prepared not to get the information from the experts, and this is about protecting people in bushfire zones. The code was developed for the large areas in the outer regions of the state where large properties require clearing around fence boundaries to protect them from large losses of their fencing and so on. The fact that we have rural zones here which are in areas not subjected to bushfire would result in a poor environmental outcome.

The RFS clearly has other strategies for managing fire risk in place, and these strategies are underway. When Commissioner Fitzsimmons came out here last year, I think it was, or he came out after the fires, he made it really clear that resources would be put into initiatives to ensure protective clearing was done. He guaranteed that these trails and the various things to maintain properties being kept safe in this area would occur. Having this done by those experienced in bushfire management is preferable to letting landowners undertake it themselves. As we've been informed, most bushfires spot one to four kilometres ahead of the fire, so a 25 metre wide strip will do little to stop fires spreading, and indiscriminate boundary clearing is useless and dangerous as a firefighting tool.

When we can have the individual analysis of each property done, and this is what the RFS can go out and do on each property, they can identify the risks and the best way to prepare that property for fire, and also enable them to know that when they have to go somewhere and do a back burn, that they're going to have the appropriate way that that fire that they burn to back burn away to protect the property can be done safely and effectively. So I believe we should be letting the RFS proceed with how they best think we should be protected. I think we should be continuing to get the information that we sought. I think we have passed what would have been a fire season this season. We've got the time to get this information.

We need really careful consideration because we have a responsibility to make these decisions when we have the information. And you've all, well most of you, have just said that you want to have expert input into these decisions. So let's get that information and let's go with it that way.

Thank you

Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I won't be supporting this motion. This is really reactionary, and I'm really disappointed. We had a considered motion on the table, based on information given to us by long-term RFS members, and also including an examination of our ability to properly resource the regulatory challenges posed by this code.

And all of a sudden, we're dropping that ideal and racing into this without any understanding of whether this works for us, whether we can properly resource the regulation. We don't even have the mapping to do this well. We also haven't—we've got no expert input. Let's be really clear about where this code comes from. It does not come from the RFS. The RFS have been discharged with putting it out . They are not the authors of this code. The New South Wales State Government is the author of this code. It was a knee-jerk response to the Black Summer bushfires to appease a couple of their ministers whose electorates and themselves were desperately impacted by this, and I feel for them. I have family who live in one of those electorates.

We spent a very tense 24 hours wondering whether my mother-in-law was still alive during the Black Summer bushfires. I worked in fire control during those Black Summer bushfires. I'm not making these comments because I think that we don't need better fire mitigation. I'm making these comments because I don't think this is the way forward. I spent a lot of time last time talking to very senior members of the RFS about whether they felt that this was appropriate for the Hawkesbury, and the resounding response from many, many people—not renowned environmentalists either, I must say—was that this won't work for us. It's not designed for our topography. It's not designed for our bush and our hills and gullies and our mountainous areas, nor is it designed for our heavy woodland bush-type bush.

It's designed for open grassy plains.

Many of the comments that I got back were things like, This is a rape and pillage approach. It won't have much of an impact on bushfire protection. I stood, and this is a quote from someone who spent five months fighting fires in 2019-2020, I watched fire spot from ridge to ridge . Clearings were not protective. This will destroy wildlife corridors for nothing. The 10-50 rule allows that you can clear around the house. That's enough. Houses that had used that rule were easy to save.

The code leaves more questions than answers. You can already get an RFS vehicle into the back of a boundary, under the boundary, the current boundary clearing legislation.

This will be a free-for-all and give people a false sense of security. There's enough now to protect, but you have to maintain the corridors yourself. This is an excuse for clearing unnecessarily. Knock it back. This is a knee-jerk reaction. A clear edge won't make any bloody difference.

You can get in far enough to do a backburn under the legislation we've got already.

The independent bushfire group, one of whom is a long-term member, or was, member of Hawkesbury RFS, have put out a statement about this, and they make it very clear that this legislation was not recommended by the Bushfire Royal Commission. The Bushfire Royal Commission stated that vegetation management should be clear and easy to navigate for the community, without undue cost or complexity. At no stage did they say that people should be permitted to clear 25 metres around their boundary. What people may not realise is that this was a windback of an initial push by former Minister Constance to clear 50 metres around the boundary. So if you did it and your neighbour did it, you'd have 100 metres clear around your boundary.

There'd be bloody nothing left . They go on to state that there's no analysis or evidence presented to support boundary clearing as an effective bushfire mitigation tool. Fire risks and fire paths do not recognise property boundaries, and boundaries are not necessarily close to assets. So you could spend all your time clearing a 25 metre swathe along your fence line, only to find that that wasn't a strategic clearing route at all. That's not where the RFS would have put in a fire break. It's not where they would have started a backburn. It's just because you wanted to get the trees out of it. This gives people a false sense of security, and the RFS members that I've spoken to tell me that they think people will stay because this will keep them safe.

We can clear around assets already. You can already clear enough to get an RFS vehicle in.

We do not need to

Clear nearly 16,000 hectares in rural residential zones for indiscriminate land clearing.

Thank you . Councillor Kotlash.

Sorry, thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I'll just take up where Councillor Wheeler left off, I think. Well, I just think this is a terrible code. It is a blunt instrument. It won't work . In fact, it will — I'll just keep this brief because there's a lot wrong with it. But just in terms of weeds, when you disturb land, if you clear land and you clear it in such a way that it's around your boundary, it might help save your fence, but it makes you responsible for then making sure that the weeds that will inevitably generate because it's disturbed land, that will be a rod for your back. So if you think about, and I agree with the last two speakers, this code was designed for very big properties, and it was designed to protect fences.

Think about the smaller properties that we have here in the Hawkesbury, and if people did this on their smaller properties, we would have a mosaic of weeds that will just be an environmental disaster. People aren't going to want to do all of the maintenance that will be required to keep it weed free. It's almost an impossibility. Then you get to the point where you have to consider whether those weeds are actually more fire prone than what was there to begin with. This is— look, I'm going to leave it at that. We really just need more information about how we might be able to use this in certain circumstances, but definitely not as this blunt instrument , this one-size-fits-all scenario. It doesn't suit the Hawkesbury.

It would be a disaster. Thank you.

Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I'm disappointed that this has returned to the Chamber in the blunt binary way in which it has . To be clear, I am in favour of reforming our land management practices as they relate to fire safety. And again, it's worth pointing out that our starting point here is that there were 65 homes that were lost in our LGA in the Gospers Mountain fire, and that imposes a strong moral obligation on us to do something, but certainly not like this. When this came to the Chamber in mid-October, the policy had been in the public domain for all of a couple of weeks. The staff recommendation at the time listed numerous reasons for caution, including, and I quote, it can be assumed that there will be differences of opinion within the community.

It would be prudent to understand the views and considerations of the community and to conduct a public consultation process. This motion manifestly is not interested in public consultation. Now , the motion that I advanced in October, or rather the amendment that eventually passed, laid out a clear path to conduct that public consultation, including with the local RFS, who informed me at the time that they had not been asked, and which they had. For example, they pointed out to me things that I did not know, like there was nothing in the code about the windrows. In other words, people who, if they cleared their land under this policy and left all of the debris piled up and let it dry, it would create an entirely new hazard.

So councillors, and councillors would be aware, as Councillor Wheeler pointed out, of representations from members of Bilpin RFS who are in a position to know, expressing their own caution about this. Now , I am informed that subsequent to our motion in October, that those public consultations were ready to get underway in February. The motion that we did pass tasked council to establish which other councils have adopted this code, because at the time there were none that we were aware of, and what that experience looked like for them was unknown. I think that would inform our debate. The motion that we did pass tasked council to investigate acquiring the geospatial and mapping tools required to evaluate tree cover and changes to that tree cover on a per property basis.

Tools that are readily available, and I gave examples of vendors who have those tools because I saw them demonstrated at the Local Government Conference. We still don't have those tools, but I am told that that investigation is underway. Why wouldn't we permit council to do that investigation? So it would be really irresponsible for us to implement a substantial new land clearing code with no resources devoted to compliance and enforcement. As I said at the time, what we can't measure, we can't establish the impact of. And lastly, council still does not have access to the RFS's own mapping tool, which they promised would be one way in which property owners could be guided as to their eligibility.

We still don't know what it looks like. We still can't even trial it or give it a spin and see whether it's a useful tool or not. The code tells people to self-assess their eligibility, but it also warns landowners that they need to seek professional advice about the score of exclusions that apply based on the species of trees present, wildlife habitats, site slope, soil erosion, landslip risk, Aboriginal cultural significance, the presence of watercourses, adjacent zonings, or the presence of 13 different ecological communities, not to mention varying restrictions surrounding the use of herbicides, chain clearing, burning, and landowner consent. This motion is silent on what resourcing will be available to assist landowners to navigate that minefield.

The motion is silent on what we do for the 1,800 houses for people that live in E4 zones where that would not apply. This motion is silent on all those concerns. So when I described the motion in October, and, you know, as naive and simplistic, it would appear that nothing has changed. This motion simply bluntly calls for the adoption of the code with no consultation. And as a member of the Liberal Party, I am disappointed that we can't be more respectful, more nuanced about our approach to some really important policy issues. As I have said before, it is possible to be both a good conservative and a good conservationist. But clearly, this motion is not a pathway to that end. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you.

Councillor Jurek.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Councillor Zampronio touched on some of the things that I wanted to say, really, so I'll make it brief. My concerns are the lack of balances and checks in place with this policy. There's no way to measure the outcomes of the policy. We don't have an opportunity to revisit the policy down the track at a later date for adjusting it anyway. I understand that we've either got to be all in on the policy or all out . And lastly, I just wanted to reiterate that the RFS professionals' concerns on making the situation worse. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Wheeler.

Just a couple of questions, if I may, Mr Mayor.

Sure

Through you, Mr Mayor, do we have the resources to give people the information that Councillor Zampronio has just listed under this code?

And also, just add to that question, would that be our responsibility? Refer that to the Director City Planning.

That would be a difficult question to answer, to be frank. It depends on— we'll be relying on whatever information is available publicly. Obviously, we'd have to look at each site individually. That would be very resource intensive, and I'm not quite sure how we would be able to resource that

And a second question: do we have the resources to monitor compliance if people use this as an excuse to clear, for example, koala habitat in rural residential zones ? No, we don't. Thank you. Councillor

Sheather .

Thank you, Mr Mayor . Council makes decisions like this often, and once Council resolves to do it, then funds need to be made available and policy to deal with those resolves of Council . I was on the East Coast

Board for the national parks for eight years, and I frequently visited areas where bushfires started on a regular basis. And over a period of time , they've been gated off . There's no work being done on them . What was used regularly as fire breaks and opportunities for locals to burn and regulate areas and brigades isn't available . The— over the last 10 years, there's been less than a third of prescribed burning , less than a third that's been supposed to be done. And then we get these massive fires, and a lot of them start in our city or certainly close to our boundaries. And people are scared that the very people and organisations that are supposed to be looking after them, it's just getting harder and harder.

I remember seeing a situation in Victoria with the bad fires down there. Just prior to the fires, there was a chap that was arrested and went to court, was fined for clearing around his house. And when those fires went through, his was the only house in that region that didn't burn down, and he was still fined for that. So some people are taking actions to, you know, similar to flood situations, to protect themselves. But we have a responsibility, and I've spoken to a lot of people within the brigades and everybody else that I can speak to about this, and I have heard from Bilpin and the work they're doing up there, which is great value to the community. But there's still people that need protection, and they feel that they might be able to do it themselves.

If they were to clear land for other purposes, I would frown on that. That's not what the intent is. It's about protection of property. It's about opportunities to allow good access for burns and the likes. So, Mr Mayor, I do support it, and I would hope that we can put in place the comments that were made by some of the other councillors with some of the issues that may arise where people would take advantage of what we're proposing with this, other than what the purpose is. Thanks, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Councillor Sheehan touched on a point that was actually quite prudent in all of this and in moving forward. We've just gone through an election. The 12 of us in this room have been elected to make decisions. We are a level of government that needs to make decisions on the best interests of our community because we all live in this community and we are all participants in this community. And we have been given the ability to do that under legislation. So when these questions come before us, we have to make a decision. Now to say things like, as we heard earlier, you can already see that there's no due process and fairness and no consistency for public consultation. We're in the first meeting back debating items, the first meeting.

I think that's really an assessment to make when we haven't even really got on with the majority of the business yet. And, you know, democracy is democracy. Sometimes it falls our way, sometimes it doesn't fall our way. And in decisions like this, it'll be the majority of the room who agrees with it or not. And personally, I am very, very supportive of private property owner rights. Of course, we all have to act within the confines of the law. That's absolutely important. But we also have the ability to know our property and protect our property, and I think The alarmist language that has been used, you know, 16,000 hectares, that's not going to be cleared overnight. People, a lot of people won't have the money or the logistics to be able to do these kind of things.

And so that's just, I just think that alarmist kind of way to approach this is completely wrong. And we shouldn't be doing that to members of our community by invoking fear and that things are going to change dramatically overnight. I will absolutely be supporting this tonight in terms of the conversations that I've had with people. There are people who support this, just as other people are saying that they've spoken to people who don't. So it is up to us here tonight to make that decision of whether we opt in or we don't opt in. I'll be supporting the decision to opt in tonight. And while other councillors have said this has not been written by the RFS, it has the authorisation of the Commissioner of the RFS.

It is not purely a document that hasn't been touched by the RFS or looked at or discussed by the RFS. So I'm not an expert on that. I will go with people who are, and from the conversations I have had with people, there will be some welcome relief in the Hawkesbury tonight. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Councillor

Dogramaci. Thank you very much. Yeah, this is my first time, and I'm one of the newest councillors. I don't know much about the paperwork and red tape, whatever you name it, which I'm always against it. I always go, doesn't matter what, I always go ahead with my instinct. And my past experiences, what I can say is that when fire comes, it doesn't come with a tape measure, or it doesn't come to an area where it has traffic lights saying that stop, don't go any further, or whatever. We have seen what happened, and we heard what Councillor Zamprogno mentioned about the Grose Mountain, 60, 65 homes destroyed. What if we lost one life? What's the cost of it? We've seen it. Who is going to repair?

Who is going to contribute X amount of money if those people who have the insurance or not? So the way that I look at it, when it was mentioned about Mr. Fitzsimmons, when was the last time he had a property in Grose Mountain or built-in or whatever? Has he ever in his life encountered fire with the heat coming towards his face, not from 25 metres, but from hundreds of metres? And like I said, has he ever lost a family member? Has he ever lost a house? So the way that I look at it, quite honestly, 25 metres, I think not even enough. Maybe it should be 50 metres, maybe 100 metres. We're talking about koala habitats and fauna or whatever it is. They are more intelligent than us. They will move out very slowly.

So for this reason, whether I agree with other councillors or not, I'm all for the 25 metres. Maybe it should be this stuff. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno. I'll just make a few comments as a right of reply. First of all, I just want to address the misconception that's trying to be— I talk about everyone's motivations, but I think that some councillors spoke about this not being a binary question. And ultimately, this is not the New South Wales Parliament. We don't have any opportunity to change the code. We don't have the opportunity to change the legislation that announces to do something different. We have a binary question, which is we either opt in or we don't. We can do other things before we make that decision, but to suggest it's not a binary yes or no, it's just not true. We have to either opt in or not opt in.

That's the only choices we have. I wanted just to point out things that, to me, are quite obvious, but I think get missed in this debate, is that, one, it's incredibly expensive to do this kind of work. It's not to say that 16,000 hectares are going to be cleared is silly. Of course 16,000 hectares aren't going to be cleared. That would suggest that everybody has the financial resources, first of all, to go ahead and do that, and it would be incredibly expensive to do that. Secondly, people who move to rural properties in Bilpin, Kurrajong Heights, they don't move there because they don't like trees. They're not moving there so they can go and clear a random 25 metre boundary around their property.

They're not doing that. I went and visited the property of somebody who's very much in support of it on Saturday , and this person's very much in support of this policy. And they showed me where they wanted to clear. They had a huge property, and they want to clear a small amount between the main road and around the back of their house because there is no access to protect their house. They don't want to clear all the way around the boundary. This is one of the key proponents of this policy. They don't want to clear around the boundary. They just want to clear the amount they need to to feel safe. And that will be the case for anyone using this policy, is that they will clear what they feel like they have to to protect their own house.

This is not going to lead to mass clearing of 16,000 hectares. I agree with Councillor Richards, that is alarmist and just trying to use fear and picking the number at everybody to the absolute extreme. And of course that's not going to happen.

I also, you know, similar point, you know, Councillor Zamprogno mentioned that, you know, if these people go and clear the boundary, leave all the material there, that'll be a fire hazard. Well , why would anybody go to all the expense of clearing that part of their property for the reason of fire protection because they are so worried about protecting their property, and then leave—you know, we're suggesting our people in the Hawkesbury, property owners, the rural properties in the Hawkesbury are silly enough to then go and leave all that material there to dry out, you know, a fire risk. I mean, that is a foolish argument, and I think it's insulting to the people of the Hawkesbury for us to suggest things like that.

I'll come back to how I started this, which is that it's important for us to respect the rights of rural landholders and their ability to protect their own properties, and that's why I think it's important we go ahead with this. So I'll put the motion, which is the rescission motion. All those in favour of the rescission motion, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Drummond, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Richards. Against? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Cottlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Djuric. Declare it carried on the casting vote of the Mayor. I'll then move the substantive motion, which is that we opt in to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Boundary Clearing Code.

There's a seconder. Seconded Councillor Sheather. Do we need any further discussion? No, we'll put the vote. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Drummond, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Richards. Against? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Cottlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Djuric. Declare it carried on the casting vote of the Mayor.

Next item is notice

Of motion one, community halls.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll move the motion in the business paper. Is there a

Seconder for that? Seconded, Councillor Wheeler.

Discussion? Thank you, Mr Mayor. It's quite straightforward. I think I just brought this forward. I've had a bit to do with some people in the community halls in various perspectives, in various ways. It's just formalising really how we best utilise our community halls and open up the opportunities for better utilisation and possibilities to access funding for upgrades and improvements. So we know we have these facilities, but there's nowhere which lists what exact facilities there are available at each, which ones have, you know, showers or space around them or specific things peculiar to each hall. Ideally, the management committees would be in touch with each other around issues they have to deal with and in times when they may be able to share resources and experiences.

And so unifying how council engages with those managing these halls and ensuring that we're allocating funds when possible would be much easier if we had a simple system in place. So I'm just calling on getting these people in touch with each other, facilitating that as these— I'm speaking about council-owned community halls, not community centres, and making a register of what equipment and so on they have at each place. So I've seen some really good examples of how an overall plan to upgrade multiple small halls, particularly in the mid-coast and the coastal regions, how that's worked in achieving funding and allowed significant and systematic upgrades of the halls to make them as functional as possible.

We know our community suffered greatly, and as people reconnect and come out of COVID and get together, places like community halls are often the ones delivering recovery programs or they're fundamental places in bringing people together. So I don't think this needs to be referred onto a committee or anything. That would just add an additional step. Staff, although I'm happy for it to, once it comes, you know, anything that comes out of it, I'm happy for that to go to a committee. But this is really just for an initial facilitation to see, you know, how we can just bring our various halls, you know, uniform the system so that we can actually utilise these community facilities as best as possible because we're lucky, we're lucky to have them and they do play a really important role in our community.

Thank you. Being no further discussion, I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Mayor, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Bygell, Councillor Lainsbury, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Jerrick, Councillor Dr Machi, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Calvert. Declare it carried.

Next item is notice of motion two, the council rating system. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor Move

That. Sorry? Move that.

Oh, sorry, I move that way. Thank you. Seconded, Councillor Sheather. Go ahead. Thank you. Really, you're going to get my teeth into this one. Thank you, Mr Mayor. There's no doubt that rates have been one of the contentious issues of the last term of Council. In fact, for five years, it is no secret that I have refused, very strongly refused, to support the previous, or what is still the current, rating structure as an unfairly burdened certain sections of our community in the most awful way. I had people contacting me in tears. I had people crying. I had people so upset that they could not pay their rates, concerned they would have to leave their family home. And in some instances, there was very, very little compassion shown for the many individual stories of despair.

Therefore, it is now the right time in this new Council term to reassess the rating structure. But there is absolutely no way that we can just jump into the deep end and do that in one night. We have new councillors in this room and some returning councillors who would have been a councillor under previous legislation or rules, where we actually need to let everybody know, especially the new councillors, how the rating system works. It is a very complicated system. It is one that takes a long time to digest and to understand. And during the last term of Council, because this was such a hot issue, we were very beneficial to be able to have a range of briefings and workshops to be able to get the knowledge that we needed as elected representatives to be able to make those very important decisions.

We say multiple times in this chamber that we are the custodians of the ratepayers' money, and that is absolutely true. Not only do we make decisions about where the rates are spent, but we have to make the decisions about how much people pay. Now, there's a lot of misconceptions about rates in the community because, as I have already stressed, it is a very — Complicated and difficult set of legislation to understand. So what my motion is asking for tonight is to start the process of the reassessment of rates. Now that means that I'll be calling for a briefing or a workshop or whatever you want to call it, where we all get together with the staff and the staff give us an overview of how rates work.

And as I have said in my motion, a lot of that information has been done and gathered in terms of the substantive way rates are structured. I understand the staff note there has indicated that if we request specific modelling, then that's going to have to take some staff time. But what I want in the first instance is very simple: how rates work. And I think all councillors need to be absolutely aware of the responsibility and the legislation around making such an important decision. I also don't shy away from the fact of what I have stood for over the last five years, and that is raising the base rate to 50%. And if the staff can have a look at the current situation that we've got and just show us what the rates would be on a 50% base rate in that briefing and in that workshop, then that would be the right way to go to start with.

I made a very, very public declaration during the last council term that I would stand with people on rates, and it was very, very important to me that one of the first things I did as a returning councillor was address this issue. I believe this is the best way forward, educating everybody on the structure around rates, and further down the track, we can very quickly make a decision on how we will put the rating structure together for the people of the Hawkesbury. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thanks, Councillor Richards. I'll just speak briefly to that to say that I think it's important. I think we have to look at this. It's been something that has caused a lot of division in the community and on council over the last few years. And no matter where you sit, I think you have to accept that many residents do currently consider the rating system unfair . Now, that might always be the case. Potentially that's true. However, what I said before the election, and I've had a lot of pressure from people who would like to see a rural residential category reintroduced. I've said I'm not going to support that. I'm happy to look at all the options, but I don't think we can have a situation where we go to either extreme, where we have this situation where we're changing the rates back and forth all the time as different people have influence on council.

It should be that we agree as a community on something that everyone can kind of live with, and we try and stick to that for the long term. I do think, you know, I think it's a smart move to have this briefing first, look at what the impacts would be. I do think reducing reliance on land value to a degree would take away some of that volatility in the rates. And if we can see that the impact's not too large on anybody, to change it to that, I think that might be the way to go. But I think, yeah, first thing we need to do is a briefing and then decide what model we want. Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Thank you, Mr. Mayor . I'm happy to have a briefing. I've got no problem with that because we should always have briefings around rates, especially when we've got new councillors. And we should also be reviewing, of course, our rating system in light of the changes put forward after the very, very lengthy delay by the state government when they've done their review. So they've introduced a raft of changes, but unfortunately they've not increased the pensioner rebate, which has remained at $250 a year since 1993. That's extremely disappointing, and we know that many of the ratepayers who are burdened are pensioners, and that is pretty pathetic, to be honest, by the state government. However, we all seek fairer systems around rating, and it's not an easy thing, let's face it.

Overall, I consider the current approach to rating by the state government in itself to be very unfair. They've imposed a 0.7 percent rate peg on us, which we know is less than our annual costs, and we know that our costs will far exceed that. So that is disadvantaging our ratepayers at the very start, before we even look at our system . I've also got some questions I'd like to raise in that briefing around our business rates, which are currently very high, which many of our local businesses have struggled through COVID, and I believe we should be looking again at our distribution between the categories in the rates, because that is a big burden on local business owners that we want to keep afloat, even though they have suffered so much in the last couple of years.

The next land valuations we now know come out at the end of 2022. Obviously how our land is valued across the area can have significant impacts on the rates for people who live in the areas, such as what we saw previously when there were massive increases of land value in our areas that adjoin the fast-growing development areas on our doorstep. So that was when we saw things like an average Average five-acre property in Oakville increased from a land value of around $670,000 to around the $2 million mark. So obviously that translated into higher rate bills for those people . A recent report in the financial review drew attention to the incredibly high increases in land value, particularly in regional areas, that have occurred quite unexpectedly during the period of COVID and coupled with low interest rates.

That has meant there's been some really significant increases. The land values in some LGAs have increased by 50% . This doesn't mean people's rates go up by that amount because the rates are proportioned between all the properties, of course, in our area, but it can make a difference. And I would be really interested if we could actually access some of that information about how that's impacted our area before we make any decisions, because it would give us a better idea of how any change to the system would actually play out and who would benefit and who would be disadvantaged. I don't know if we can get that information before the valuations come out, but it would be really good to get it because we know if there's big increases in one part of the area, then that can increase their rates disproportionately compared to other areas.

So this is the nature, of course, of proportionality attached to rating. Last year, the Valuer General's annual report did contain a lot of very interesting information, and I suggest everybody reads that if you want to be informed about rates. It includes studies that the department's done around a review of the impact of rezoning potentiality on land values, and I think that's something we have to take into account because our big increases in the Oakville area, the people couldn't rezone, but clearly the sales figures that were informing those land valuations were from the areas that had been rezoned. So the Valuer General was You know, was looking at that around the Aerotropolis and looking at those figures.

This is why we need certainty, of course, around planning and projected future growth areas. And the state government needs to be upfront about future plans around the M9 and various infrastructure so that people can know what's going to happen in terms of land values. I think that if we look at this, we can't simply just say we'll change something or do something without really being informed. And I think that there's a wealth of information around there that we need to get our hands on before we make a decision, because we know we live in an area that is subject to these, you know, these anomalies in terms of having an area that will suddenly increase because of what's happening, not necessarily within our LGA, but within proximity to our LGA.

So I'm hopeful that—I'm happy to support having a series of workshops. I think that's beneficial. But I do hope we can access as much information to inform us into the future that we can possibly get our hands on, and that we can really understand what the actual impacts will be in real terms. It's unfortunate that the next land valuation will be later than our workshops. But anyway, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. We had three speakers in favour. Is there anyone speaking against? If

Not, Councillor Vigil

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Mayor, and thanks, Councilor Richards, for putting the motion . Yeah, I'll support that

Unequivocally.

I heard on the election campaign too that the base rate was an issue, and it's somewhat unequitable in some certain areas, and it's created some distress since 2017 when it was changed. And being a newbie, or one of the newbies that's on Council, yes, unapologetically I want a briefing from Council to understand it. So, yeah, I'll be supporting the motion, and I'll keep it at that. Just over 30 seconds, Mr Mayor. Happy days.

Thank you . Just ask that again. So we have four in favour. Is anyone against, or do we need to keep talking about it ? Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I've got a minor amendment. I've sent some words through to the staff. Okay

Seconded for that.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. So, look, this is not a big change to the original motion. It's just expanding, I suppose, what the staff are asked to bring to us so that we can properly evaluate what is the best way forward. It's unlikely that we will be able to

Normalise the distribution of rates for everyone in the LGA because we have such skewed land values. We've heard that the current system is considered unfair by those on high-value properties who would like to keep their high land values but have lower rates . But previously the system in place, and I'm glad that you're not keen to go back to it, Mr Mayor, was considered to be very unfair by those on low-value residential properties who were made to subsidise those on high-value acreage. I think it's really useful for all councillors to receive a briefing on rate structure. It's something that people talk to us about all the time, and we need to be able to, we need to understand it so that we can discuss it properly.

We also need to understand what options are available to us, the legislation that governs this, and the impact of the various rating systems, particularly given the IPART review and the government response that came out in 2020, which did not go as far as many of us hoped, I think . If we're fair dinkum about this, we need to expand the proposed briefing to include various forms of modelling so that we can choose the most equitable outcome. Fairness isn't about everybody paying the same. Fairness, equity is not the same as equality, and we need to make sure that the outcome that we choose is the most equitable that we can come up with. We can only do that with all the information in front of us.

Thank you . I'll speak against the amendment briefly, just to say that whilst the amendment is quite similar to the motion, the difference is that in the motion, Council is indicating at least one thing that we'd like looked at so that it can be prepared for the briefing. It's not committing to anything. It's just giving some direction to staff as to one of the questions we're going to have at the briefing. And whether we pass this amendment or not, I think we're still going to have that question, so we might as well tell staff that that's what we'd like to have in there. So I think it would be not helpful to pass the amendment instead . Councillor Calvert, did you want to speak on the amendment

Mr Mayor, I originally wanted to speak on the motion, if I could. Excuse me. And I just wanted to add a couple of points that— Firstly, I think this is an example of something that could have been sent to a committee. And the committee could have set up a working group, because what we're talking about here is certainly informing the councillors, and I think that's a good thing to do. But I think we also need more community input into this subject. A working group could do that. A working group could have public meetings and bring up what the community is thinking, because I know there are a lot of people who have complained about rates, but I think there's also a lot of people who don't understand the rating system.

And this little figure of 50% that we hear floating around all the time, I think is rather misleading. People hear 50%, they think, Oh, that's all right, it's halfway. But 50% is not halfway; 50% is all the way. We get to adjust the base rate between 0 and 50. 50 is the top. And so I think that's a bit misleading. I would like to see the public involved in this some way, and I'm asking whether the mover of the motion would consider sending it to a committee as well and holding some public meetings on the matter.

I think that's going to—we'll take that as a foreshadowed amendment, I think. We've got one amendment on the table already, which we need to deal with first. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I support Councillor Richards' motion, and I'm favouring Councillor Wheeler's amendment, and I'll try and explain why. I've said more about the subject of council rates than almost any other subject in the previous term of council, and I often reflected that, you know, it was grossly unfair when two families who were in similar circumstances in terms of their access to council services and their income, one family would be paying two or even three times as many rates. as the family in another suburb simply because of their geographical location. And those who were happy to endorse various changes to our rating system in the previous term never ventured a justification as to why those guidelines in the Council Revenue and Rating Manual, a document issued by the State Government which stipulated that councils must be mindful of both access to services and ability to pay in setting rates fairly, those restrictions should be so blithely ignored, except for a hand-waving assertion implied or otherwise that acreage landowners in certain suburbs were very rich and could afford to pay more.

But I am disappointed that this motion doesn't go further. Councillor Richards' motion simply starts a conversation, and that's a good idea. I like action-oriented motions, and I think there's perhaps enough sentiment in the room for us to be proscriptive. I'd have liked for us to have said that we will set a 50% base rate, not merely have a conversation. We've been talking about this for years. I'd also like to be quite explicit about what our ultimate aim is, and that is, since I've done a lot of analysis in this area, I think the solution centres around flattening what you'd call the fairness curve. And I would like to see a rating system where people in the tenth decile, the upper decile, are paying no more ever than twice as much than people in the lowest decile.

Because certainly, if you were to chart all the rates, all the residential rates that are paid... In the district, from the cheapest to the most expensive , that hook at the end of the curve goes up incredibly sharply because of those distortions caused by speculative land value changes. And I'd like us to direct staff to do whatever they can, in terms of the analysis that they're going to bring to us, to try and come up with ways of flattening that curve so that people are paying more or less the same if they're having more or less the same access to services and are on more or less the same income. This motion doesn't quite get us there. Councillor Richards' motion got us a third of the way there.

Councillor Wheeler's amendment progresses a little. I'll be happy with that tonight, but certainly the conversation is not over yet. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

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

Okay, I'll just ask the screen can be taken down so we can vote on the amendment. Oh , sorry, Councillor Dr Marchi, did you want to speak to the amendment? Yes,

Thank you very much again. Again, give it to my inexperience in this council. What I don't understand is, well, certain comments made regarding the size of the land, the house and the area. I know a couple of people in my short time as a councillor, I have visited some people. Correct me if I'm wrong, that some people, they pay up to 300 more, and if I did my figures correct , what I found out that about 4,300 or maybe a bit more rural residential ratepayers, in dollar terms, of course, I'm talking, they pay about 45, 50 percent of the amount paid by maybe four... 20,000 residential ratepayers, correct me if I am wrong again . Like I always said during the election and before the election, red tape and the committees and the meetings and that sort of things.

Why do we have to go into all this? Why don't we just go to the direct ? To be fair, this is not a socialist country. We are in democracy. We are supposed to be fair. We are supposed to be equal. It doesn't matter whether I have five or 50 acres, whether in the top part of the, the most expensive part of Hawkesbury, or, doesn't matter, I don't know, or whatever it is. Why don't we just go simply direct to the heart of the matter and just set one rule. It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter whether your next-door neighbour is paying you three times or more . I just don't understand. Set another committee and then have another workshops and sit down and discuss and send it to this department and come back with it, and then they will come up with consultancies and pay them money.

The people in the meantime, they will suffer. They'll pay more and more. They will cut from their expenditures. They'll put less meat on the table. Some people that I know, some of them inherited their land. Some of them purchased with the intention of perhaps selling it in the coming days. I mean, most of the people in Oakville and Moralia areas, they might be retiring. Kids have gone out and a couple, you know, living in there and paying a stupid amount of rates. Something has to be done. It's beyond my power, but I think that, you know, we should set, you know, we should put, you know, certain kind of... have to work in some way. I don't know how. Like, I give it to my ignorance in this area.

But something has to be done without taking this matter further for discussions and how we have to do it, what is this, and get together next month or the month after. Nothing has been done for the last, I don't know how many decades. Things have changed. Times have changed. What we had 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we don't have it now. So there has to be some kind of less red tape, less discussion, less meetings, less committees, less consultants. I don't know. You know it best. Let me know if, for the positive outcome, yes, I will put my input. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So we'll put the amendment, which was Councillor Wheeler's changes. So all those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour of the amendment are Councillor Dobramaczi, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Progne, Councillor Kotlash. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Richards. So declare that carried. I'd love it if we didn't need any more discussion on that motion, but we can if we actually have a foreshadowed amendment, don't we ? Councillor Calvert, did you wish to move that amendment

Mr Mayor, I'm happy with... Just noting it and asking that we discuss it at the briefing session, that we take it to a committee at that stage. Okay

In which case, unless there's any discussion, I'll put the motion. Yeah , put the motion. Right of reply, Councillor Richards, sorry, I didn't actually do that.

Not needed, Mr Mayor, thank you.

Okay. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Bygott, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Durick, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zemptron, Councillor Carbone, Councillor Kotlash. Declare it carried.

Might just take a 10-minute adjournment, just because it's a bit of a break, we've got a bit to go on with, and we'll reconvene at 10 past nine, and the livestream will start again at that point.

So the next item is item 20, and Councillor Wheelie, you've got a declaration.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I've got a pecuniary interest. My husband is employed by Hawkesbury City Council, so I need to leave the meeting.

Thank you.

Wait for Councillor Wheeler to be removed.

Okay . Councillor Dobramaci, did you want to move your motion?

Yes. Can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you now. So you moved, Councillor Dobramaci. Is there a seconder for this?

No . There's no seconder, Councillor Dobramaci, so the motion fails . We'll let—

Councilor Wheeler back in.

Councilor Wheeler rejoined.

Okay, next item is item 21. Councilor Dogramaci, did you want to move that one? Yes, please. Is there a seconder for that one?

Seconded, Councilor Sheather.

Discussion,

Councilor Dogramaci?

Yes, this is regarding the business matter, isn't it, and tourism. Yep. Okay, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, indirectly, it is related to the first motion which has failed. We've been talking about the financial situation of the council, that we have no money, and I understand from certain people, and I think, you know, some councillors saying that something similar to what I wanted to do, like investment and making this place more attractive. I have traveled all around, as you may know, that I have lived in Europe for nine years, and I have attended many council meetings, I have attended many business opportunities, and we have in Hawkesbury something that no other council, let alone New South Wales, let alone Australia, for that reason, have.

We have this Hawkesbury River, and for some reason, I don't know why, probably the people, you know, who are trying to do something have never been outside the country, they don't know how business is run. I'm not saying that, you know, I know everything, but I always approach to any kind of opportunities with passion and with logic. I don't need to tell you that if there is no logic, there is no persuasion. And there's a saying in the United States: logic moves mountains. We can bring business in here, but I'm new, as you know, I'm new, and I don't know the areas. I have discussed this matter with the general manager, who was kind enough to spare me an hour. I have people interstate and overseas who wanted to come in here and expand their businesses, South Coast, to , believe me, in Upper State New York in Buffalo.

People, they wanted to come here, and I think they made the initial approach over the phone. I don't know how true it is, but they told me that council gave them just a blank answer. Can you hear me?

Yeah, we can hear you.

Okay, all right. So I don't know what happened. Anyway, I don't know how true it is, but there are many, many companies that, you know, I can bring in here, but I have no idea where they could start their businesses, what kind of areas, you know, how are they zoned? Do they have easy access to services, that sort of thing? And I have no idea. For argument's sake, only recently, although despite people telling me not to discuss this sort of things openly, I don't believe in that. I discuss openly, and I'm not expecting anything. I could put council, people in the council, to in contact with these people as recent as— A gentleman from India who is prepared to invest 100 million dollars in Hawkesbury with a big project, and I mentioned that one.

I don't know where to go from here. I don't know who is the person, or do we have a committee that, you know, I could put these people together so they could discuss? Do I invite these people, you know, to the council chambers? Do we have some kind of discussions? So what I am saying is that, you know, I am offering you my services free. I don't want anything. When I say I don't want anything, a little placard when my time is up saying that Dogramaci Street or whatever, or Dogramaci Park, that would be enough for me. But use me. I have these contacts. Let me do something. Let me bring these people. They are ready to pour money in this area. An extraordinary, large, very big company in the United States, perhaps the biggest dairy food manufacturing company.

They wanted to come in here. I suggested them. I gave them some phone numbers. They told me that they contacted the council, and initial discussion was so negative they had to move their operations to Victoria. Now they're employing 360 people, and I don't need to mention the name, but their products are all over supermarkets. And my last discussion with this gentleman, who's my ex-countryman, he said that he is still looking, you know, for some area that, you know, he could bring some kind of distribution centre in Hawkesbury. I don't know where to go. So it's you people will, I think, I'm going to discuss with them on next Tuesday. He was kind enough to give me an hour. Like I said, I have these contacts, and I'm not expecting anything in return.

I'm not going to buy land or— Time has expired there, Councillor Dogramaci. All right. I'll wait to hear from you people then. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

Councillor Michael.

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Mayor. Can I move an amendment to this motion, please? Yep. I think staff have probably got this. Does that mean they're going to paste it or I just talk to it, if that's all right? I don't mind.

Pay for it to be brought up if it's been sent through. Yep.

Thanks.

I'll be able to do this automatically in another year, probably.

Staff got that one. If not, potentially just read it out, Councillor

Yeah, that's okay. Time . This is the amendment, thanks. The council receive a report regarding the engagement of the business and tourism community. This report should outline, review the actions already taken by Council to increase engagement, and options and recommendations for further engagement with the business and tourism community. It may include the establishment of an economic investment and tourism reference group and draft guidelines and the process for establishing the economic investment and tourism reference group.

Okay. Just give it a moment for that to be brought up on screen, if only if anyone's ready to second that. Seconded, Councillor Reardon. Okay, we can get that up shortly. But did you want to speak to that, Councillor Michael?

Do I wish to speak to it?

Yep.

Yeah, just briefly. If you engage back in the community and just bring them in and happy days and troubles aren't concerned.

The draft guidelines and the process of establishing that, that can be done. I think there's got to be draft guidelines for the process. So I get it. The business and tourism community are the experts within the Hawkesbury, which you engage them. But I also know over the past years, the actions are already taken by Council to increase engagement too. So anyway that's pretty brief, but that's how I see it anyway. I don't know if anybody else wants to speak to it. Sure. Yeah. I know you've done much over the years, but I just think we can continue it. But I'd like to see the options and recommendations for further engagement , focus groups anyway. So

I'll just speak briefly in favour of that amendment. I think this is a really good idea, been brought up by Councillor Dogramaci. I think the intention there is very timely, and I really appreciate that. I think that Council has to be seen to be open for business. We have to be seen to be that this is a good place where you can invest with certainty, and then we get welcomed. So I think that the direction Councillor Dogramaci is going in with this is great. I think this is a very similar motion to what Councillor Dogramaci has put forward. It just comes, I think what's missing potentially out of the original motion is that the motion before us only gave us one potential action. Whereas I think we do need to look at all the things we have, because we have done many, many things over the years to try and engage businesses.

We've had meet and greets, we've had forums, we've had response to different business events. We have had tourism committees. We have had economic committees, all with varying levels of success in, to meet their objectives. So I think before we jump into just another one, whilst I appreciate the sentiment, I think it'd be better to get a review of the actions we've already taken. Look at what we're already doing right now. We do have an economic development manager who's working hard to engage local businesses through a variety of measures. So I think having that put in front of us, what we're doing right now, what's working, what's not, and then a recommendation then on whether we go ahead and establish that reference group or whether there's some other way to achieve what Councillor Dogramaci is seeking more efficiently.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, did you want to speak on the amendment?

Thank you, Mr Mayor, I will, and I'm interested to hear debate on it because it is similar to the original one, and I have no issue with the original motion. But what I was going to suggest was the next motion about reviewing the committees. I was wondering if we could sort of roll it in to have it done at the same time if we were looking at all our committee system and so on. From discussions, from what I understood Mr Dogramaci was meaning was really about investment attraction and investment attraction policy as such. And I think that's a really important component that we need here, particularly if we're to get any spinoffs from the development around Bradfield and the aerotropolis. And so I think we need to establish within the council how we are going to approach getting any ancillary industries that may be able to set up in this area into the economic development space and so on.

So that's how I was understanding it, was more getting some guidelines around what we can do to actually put out investment attraction opportunities to people wanting to come here. And I think that I'd be really happy to discuss it in line with the system that we have already incorporated our existing tourism committee into. So I think we're setting up another additional thing, I would like to see the whole lot reviewed and that we came up within those groups how we were going to approach getting more people to operate in our area. And I understand the sentiment of both the original motion and of this amendment as well. Thank you. Councillor Calvert.

Thank you

Mr Mayor. I originally wanted to move an amendment, and I'll tell you what that amendment was. It was that Council ask the Innovation and Partnership Committee to establish an economic investment and tourism working group. Now, I'd be happy if Councillor Veigel was to consider changing the beginning of his motion to say something to that effect so the report can come back from that working group, or alternatively I'll put that up as a foreshadowed motion.

I think that, if I could just speak in response to that, just to offer a potential way forward if Councillor Veigel didn't want to, was that this report, essentially this report, comes from that committee rather than directly from staff. We asked the committee to look into these three things for us and report back. I think that probably makes sense, but that to be up to Councillor Veigel if you wanted to change it to that.

Councillor

Veigel. Yeah, I'm happy to make that change if the consensus of Council is okay with it. So the amendment would

Become the Council ask the Partnership and Innovations Committee for a report. The rest is the same. Yeah, thank you for that, Councillor Veigel and

Mr Mayor. I

Just wanted to point out, as I did in the last item , we tend to be underutilising our committee structure, and this to me is a classic one that could go to our existing committee, and a working group could be set up or a reference group, as Councillor Veigel calls it. That group can call on public submissions. It can call on experts. It can have members of the working group that are from the public. A lot of people think that the public have been shut out of committees, but it's just the opposite. This working group could have members of the public, members of the tourism industry on it, and could provide these answers, as Councillor Veigel said. But it could also become a longer-term working group that, after it's provided these answers, continues to function and gather information and make recommendations to Council.

So I thank Councillor Veigel for making the change. I think it's the best way to use our existing committee system and not talk about throwing out our existing committee system, but to actually make it work properly. So thank you. Councillor Sheather

Sorry,

You're on mute, Councillor Sheather

What actions do, or Council involved in now in relation to tourism? I know we've got the Clarendon place, but what other actions is Council involved in in tourism or economic structures outside of Council business?

Sure. I guess that's the potential purpose of the report to outline that, but I'll refer that to the Director City Planning for a brief overview, if possible . Yeah, thanks

Okay, thank you. Through you, Mr. Mayor. So obviously locally we are involved in, through various networks in our business community, you know, the various chambers or business groups that have been established. Council has the Visitor Information Centre, which also supports the Tourism Committee, and we've run a lot of programs to support our Tourism Committee, particularly as a result of the bushfires, COVID and flood, and we're continuing to do that. In terms of the broader region, we then liaise with surrounding councils, particularly across the Western Parkland Councils, and there's active work going along with the state-based Investment Attraction Office, which is set up by the state government, to see how we could benefit from the work that will be coming through as a result of the new airport.

So there is, you know, both work done regionally and locally, but as the Mayor said, we'll be able to outline that in more detail in the report to Council.

Thank you. Just further question, Mr. Mayor. How many of those groups or organisations are driven through the community rather than through state government or council?

I'm not— there are a number of business-based groups that are run by businesses, and council is just a member. In terms of the proportion , I wouldn't be able to answer that question.

Thank you. There's a few local groups, Councillor Sheather. There's the Hawkesbury Chamber of Commerce, the Windsor Business Group, and the Hawkesbury Business Events Network . There's a few that councillors are involved in. Yeah.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I'd speak in favour of the amendment. The years I was on council before, we tried endlessly... Tourism projects, predominantly driven by Council, but in some cases there were small community groups, and they all fail. Unless you've got a driving force in the community in any of those areas where Council can support those organisations through a variety of reasons and opportunities, they don't seem to work. And that's why I supported the motion, because I think we really need to have a talk about it. In relation to other committees, that's something else I'm passionate about, but I think that we need to have a clear direction on what we want in relation to this sort of stuff.

We need business, we need economic investment and tourism. And I think with what's proposed here and the comments that Councillor Calvert made, that there's a good opportunity here, and I thank the Councillor for bringing up the motion in the first place to have those discussions and lead that way. Thank you.

Thanks, Councillor Sheather. There's no further discussion on the amendment. We'll put that now. Just wait for it to come down off the screen. So we'll put the amendment now. Those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Richards, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Drummond, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Calvert. Declare the amendment carried. If there's no further discussion, we'll put the motion then. Yeah, we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour of the motion are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Richards, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Drummond, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Zamprogno , Councillor Calvert.

Declare it carried.

Next item is notice of motion five, Council committee review. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, would you move

That? Yes,

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Is there a seconder for that? Seconded, Councillor Wheeler. Discussion

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I think with the new council and new appointees to the committee, it's important that we review the current system to ensure we're encouraging and including the community to get their input. The way I see it at the moment is we've got the bones of the committee system set up, but we need to work out how it can best operate, especially in terms of ensuring that we're getting things on the agenda that we need to address at a committee level, and we've seen a couple of those things come up tonight. So— I think that, you know, for example, it's probably easier with some issues to have things arise in discussions like this that can go to a committee. But there's other areas, for example, the Community Partnerships Committee that doesn't have any community input, and it hasn't met in going on to nearly two years, I would think, the former Human Services Committee.

And that means that we're not addressing the many issues that multiple sectors of our community face. We need to decide on the best mechanism to capture what we need to be taking advice on so we can ensure that resources and improvements are made as required. If we're dealing with innovation, we might not have anything arise within our existing council business, although we just did then, but we may not. And we have to— so how do we pursue innovative ideas which may exist within our community, which could be of benefit to us, or could be something we should be considering? I think that what, including what Councillor Dogramaci just has raised within this review, is very timely. So we can review how those ideas can be incorporated into the system we have, and we can revisit the best way that we capture the information that we need to have and how we can get that out into the public and get it in from the public to inform us better on what we're doing.

I think that we need to look at that as a group, especially as we're now a new group, and go through it again. Importantly, I think it's really important that we set up a system around how we get feedback both to other councillors and to the public about what's happening in the committees outside of the organisation that we have reps on. So when we have council funds going into organisations, it's really important that we know what's happening. We shouldn't have to follow up. Up to get the minutes, we should be aware of any stance our councillor who is representing us on a committee is taking on any given issue. And I don't believe in the past there's been sufficient accountability in this area, and I think we can improve, and I think we need to set it up so we can improve much better on that.

Sometimes there's things happening which are of general interest to the public from either internal or external committees, and if these are having impact on our community, then we should be getting that information out to them. So I know one thing people are interested in hearing about, you know, if something's going to be taking place from the River County Council, or other people have asked me about how is the funding within the Sports Council allocated, which fields are going to get upgraded, all that sort of information. It may exist somewhere, but currently we're not getting it out to the public to really let them know. It's not requesting anything too onerous or time consuming. It's simply transparent accountability by elected representatives.

So if we can work together to establish the best way to involve our community, that's what we should strive for. Evolving our committee system into one which learns as it goes along is something we need to be open to. Over the past 12 months, there's been a perception in the community that they have been sidelined, and this was raised with me often leading into the election. In fact, standing at pre-poll, I had person after person saying it because many people were relying on what came out of our committee system to tell them about things that were happening. I know others who've been elected felt the same way. I've had discussions with some of the candidates who were running for the election, and they believe we need to reinvigorate community participation.

So I hope we can do that via some discussions at a workshop . I don't know necessarily the best way, but I think that we have to. We have to review this. The system's been in place for a while now, and I think it's time to review it and see how we can make it work a bit better. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Dogramaci. Sorry,

You're on mute.

Still on mute, Councillor

Dogramaci.

Okay, okay , now. Yeah. I

Don't know how these committees work. I don't know what happened in the past. Past is gone. I don't know what happened. I don't know how many committees on tourism and economic matters, you know, have been raised. Why they failed, I have no idea. That's gone. Let's forget about that. Let's see what we could do. Like I said previously, use my knowledge . When it comes to IT, I have no idea. I cannot suggest. I cannot recommend anything. But in that area, and when Councillor Mary, when Mary Lyons-Buckett, when she said that we have somehow have to have, you know, some kind of community input or whatever, what do they know about two companies? One, I don't want to mention two different countries.

They would like to come in here and start producing high-tech drones, which are currently coming from the United States at stupid prices at these two... Second and the third highly respected companies in the world manufacturing these drones, they would like to come in here. I had a quick look around Wilberforce area, industrial area. All they need is to build maybe an acre or something like that. That's all they need, and maybe they will employ 30, 40 people. So I don't know, you know, why do we need to discuss with community members, whether, after all, we are looking, we are bringing business in here. They'll be producing these products in Australia, in Hawkesbury, and exporting to different parts of the world, as well as using, for argument's sake, detection of drugs and that sort of thing, or other matters.

So as to workshops or whatever, why do we have to waste time? Let's meet at the end of this week, doesn't matter, Saturday or Sunday, and to discuss these things. I don't know how many members of the committees can come along with me to the United States or to different parts of the world, which I am prepared to pay for the cost of it, as long as we bring these people in here, as long as this council make things easy for these people. But if it's correct, I don't know, again, correct me if I am wrong, what I hear from people, that the delays, the customer service, the wait for DAs, we are the second worst council in Australia, or at least in New South Wales after Cumberland Council. Why do we have to, you know, put up with all this red tape and meetings and consultations and that sort of thing?

So let's get down to business like a professional business, as since council is a business. Just tell me when you want me to attend to give you some of these ideas. I'll be more than happy. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor, sorry, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Look, I'm interested that this has been brought to Council because I think it's all too soon. We discussed reviewing the committees just about a year ago, and some of the people who are pushing for this review wouldn't support any change to the committee system. They wanted things to not change at all. And now we're hearing them say, let's review the committee system, and apparently things must have changed. Now, over the last 12 months, as we all know, there's been a pandemic, and our committees haven't really been able to get off the ground in any way because of that. The committees run best when they're face to face, especially if you're going to bring in lots of people in a large hall.

And the few that we've tried online haven't worked very well because they're new and we haven't established a relationship with people at this stage. I'm hoping that the pandemic will slow up in the next month or two and maybe we can go back to face-to-face meetings and really get these committees off the ground, because at this moment I think it's way too early to review because we really haven't got them going properly yet. What we need to do is give them a chance to work and then come back and have a look at maybe not reviewing them, but refining them if that's necessary . The Community Partnerships Committee, for example, I'm very keen to get that one going as soon as possible. I spoke to the General Manager about this a month or two ago, and we want to get this going.

And there's a few working groups that... Carried on from before through the Access and Equity Committee, and we're going to get them to report as quickly as we can. Now , a working group can be constructed in that committee, a working group that is an Access and Equity working group and has members of the public in it, and it can even be run by a member of the public if that's what you want. And we can have lots of people from the community involved in those working groups reporting to the committee. I think a lot of people don't understand that what we've done with committees is actually opened them up to the public, not closed them. And yes, I stood on pre-poll and polling booths, and I got people saying similar things to me, and I corrected them and said, Well, you obviously haven't had the right information.

The committee structure that we've brought in doesn't remove the public. It actually increases public consultation and public representation. And I'm really disappointed that some people used this issue as an election issue and didn't actually tell the truth the way it actually is. And a few people who used to be on some of the committees I was on have taken great umbrage that we've closed their committee, and I've taken great pains to explain to them that the committee is not closed, it's just reformed, and you can now play an even bigger role than you did before. Now, as I said at the beginning, we haven't had time to get it all going properly, so having a review now I think would be ridiculous.

I think we need to wait at least another six months, get things working, then we might consider having a look at it if it's not working properly. But right now is not the time to do this, and I think it's become a political issue, and that is very unfortunate.

Thank you. Thank you . Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm speaking against this notice of motion. I agree with Councillor Calvert. This is not necessary, and it's not . It might be necessary in a year or so, but it's not necessary now. We've had one, possibly two briefings and four meetings on reviewing our committee structure, and I think we did a really good job. Our new structure is good. It just needs a chance to work. And just, I guess, to address something that Councillor Dogramaci said, is if we have a committee issue that's about, for instance, let's say it's about economic development, when Councillor Dogramaci was a member of the public, if we had that system, then he could come and address that committee and become involved .

That's the absolute beauty and strength of this new system. If you're interested in a particular topic and you have expertise, you are a member of the community and you wish to share your knowledge and be part of the community and get stuck in so other people can benefit and the whole community can benefit, and we can get that sort of economic stimulation that I know that Councillor Dogramaci is trying to achieve . That's how we can do it. So maybe don't think about it as red tape or it's yet another meeting. It is how we are going to say to the people of the Hawkesbury, come and give us your thoughts. You don't have to be an expert. You can just have a good idea maybe and say, you know, I've got an idea but I don't know how to do it, and get somebody to stimulate that sort of community networking and involvement.

That's what we have to try and achieve. This notice of motion doesn't address that. It says, oh, it assumes that we need to increase community representation. We don't. We have to just get it to work. We have every, you know, we have the mechanism to allow everybody and anybody to have a say. That's excellent opportunities for representation. The second point in the notice of motion, sorry, and I'll be quick , community input into the agenda items. I disagree with that. The committee structure is not a place where people can, I mean, they can bring ideas and such, but it has to go through the processes. So, you know, there doesn't have to be a separate mechanism. We have the mechanism to get things on the table.

The third point I disagree with also. I think what we have to do with our external committees and our external organisations is that I think we have to wait. And get the people that are on those committees to bring back to the council how they think it is best to convey what's happening in those particular committees. It's no use us gathering together in a little group and saying, well, we want this and we want that and we want this. From experience with the Hawkesbury City, Hawkesbury River County Council, a lot of the things that we had said in prior meetings was not possible. So let's just tip that about. I agree that we need better communication, absolutely agree with that, and I am committed to doing that .

But I don't think we tell them what we want. I think we have to make sure that, you know, we're aware of their mechanisms and we can get the reporting up from there . Point four I don't actually understand. Mechanisms for how council communications will ensure sufficient decisions and proposals impacting Hawkesbury Council and ratepayers' residents will be published. I think that's irrelevant. That's across-the-board stuff. I mean, the way we communicate our decisions and our decision-making processes is, I think we've got that covered. So not supporting this. I am really, really looking forward to getting stuck into the new committee structure because I think we can make it work, and we can make it work to be transparent, effective, transparent and accountable.

So let's do it. We don't need a review at this time. Thank you.

Thanks, Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor . In an effort to be genuinely fair about this, you know, we've got to kind of set the scene. When we reviewed the committee structures at the end of 2020, I described it at that time as an experiment. And I've looked back and tried to work out whether I actually regret permitting that experiment to be undertaken. I think the jury is still out. I have to, in fairness to Councillor Calvert, who seemed to have the most emotionally invested in this reform, to say that last year was a very dislocated year, and perhaps it isn't fair to look at the way in which committees met or failed to meet, or the way in which they met under COVID conditions, and to see that as representative.

But I also proceed from the assumption that each chamber has the right to look at and determine the ways in which it wants its committees to function to best service its decision-making needs. And for that reason, I think I'll support Councillor Lyons-Buckett's motion, because we have to look at the way in which the community participates. And it's not just whether they're there; it's not just whether they're aware of whether the meeting is occurring; it's whether they can vote. And I've had really long conversations with Councillor Sheather, and I've learned a lot at his elbow, because he is a master of community engagement. Not that there's any such thing as a short conversation with Councillor Sheather, but the thing is, he's taught me that, you know...

The community drives these committees. They're not our creature that we can just invite people to kind of come and watch us talk. I want people in the community to feel a sense of agency and genuine participation. And I think the only way we're going to do that is by introducing or reintroducing voting members of the community to these committees. And I'm glad that this process kicks that process off, and I hope we get it right. Thank you, Mr Mayor .

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I agree with Councillor Zemplenyo that there is a need to reintroduce community members who don't just watch or don't just get to address for five minutes on a particular point , but they actually get to participate in the whole process of the discussion. And often that discussion ebbs and flows. It's not a come on, speak, come off again. Good persuasive discussion requires everybody being on the same playing field. And by not giving decision-making capacity to community members in this process, I think we've taken a step back, and it's something that I strenuously argued against at the time. We always said that we would review this decision, and I think now is as good a time as any to do that.

I don't think that we can blame all of the problems that we saw with the committee structure on COVID. The Heritage Advisory Committee, which was an existing committee . Managed or survived the process of the committee rejig. There were two things that heavily impacted. Now, we had an existing agenda. We had a lot of work to do. We had done a lot of work already. It was a large, well-functioning committee with excellent expert input into the committee decision-making, and we had an existing structure and an existing relationship with each other. We still were impacted by two of the key, what I see are two of the key problems with the current committee structure. The first is the need, is the lack of an obvious and straightforward mechanism for getting items on the agenda.

Now , the Heritage Advisory Committee previously, the staff would refer items that they needed expert input into to the Heritage Advisory Committee. The council could refer if it chose, but also members of the committee could raise items that they wanted discussed in general business. Expert committee members very often have things that they feel that council should be aware of or that should be discussed or worked into policy platforms or into council actions. That's a perfectly, that's a really useful free input from these people who give freely of their expertise and time. We've lost that mechanism, and I think we need to reinstate it. We also, there has to be ways of getting information on the agenda, staff to the committee to council, staff to council to a committee, to council, the community to the— excuse me.

the community to the committee.

There is no current mechanism, besides something coming to Council, for it to be discussed in a committee. And that is part of the reason why the committees have lost momentum. That's not COVID, that's structure . The other thing that's missing is regular meetings with set times throughout the year, so that people know when they're on and they can work around it. And that's when you'll get regular input from people who are really interested in this stuff. They know that the Environment Committee meets on the first Tuesday of every second month or something, and community groups will discuss and say, let's get there, let's watch this, let's see what's on, let's talk to a councillor and see if they can get this before the committee.

If you give people that certainty, you'll get more input . The other thing that, and I saw this with the Heritage Advisory Committee, if you don't have a set meeting structure, there's nothing that forces you to move ahead with the process apart from a councillor jumping up and down. And that's a retrograde step as well, I think. If you know that you've got,

I

Think we had four or so Heritage Advisory Committee meetings, the staff know they've got to have the reports ready, people know they've got to turn up, and we know that there's an expectation that there will be some advancement in what's been discussed from the previous meeting. And that keeps momentum going. And that's the other reason that we've lost momentum with this committee process. I think this is salvageable. I think there's three key changes that need to be made. We need to review this. And there was a question earlier, why do we have to listen to the community? Because that's our job. We're elected to represent the community. We can't do that without listening to them. This is a really good way of doing that.

Thank you. Councillor Dogramaci, did you have a question or have? Just

To reply to Councillor Kotlash, just briefly, and I understand that, you know, I have to go through you, the Mayor, why I didn't do anything, you know, for the last 25 years, which I've been a ratepayer. I have no idea. I had no idea about, you know, how councils work and that sort of things. And one of the councillors amongst the 12 knows me very, very well, that I, before this COVID, I travelled overseas every three months, and sometimes a week, sometimes two, three, four weeks, all for business. So I didn't have time. And the reason that, you know, I'm now a councillor is so many of my customers, local and interstate, as well as overseas customers and friends, they begged me. They said, ‘Well, please get in and do something.’ So basically that was it

That's fair. I'll take that as a point of misrepresentation. Please clarify, and I think Councillor Kotlash's conversation didn't mean that at all. Okay. Yep. Councillor Kotlash, did you want to say that? Yes

Thank you, I did, and I, Councillor Dogramaci, I wasn't inferring that you hadn't done anything. What I was trying to point out is that the mechanism now exists; it didn't exist then, so don't worry about it. The mechanism now exists for you to get involved in that way. That's what I was trying to say . I know you said the past is past, that's good, you got all that. I wasn't inferring for one minute that you didn't get involved, you know, and that was—I wasn't having a go at you. Thank you.

Consider it clarified.

Thank you. Okay

Councillor Sheather.

Thanks, Mr Mayor . Mr Mayor, the motion is that the councillors have a workshop, and it's to discuss committees. I've got a bit of concern about efficiency, transparency and accountability . I don't know of any groups that aren't that way already . But the things that we've spoke about tonight, there's a variety of different avenues that have been discussed on how we participate, or how we may participate with the public to engage our community. And Councillor Lyons-Buckett brought up about the halls, the council halls, by bringing them together. That's another great opportunity . But to the degree we get involved, that would come out in a workshop and how that might happen . My view in relation to committees is how we involve the community in their own structures in a similar vein as what Councillor Lyons-Buckett spoke about with halls.

And it's about communication, contact with one another, understanding , and bringing a community together. Now, council can either pursue that avenue or divide it, which leaves a divided community behind . You know, there's issues in the community that wouldn't be there if discussions had taken place in the first place. There's assumptions and directions, and then people have different personalities and views, and all of a sudden they've got a dog. Dogged approach. That's not how community should be. It's not how council should be. And we've got an opportunity here in a workshop to chuck those ideas around, to come up with ways

That a lot of the councils discussed tonight that we have failings in. And I don't mean council failings. I mean the community is failing in that area, and we should be leaders in directing that. So that's my view of workshops and community involvement . And I know that it works. And , you know, it's when you want to achieve something, it's much easier if you've got close contact or friendship with someone on the other side of the table, and it works. And even if it doesn't work, when they leave , it's not with a dogged view of hatred or the likes, you know. So there's a lot of value in community representation and the role that we can play.

Thank you Thanks, Councillor Sheather. I'll just speak briefly. I also won't support the notice of motion. I think one thing that needs to be pointed out is that of this council of 12 councillors, there's only five of us that have actually served on one of these new committees. So it would make a lot more sense for us to be looking at a review potentially after the other councillors, the other seven who haven't been on one of the new committees, has had a chance to serve in that capacity and understand how they work, because I think there's a lot of misconception out there around these things. We, as councillor, as the deputy mayor, sorry, did point out, we did have to have all but one meeting of these new committees on Zoom.

But even at those meetings we did have, we did have, I mean, what Councillor Villa was saying, I agree. You need the back and forth, and we had the back and forth with the community members who attended. There was no strict five minutes is it. It was they were just part of the conversation. They sat at the table or on Zoom, and it would only be, you know, an enforced five-minute time frame if you had the meetings where you got the hundreds of people and you had to get everyone to go. It's certainly not going to be the norm. And, you know, it's not working any different to any other committee. I agree there could be a change around setting more regular meeting times, but I would also just go back to the original one, the original intention, is that we don't judge these committees.

By the amount of stuff they produce, we judge them by the outcomes they're achieving, because we had some committees that were very busy, that had, you know, full agendas. But, you know, and with full respect to everyone on the committees who was working hard, you wouldn't necessarily be able to pinpoint the great difference they'd make to our community. So I think we need to be judging these committees not by the amount of items of business they go through, but by what outcomes they're achieving. There definitely was—I'm trying not to be at all political in this because it has been politicised and I don't want to contribute to that— but there was a perception, you know, towards the end of last year that people had been excluded off the committees.

And that's not surprising given that there are a number of councillors saying that as loudly and as often as they could. That's why that perception was there, is because it was being pushed by councillors. So I think what I would like to see as the mayor and the council going forward is that all 12 of us actually give this a proper go. It's good to see that the councillors who wouldn't last term have now joined these committees. Give it a go. Learn how it works. Be on board. Let's work together. If in six months we feel it's not working, we need to change something, I'd be much more open to a review once it had had a chance to work, and once we'd have a chance for the other seven councillors to have a go at how these committees operate.

Serve on one, go to a meeting, see what you think before you try and review it. So that would be my view . Go right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thanks for those contributions. I think that, I think it's unfortunate that some councillors are so precious about sticking to their idea that they're not open to introducing the new councillors into having a discussion about how this works. I think that I have committed to going on the committees to try and assist to get them working, to be a part of them. The spirit of doing this was to come together to try and get everybody to understand, and it's clear from some of the new councillors they don't understand how the committees work. So a workshop going over what they're about, what their agendas should be based upon. We know it hasn't worked, and I mean, to be quite honest, and I didn't want to have to be critical about it, but we've had well over a year of it, and the heritage committee managed to do it all on Zoom.

We have managed to attract hundreds of people watching council meetings, and yet we did not attract people to the committees because, as Councillor Wheeler said, if people aren't aware that something's coming up, if there's no scheduling of the meetings, we just need some structure. We need to look at what would satisfy people. We need to ask the community, and we did ask the community and the people on those committees, and that was ignored for this different model. So I'm really sorry that this may not be supported. It was a promise that I gave to people in the community who feel disenfranchised, who are people who face obstacles every day, of which none of the outstanding issues that were carried over from the last councils, they have not been addressed.

There has not been one community participation meeting, community partnerships meeting, not one. That means there has not been anything for those people who are visually impaired, who are mobility challenged, who need us. To be asking them how we can help them live a better daily life in this community. Those people feel excluded. Now, they may be a minority, but that's a real hurt to them. And they have spoken, I know, to a number of people here, and they have said, We need to get our voice in, and there has not been an opportunity. How do you think that opportunity is just going to miraculously appear if there's no scheduled meeting for those committees? That is what I wanted to look at. And it may be the case that not all committees need to be like that.

Some committees can simply get their content from what's brought up in Council around strategies or things. Other committees, we need to have our community saying, This is what we need. I don't understand why there's a problem to have a workshop to introduce the new councillors to this, to talk about how we would schedule the different meetings. It's our duty to listen to the community. I think there's an element of arrogance in thinking that only one way can work, because these sort of things should be fluid. This was a call to work together, to all get together and to try and find the right balance about how we allow our new councillors to have an input, how we show our community that we'll work together to find the best way that we can incorporate their voice into this Council.

So I hope it'll be supported. It's asking for a workshop. We need a workshop to look at these things anyway, and I hope we don't let our community down.

Thank you. Put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Sheather, Councillors O'Progne, Councillor Djuric, Councillor de Rmaci, Councillor Wheeler. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Feigl, Councillor Richards, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert declare it lost on the casting vote of the Mayor.

Next item is item 23. Is there any questions on questions?

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Yes, Mr Mayor, I do just have a question on that, and I thank the Director of Infrastructure for the response. I'm just finding my question. Thank you very much for that response. I will raise that then as a notice of motion, but I did just want to ask the Director if he has any idea of what cost we're talking about to look at that system . Is this something that's hugely expensive or is this something that's achievable? I just wanted to ask that.

Through you, Mr Mayor, I don't think it's a prohibitive cost, but that's about the limit of the detail I'd be able to provide without taking that on notice.

Okay, thanks. Well, I'll bring it back as a notice of motion. I just didn't want to do it if it was something that was so cost prohibitive there was no point in trying. But I think it's very important, particularly to our people in the remote areas, so thank you for that answer.

Thank you.

That's the conclusion of our business to be dealt with in open session. Is there a motion to go into confidential? Moved to go into confidential session, Councillor Richards, seconded Councillor Sheather. All those in favour. Declare it carried.

We have a noise. Have we done that in

The past? Yeah, I'm not sure because of the confidential nature of it, though.

What are we thinking, Charles?

We're now currently live in live session. We're just getting some advice on what parts of the confidential resolutions we read out publicly. We'll just take a moment to take some advice. While

We're waiting for that, I might get Councillor Richards to read your interest onto the recording.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. My interest was significant and pecuniary. One applicant does work for my partner on restoring a local heritage item, and another is in my Rotary club

Thank you.

Liz, a new email has just been sent to you.

Thank you very much.

So I wish to advise that a procedural motion was moved by Councillor Veigel that item 024, appointments to the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel, not be dealt with on block, and the procedural motion was carried. Motion that the General Manager advise that while in closed session Council resolved on the motion of Councillors Zamprogno, seconded by Councillor Lyons-Buckett , that information provided in the report in relation to the role of community members on the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel be received and noted. Council appoint the following community representatives for the pool of community members of the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel from meetings of the Local Planning Panel until the 29th of February 2024: Graham Edds, Paul Rogers, Markle Edwards, Preeti Karan, and Brett Mason.

Point three, advise the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and of the additional community representatives appointed by Council to the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel. And point four, advise the eligible applicants of Council's determination and thank them for their interest in this matter. For the motion were Councillors Calvert, Djuric, Lyons-Buckett, Reardon, Sheather, Wheeler and Zamprogno. Against the motion were Councillors Conolly, Dogramaci, Kotlash and Veigel, and absent for the vote was Councillor Richards. In respect of item 025, regarding

The migration of Council's corporate systems to software as a service, whilst in closed session the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Zamprogno. That the report be received and noted in accordance with the provisions of Section 55(3)(i) of the Local Government Act 1993, Council not call for tenders for the migration to and the provision of Council-supported systems to software as a service on the TechnologyOne cloud base on the basis of extenuating circumstances for the following reasons: a, lack of pre-configured local government integrated enterprise resource software as service solutions; b, leveraging existing system capabilities on the TechOne solution; the cost and time burden of proceeding to tender to make a similar assessment for an inferior financial outcome; and d, unavailability of competitive tenderers to provide software as a service or TechnologyOne software.

Point three, Council enter into a five-year contract with TechnologyOne for migration to and the provision of software as a service as outlined in the report; and four, the General Manager be given delegated authority to execute any documentation associated with the final agreement between Council and TechnologyOne. All the motions were: Councillors Conolly, Calvert, Richards, Reardon, Veigel, Sheather, Kotlash, Dogramaci, Djuric, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett and Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. That concludes all business for our meeting, so I declare the meeting closed at 10.43 p.m. Thank you everybody for your participation.