Environment Committee - 26 April 2022

Welcome everyone to the Environment Committee for the 26th of April 2022. My name is Andrew Kearns. I'm the Manager of Strategic Planning at Hawkesbury City Council. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Persons of the country. Just a few procedural matters before we formally commence. Committee members and members of the public attending the meeting in Council Chambers are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden.

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

For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the committee, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates to both your address to the meeting and any answers given in response to questions from the committee. As a courtesy to others, it is requested that mobile phones either be turned off or on silent. Are there any apologies? Councillor Lyons-Buckett is an apology. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, yep. Councillor Wheeler possibly. See if Councillor Wheeler arrives, yep. As required by the Code of Conduct, committee members are required to disclose any pecuniary and/or non-pecuniary interest in relation to matters on today's agenda.

Are there any interests to disclose? No? Can I please have someone to move the minutes from 6 July 2021? Moved, Councillor Conolly, seconded, Councillor Kotlash . The committee will deal with items that have registered speakers at the start of the meeting. Committee meeting attendees who have registered to address the meeting have a time limit of five minutes to speak. Committee meeting attendees who have not registered will be asked by the chairperson at the end of the hearing, at the end of hearing, registered speakers if there are any further speakers that wish to address the meeting, and may speak for a period at the discretion of the chairperson. When called, please speak clearly. At the end of your submission, please remain available to the committee to ask questions.

So the first item for today's agenda is the election of a chairperson. As this is the first meeting of the committee of this term of council, the first item of business is the election of a chairperson. The business papers contains a recommendation that the chairperson of the Environment Committee be determined. Is there a mover for that recommendation? Councillor Conolly?

Yeah. So moved, Councillor Conolly.

Seconder, Councillor Reardon. Yep. The election of the chairperson will be conducted by myself. Therefore, I call for any nominations for the chairperson of the Environment Committee. Nominated Councillor Kotlash. I second that. Nominated Councillor Conolly, seconded by Councillor Reardon. Councillor Kotlash, do you accept that nomination? Thank you. Are there any other nominations? No. There is one nomination for the chairperson, Councillor Kotlash. In that case, I declare Councillor Kotlash to be the chairperson of the Environment Committee for this next 12 months, and I will now hand over to Councillor Kotlash to chair the balance of the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Kearns, and welcome, everyone. Have we got a list of— oh, you've got it here, thanks. Okay, so we will, as Mr. Kearns said, we'll go through the agenda with our registered speakers first. So we'll start with item three, which is our zero to letter to the river item, and our first speaker is Mr. Roger Griffiths. Ah, right. If you'd like to go to the lectern there. Thanks. And be sure to push the button and you'll be

Will the microphones work at the table or not?

Oh. You should

You want to try pressing— He won't be on camera though. Oh

Okay. Okay, thanks.

Good afternoon, committee members, ladies and gentlemen. I came to Hawkesbury about six years ago, and on regular afternoon walks I noticed a lot of rubbish, and I began to pick it up , heading for the drains and the waterways. And as I was cleaning at sundown, I protected myself with a vest, a high-vis vest. And I kept being asked, Are you work for council? No, I don't. So I got a printer to put on the back, It's for the betterment of my suburb, which is okay . Now, I've moved on and actually I've got a better one now, which is, I can go anywhere now. So the idea is that it gives— I mean, it's a safety aspect, but also it's an idea that it is something positive and it's a bit of a publication to anyone else.

Oh, I could do that. My next story is that just last Friday, I happened to be at the Windsor Riverside Shopping Mall, and a pop-up store was there, and a lady was educating, or trying to educate, the passing public about household waste. And I learnt that silver foil, new, can be rolled up into squeezed into golf ball size or bigger, and put into the recycling bin. Now, I did not know that, and I have a certain interest in environmental and rubbish. Also, I learnt that the council has a Facebook site about waste, and I did not know that, and I've even yet to find it, but perhaps I'll find it later. My point is, if I do not know these simple things, a couple of things, how does someone who has no interest in the environment, how do they learn about such things?

The Hawkesbury Council needs to be regularly prompted, I feel, about these snippets of information that keep the interest rolling along, to make waste management somewhat exciting and positive. The old cry being, Do the right thing, put it in the bin. And once we become pleased with cleanliness in our area, or our own area, we begin to ask, What can we do to improve it? We move from clean-up to creating something like this. The local rugby teams do their practices on a local reserve. They haven't for a while, but they were. And before they practice, as part of honouring the land that they use to practice on, perhaps they should do a clean-up walk around first before they start doing anything else.

And just it moves the thinking firstly into litter awareness, and then caring for the land, and then moving the thinking on, perhaps to planting shade trees around the practice area in the edges of those fields. There's more from the cleanliness. It moves to, What can we do to enhance this area? Or perhaps we could encourage owners of large land areas to consider creating a nature reserve on part of their land in order to, say, bring back the Regent Honeyeaters or install artificial tree hollows for powerful owls. If we can improve our thinking to do the right thing, benefits and beauty will follow, and all will enjoy it. Our culture creates consequences, for better or worse. So if we can change the culture, enhance the environment, and move towards zero litter to river.

Thank you so much for that. Do you want to answer some— you can go and sit down again. We can have a bit of a chat if you like. We won't be so formal as in an ordinary council meeting. Has anybody got any questions for Mr Griffiths?

Roger, I often see—

I

Always see you when I'm driving past. Have you been able to attract others yet? Like, have you got anyone else doing it with you at this point?

I've done a few spontaneous cleanup Australia events, not on the day but other days through the year, and a few people are. There are a number of encouraging individuals in the area that, yeah, I'll be in that and they do it. It is a handful, like a handful, not many. Thank you.

Thank you. That was really excellent, and you have had some really excellent ideas. The next speaker is Matilda Julian. Thanks, Matilda.

Thank you. And, Roger, you've really inspired me already today, so thank you so much for speaking about that. Just by way of background, I live in Bilpin, and I've been organizing annual cleanups for the last few years, and I regularly get—we get about 30 to 35 people in the Bilpin area. I'm speaking today because when I was reading the business paper for today's meeting, it seemed that even though there were really great suggestions and submissions made for this particular item, it seemed like there was a bit of lack of enthusiasm to follow these suggestions up. And particularly when we've got these great suggestions coming from high school students and groups. So, yeah, I suppose I'm speaking today because I really want to persuade the committee to take action, even if there is, like, a relatively lack of funding within the council itself.

I suppose I personally want action on this issue because I see a huge amount of litter ending up in the national parks where I live. Our litter is ending up in our food chain, and it's harming our wildlife. It may be my reading of the business paper, but it appeared to me that a lack of funding may mean that none of the suggestions are taken up. And so I'd like to provide just a few reasons or suggestions as to what council can do to make sure that some of these suggestions are acted on. Firstly , council, you know, did a great social media campaign, wrote to schools, and it really promised the community that it was going to, you know, work with community members on this issue. I really feel like council should honour its promise to work with the community in terms of reducing litter.

I just can't imagine how deflated those students will be if they hear that council decides not to implement their suggestions or any of those ideas. They've participated in consultation as requested by the mayor himself, and this should be met with encouragement and enthusiasm by exploring these ideas further, as well as looking into funding and partnership opportunities. Secondly, and as, like Roger has made mention, some of these suggestions require very little funding. Ideas such as, like, you know, providing high-vis vests that might be printed, using, you know, existing services and networks that Council has, like the Business Network, Tourism Network, to, you know, encourage best practice within our small business community, to encourage waste reduction strategies such as compost, like Roger mentioned he didn't know about, you know, the part of the Council's website about waste reduction.

Like, that can be changed quite easily and with little funding, without funding really. And also organising specific clean-up days, particularly for the river and our waterways. Of course, some suggestions may need extra funding, and those ideas should not be discouraged without exploring how much they will cost and what there is out there in terms of funding and partnership opportunities. For example, we have some great local community organisations such as Rotary and Hawksbury Environment Network. I would like to know if any of these organisations or other ones have been contacted about partnering with Council or with these school groups. Also, in terms of grant opportunities, at the recent Keep Australia Beautiful litter conference, the EPA was encouraging councils and organisations to apply for their funding.

They've even organised their own networking event on May the 24th to provide information about grants and to assist in partnership on litter strategies. I would like to see Council explore these opportunities. My final words to the committee are in relation to my specific submission and suggestions that relate to arterial roads such as Bells Line of Road. They are notoriously hard to clean up, so we really need to approach it from a preventative angle. Bilpin is special and vulnerable because it's sandwiched between two national parks, one of them World Heritage listed. For a town of very few residents, we get a huge amount of litter that all gets washed into these national parks. Hawkesbury Council encourages tourism in Bilpin and therefore bears some of the responsibility for the effect of tourism, and has an onus to ensure we have adequate infrastructure and appropriate messaging around visiting our area and similar areas.

The message shouldn't be, Visit Bilpin and have a great time. It should be something more like, Visit Bilpin, a unique place surrounded on all sides by national parks, and please tread lightly and respectfully while you're passing through or visiting. In conclusion, I would suggest the committee considers taking the following actions. Firstly, exploring all funding and partnership opportunities, and secondly, meeting with these groups from Colo High, bead holding. And other interested parties, and determine which suggestions can be best supported by the funding and partnerships available. Thank you.

Thanks, Matilda. If you want to stand there to answer some questions if there's any questions for Matilda. I'm sorry, I forgot you were off camera when you go back to your seat.

Thanks ,

Mr. Mayor

Sorry. My question was just about Bilpin, and I know we've sort of had some discussions about this, but it'd be good to get on the record here in this meeting. What infrastructure do you feel is necessary to prevent the litter at Bilpin?

Yeah, we get a huge amount of tourists, but presently there's no open or public recreation areas. The one oval we do have is currently being upgraded. It was in really poor condition for a decade or two. It's currently closed because it's being upgraded, but in the upgrade there's only two shelters. So for the thousands of people that Bilpin attracts, two shelters in one public space is just so inadequate. There's no other places really to stop and put things in a bin. So yeah, like we just need sufficient areas for people to congregate publicly.

And sorry, I know I'm putting you on the spot, but is it your view that that just needs to be better facilities at Bilpin Oval, or do you think there's other places that Council has access to in Bilpin? Yeah

It's interesting. When the oval was being upgraded, I think I spoke to a couple of people from Council. I can't recall the details, but I've said from the beginning two shelters is just— Extremely insufficient. So even if more shelters were provided in that area, it's quite a large area, and more shelters could be put there, that would be great. There's also another rest area at Mount Tomah, and I know that Mount Tomah is not within Hawkesbury City Council, but it's definitely something where it would be really appropriate to work with this other council and make sure that, you know, there's—that's another available spot for people to stop and put litter in the bin, etc

Thank you.

Thanks. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, and the light will come on, hopefully.

Just the big grey button on the bottom of the microphone.

The silver button.

Yeah,

You're on. Thank you. Just to pick up on what Matilda said about the schools and their submissions to do some work for the environment, from the Hawkesbury Environment Network, and we would very much support the schools in being able to do something like that. I understand Bede Polding has an actual environment group amongst the students, and then Colo High put in a submission from the SRC. And if HEN, Hawkesbury Environment Network, could work with the council, we'd be very happy to provide a small amount of funding to provide a couple of relief teachers who could go with the students if they want to do cleanups or if they want to film themselves doing litter collection or something like that. So I just want to put that out there, that Hawkesbury Environment Network supports that initiative from the schools, and we'd like to be involved in that with the students.

That's terrific. Thank you very much for that. Thanks. Thanks, Matilda. That's the end of our registered speakers, but.. . If anybody else has any other burning issues, I'm really happy for us to hear them. I'll open it up for— this is, we have a relaxed attitude in this committee. We've just decided we're going to be very relaxed and conversational.

Thanks, Bill. Okay. Look, honestly, I could have spoken on every one of the items here, but I think you've seen too much of me over the last 22 years—well, quite a few of you. Look, I agree with what Matilda and Jocelyn have said. A lot of the litter stuff is also being pummeled into the kids at school. My kids came home and we were already doing it at home. But yeah, look, anything that can be done. Again, littering for the environment is a death by a thousand cuts. Everything that doesn't go in the bin, I routinely pick up bits and pieces around. The aluminium foil, by the way, can also be put in with cans, etc. It is melted and recycled. I regularly pick up aluminium foil. I've done it for years, but I'm also environmentally aware and I've been doing scrap metal for more than 50 years of my life, so it helps offset my pension politely.

That cans and deposit bottles. I normally can pick up enough deposit bottles to offset the electricity cost of running my car that I'll be speaking about shortly at 11 cents a kilowatt hour. Two deposit containers covers a bit over 10 kilometres of my electricity costs that I don't export off my rooftop solar. Oh, we might have

To get you to document

That. All of these things, again, how do you stop it? With environmental things, often it's a case of people are too busy with what I call the chicken shit of life. That's getting on with doing things, paying the rent, the mortgage, etc. But the other thing is often it's a case of, no, don't care and don't want to know. And quite how you get to those people has been a frustration of my life for a long time. I've also done environmental monitoring in several paid occupations that I've had, and to change people's practices is a really difficult task

I must say—thanks, Phil—I must say, though, that because I'm old, I remember the Do the Right Thing campaign, and it was very successful for an environment campaign. You know, it really hit the mark. I know we're talking 30 , 40 years ago. Nobody knows what I'm talking about. Back in the old days, there used to be this campaign called Do the Right Thing, and it was on the television, and it was a sort of cartoon.

Councillor Kotlash, I remember that campaign, the Do the Right Thing, and quite frankly, there are quite a few people that don't want to that I would like to pick up and drop in the bin.

All right.

But that's—I'd probably be a social pariah if I regularly did that, particularly around South Windsor Shopping Centre.

Thank you. Yes, indeed. Welcome, Councillor Wheeler. We're on to item...

Did you want everyone to quickly repeat what they've said?

No,

That's fine. Sorry, Madam Chair, it's a work day for me, so it's a little bit difficult to get here at four o'clock.

We shall do something about that, no doubt. Yeah, I made it by three minutes, so yeah. We're on item, the zero litter to the river item, and we've heard some fabulous suggestions from our speakers. I'll just open it up now for some debate, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. I just had a question first. I've circled, from the submissions I went through and circled all the things I think we could do fairly easily. So I'll probably try and perhaps add into a motion for discussion. But I guess all the things we've spoken about so far are about trying to clean up, essentially. One of the submissions made a good point around plastic bags, single-use plastics from smaller retailers, and it's not really, I guess it's not really a local government issue, and I'd be reluctant for us to spend significant resource trying to tackle that. But I wondered if staff have any thoughts, or anyone has any thoughts on what Council could do in terms of trying to influence that behaviour at the source.

Good question. Is that for you, Justin? Justin Murphy? Yeah,

Thank you, Mayor. So I guess the first thing to note, the EPA is looking at single-use plastics, including lightweight plastic bags. So in June and July, they'll be phasing out single-use plastic bags. And then later in the year, it expands out to, like, cutlery and other single-use plastics. We're looking at doing a workshop in June with businesses and also the community about avoiding those single-use plastics and plastic-free living. So we will be running a workshop with businesses and also a separate one with residents in June. Yeah, so I guess, and the other point is raising that awareness as well and educating the community about alternatives and the importance of avoidance, not, like you said, not just cleaning up the litter, trying to prevent it in the first place.

I thought the suggestions from schools were quite good. Yes

They spoke about going out and filming while they worked, and I thought that would be very good. Well, since we've just had an offer from HEN to make that even more possible with maybe some helpers and some ex-school teachers, me thinks, some ex-school teachers that might be able to go out and to assist, and maybe a bit of funding, I think that's absolutely, yeah, it sounds like it's doable. Where we might do that, I suppose, depends on— Depends on the schools and what their curriculum is and how they organise that. And so we could possibly go from that direction, how they might want to do it, and council and HEN just support them to do it. So I agree, Councillor Reardon, and it seems a good one.

Yeah. Actually, we missed out on the Clean Up Australia campaign , which would probably be really good.

Well, I think the problem with the Clean Up Australia campaign is that, I know we blame COVID on a lot of things, but I think that that was just something that, you know, wasn't going to really happen. It sort of has dips and troughs. Are we doing a— do you want to comment on that, Justin?

Yeah. So for Clean Up Australia Day this year, it was actually during the weekend of the flood. So we had a number of sites registered, and we've postponed the event. So locking in a date in May or June, and we'll contact all the site organisers. So yeah, it's been postponed. It wasn't cancelled. And like Roger Griffiths commented, we do occasionally receive requests for like one-off clean-ups throughout the year, and we consider them, and we have supported ones in Bligh Park, so we also do that as well.

That sounds good. Thank you. Mr Mayor

I guess to get us going here with something to be discussing, I think there's quite a number of good ideas here, but I don't think we're probably in a position, just on the back of this, to go and recommend a course of action to council. So the motion I'd like to put is that the committee ask for further advice from staff on a number of points, and I'll just start reading through those points. Yep First of all, on supplying , setting up a Hawkesbury helper system to supply high-vis shirts to people collecting rubbish, to look at the provision of bins and shelters at Bilpin Oval , working with Blue Mountains Council in regards to the Mount Tomah rest area and making that a suitable place to sit and therefore isolate the rubbish to.

Sorry, gone the wrong way. Hold specific Clean Up Australia Day events throughout the year at key places. I think one thing we haven't spoken about yet that's important is increase our advocacy in regards to the earn and return points. That's a good scheme, but there's no point if we don't have any deposit locations.

Oh, right, yeah. That needs to be followed through. I think that's already— can I just, is that being followed through?

I know. Sorry. I probably should let you speak, Mr Mayor. I know you've made, like, representations to, you know, the state member, but Council itself has worked with the return scheme coordinator and, you know, there has been, over the last four years, five years of it operating, there have been collection points that were installed and then later removed, so it's sort of been an ongoing matter . And one of the submissions from Colo High School raised the point that you just made, that sort of on the western side of the river there aren't any collection points, so it's a constant sort of representation of the state government.

Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you, Mr Mayor. So

I did get representations back, which I think maybe we could report to the next— sorry, letter back to my representations, which could possibly be reported in the next business paper, advising all the things they were doing, but that was still now a few weeks ago and I haven't seen any action on any of that, so it might be something to consider at that point.

An update,

Maybe. And the last thing, which I thought was quite a good idea, was in regards to the suggestion from Colo High School for the schools to participate in a film-making competition for any future cleanup campaigns. So if that could be considered as part of the consideration of specific cleanup events, as to how the schools could be involved in marketing those and broadening the participation. Yes.

Can

I

Second that motion? Yeah, well, I'm going to add to it, so hold your horses, please , if you wouldn't mind. The offer from HEN to work with schools as well, because that's kind of got those things, other things through it, but— Councillor Llewellyn, sorry, I missed you before.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Just a few thoughts before I address the motion specifically, and sorry that I'm a little bit behind the eight ball. I thought the comments about the signs to drains were useful, and that's been something that's been canvassed a couple of times with regard to both litter and to chemicals going down the drain. We've got a problem in some of our town areas where people wash down vehicles or tip out the stuff that they've brought home from work, various chemicals and things, and they just tip them down the drain. And so I think, you know, not— Colo High suggested that they have some spray-painted signs at the school that say—I know Parramatta Council went through, years, 25 years ago now, with little spray-on signs that said, ‘Everything that goes down this drain ends up in the Parramatta River,’ and I think that’s quite powerful messaging.

And we should be doing—I think we should be doing the same thing here. And I think arguably here people have a stronger connection to the river than they do in a much more urbanised place than Parramatta. So perhaps if we could address those—add that drainage signs. And look, I think we could do that as a means of involving the community as well, and that you could get a group of people to go out and do that, rather than relying on our staff to do it. It becomes a community engagement tool. I think the work that Roger’s done in Bligh Park has been particularly notable in involving people who live around there, and those things are cumulative. It gives people a sense of pride in the place and a feeling of belonging and responsibility that I think is quite powerful.

And so I think we should move on that. I think it’s pleasing to see that the EPA is moving on plastic bags. We did have some support when this motion came to the last council to convert Kurrajong Shopping Centre to a plastic bag-free zone, and I think there was a group of young people who were quite keen to be involved in that, and I think that is maybe an additional — So that it doesn't feel like it's the heavy hand of local government, but it becomes a partnership where perhaps we work with Colo High, for example, who are quite active on the ground there, or with Bede Polding and Bligh Park, or with Hawkesbury High for Wilberforce and Glossodia. And we go with them as the adult in the room, I suppose.

But it's actually the kids' initiative, because they're the ones who are inheriting the mess that we're merrily making of the planet now. But it's less that local government thing. So we become the facilitator rather than the pusher. And I think we saw something similar with the success of the Responsible Cafes initiative that HEN ran before COVID undid all of that good work. And I think that's a discussion we have to have as well about getting back to that pre-COVID, we were getting really good with keep cups and getting rid of single-use coffee cups. And now we've got this wave of additional single-use waste, masks, gloves, and I think we need to have a discussion about how we deal with re-educating so that we start to worry about litter as well as infection, but also so that we now go back and re-look at our practices as well, because we are using a phenomenal amount of single-use products as an organisation as well, and we have to undo that too.

And so I think council needs to review its single-use, both single-use plastics, and we've got stuff coming in Styrofoam. I mean, it doesn't get worse than that. So I think that that needs tackling. And then the issue of mask bins for masks, we need, I think, is another. Another one. I was actually quite pleased to see Clean Up Australia postponed, not because we had a flood, but because it's always too hot. That's the invention of someone who lives by a beach, Clean Up Australia Day, and it's not something that's, you know, it's usually 40 degrees when Clean Up Australia rolls around. And if not, you know, it's so muggy you could just wring yourself out quite cheerfully. So I actually really like this idea of a number of Clean Up Australia Days, and that's a pain in the bum to organise.

But I think you probably get the same people to the same events, but I think you can probably target areas more efficiently rather than a more piecemeal approach when everybody's—it's too hot to do more than a couple of hours. And if you've got a site that can be cleaned up in a couple of hours, that's great. But if you want to keep powering on, it doesn't work. There was that nice initiative down in Shoalhaven, and I wonder if we could approach Shoalhaven and for some of their learnings, that Take 3 for the Sea program. I couldn't find anything that rhymed with river that was vaguely numerical in order to steal it shamelessly, but it was a really nice initiative that people really got behind because they identified with their beaches and that whole sort of local identity thing.

So that would be nice if we could piggyback on some of what they learnt from that. I think, again, I think COVID undid a whole lot of that work. I guess it puts us—people are desperate to emerge and desperate to engage, and I think, having seen the destruction from the floods as well, people are keen to be actively involved in some sort of clean up, and I think we can build on that. So if we could add something about council's own single use to the motion, I don't have any proper words. Something around masks, please, and working with schools on the plastic bag initiative.

Just with the masks thing so that staff can capture that , do you mean special bins out in the environment for masks

Look, I think we could even put up some, we could get some signs printed to go in various places saying, Put your mask in the bin. If you're not using your mask, put it in the bin. Because at the moment people are just discarding them as they go. I mean, I've got about 20 in my car, but there's always a pile on the street.

Okay.

And they're elastic and they get stuck in wildlife. They're really problematic.

I know. So we've got the additions to your motion, Mr Mayor, is the signage, which is the spray-on signage, which I think is a great idea. That's really easy done, I think. So that, and then maybe getting the Carrajong Village, is that a specific—

I think Carrajong Village said that they were keen, or— I'm trying to remember back four or five years, but I think when we did that initial plastic bag motion, I think Carrajong was being looked at as a trial site.

Do you want to just say investigate? We don't have to commit anything.

Investigate trial sites and school partnerships. Okay.

Does that suit you, Mr Mayor? So we've got three more from— is that all, Councillor Wheeler?

I think so.

It's all right, we can always add a bit.

I reserve the right to add more. Yeah

Yeah, that's all right. I think that's probably a good list. Just one thing, just while we're on it, years ago when I worked for Blue Mountains Council, I was involved in the Urban Runoff Control Program, and one of those initiatives was to get schoolchildren to spray paint on the pavement. And it was, I think from memory, I think there were frogs on the stencils, and it was sort of to catch kids' eyes mostly, but it did look really funky and kids just loved it. I think they thought they were, you know, graffitiing and doing something a bit naughty, but anyway, it was very, very well— You know , that captured their imagination. So I think that's such an easy thing to do, and it might just start bumping that message up, that social message up. So have the staff captured all of those things in that motion? Has anybody else in the gallery got any comments about that? Feel free to comment.

Yes. Can I add one thing? Single plastic use, or a lot of them, is going to be banned from November this year. And I feel like, you know, we've got this great business network newsletter that comes out every month. It's really, we need to get people to know about this earlier rather than later, and it's about getting the average person to know what's going on. So I think we need to use that newsletter to get this information out there. I don't know if we've got enough information to put something in each month, but I think it's really important to keep businesses on board because they're the average citizen, and they're servicing the average citizen. So I think that's a really great way to kind of keep getting the message out.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think we should look at doing that. And I also think if we have information that we can provide as a council regarding that, probably to put the two ideas together, you'd probably find school students very happy to go and distribute that directly

To

Retail businesses.

Sorry

Just saying, I think you'd find that school students interested in this would be very happy to go and distribute something to retail businesses.

Yeah.

Much easier than them having to ask them to do anything, and they still feel like they're getting involved and getting the information out there. So,

Yeah

I think I won't try and add that to the motion. I think as long as this is all being recorded and they're already typing away very fast. So.

We've probably got enough things on the motion, but Councillor, will you have your thoughts on something else?

Just further to Matilda's comments, council staff and councillors in various capacities attend a variety of different groups where we could be talking about that early, I think. And I think you're right, you know, because one of the things that we know happened with the plastic bag, with the lightweight plastic bag use for supermarkets, was that then there was this big dumping of, because they'd ordered, yeah, and it was all in stock, and then all of a sudden they couldn't use them anymore. If we can give people prior warning, they can start to convert now. I mean, it's piece of legislation that's been in train for... For about 12 months already, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people are aware of it.

But there's the, I can't remember what it's called, but it's some sort of liquor— well, there's a group that meets regularly. Is it the Liquor Accord? That's what. So there are the pubs and clubs and those organisations. There's the Chamber of Commerce, the Windsor Business Group, the Kurrajong Forum. There's a whole lot of different areas that we could probably be warning now. And I know some of those have already gone down that path. I attended a Liquor Accord meeting, and they were merrily swapping details for phasing out plastic straws and doing bulk buys of recyclable straws. So they're on board, but they need some prior warning so that they can start converting already.

Thank you. Are we able to get the motion up on the screen? Thanks. I think that's a lot of actions. I think we've done rather well out of that. There's a few typos, but that's okay. Any more discussion? Otherwise I'll put the motion. I'll let you read it for a minute.

Put the motion and acknowledge there'll be typographical changes before the minutes. Yep. So

You get— So point seven should be Hawkesbury Environment Network partner.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah

I think it's been typed up very, very quickly, so I think we just accept the intent and

Fix it before it comes out. Yes, that's right, exactly. No, I was happy with that. Helpers and heavies. Right. Okay. I'll put the motion. All in favour? I, unanimous. Do I have to read out people's names? No. Thank you.

So we'll move on to item four now, Hawkesbury City Council Electric Vehicle Scoping Paper, and our first public speaker, and our only public speaker, is Mr Bill Sneddon. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, Ron, Mr, being up here, I guess. Look, I'm largely in favour of the consultant's report that you've had. It's pretty complete. You're all aware now that I've owned an electric car for a bit over five years. Back of the program calculations this afternoon is I've avoided 2,700 litres of petrol burnt through it by using my BMW i3. There are some missing details in the consultant's report. It is written around directly about just council for cars, but there's a few things I'd like to point out. It was also written in September of last year, so there's been a lot happening since then. But to start off with, not in the report is that you have a potential to lower your CO2 footprint by using biofuels in existing vehicles, and vehicles that can't be readily used as electric vehicles.

So I'd point out that E10 petrol reduces about 10% of your CO2 compared to regular 100% petrol. You have no noticeable power loss or engine modifications. You get cleaner burning, potential small savings in fuel costs due to reduced excise. Use, instead of the higher octane fuels, we should be using at least 10% blended petrol instead of higher octane fuels where possible. Any vehicle that's using a high octane rated fuel than is actually necessary for the engine is completely wasting the fuel, and you're paying more money to do the same job. Another thing to consider that's not mentioned in that report would be when buying vehicles, if we're buying hybrids, we should be looking at them being able to be used, say, E10 fuel at no more than 94 octane rating, simply because we can save money on the fuel.

There is another ethanol blended fuel that's not normally used, that's E85. It's difficult to get. It certainly gives you a lot more benefit on CO2 reduction. Flex-fuel vehicles can use it. A lot of cars now with fuel injection will automatically re-tune the motor. For whatever fuel is being run. Unfortunately, E5 is largely was available in Queensland for a short period, but E85 is regularly used overseas. A lot of it's used in Brazil and in America. So it's just another one of the fuels. But by using a biofuel blend, you are reducing your CO2 footprint, so that can go into Council's accounting immediately. So that needs to be considered. Now, regarding diesel vehicles, a simple swap from regular diesel fuel, if we're not using it, to biodiesel would immediately give you an instant 100% CO2 offset because it's a renewable fuel.

Qantas, you may have read, is recently trying to swap to sustainable source jet fuels. They're hoping by 2030 to be able to use 10% of sustainably sourced fuels, and they're carbon neutral in their fleet. But not much biodiesel has been made in Australia. It's big in Europe. You may have a potential to buy biodiesel through maybe you're purchasing through WSROC, but it would immediately allow all of your diesel vehicles to effectively be counted as carbon neutral. Especially important going into the future where the consultant does say some vehicles are not suitable for electrification, like your street sweepers, maybe dozers, et cetera, down on the tip. All of those can be run on biodiesel, and that would immediately give you a carbon dioxide offset.

So that would help with your budgeting there. Another point is many new electric vehicles are coming to the market since your September 21 consultant dating. There are new tradie and heavy vehicles that are coming. Ford has just doubled the size of its big ute plant in the United States to 100,000 vehicles, not the 50,000 they'd started with. Many of these large utes and trade vehicles have mains voltage power outlets for off-site use remote from 240 volts mains or generators. That's an interesting thing. It will certainly help with your yard staff, et cetera, being used in vehicles off-site, so they wouldn't need to carry generators, for example. And you can recharge power tools or run directly off the main battery.

The computer on board these vehicles monitors the charge state, and it'll cut you off pretty quick if you're getting too low on the running range of the vehicle. A third point is council vehicles will be charging off carbon neutral electricity from your bulk purchase at your larger buildings, courtesy of Mayor Calvert. We have an 80% renewable energy purchase, so any of the electric vehicles you're charging at the large facilities will automatically be carbon neutral, and that's not to also forget your on-site solar. Areas where you could be charging during the daytime. So you would want to avoid charging electric vehicles, ideally from the smaller buildings that aren't on that renewable power purchase.

So you immediately do some significant things about reducing your CO2 footprint. But once you start purchasing and charging your own vehicles off council's capacity, the charging analysis in the document I largely agree with. Most fleet vehicles are probably only going to be doing maybe 100, 150 k's a day, and that's well within even slow charging. So really, you don't need to be fast charging in most cases. I agree again with the consultant's report. My experience is I've done 45,000 kilometres off my rooftop solar. I have never activated my BMW's charge cards, and in doing that I have saved something like 2,700 litres of fuel in the five years I've owned my i3. I find charging at 10 kilometres per hour quite acceptable, and you also don't need to upgrade any of the power systems that you're plugging into because you're only running at the equivalent power use of about a one-and-a-half-bar radiator.

So you could have two or three cars easily plugged into any standard circuit, in my opinion. So as far as council policy regarding charging, fast charging, etc., you're unlikely to need it for your own vehicles, and they're right. There's only about, well, they did say there's 30 vehicles in the area, so at the writing of that report I was one of 30. I'm probably one of about 40 now. There's a few new Teslas around. I've seen a lovely white one today, for example, but I'm not going to get jealous about that. Daytime charging where vehicles are parked can be made routine. You just have to get staff into the use of plugging in if there's charge facilities available, as well as overnight charging.

If you can charge during the daytime. There's advantages about that that I can mention later. Not mentioned is also the 240 volt outlets of the new tradie-type vehicles that will be coming, because the power batteries run at 300 plus volts. It's easy to build inverters into them that will put 240 volts out, and vehicles will probably, most tradie vehicles will either come with them as standard or with options. Similarly, large other vehicles that you might purchase would probably come with those sorts of facilities. There's also not mentioned is the potential for the new electric vehicles to go into smart grids. We're already talking, at Origin supposedly, about putting in a grid with a battery.

You've got to remember that electric car batteries are capable of probably powering about three houses in parallel overnight because of the size of the batteries. They are large, the electric capacity. Smart grids, there's one in trial in Canberra at the moment that users Nissan Leafs because they have the ability to feed power back into the grid, computer controlled. The grid can demand plugged-in vehicles to feed into the grid, so you can smooth out brownouts and power shortages. You can build resilience into the grid without having to install a battery. You have to have agreements between the vehicle owners as to what they're prepared to run down, and also the utility pays the owner of the vehicle somewhat of a premium compared to what they're buying electricity at in order for that facility to happen.

It's certainly been well written up, and it's been done overseas in some places, so it gives you a way of having resilience in the grid without actually going and installing separate batteries, as was, say, done, for example, with Tesla in South Australia. In South Australia, by the way, the— The Tesla battery was said to have paid back within less than a year or so, simply by allowing the grid to operate more smoothly and the operator not to buy peak power at very, very high prices. So there's a chance there. A trial like that could possibly be done through University of Western Sydney. Certainly the Nissan Leaf is the car that's mentioned at the moment. Other cars coming in will have the ability.

Some can be ordered with that capability of feeding back to the grid. Now, in theory, you can also use the car for your own home battery. Again, that depends on charging requirements, et cetera, et cetera, rather than putting in a Tesla Powerwall or similar. In my case, a thousand kilos of lead-acid battery sitting at 48 volts, you can actually use the car. Cars have massive capacities in those batteries, and for houses that have one or two electric vehicles potentially in the future, that will happen. One vehicle would probably be the general run-around hack that might only do 40, 50 k's a day taking kids to school, so it would be sitting overnight with a hell of a lot of spare capacity in the battery that could potentially be used overnight to run the house.

Again, there's some legislation required and utility cooperation currently involved that would be required. It would certainly give resilience in the Hawkesbury during floods and fires that we've had shutdown of communications, et cetera. If we can do that, if we have vehicles, even tradie vehicles with large batteries capable of running communications, et cetera, in the field when the grid goes down, big tradie vehicles with 100-plus kilowatt-hour batteries could probably run four or five days worth of communication without being recharged. They could also be recharged off a generator, et cetera. So there's potential to do things that really haven't been considered in the report, but then the report from the consultant is about directly for council's use.

Further not mentioned is charging off rooftops. which I do and have done for five and a bit years very successfully. I can also charge off my home battery. So again, this is the slow charge scenario. I simply don't need the fast charge. If I was fast charging at home, it was going to be about another five or six hundred dollars for the semi-fast charge setup. But to go to extreme fast DC charging, the consultants are right, you're talking in probably, you know, $10,000 or more because you simply have to have a lot of big cabling going in. It's not a cheap option. And then you have to have all the electronics, et cetera, to run it all. So overall, there's potential for improved resilience with these new vehicles that are coming in, especially with the 240-volt power outlets.

As these vehicles become routinely available and right through the area, we have potential during floods and fires to keep communications and other things going. It's well worth considering in the longer-term resilience side of the environmental question that we're considering here. Charging during the daytime off the solar system is also beneficial because if you are being paid a relatively small amount to export to the grid, you're better off to use that power during the daytime to charge the car or to run washing machines, etc. All energy advisors will tell you that. I, for example, get 11 cents a kilowatt hour for export. My buy-in price is 30 cents a kilowatt. So every kilowatt that I can use during the daytime, while I also have batteries so I can run overnight.

But if you only have solar panels, you are better off to be using the electricity you generate during sunlight. So charging a car during the daytime is another way of doing things. Now, if you were capable of running the house off the car during at night, you would then have a mobile battery, not a hard-wired battery on the wall like, say, a Tesla or an LG Chem or something or other battery. Another advantage of this charging is in some areas where there's a lot of solar installed, there is a voltage rise that comes during the middle of the day when all the panels are feeding in. It's called an island effect, and by charging cars and using the power during the daytime, you're putting more demand into the grid directly off your house and you reduce that problem.

It's a major problem that's coming with some of the utilities, particularly at the end of wire runs or where there's a large amount of power being generated in a relatively small area with large solar rooftop systems. So there's a lot of opportunities here for council. I really have commended council in the past for what we've done with solar, with heating, etc. We've picked the low fruit. We've done it very carefully, and I would anticipate the same thing will happen with electric vehicles. And quite frankly, if you don't think the electric vehicles are coming, the tsunami is going to hit you a bit like in Tonga. There's about another six or eight vehicles being released in the last few months.

There's a big new Chinese company that's doing fleet buys in Sydney. One of the problems, though, with a lot of the vehicles is at the moment they are short utility-style vehicles, because that's the big part of the general market. It's also done to get the flat battery pack with a low centre of gravity on the bottom of the vehicle. So as far as lease-type vehicles for staff, there are not a lot of sedan-type vehicles on the market, although the Nissan Leaf is one. I'm not particularly pushing Nissan. I could push BMW like crazy, but you probably don't want to be paying $150,000, as you don't want to for the top of the range Teslas. So Teslas have now come in. But in all of this as well, you've got to be looking at the economics.

The dilemma that we have is really the federal government has done bugger all to help with anything with our energy policy. They're being pushed like in the United States to a fair extent by the states and private companies. So anyway, here endeth my discussion. Any questions?

Thank you so much. Are there any questions for Bill? No? Thank you. That was excellent. Thank you . Is there anybody else from the gallery that wants to talk about how council might best transition ? No? I'll open it up for discussion. Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Are you pushing your button?

I was getting there. Yeah. I think the scoping paper, I think, is a good start for us. We are quite behind in this space, I think, and that happens for a variety of reasons. I think it's about the mix of vehicles that we use in the Hawkesbury. It's about the distance that people travel. But increasingly, too, it's about a lack of infrastructure in that space. We've been quite We're fortunate here in that most people can park their vehicle comfortably at home. What that has done, though, is meant that we have washed our hands, really, of our responsibility to set this up as a necessary transition. And Mr Stedden is right. This is, we can put our fingers in our ears and pretend that this isn't coming, but it's absolutely coming.

And I say that as someone who still drives a manual gas guzzler. You know, I love driving. I grew up with classic cars. I still have a classic car. I will mourn the loss of the internal combustion engine. But we cannot continue along this path. And, you know, having sat quite a lot now in a friend's electric vehicle, I would certainly cheerfully have one. I might not be quite willing to give up my old Jag, but I would certainly park an electric vehicle beside it in the garage. But because we haven't had to negotiate things like power to poles so that people can park on the street and charge up because they don't have garages, because they can't get the cars off the street, that sort of thing, we've managed to just leave this to the public to do.

And it's made us, I think, a bit sloppy. Now, we're not the only ones. I know from working in New South Wales Parliament for a couple of years, there is one electric vehicle charging point in the parking area of New South Wales Parliament House. The current Treasurer is allowed to plug into it, and any other MP who buys an electric vehicle is not. Someone apparently tried to run an extension cord out and got into a lot of trouble. So we are not the only government body who are really behind with this. But we have to catch up, and we have to catch up quickly because we've just seen what happened to the price of petrol. Petrol leaves us really vulnerable to external shocks, to external price shocks, as well as the environmental impact of it.

Now, when that happens, when petrol goes up to $2 a litre, Council bears the brunt of that in our budget, just as households do. The faster we get off the petrol train, the less we are, the more immune we are to those shocks. For something that happened on the other side of the planet, you know, this is not something that's in our immediate control, but it can be. We desperately need to put in, in partnership probably, and we've missed the boat already. We have to get on top of this with some charging infrastructure at popular parking points in the Hawkesbury. This needs to be part of our town centres, needs to be part of the parking review that we're doing. People will stay and eat and shop while they charge up their electric vehicle.

There's nothing in the LGA apart from, I think, the Tesla charger at the Sebel, and that's it. And no one's shopping in the town centre if they're at the Sebel or whatever it is this week. We've also, I think there's also the issue that's raised in the scoping paper about the current tax system that advantages increased kilometres and petrol use for fleet vehicles. I'm not an accountant, and I'm not entirely across this, but could we look at perhaps making, putting a motion forward to LG New South Wales and ALGA that that be looked at, that electric vehicles be treated in the same way. You're still travelling the same number of kilometres. Just because you're not pouring petrol into the tank shouldn't mean that you're disadvantaged tax-wise, and I think that's something we should, we as councillors could take to those meetings for further advocacy.

It's not something that they're going to necessarily listen to Hawkesbury Council on, but if it comes from Local Government New South Wales or the Australian Local Government Association, we might get someone paying some attention. And the other issue is our fleet. Now, I think we've started talking about doing some converting to hybrids, and there's that mention in the scoping paper about— Hybrids , if they're not used properly, actually can have worse fuel economy than ordinary vehicles. And so I'm wondering, as we've started to roll out some hybrids into our staff vehicles, if we're educating those staff on the usage of those hybrids so that we are taking advantage of their electric capacity rather than just running them as heavier, more expensive internal combustion engines.

Thanks .

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Mr Mayor.

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. One question I had was around the FBT. If someone, I'm not sure if anyone here is across the detail of that, I wondered, reading that, why that made sense, given that FBT takes into account the total operating costs, including deemed depreciation.

Could you speak up, please, Mr Mayor?

Sorry, trying to lean into the microphone. Given that FBT takes into account the total operating costs of a vehicle, if the total operating cost of an electric vehicle is lower, why would FBT be penalising an electric vehicle? I didn't really follow that logic.

So this is what

Councillor Wheeler said. Yeah, and I did a bit of a Google on it before the meeting because I was shocked, sort of a bit stunned by that, and I didn't find anything in the industry that suggested this was a widely held position. So I don't have a problem with the advocacy if it's required, but I was confused, as someone who prepares a lot of FBT returns, as to why that would be the case

I must admit, I was curious to know whether anybody else was advocating this, or is it—? No.

I assumed that it was a

Kilometre. Right.

So

We need clarification on that then.

So the reason that, like in the business paper suggests it's higher is because the initial capital cost is higher and therefore the deemed depreciation is calculated off a higher initial capital cost, but— Which is true. That does make sense. But what is also in the calculation is your operating costs. So your petrol is in the calculation too, and your electric vehicles shouldn't have any. And therefore, that should be the offset to that, you would think, if it does in fact stack up. There is an election policy of the Labor Party to remove FBT altogether on electric vehicles. But that's, I mean, that's neither here nor there in this discussion. That goes further again. But in terms of, yeah, I just wouldn't mind some more advice on where that's come from. Yeah.

Okay, yes. Can we note that? Yeah

We can take that on notice and get back to you on that.

Is that all the discussion? Okay. I just wanted to have a bit of a look at the recommendation that's in the business paper. The first one, it says Council adopt the Hawkesbury City Council Electric Vehicle Scoping Paper, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that needs to just say that the Environment Committee recommends that Council adopt that,

Just if we want to be

Pedantic about it. I think the second point is really the same as the fourth point. I don't quite understand the differences between it. It says Council staff continue to review the opportunities available to transition Council's fleet to electric vehicles. And then it says, number four, Council staff pursue opportunities to meet Council requirements and resourcing capacities to assist in the facilitation of this transition. I'm not really sure I understand what difference that is. That's sort of one and the same thing.

Yeah, that's essentially covering the same point. I guess point two is specifically referring to the transition of council's fleet, where I guess point four is probably more broader in terms of the matters raised in the scoping paper, remembering that the main areas in the scoping paper is obviously transition the council fleet, analyse the demand for charging infrastructure, and then the building infrastructure guidance, so that the guidance to the development sector in terms of the type of infrastructure that does get put in place.

Okay. Is everybody happy with that? Yeah

So I'm happy to move the recommendation as is with the word recommend. I mean, noting that, I mean, points two to four don't really require a council resolution anyway. But if we take it out, it might look like we were trying to avoid having it in there, which isn't the intention. I

Was just seeking to be a bit clearer on what that meant. Yeah, no, happy for that. I haven't— sorry. Well, what did I say? No, that's great. I'll second it, Madam Chair. So—

Yeah, so I was moving that.

Okay

Moved

Mr Mayor, and seconded Councillor [unclear]. Did you want to say— No, you're right. Okay.

Bill. Could I just emphasise, please, that regarding council building charging facilities, we should really hasten slowly because there are a number of commercial players out there. They all seem to be touting for business. Some of them are putting in really fast chargers. Again, we will be largely catering according to— The consultant, and from what I've seen, to probably people that are transiting the area to some others. So where you put the charge stations really needs to be probably around where there's a bigger number of people. And the other thing is, if people are not driving long distance, in other words, they're doing limited commuting, they might only be charging once a week or so.

So I think there's a tendency to overemphasise maybe the number of charging stations we need. And certainly they're just— it's not going to be an economic demand in the Hawkesbury, I think, for quite some time. So again patience slowly. I think you have plenty of time to see what's coming as far as what we need to do. Yeah and

As

A ratepayer, if somebody's prepared to do it commercially, let them go. I

Guess that's the point three, which is really about, you know , council assisting in the part of the town and village place plans. See, we wouldn't probably— it's more about what we need, and then we'd maybe go out to, I don't know, road industries or what am I trying to think of, like the NRMA and different motoring bodies that might do that, because in the early days, some of those motoring bodies actually put in charging stations for nothing. They actually had them in various places. So that's, I think, that's gone. We're mindful of that point that you make, and I think that will come out, and that's why I think we're going to consider that, and you're right, we have to consider that.

We have the advantage here that we're not an inner city council that's been pushed by quite a number of wealthy, outspoken people in a small area. I mean, I never thought I'd own the vehicle. It's only because of my mother's inheritance that I own my car. I never thought I'd get there politely. I mean, I've been driving and flying Radio Control things for over 30 years. It's a different experience sitting in it. But again, I think we have somewhat of a luxury of time. And certainly, if there's a business case for other people to come in, like supermarkets being built, et cetera, we have one or two shopping centres that we own only because nobody else was going to do it. We can sit back and— Yeah,

Get it right. Yeah, and it is changing, I know, and I agree. You know, what's available and who's going to do it seems to be a changing feast. But moving along, thanks for that. We have— We— I'll put the motion. Have I put the motion yet? No, we haven't.

Oh, Councillor Willis, sorry. Can I just address a couple of things that have been said? The idea that we hasten slowly. Look, we have none. I don't think we could hasten any more slowly than we already have. Quite frankly, we will be at a standstill. Really. I think there are some advantages in not being early adopters, and no one could accuse us of that in this instance. But I think council's role is to identify the site, to advocate and to facilitate, and that's what we're able to do because we're doing these major planning works, and we've just about finished that, and we've got a parking review as well, and that's an extensive parking review of Windsor and Richmond. It's not a small thing.

We will be able to identify, I think, appropriate sites where we can not only get an external body to provide one of these chargers, but we can make sure that it's located in the most advantageous position, not just for the end user, but for leveraging town centre activity so that it serves more than one purpose. It's not just people charging up their cars. And I think that there will be very few people in the Hawkesbury LGA who use it to charge up their own cars. People here will largely be charging at home. This is to catch a tourism market that we know we are missing now. But there are certainly advantages in not being the early adopter. I think we saw that with council's transition to renewable power.

Just for the record, Councillor Calvert was mayor at the time, but the work was done by the staff. And I would hate for it not to go on record that Lachlan McHugh, council's building services manager, was largely instrumental in that quick and, frankly, really economically advantageous transition to renewable power. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Mr Mayor, as the mover of the motion, did you want to write a reply? Mr Mayor . I thought not. Thank you. Yeah, see you. Thank you so much for participating. It was really lovely to see you. Bye. I'll put the motion. All in favour? Unanimous. Thank you.

Item two is the item on Cool burning, cultural burning.

Happy with to move the recommendation. Thank you, Mr Mayor . Yeah,

I'll second that. Thank you, Councillor. So we have a mover and seconder. Who'd like to—

I think that— sorry, might we discuss that? Well

We have a guest here from Greater Sydney LLS, Mr Brad Moore. I think he's here to answer questions. I didn't know whether you wanted to address us on the report in the business paper, which I've got to say I think is excellent . It was such a good read and so interesting. I don't want to put you on the spot. I thought we might just start off a conversation and you can join in if that suits you. Thank you. Who'd like to— any discussion?

Yep.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Look, this report was called for 12 months ago now by the previous council, and the previous council requested that. We come back to them with a discussion paper. I think that the work that's been done here demonstrates that whilst there's merit in the concept and the methodology, it's not really work to be done by council. It doesn't appear it's our core business, although we're really the agency with any responsibility for that. I think what our role here is is community representatives, and this is something that's being brought to us as community representatives, so it's right for us to bring this up and pass it on to the agencies that could action it. So for that reason, I'm happy with the recommendation that we do refer that matter to the bushfire management committee, which includes the RFS and other agencies, as well as to those agencies, some of those agencies directly.

I think that's a good way forward.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. If there's no other discussion—oh, Councillor Wheeler. Thanks

Madam Chair. This is a fascinating report. I think the Mayor is correct in that the space for Council in this space, I think, is complicated, and maybe it's one of those advocacy issues. I'm a member of the RFS, and I know how fixed they are to their hazard reduction burning processes. They've been really stymied in the last couple of years with those hazard reductions because of rain. Nearly every time they've had a hazard reduction, a series of hazard reductions, and it's, you know, if you go into the main office and you see it mapped out on the wall, it's really complex. It's this great sort of honeycomb of sites, and there's not a desperation, but there's a sense of urgency about getting this done in the window that you have .

Many of those burns tend to be quite hot, in part due to time, and that comes down to using volunteers to try and complete a task from Friday to Sunday night. Some of it comes down to complaints about smoke that tend to be not people in the Hawkesbury because we understand the need for this. They tend to be, you know, part of the Sydney basin where they're heavily impacted but don't see any benefit like we do. But there's also, I think, a culture of much hotter burns, and how we facilitate the change to these more gentle land management practices, I think, is a really difficult question, and it probably, I think we do have a role, not perhaps in necessarily the management of these burns, but in the advocacy for a gradual change.

I don't know how many people have seen a cool burn. In action, I witnessed a little bit of one burning in conjunction with a standard hazard reduction burn on a site, and they were on either side of a river, and it was chalk and cheese, I have to say. The cool burn was very smoky, very calm. The people who were the Aboriginal crew who were running the burn were all sitting around under a tree, drinking coffee, and were having a lovely, you know, relaxed afternoon. On the other side of the river, we had the traditional hazard reduction burn. There were people running everywhere. It was a frantic, really busy, full-on process. No one was having a cup of coffee over there. They both conferred a similar degree of protection on the town in question, but they were staggeringly different.

The bush at the end of both was far less impacted by the cool burn than it was on the other side. I think Council probably has some sort of education and advocacy space here that I think we shouldn't step back from. Part of that is educating the community about what hazard reduction looks like, how necessary it is, and how it's done. Because there's a lot of, I think, there's a lot of misinformation about who does hazard reduction, who controls hazard reduction, who gets to stop hazard reduction, because apparently that's the Greens all the time. You know, we're so powerful that we managed to cause the Section 44 if you ask lots of people. But I think we need, what we have is a— I had an Aboriginal elder explain once, We have now a nation that is terrified of fire, and that's justifiable, I think, given what we've seen.

But before whitefellas turned up, we had a nation that used fire, respected it, and saw its potential. We've lost that, and I think that we shouldn't just hand this back to the other agencies and say, This isn't ours. You know, I think we can start this slow process. It's a process of healing, I think, both of the land and of the two cultures together, where we start slowly moving towards far greater use of this practice. We've got people using this at Yellow Mundy. I think we've probably got some sites where we could call for cool burning done, of council sites. Certainly there's groups that can do this locally, and I think we can use some of our sites could become demonstration sites for this.

It would take the pressure off the RFS volunteers as well if we were to go down this path. But I don't think that we can just bounce this off at this point. We're at a crossroads. We should be moving forward.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. I'd actually just like to ask Brad about that. Are there some sites in the Hawkesbury that are already—is Yarramundi already being, to your knowledge, if hopefully I won't put you on the spot— are there cultural burning practices happening in Yarramundi?

So, hello everyone. Thank you for inviting me to the meeting today. I'd just like to acknowledge that we're on Dharug country, acknowledge the Darkinjung people of the greater Hawkesbury LGA and, yeah, acknowledge our Elders past and present. If I hold that. Okay, so yes, as far as your question is concerned, there has been a number of cultural burns that have been undertaken at Yellowmundee Regional Park, around the Shores Creek Aboriginal Place area. That's been done over a number of years as a reintroduction of a cultural practice and reclamation of a cultural practice, done in collaboration with National Parks. There's varying kind of degrees on the, I guess, the understanding of why people are actually implementing those burns.

And initially, from what I've seen from both talking with the community there and also with national parks, it became a social and cultural reclamation, you know, movement. But what's actually underpinning that too is an environmental restoration understanding as well. And so I've been involved in that one. I'm actually a Darug person myself, so I've been involved in the Yellamundie burns, but also looking much broader across Greater Sydney, including in the Horsley LGA with national parks. But there's a growing interest from land management bodies to work with First Nations communities to look at, you know, the environmental management aspects of cultural burning as well. So it's beyond the idea of—and there's been a bit of discussion already around hazard reduction.

Hazard reduction, from my understanding, with, you know, very knowledgeable practitioners that I work alongside, is well and truly a by-product of managing healthy natural systems that accommodate fire. I say this because there's systems in the environment too that fire shouldn't be part of, and that's an important consideration as well. Just recently, we did a pre-burn assessment just outside of your LGA with a practitioner who's come in and sharing the cultural knowledge in returning this type of activity from Far North Queensland, but with the members of the Darug community. And the first system that we went and visited was what you would call a non-fire country, you know, systems that then you don't want fire in, and whereby you use the right type of fire to actually protect those systems from devastation, which unfortunately are burnt in hazard reductions by, you know, agencies and RFS, things like paperbark and, you know, more wet area trees that should not have fire in them at any time.

And use fire where it is needed in the more dry kind of woodland areas to return the grasses and, you know, the herbaceous layer as well. So we're working, I'm working on that a lot across Greater Sydney with different communities, First Nations communities, as well as different land managers through different tenures. So as part of a project that's the Cumberland Plain Restoration Project, which I think Auburn City Council has an interest in, I'm working with Liverpool Council to undertake an introduction cultural burn with a qualified practitioner on, I think, maybe community land. So there's an example of a local government. Similar conversations with Blue Mountains City Council around community lands and Crown lands, where council is the manager to start to undertake that.

And I get requests almost weekly about these things. Still, even it's gone a bit quiet, but there's a lot of interest from, you know, public and private landowners. There's also private bodies and private state agencies that are actually embarking on this as well. So it's a thing of, I guess, in this part of the world, reclaiming that cultural practice, as Councillor Wheeler said, but it's also a practice that can have a strong outcome towards healing impacts of historic trauma, but also healing country through that as well. You know, so I guess that's kind of in the broader example of where I'm going. The other thing that we've been busily working on at Greater Sydney Local Land Services is how to structurally support these types of burn, because at the moment, as far as legislation is concerned, it's not very clear.

You know, and hazard reduction's one way that people are doing it, but there's limitations that come with hazard reduction certificates as well. You know, so moving outside the sphere of the RFS, because this is an RFS activity, we're looking at other ways to support both private and public land managers in how to do that in collaboration with— First Nations people, traditional owners. I will emphasise that the front end of this report talks to that relationship because any time that I'm approached by people around an interest in cultural burning, my first question is, do you have a relationship with the people of that country? Because that's the head of catchment. Having the relationship with people from the country around how that country is managed moving forward, as it was for countless generations beforehand, is the fundamental question.

The next part of that is around then taking approaches to caring for country and being genuine in that approach, which is genuine in that relationship. And one component of that is managing country through fire. You know, so it's a sequence of things. But I have been talking to some of your staff about this as well, where sometimes if you have a catalyst or an opportunity to work on something together, that can further that relationship. You know, so I guess that's kind of where I'll leave it at the moment. We've got support programs that we can do through. We regularly put out things like Caring for Country grants that can be applied for by First Nations groups and/or land managers. But there are other ways, I'm sure, through state and federal funding that these things will become more of a common practice.

But it's a common practice around putting fire on country for cultural and/or ecological values, which in essence are the same thing, not as a sense of protection of assets or property. The biggest asset that we need to protect, as one of my friends from Firestick says, is country itself. So, yeah.

Thanks, Bren. Just one thing I'd like to sort of add to that is last year I put up the conservation and restoration strategy, and I know we've pared it back a bit, but that whole notion of council understanding, you know, what we've got and how to protect it. And I look at this sort of burning in, I think, in the same terms, is that I'd like to know where significant ecological , you know, communities are, or koalas or whatever, whatever we're trying to protect. I don't actually think about this as being hazard reduction. I think about it as being that kind of, you know, that glue and that, or one of the things that you would want to do to be able to manage the environment in such a way that we get a bit of restoration and we get some , you know, we start clawing back the damage that we've done.

And I suppose that whilst I agree this is not really council's, you know, really it's not our responsibility, I think we can really play a big role in identifying those places and bringing people together. I just think we've got, and it's funny because when we were first talking about the conservation and restoration strategy, I tried to get across the thing about identifying catchments, and we could actually just identify areas of significance to the First Nations people, and we could do that in, I don't know, lots of ways, but we just have to start that. And so I'd really like to see us, you know, be able to say to people, identify which catchment you're from or you care about or you belong to, and start talking about the land and start, I guess, embracing that feeling of caring for country.

I think, you know, that's something that I think we have a lot to do. So, I'll — Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Could I suggest an additional point to the motion then? So this would be a point two, which would be that— so point one would stay the way it is, but Council work with LLS to identify land managed by Council. So that would include both council-owned land and Crown land that Council is the manager for that should be managed using cultural burning, and then that needs an action point added to it, I think, and further report to this committee about transitioning that land to cultural— to this type of management. Yeah

I think that's a really good addition.

I'm happy with that

Is that okay? Yeah. Also, I would like to start that conversation of being good neighbours, because it seems that you work a lot and you've said a lot about our national parks and wildlife and the reserves and the World Heritage area. Where we are neighbours and where we can make that, you know, where we can connect on that, I think that's something that we need to include as well, because there's no use you doing all this lovely stuff somewhere and then, you know, and we're going, oh, you know, getting the — what's a fire equivalent to a machete, you know what I mean? Like it's just, it sort of doesn't— Yes, that's important. So if we get a handle on that, and even if we just get a handle on it, not necessarily acting on it now before we actually know where we're at, I think that's a good— I'd be really happy.

I think that would be a step forward. So that's, yeah, I think that would be good.

Council, yeah, I confer because one of the things we talk about is the idea that for the proper management of country, it's tenure blind. You know, the idea that then there's a line on the map that's national parks or a line on the map that's, you know, Horsham City Council, you know, management or whatever, is kind of all those layers of colonisation that sit over the top. And so therefore the idea of then putting fire in where it can across a healthy system is probably more, you know, is the way forward and a beneficial way too. So I agree with you, and I agree with the idea of that additional recommendation and to work with First Nations people from country and co-design, because that's an important part of that relationship.

So it's not just the council taking on that responsibility or saying we're the experts or we're the people doing it, so that helps you with the identification of those levels of importance. Would

You like me to add that to the motion ? Perhaps. Yeah

And to look at where these opportunities arise, because one of the things that I'm also working on is where across the region we can continue to find opportunities to rebuild and reclaim those skills across different types of country, because a fire in a grey box country is different to a fire that you'd put into an ironbark country, and it's different to the fire that you'd put into a stringybark country, you know, or a bloodwood country. And so these opportunities all start to provide the community reclaimed knowledge to be able to continue those practices, which in due respect is what Europeans first inherited when they came here, and what they seen and described is the result of careful management, you know, for eons. Yeah.

Okay . Your light's

Not on,

Daniel.

So that would read Council work with local land services and First Nations people to identify land.

Brilliant.

Blah

Blah.

Thanks

Thank you. Has anybody else got any other comments before we put the motion? Oh, do you need a right of reply, Mr Mayor? I remembered. Thanks. I'll put the motion then. All in favour? Aye. Carried. Thank you.

And thank you, Mr. Bradmore, for your expertise, and thank you for coming. We really appreciate your presence here and helping us through this. We'll go on to the next item , which is item five, increasing tree canopy. You're welcome to stay if you've got anything to

Add to tree

Canopy.

Careful management of tree... and old growth trees. Yes, you do. See

I knew that. Thank

You Councillor Wheeler. I'll move the recommendation in the business paper, but with an additional point three, which, I'm sorry, I haven't provided because I'm a study in disorganisation this afternoon. No worries. So, the existing point one and two, and then a point three that— so it's four. So the Environment Committee, point three, form a working group to develop an urban forest policy to include consultation with the Hawkesbury Environment Network and Western Sydney University.

It's

A tree canopy policy, but with extra layers, basically.

Okay, I'll second it. Thank you. Can I make a suggestion, just to set us on the right track, though? Do we need points one and two if they don't say much?

That's not the kind of advice I think Council wants back from the committee. No,

Probably not. No, sorry

I'd be happy to scrap them

And just go with — As long as we continue to seek funding. Oh no, we don't need to seek given. Don't we put that in? Yeah, Mr. Kearns would like to address that. Just

Highlighting that we have been very recently successful in receiving funding to undertake an urban forest strategy. So we've received funding last week, I think it was, that was announced. So we're obviously in the process of working through the funding agreement and then putting that out to quotations in terms of consultants to undertake that work.

Thank you, Mr. Kearns. So how would that— so I'm wondering how that would marry with your recommendation motion that you've just proposed?

I don't know, because I looked at this initially and thought this isn't

Doing

Anything, you know, aside from what we would do anyway . So I guess now we've got funding for— I mean, because to be fair, Council moved this motion for an urban forest strategy in 2017, and it's now 2022, and we've lost more tree canopy than we've planted. Just to be really clear, this is at crisis point. We are one of the hottest areas in Western Sydney. We are losing tree canopy. We now have a policy in place where you can remove 25 metres of tree canopy around your block in a rural zone. So we're losing more tree canopy than before. So we really need to ramp this up, and I think, you know, I'll be really keen to receive a strategy from somebody else. But I think there's still room for us to work towards some of this stuff within the LGA if it's not sucking up council resources, which we are constantly told we don't have.

Can I make a suggestion that, whether it's possible for a working group to work with the consultant? Would that satisfy the reason you—

Could we go— could we just simply recommend, with this new information, that Council consider the best way for the community to be engaged in the development of the urban—

Yeah, well, yeah

Because

That's just been a bit of a game changer. I'm just concerned that this is going to fall over again, having waited all this time. And what I'm also concerned about is that we get a tree policy that fits here, but that also isn't the bog-standard— I don't want a bog-standard tree canopy policy. I want an urban forestry policy. There's no point planting

Gum

Trees all up the street, or liquid ambers, or plane trees, or crepe myrtles, or tallowwoods that have got big weed potential, like we keep doing and pretending that we've ticked this box. We have to have—we need to have multi-layered plantings. We need to have an urban forest, not just tree cover. They need to be suitable species. They need to be climate—they need to be climate-ready, and ready for the next 30 or 40 years. There needs to be attention given to irrigation of these trees, future maintenance of these trees, succession planting. And I don't know what we're going to get back from a consultant, but there are some good tree policies kicking around from other councils, but none of them do enough to cover all of those bases, and I'm concerned that we're just going to get the same thing back.

Can I suggest maybe then that the working group scopes out the— I don't know how far we've gotten with the... What did we ask the consultants to... what's the grant?

We haven't done anything yet. We haven't done anything yet. We've only just been advised in the last week that we've been successful and obtained that particular grant, so that's under the Greener Neighbourhoods grant. So obviously we're in the process of preparing a brief for consultants in terms of that. So that's our next action, yep.

Do we have a...

50,000. 50 000. Had a

Timeline?

I don't have that at hand. Does the grant

Stipulate a timeline?

It probably does, but I don't have that information with me.

Mr Mayor.

Yeah. I wonder, is it possible then, I know we're throwing this around with this new information, that is it going to be a hold-up if we ask for the brief to come back to this committee before it goes out to market? Is that...?

If we did a working group quickly, that could come back to the working group rather than the committee, because that would have to be convened, the business paper has to go out

But the thing is, the working group, we'd have to go and pick who we want on it and form the working group first, whereas we could just have a committee meeting and if you've got people in mind, you can invite them to the committee meeting and...

And we can just have a round table.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be... Timeline's 12 months. Oh, timeline. Oh, thanks.

For spending the money

To have it completed.

Yeah, okay. So we'd need to... Thanks, Charlotte.

Well, I think we... Yeah, well that'll get us going. 12 months from now, from when we put the scoping in. Yeah, okay.

So is that the motion we're going with? We've had a few around. Yep.

Yep. Did you want—right, oh, anybody else got any comments? You've got your light on, Mr Mayor. Do you need a right of reply, Councillor Weller?

Probably not. Can I just clarify what the motion is? Yeah, yeah, that would be a good idea.

In the right reply? No, good. Do we have those words from the staff?

We've moved on from that. So I think the committee is recommending that the committee be consulted with the brief before the brief— the committee be consulted before the brief for the urban forest strategy goes to market.

Sorry, does that need to come to a committee meeting, or could we do that online to make it faster? Could we do it out of session? Yeah

We could just have a committee meeting just on that basis. We only need a few days' notice. I don't mind which

Way we

Go. But if we

Just did it offline , then we wouldn't have to have a meeting with the staff and the—

All right, well, in which case you might want to recommend that if we're going to exclude the broader community, we might just recommend that it goes to the full council rather than just us.

Yeah.

Put your light on.

So I've had a bit to deal with this after working with the council for 12 years. Maybe as part of the brief that you guys issue the brief, but the brief has some of that consultation or some kind of public feedback. My recommendation again was to try and engage with First Nations people. Again, pick up on Councillor Wheeler's point about not just putting in anything, but my preference is endemic trees in this type, because then therefore endemic trees that are from this country, they have a higher rate of success. Absolutely. It's also what you've got to be careful of is, I don't know how you propose the urban forest on what types of lands, but not kind of manufacturing these new— You know, dense kind of scrub country that then, you know, again picks up on your fire issues and things, because that's not what the Cumberland Plain looked like.

You know, so again, almost using the idea of right fire for right country, it's right trees for right country as well. You know, where it's not in the urban centres, but things like that that you might want to look at in your brief, that then gives the parameters of what you're actually asking these consultants to do. Plus where, I mean, obviously 50k is not a great deal to actually develop a strategy like that, but it's something, and you could then get them to pick up on some of the, you know, have your say or whatever you guys do to actually have input into some of that direction moving forward. That's just a suggestion.

Yeah. Okay, so have we got, Councillor Wheeler, do you want to wrap that up, seeing it's your motion? No, you know, I'll just gladly hand that over to

You. Sorry, there's probably a couple of aspects. I think the first one is that the committee be consulted prior to the brief going out to market. And you can interpret that in the, I'll leave that deliberately loose, and you can interpret that whichever way you like, and that the brief include a public feedback phase.

Yeah, okay. And then we can, so that's coming back to a committee meeting, so we're clear on that

Well, it's coming back to the committee

Somehow. And if it happens to be in line with other things coming back, we'll do it then, and if not, we'll do it to get it going so we meet the timeline. Okay, so can I just clarify

What's coming back to the committee? The brief, the brief before it

Goes to tender

So you want it to be endorsed by the committee before it goes out to tender. We want to eyeball it. And then we have to get it endorsed by council then, don't we? Well, I don't think it needs to be endorsed. We just want to

Have a look at it and provide any feedback. Yeah, yeah.

So I suppose how I'm understanding this, we will draft the brief, we will send it to the members of the committee and broader council, that send it to all councillors for their comment and input, and then we're in a position to finalise it to send out to the market. Okay.

And we can take that out to our own networks for a bit of consultation.

Yeah, and part of the brief would obviously engage, include engagement. Okay. Okay

Are we all clear on that? We don't need to have it up on the screen then. Councillor Woollard, did you want to write for applause?

No,

Thank you. Good. I'll put the motion then that we understand it. All in favour? Carried. Thank you. That's the last of our items. So that was really beautifully timed, everyone, because there's another committee meeting shortly. So I'll close the meeting at 5.56. I hope my— oh no, it's 6 o'clock on the— sorry, my Fitbit's running slow, which is — there's a few jokes in that, my Fitbit running slow. But thank you, everyone, for attending and thanks for your attendance to our gallery. Thank you, and to you.