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Good evening all. Welcome to Hawkesbury City Council meeting of the 11th of March 2025. I'd like to welcome those who are attending the meeting in the gallery tonight and those who are attending online. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug people as traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to their elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as First Nations of this city. I'll now hand over to the General Manager.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Members of the public attending the meeting this evening are advised that in the event of an emergency, you'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would also like to advise that in accordance with clause 5.33 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting and live stream of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary.
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This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Finally, it's also requested that if any person attending or participating in the meeting this evening has their mobile phone, can you please turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Thank you. We don't have any official people to acknowledge, but there is someone in the gallery this evening that deserves acknowledgement. It's the speaker for a later item in the business paper, Mr Kevin Conolly. He's a past member of this council for many years and was the member for Riverstone.
Apologies, we don't have any, but we do have a procedural matter. Councillors, as you're aware, with the issues we had just a while ago, we've got a councillor has given— has received, councillors received from a councillor, Peter Ryan, to attend tonight's meeting via video link, as he's away on leave. Would someone like to move that way? Councillor Conolly. Councillor Creed. Any discussion? Those in favour?
Agenda Items subject to Public Address and Mayoral Minute - Hawkesbury Woodcraft Cooperative
Les Sheather
Items to be addressed by the public this evening. There's two items. The first one's the mayoral minute, item 8.1.1. The second one is 10.3.3, Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management. We'll go to item 8.1.1. The two speakers there is John Morrissey and Mary McKinnon. I believe Mary wishes to speak first on this matter. If you'd like to come up to the stand here. There's five minutes, and there will be a bell tone at one minute to go.
You hear me? Got a loud voice. Maybe you don't need the microphone. Look, firstly, I'd like to start by thanking the councillors and their staff for allowing us to come to this meeting this evening and put our case forward, and we thank you for your dedication and interest in our community. Some of you have been to our workshops and know what we do within the Hawkesbury, but you're all welcome at any time to come and visit us. For the last 12 years, I should state we are the Hawkesbury Woodcraft Cooperative Incorporated. For the last 12 years, we've operated from the Wilberforce Scout Hall in Woodlands Road, Wilberforce, but we've received notice to vacate the premises by the end of May. The property is to be sold.
It has been mutually beneficial to us to be part of this association with the Scouts. We are grateful to the Scouts for allowing us to rent the workshop from them, and we've been very good tenants to them. We maintain the building and grounds, making numerous repairs and improvements. Our financial position is solid, and we are entirely self-sufficient in terms of annual running costs. We charge only $50 per year membership fee and $5 for each day of attendance. Considering the expensive machinery that we run, this is an amazing value for money. By various fundraising efforts, we have managed to keep fees low, and we make membership available to the widest possible demographic. Members are generally retired, but we are still genuinely intergenerational, with some retired craft people mentoring beginners, including several homeschooled students who rely on us for their industrial arts training.
Several members have disabilities, including blindness, deafness, mobility issues, etc. Our organisation is very much skill-based, but there is a strong social component to the club. We all know that older people can be socially isolated and that they require mental, physical and emotional stimulation to thrive on their own. Woodworking provides intellectual and physical challenges which can be overcome by teamwork and mentorship, which can give enormous satisfaction to both the worker and the mentor. At Hawkesbury Woodcraft, we know that we all have talents and we all have needs. We are asking Council to help us. In doing so, Council will be helping the community. We've played a leading role in the craft community by providing a series of workshops in the use of hand tools for women at the Remakery in Windsor.
For many years, we have been linked to the Australian Pioneer Village, where we run a stall every Sunday and provide demonstrations in woodworking. We run free scroll saw programs for local residents affected by flooding. We have hosted state and national woodworking exhibitions, and we ran a craft weekend at the showground covering a huge range of crafts. The weekend was attended by over 2,000 visitors. We also serve the community by creating or performing repairs to wooden items, perhaps turning a replacement for a broken table leg or repairing a family heirloom. Without a shed, these community benefits will be lost, as will the social, physical and mental benefits to our members who will not have a shed to come to.
For the shed, the size that we would like, John, who's our next speaker, will probably address that better than I can, but approximately $300,000. But it would include us using the shed for other craft purposes within the Hawkesbury.
We are currently looking to see if we can rent some premises just to store the equipment. It's not ideal because our fear is that we will lose some members simply because of the time frame. Once you stop going to a facility, you know, it becomes difficult. We don't have anything at the moment, but we have, I guess, as they say, several irons in the fire.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in favour of the proposal. Hawkesbury Woodcraft is a not-for-profit cooperative. We've functioned and thrived for over 30 years. We deal only with woodwork. We're not a men's shed. We now have 89 members on the books. Over one-third of those members are women. Ages range between 14 and 93. Members come mainly from the Hawkesbury, also Blacktown, Blue Mountains and Hills local government areas. But we also have members who attend regularly from as far away as Lithgow and Bundeena. We have experienced teachers of woodwork, we have school students, we have many retirees, some of whom have decades of experience working with wood and some who are complete beginners.
Other members are qualified tradespeople in other areas, including electricians, plant mechanics, fitters, builders. We also have members with managerial, legal, financial backgrounds. This wide range of skills helps us to run the organisation very efficiently. Our numbers are growing and we've had to open an extra day per week to cope with the demand. We are self-sufficient in our annual running costs, but buying a new shed is, of course, totally beyond the scope of any craft club, so we're asking for your help. We would love to move to the land in question, that vacant block of council-owned land close to our current workshop, and build a new shed there. The new workshop could be constructed in such a way as to allow access by other craft groups so as to maximise the cost-benefit value of the building.
The extra space in the new building would also allow us to take on more members and provide a safer working environment, and the new associated craft groups could increase the number of days that the shed would be used.
We will be, and we have been, excellent tenants. When we took over the scout shed, it was derelict. The grounds were so overgrown that the shed could not be seen from the road. We've made it waterproof, replaced sections of the roof, redirected the ground water so that it would not flood the shed. We've overpainted graffiti, replaced hot water systems, rewired electricity box that was hit by lightning, installed alarm system, removed dead trees, etc., etc., etc. All of this, though, was undertaken using our own labour and expertise, without any cost to Scouts, our landlords. And we will be leaving a shed that's a vast improvement on the original that we came to.
If we are able to build on the block of land in question, we will provide excellent value for money. We have the machinery and we have the skills to complete much of the work ourselves and improve the basic shed by installing things such as the kitchen, library, framing the bathrooms, installing storage, showcases, workbenches, etc. And again, we will maintain the shed and the surrounding land as we have done in the past, with a working bee one day every month.
And we are under extreme pressure in terms of time frame. We've been aware of Scouts' plans for a good time, but despite all our efforts, we are unable to acquire a new home. We face three major problems. We need a new block of land, we need building approval, and we need the funds to build the workshop. The situation is complicated insofar as the land and the DA are essential before we can apply for any grants to fund the project. So tonight, we hope that Council will help us to source the land. We also hope that Council will be able to help us as much as possible to gain the approval that we need to build. Any grants that we apply for ask for a copy of the DA so that we can be shovel ready.
In effect, at the moment, we can't even get to first base in applying for a grant without these prerequisites. We need the land and we need building approval. Our need is dire. The situation is urgent, but we hope that Council will make it easier for us to get building approval and open up gateways for us to obtain a grant so as to finance the project. We ask for your assistance and we hope for your help in the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Morrison. With regard to having other groups perhaps share in this, would that just be like sub-leasing to them, or just you haven't thought maybe of that model? But my question really is about, I know Woodworking would have quite a few sort of equipment sort of things. Would there be space? I mean, would there be any sort of risks to anyone else using it, that either they may be injured or they may damage something of yours?
Yes, we have considered this, and we would hope to be building a shed much larger than the current one. And our idea would be to have the machinery side of the shed, that would be closed off, and then the, say, what I would call the workbench area could become available to other craft groups. But we would have to, obviously, there would be no access to what I would call, or what I refer to my grandchildren, the danger room. So there would be no access to the danger room, and then there would be a safe working area, and that safe working area, we would be happy for other people to come in and work there. They would also have access, of course, to any sort of tea-making facilities and toilets and so on would be on that safe side of the room, of the shed.
Councillor Veigel. Yeah, thanks, John, for coming in. Scouts Australia on their device, Chris. Is it possible of extending it until we can get this sorted out from a council basis? How do you deal with this?
I believe they are planning to sell. I believe they will be putting it to auction, but I would imagine that is going to take some time to organise. So we may have a little bit of leeway there. We will, of course, ask them to put things off as far as they possibly can, so as we can avoid the issue. Obviously, it's an expense for us to make a move. We've got a lot of big, expensive machinery, and to make two moves is going to double that expense. So, of course, we will do our very best, and if council has any way of encouraging them to Give us a slightly greater lead time, we would appreciate it greatly.
Thank you. Councillor Ryan. Yeah , thank you. John, question to you, John. Have you looked at engaging with other groups? I'm aware that there is a group just starting up at the Skyeville Army camp at the moment, and have you engaged with people like that, perhaps to share buildings and that sort of thing?
We have, and we've spoken, and we spent a fair amount of time investigating the Skyeville possibility. Unfortunately, the shed that they have there, they have a very large shed, but much of it is taken up, or will be taken up by the museum, where they have tanks and all sorts of other machinery there, and all of that is in beautiful, nicely polished condition, and it doesn't go well with us having a wood workshop on top of them. It also minimises the space that would be available for us, whereas we are in fact a growing group and we need to increase our space, especially to make sure that we have safe working distances around the machines. So, in short answer, yes, we have looked at Skyeville, but unfortunately it's not suitable for us. Yes
We're probably looking at about 500 square metres. Our current shed, I think, is 275. Now, that is already too small for our needs. It's also not really, as we try to already to get safe working space around the machines, we're already struggling. So we need to increase that, and then we also need, if we're going to go to that , a setup where we have a safe area that will block off a large percentage of the room. So, yeah, around the 500 square metre mark.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. Thanks, Mr Morrissey. I would have thought from your description of what you've done for the scouts that you'd be in a pretty good bargaining position to get a bit of extra time at those digs. So, whilst you say use our influence, I think you can probably, you know, use some of that. That's by the by. Thanks for that. Could you give us an indication of how often this facility would be used? Just say you've got your 500 square metres and—
Our current facility, we're using three days a week Now, depending on the... and that is partly because our numbers are limited as well at the moment, simply because of the size of our shed, our current shed. If we had a bigger shed, we would be able to accept other, more members. But also, if we had other craft groups wanting to work there as well, we would quite happily open up. It could be extra, you know, two, three days a week. And obviously, the more it's used, the better. We are quite aware of the fact that we are looking for public funds in order to build, and it's only fair that we should make the maximum use of those funds by having the building open as much as possible.
Yeah. Have you considered, sort of, instead of necessarily sharing arrangements, but a duplex arrangement, that you could share the cost of that particular facility? And I'm thinking the costs of the development application and all of the things that, you know, you'll need to go through,
We haven't considered that, but I suppose the problem would be that we don't know which craft groups would be interested and how many of them would be in a position to make a... You know, a 50-50 contribution. There aren't many. We are a great little club, but, and we are still probably bigger than a lot of other craft groups, significantly. And we have been a leading member of the crafts industry , if you like, in the neighbourhood.
That's what I thought. When, I mean, we talk about building a shed, you really don't need a shed; you need a facility because of your machines. A palace. See what we do. I was thinking when you were talking about the Skyville option, being the wife of a woodworker, I am very au fait with dust extraction technology, and I was just wondering whether that, I mean, you know, the cost of excellent dust extraction might get you out of that. I don't know. Have you, I mean, I'm just trying to figure out how.
The museum. Yeah, it would be problematic. And as well as that, it's also a question of the size of the facility at Skyville. Some of it, or a good percentage of it, is an old kitchen area, and the roof, well, I can touch the roof easily, which is not a satisfactory situation for, you know, when you're dealing with machinery, noise and dust and so on, from all those perspectives. Well
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you very much for coming. My questions are a little bit different and orthodox, you may call it, and direct, and please don't be offended in any way. In my three and a half years, this is the very first time that you are coming in here with this problem. Am I correct? Yes Okay. And when you started operating in that shed, Scouts shed, were you not aware that, you know, this day would come?
Were actually led to believe the reverse, that any communications that we had had with Scouts were that we were excellent tenants, and we need never worry that we were there and there would never be any problem with us as tenants. But the situation has changed, and Scouts need to access money, and unfortunately, you know, they need to sell our shed. That's it.
We've spoken with some councillors, and we have had in the past, I mean, we've spoken with, and we have had support from council in the past for some of our activities. For example, our open craft extravaganza a couple of years ago, and ex-Mayor McMahon was a very good supporter of us there. Other members of council have been to the site and are aware of our situation, and that's how the proposal has come to council tonight.
It. That's right. All right. The land that, you know, in question, which you said that, you know, council owns, have you made any kind of inquiries whether you could have it or not?
Okay. All right. Second thing that, as Mary mentioned, $300,000. I would say at least that. Okay. And naturally an intelligent person, and all of your members are, you know that we don't have that kind of money. No, but the point
Is that we're not actually asking. I mean, if you have that money hidden away, we will gratefully accept it without any problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, I suspect that your pockets are like mine, and so, no, we need to look for a grant. But in order to get any grants, we need two things. We need, if we're looking for a grant to build, then we need land, and we also need a building approval. And once we've got those, we can apply for grants. Now, we have been applying, or we have been trying to apply for grants, numerous grants in the past over the last 12 months, but we cannot get anywhere because the first requirement is, have you got permission from your landowner, and do you have a building approval? Now, until we get the land, we can't get the building approval. Till we have a building approval, we can't get a grant.
22 with inflation. Yes, yes, exactly. Well, God help you. I mean, I wish I was in a position to make a decision, but I'm one in 12. Thank you, Councillor. It's got to be a question. Thank you
Councillors, in moving the mayoral minute. And thank you for your questions this afternoon. This has been going on for a long, long time. All the questions you asked tonight was relevant and have been exhausted, in some cases many times. They looked at Skyville, they looked at the university. They've looked at other land around. They looked at buying the property, as Councillor Dogramaci just indicated too. And in all cases, it just didn't stack up. And I've been involved with them for a while in that regard. And when we spoke about this site in Woodlands Park, which is only across the road from where they are, it's ours. It's zoned appropriately. It's, as indicated, an area the Sports Council hasn't used for many, many years.
They maintain it and fix up areas that have been abused with vandalism. So it's been a cost actually to Council to actually keep that land how it is. It's flat. It's big enough for the purpose that they require. The water power and sewerage is right at the back door. It's ideal. And at this stage, and I say at this stage, not leading into anything about future funding or the like. What's been proposed is that the organisation negotiate with Council in relation to the use of that land, the activity on it, how it's operated, managed and maintained, and the purpose of DAs, all that sort of stuff would be discussed by Council staff and come back to us as soon as practical. May is the time that they've got a deadline.
It's likely to be extended, but I wouldn't like to be hanging by a rope by it. Times have come and gone in the past. And the like, very seldom do things stack up, I think, as comfortable as this to appease a community group that's had an issue for some time. They've looked at amalgamation with other organisations and the like, and for different reasons, it hasn't worked. There is organisations they can work with, but the ones that have been available for discussions at the time just have failed in some form or another. And they're fairly excited that this site can operate for the purpose without intrusion on neighbours or the likes, and indeed, at this stage with this discussion, a great impost on Council.
The arrangements to come back from the staff in relation to the leasing will cover all those things, and indeed some of the questions you've asked tonight.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you for bringing this Mayoral Minute. It's obviously really an important area of our community, and I think we'll do our utmost to try and help and assist this cooperative. I can see the benefit of it, even though I'm a bit biased. But it's obviously, it wins on so many levels, so I think we're all in furious agreement of that. One thing that I don't like is the fact that we haven't been out and asked the community whether they have, you know, for expressions of interest, because I guess before I actually talk on that, I've sent some wording to the staff, and Mr Mayor, if you would consider adding this point to your Mayoral Minute, I would be really grateful. I'll get staff to load it up.
It's a bit weighty, but basically what I'm proposing is that Council lets the community know that this parcel of land is available for community use. And by doing that, we might get some expressions of interest that might actually be appropriate that you guys haven't investigated yet. It also is the fairest way, I think, of doing this, because a piece of land has come available. We know you have a need, but there are other needs in the community. And I personally, from this point of view, need to be satisfied that we've sort of done our best to be fair to everybody. I guess, how would you guys feel if tonight we were talking about using this land for some other purpose and you thought, well, we could possibly use it as well?
So what I'm proposing is, as I said in the dot points, that you might be able to develop this site in partnership with somebody else. We've talked about that through the questions and the addresses that were given to Council. If we don't get any expressions of interest, then we just go to the two points in the mayor's minute. So just to reiterate, this is not about not supporting you guys. It's about opening it up to the community. I think it's our duty to let everybody know that this is available and see if we can get— there might be an organisation that's quite dissimilar to what you do that might work. We don't know yet, but I think because this is going to cost a lot of money,
Even just the fees for the DA, if you split those fees, it might be advantageous to two organisations, or even three, I don't know. I think we have to keep our minds open. So, yeah, I don't mean to put a dampener on that. I hope nobody thinks that. I don't mean that in any way at all. I'll do my darndest to , you know, support this cooperative. I think it's a fabulous cooperative, and obviously you've been working for a very long time. And we really appreciate your efforts. So I'll end on that. I just wanted to sort of make the process just that little bit fairer. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. I'm not prepared to amend the mayoral minute. I would accept an amendment to the mayoral minute, but before that, I would ask the staff to inform councillors on what , if any, proposals would be allowed or practical on that piece of land.
Laurie Mifsud(staff - Director Corporate Services)
Thanks, Mr. Mayor. The parcel of land is community land under the Local Government Act, or classified as community land under the Local Government Act, and therefore then any use of that land would be subject to the plan of management associated with that. So what we would need to do would be to make sure that anything that was going to be leased on that area would be in accordance with that plan of management.
Laurie Mifsud(staff - Director Corporate Services)
Yes, we would also need to address the zoning on that particular property to make sure that anything that was going to be erected on that could be erected on it based on the zoning.
Councillor Creed. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm happy to second your original Mayoral Minute. I do have a question for staff. The timeline for this process, given the very small window that the group has available, what would be the timeline for staff to bring this back to Council? Next meeting, the meeting after, two months, three months? Like, we just don't want to drag it out if this goes ahead tonight.
Laurie Mifsud(staff - Director Corporate Services)
Thanks, Mr Mayor. If Council were to adopt the Mayoral Minute, we would enter into negotiations with the cooperative immediately, with a view to trying to settle on proposed terms of any lease agreement and getting that, or licence agreement, and getting that back to Council as soon as possible, preferably to the next Council meeting. But it would depend on how those negotiations go.
Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you to the speakers for bringing up this. It is quite an issue for them, and as Councillor Kotlash alluded to a little, it is also an issue for many other groups in the area who come to us at Council and ask if there's any Council land or any Council facilities they can utilise. And we've had things like artists' collective, charities, community groups, the pipe band and the orchestras seeking to have some storage for equipment. So I would really hope that if this did proceed, that it would definitely be specified to be done in a way that there was some joint usage of it, because we, I would— Sort of like to have gone out to the community and seen if which other groups were also after such a facility, because I think it does come to fairness.
And when we say , you know, fairness is what we stand by, that is one of the reasons we would do that. And I also think that from the number of questions that councillors have asked tonight, it's quite apparent that it's something that perhaps maybe we should have had a briefing around so that we could have gone through some of these issues. And I think that I'm more than happy for the Hawkesbury Woodcraft Cooperative to go there. But I do think we have to go through a process that we would with any other leasing of council-owned land. Another couple of things I had a little bit of a concern about would be what if the lease is undertaken and there is no funding available? If that funding didn't ever eventuate, we would have to have some sort of an exit clause in the lease because that would tie up land that was then not being utilised.
Given that this is an activity where it's for locals and for out-of-area people as well, I think that we do also, that's another reason why we should be looking at a joint use for other local community facilities as well. I did want to ask staff for some clarity around the feasibility of the works being done by the cooperative themselves, doing a lot of work on there. I know in the past this has been raised as an issue when other community facilities have been wanted to be undertaken by the group who were building something. I think there was an RFS shed a few years ago where there was some sort of issue around that. Can we have some clarity around whether that's an issue in terms of liability or any sort of conditions if people were to be doing the work themselves?
Laurie Mifsud(staff - Director Corporate Services)
Thanks, Mr. Mayor. We would be negotiating with the co-op that any sort of licence agreement would involve them maintaining any buildings or structures that are on the property, and there would become their responsibility.
Through you, Mr. Mayor. I think what we would be needing to contemplate there is a whole raft of matters around, first of all, the type of the lease, so be it a building lease, a land lease, or what the nature of that might actually be. And then it would need to be worked out between the parties about what the council's level of involvement in the project management of the building itself would need to be, and the level of time impost from our organisation into that aspect of it, just simply to ensure that, as you've rightly pointed out, Councillor, those matters of public liability and the like are covered off at that point.
Thank you. Just a follow-up question to that: does Council have any likelihood of themselves building a facility there that then could be leased to them? So I know we don't just have spare money, but would we perhaps have any access to any grant funding, in which case Council would be the owner of the building? Well, who would own the building if there's a grant that's given to the woodwork people? Who then owns that building? It's on council land we would own it, I would imagine.
Look, technically, yes. The nature of it is it will come down to the exact nature of that lease, though. And I would think it, financially, not a very sound decision for council to be constructing the building and then seeking to tenant it. It just wouldn't make financial sense, nor would it make good sense to construct a building where we didn't know who the tenants were.
Just to clarify that, Councillor, there's a range of varieties that council can do in relation to a lease. The land, if it was ever ceased by the applicant, can be taken back to how it is today. That's one option. The other option is that if they leave, it becomes council property. So they're all negotiations that the staff will have in relation to the long-term, well, hopefully long-term use of the land. And , yeah, so they're negotiable in relation to the activity and what council would prefer in relation to the long-term outcome. Councillor Zamprogno
Councillor Brogden. Thank you. I was going to ask exactly the same question about whether we were discussing an amendment. I oppose the amendment, and I endorse the Mayor's original motion. This is already such a torturously drawn-out and painful process for this community group that are simply seeking a home. I can't remember whether it was your organisation or another local men's shed organisation that received $80,000 worth of funding through the Community Partnership Grants. It was the Men's Shed, and that grant expired based over exactly this issue, an inability to find a home, and that group was seriously aggrieved, and with good measure, with good reason. You know, good money that went begging simply because a home couldn't be found, and we looked at the Pioneer Village, we looked at the showgrounds at Clarendon, we looked at a property in Bosworth Street, and it all fell through.
I understand Councillor Kotlash's desire to be scrupulously fair, but let's put this in context. This is a corner of a park that hasn't been coveted or sought by any group, and if the group are offering to improve this piece of land owned by Council. Through their own efforts, create something of enduring value not only to their organisation but to the broader community. And I would like to mark the very significant service that they perform for the community because I spent most of last year at a school, among other things, as a woodwork teacher. And I discovered that that was my happy place, so much so as that in my recent renovations to my own home, I've added a woodwork shop annex to my home.
And, you know, if my partner's getting on my nerves, I just go out to my workshop and tune out. It's wonderful . So, you know, I can't endorse Councillor Kotlash's amendment that would draw out this process when, in my opinion, it's very unlikely that groups would be falling over themselves to seize on this corner of a park that has never been sought by any other community group that I know of. I think the mayor's mayoral minute is the clearest pathway to allow this group to negotiate with us, to provide an improvement to a piece of council land, which, if they cease to occupy it , reverts to us. It's a win-win situation for us, which therefore makes it a very generous offer, and I think we should do anything we can to support them.
Sorry, just a question, and then I might, and I'll ponder that before I speak . How long would staff estimate that point one of the amendment would take
Laurie Mifsud(staff - Director Corporate Services)
So we would obviously go out for expressions of interest. We'd probably give at least 21 days for expressions of interest to come out. We would need to formulate some sort of advertisement and probably put some sort of sign up on the site and so on, and then get expressions of interest, get those back, and then assess those expressions of interest. So it would take, I'd imagine, probably six to seven weeks. So it would be at
Debbie, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't mind either the amendment or your original mayoral minute, which I was obviously supporting wholeheartedly anyway. But I don't think that the amendment brings anything negative to the table. In fact, I think it brings an amount of fairness to the table. And the only reason I think I'm pondering or contemplating the amendment is rightly as spoken by the membership, the speakers tonight. When I was the mayor recently, I met with members of this group with this predicament, but also with members of other groups, which Councillor Lyons-Buckett has touched on as well, which included the men's sheds, the arts groups. I honestly found during the time I was the mayor, one of the biggest things I did was deal with community groups who didn't have a home.
And it was really, really frustrating because all , as we do here as elected people, is want to help our community. And when we didn't have those facilities available to be able to give them that space, it's really frustrating. So. I want to commend you, Mr Mayor, on putting forward the mayoral minute because there was a problem. You've done everything you can to find a solution, but I do not disagree with the amendment because I do think that it does—the heart of that amendment is an element of fairness. So I think that in supporting the amendment, I'm still supporting your mayoral minute and the intent to make sure that the woodwork cooperative have a home. And what I liked hearing from the speakers here tonight is their absolute willingness to ensure that anything that would be built on that site, once funding is received, would be for a broader community benefit, not just for their group.
And I commend you for having that wonderful Hawkesbury community spirit to do exactly that with. But I think what you've started here tonight, Mr Mayor, is a wonderful process. The key word I see in my mind is opportunity. It's an opportunity for multiple community groups who are in this situation to be able to benefit. And perhaps if option point one is explored in the amendment, it might actually give the woodcraft cooperative some a boost, really, with other groups getting on board with them for the element of obtaining that funding. So even if you were the core group or the first group that we decide, perhaps later, once we get reports, who knows, I'm not preempting anything, but you were the custodians of the building, perhaps you could be boosted by having more community groups on board with you as an advocacy piece to get that funding from the other levels of government.
And I think that the louder voices you have, or the more people supporting you, or the groups supporting you, the better it might be. So I wholeheartedly support this idea. I really hope that whatever process we do undertake, it is as fast as possible because I know how much you require a home. And I truly understand your predicament of having to pack up everything that you have in your current premises and put them in storage with an unknown amount of time before you can participate in what you do again. And I understand the fear associated with losing members, and not just that, but also the social element that is lost, which is a core component of what you do as a group. So as I said, I don't think the amendment.
It doesn't bring anything negative to the table. In fact, for me, it's an opportunity to bring more groups together as a joint advocacy piece for funding to those other levels of government. But I do want to thank you, Mr Mayor, for taking the time to really find a solution for this group, which I think can be expanded to other groups by using some land that we have there. And as we know, we are very short in our land options that we have available, or our buildings, in terms of wanting to house community groups who are not-for-profit and don't have the ability to pay. So thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm still contemplating what I'm doing, but I just did want to put on the record I don't see the amendment as being burdensome.
I think it probably brings more to the table. Thank you
Thanks, Mr Mayor. A question, if I can . When we talk about timing, I wouldn't have thought that my point one would have really added a lot of timing to this process. This is going to take months. It's not going to be, as Councillor Zamprogno alluded to , if we get rid of point one, it's still going to be a really long process. I agree with the Deputy Mayor that this might bring opportunities, and I was just wondering, could we get staff to give us an indication of ballpark DA process, negotiations, you know, and all of that sort of thing? Because I really don't think my amendment is going to drag the chain any more than any of the other million things that you're going to have to do.
I might just talk it through at a fairly high level, perhaps. So, as the Director of Corporate has indicated, the process of negotiating the lease terms will take some time. We, I don't think that we would be in a position to come back to Council next month. It would more likely be the month after. I'm particularly conscious of the amount of work in our very small property team at this particular point in time on a whole lot of fronts, so this sort of needs to be weaved in amongst that. So, at a point where Council resolves that it does wish to enter into the lease arrangement, really then that would give the co-op the comfort to then start to proceed and to work out how they're going to fund a development application process, which will be both timely and expensive in its preparation.
So, I would expect that the DA preparation, so before it even comes to Council, would take certainly between, you know, three and six months for that work to be prepared. Then it would come to Council. Council, as the landowner, does not have—our staff don't have the delegated authority to determine that application, so that needs to go to a panel to be determined. So, you know, we're starting in sort of another three- to six-month period. So, we are looking at a protracted period, and I certainly appreciate the need for urgency on the matter, but the reality is this is going to take some time.
Thank you. Could I ask a follow-up question, Mr Mayor? You can. Thank you . Councillor Wheeler asked how long the amended point would take, and if it was six to— Sorry. Six to eight weeks. If we didn't get any other expressions of interest— oh, no, I'll backtrack. Could I change that second sub dot point to say if other expressions of interest were received, then we start negotiating with everybody? You know, it's— I want to bring opportunities here as well as fairness. Fairness is one point. Opportunity is possibly the biggest at the moment. So
That we've dent to what the general manager has just said. I can't see it— is it my understanding that point one is not really going to hold up this process much? Is
That a fair— I suppose that's a bit of a hard question to answer. I'll ask a more specific question. It's fair of you, isn't it, as a councillor. Are there things that we could do if we received some other expressions of interest that we could start negotiating now and obviously with the woodcraft co-op and start bringing that process together if we resolve in that regard
So the very first step, you know, were the motion to— To be resolved would be for staff to develop the terms for the expression of interest, because how we are the staff or how is council actually going to evaluate who's the successful tenant here? And that's not necessarily for myself or the staff to work that up. You may wish to look at a number of factors around, predominantly, I'm assuming, around community benefit, about their ability to realise the plan at the end of the day, and their capacity to deliver that. So there might be a number of factors. There might be a component in an expression of interest that says, are you willing to share with others? Okay, and so there might be a group of people who could similarly get together.
We don't know, but that's how we would probably start to frame up the expression of interest when we're going out and seeking for organisations to put forward. If that's what they want to do, they need to kind of put that on the table to us, I think.
Where to go from here. Thank you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I maybe could assist. Mr Mayor, I can see that there could be a prolonged process. I think perhaps, I mean, the entire thing, as the General Manager has just said, is not going to be a fast process anyway. But I'm thinking, is it possible, could we perhaps have a term in any lease? Well, firstly, could we proceed with an agreement to lease if we, in principle, agree to lease, so that prior to an actual finalised lease being entered into, we could sort some of these sort of things around joint usage, etc., and to include in any such agreement a condition which ensured that there would be available space for other community groups to lease, and then that could be determined further down the track. Is that a possibility
Absolutely, and that would be— oh, sorry, you answering the question? Yes, Councillor, and that would probably be that first step that we enter into before to give the successful tenant the assurity over the process before we enter into the binding lease, presumably at a post-DA stage.
Thank you. I would be happy to go down that path , and then to see us embark for the remaining space that may eventuate in a building there for other groups to have an opportunity to submit at that point if they were open to subleasing or even jointly leasing, depending on the arrangement at the time. If we had an agreement to lease, that may be a way around that.
Councillor. Thanks, Mr Mayor. I think in our efforts to be helpful and to be seen as fair, we are overcomplicating and we risk mucking up the whole thing. We've got a community organisation who have come to us after three years of trying to find a new home, and they've been very open about that, about their difficulties. They've tried negotiating with Scouts Australia, they've tried negotiating with the university, with the Secret Garden. They've had a long association with the Pioneer Village. None of these locations are suitable, and they're now at the point where Scouts Australia, who are selling— let's be really honest about what's happening with Scouts Australia— they are selling these properties to pay for their responsibilities under the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse.
That's what's going on here. So that's what's happening to this community organisation. I am more than happy to vouch for their work ethic. I worked beside the Woodcraft Co-op at the Pioneer Village for a decade when Council had locked us out of that facility, and their commitment to that site was fantastic . You know, many, many days we spent just picking leaves out of gutters to stop those buildings falling down. These are people with a strong commitment to the community and to the Hawkesbury. Why I think we've got a bit of a muddle, in part, is because we have had a previous term of Council. We have not worked well together as an elected body. I hope that we're moving out of that, and what we see in this proposal, I think, is an attempt, is illustrative of what can be done when councillors step back and let a few people do some of the negotiations, and we just get out of each other's road.
What we've got, though, is a stumble in our processes at this point where it's come to Council with time pressure , and we all want to do the right thing by these people, but we also want to do the right thing by the ratepayers as well and be fair and transparent. I think this is probably one of those lessons that we go, look, this is probably not how we would like to do this all the time, and this is not how we will necessarily do this in the future. And I think we need to have a really solid discussion about our own processes around these things. But I'm also not sure that the process that's on the table now is actually going to yield a good result. What it's starting to happen here is that we are placing Council in the position of the site manager rather than Council as in the position of the site provider to a lessee.
This is currently vacant land. The Sports Council mows it. They cast their eye over it occasionally. People might kick a football around on it here and there if the oval's busy. But for the most part, this is vacant land that can now be utilised by a group who are desperate for a bit of space and who are offering to go through the process of finding the funding and the applications to put a massive shed on it that could become a facility for the Hawkesbury in the future.
I think in the future we need to discuss these things at a briefing. We need better processes around it. We need a property strategy that identifies where the land is suitable, what its potential uses are for when people approach us about things. But we haven't got any of those ducks in a row at this point. And I think one of the questions, I think, if we go out to this expression of interest process, is who then becomes the lead agency? Is it the Woodcraft Cooperative, or is it one of the people who puts in the expressions of interest? What happens to that management then on the ground? Do we manage that? What happens with the potential for conflict? Who becomes the lead in this process? Who gets the grant?
Who puts in the DA? Who does all these things? We have an organisation here with a proven track record of mental health support, skill building, repair and maintenance of land and equipment, who want to make this commitment into the future. I can't support the amendment because I think we're just making things a bit more complicated. What I would certainly support is an expression of interest process run by the Woodcraft Collective, which is a process that they share and share the findings of with Council, or that Council provides some support to once we are in negotiations. And I would certainly support us having far better defined processes so that we and a community group aren't in this position in the future.
But I think in this instance with this site, I'm happy to move forward with the mayoral minute as it was presented.
Thank you, Councillor. Just make a comment. With the discussions that we're having in relation to other potential uses and the likes, we've got a community hall at Wilberforce that is underutilised by a long shot. It's only a K and a half from this particular site. For any organisation that wants to use it pretty well 24/7, and it's underutilised. What's been proposed here this evening, and the discussions that we're having now, I've had with these people and the Deputy Mayor in the past, if there's an opportunity to coincide with another group, let me tell you, those people are going to break an arm to get there because of funding, and they need it. They've explored those avenues. We don't need, if we're going to lease it out, and I can tell you that every effort will be taken by these people to utilise that for the purposes that it can be utilised for.
And it's really limited. We're talking about a building that's going to house particular age groups, which might not be consistent with other groups. We're talking about noise. We're talking about dust. A whole heap of things that need to be taken into account, and why some of them can be put aside in the short term, it's impractical to vacuum out. A room for a childcare centre. It just, you know, that's a poor example. They're tough kids at Wilberforce. But so the people that they would probably associate with is people involved in some to do with timber. Other organisations would find it difficult, both from their perspective and the woodcraft. But that's not saying that it can't happen, but there would be difficulties there.
But the discussions that I've had over some time, two people that sit in the gallery and more have discussed the opportunities to make this happen and to utilise what they put forward as a hobby as access for the community. So I don't have a problem with going to the community. I'm not going to support the amendment, but because that land's been vacant for 35 years, longer, and when the opportunity come up to assess it, I looked at the opportunities, and no one had approached anybody, not even the sporting groups, to use it. It's a little piece of land in the back of nowhere. We had a toilet block there until 12 months ago. It was a council toilet block that got pulled down. No one goes there.
No one uses any facilities there. And in relation to the use of the site, I approached the staff, not to their recollection there wasn't anybody that was looking for anything there that that could be fruitful for. And when I approached the Sports Council for their long-term views on what that land might be used for, they were happy to leave it to council to negotiate any possible use for that site.
Mr Mayor, I've given just some words to the ladies to put up, which may cover, which I would ask you to add to your Mayoral Minute, and Councillor Kotlash may either withdraw her amendment or we leave that. And that is probably coming now , that to just include that we enter an agreement to lease. While it all gets sorted, with a couple of specific conditions in there that I think may cover us for the future, if you would be happy to add that. One is that there would be some, that any building constructed would have some available space for other uses, not specifying the uses, something to enter into down the track, and that if funding is not secured within a specified time, that a clause to terminate the lease is included. We would have to determine what a reasonable time, like if it gets to 12 months and there's no funds.
Okay. Councillor Creed. Sorry, I just want to, I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. The entire point of this is that council staff enter into negotiations and then come back to council with a potential lease agreement. So I just think we're getting way ahead of ourselves. This is massively time sensitive for this particular community group. I'm not supporting the amendment because I think that, given the fact that... It's taken you as mayor to get something for this community group and to put it up. We should be just— we should be in favour of this. Yes, we don't normally do this way, but it is time sensitive. Delaying it any further than potentially it's already going to be delayed with your mayoral minute, with the normal process.
If we delay it any more with the amendment, we may as well just be saying to these people, you may as well just shut up shop. It's not going to happen. You know, we are all of good intentions when it comes to timelines and all that sort of stuff, but how many times have we seen this happen, that timelines get blown out and blown out, and there's delay and delay? These people will not survive with their community group. So I'm in agreement with both yourself, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zampronio. I'm not supporting the amendment, and I'm wholeheartedly supporting your mayoral minute. Thanks, Councillor. Deputy Mayor
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just an option. I know that Councillor Lyons-Buckett has foreshadowed an amendment, but just an option: if we deleted the entirety of point one, which remains point two and three, which is your original mayoral minute, which would become point one and two, and just at the end of the second point, which would be following completion of the negotiations outlined in part one, the matter be reported to a future council meeting, and in that report includes options to explore expressions of interest to other community groups. That way you're actually putting it in order of what you wanted, Mr Mayor, and it says that that report that you want to come back to council includes options of how to do an expressions of interest to other groups. So completely remove the first part.
This is only if Councillor Kotlash withdraws her amendment. Completely remove that. And then just to this, just as an option, if the staff can do it as I'm talking, just so people can see what I'm trying to say. Yeah, remove that,
Can we put the motion? The amendment. Put the amendment. Beg your pardon, Councillor Creed? Can we put the amendment? I'm just about to put the amendment. Those in favour of the amendment, which is Councillor Kotlash's amendment on your screen. Those in favour?
Thank you, Mr Mayor. My foreshadowed amendment would be the wording that I had put up before, which will reappear, I would imagine. I'll require a seconder.
Councillor Wheeler seconded. Mr Mayor, I just, I agree with you and I agree with the sentiments about the Woodwork Cooperative. I think they're a wonderful group. I think the things they do are wonderful. I'm also incredibly cognisant of the amount of times I have been contacted by other people in the community who have asked Council for facilities, who have said, Can we get some sort of land? And when we have asked Council, nothing has been available. I'm just trying to cover that we have an opportunity there for many other groups that also do great things in the community. That we're not showing favouritism by simply proceeding with one group for council land. And as you said, nobody has followed up.
But to be quite honest, within the community, people have no idea what land around. There's not as if you can just click on a map and see what land may be available for a group to approach council to use. So I think that one day, I hope that our community can actually access such a facility, and they could see there was a spare piece of land, and they could perhaps also promote to do something there. I would sincerely hope that the conditions around this are simply that anything being built there, that the Hawkesbury, it would require the lease, the Hawkesbury Woodcraft to commit to any building they build to set aside a certain amount that could be available for other community groups. Nobody may ever want to use it, it may not be suitable, but it's a commitment from them, and I think they sounded agreeable that they would do such a thing.
And the other matter would be around if funding isn't secured in a specified time, and I don't know what that would be, that the lease be terminated because that would be preventing another opportunity for somebody else who could perhaps enter that lease and gain funding and then perhaps, you know, incorporate something. I'd like to see a solution. I think this covers our concerns around equity to all groups within our community better than not having anything included.
Amendment, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. With all due respect, Councillor, I think— The discussion in the room was about not overcomplicating it, but this exceptionally complicates the situation. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but it's out of order because you've got here commence negotiations with them, then enter into a lease, then after negotiations bring it back a report. So it's completely, it actually doesn't follow due process or an order of what would be the right way to do something. So I won't be supporting this amendment on the board. I'll be supporting the Mayor's original Mayoral Minute. I think this is just, it's way too complicated. It's out of order. You want to— Not out of order , out of process. Sequence, thank you. It's out of sequence. Thank you. It's
Don't climb out of your chair. It's okay. It's not worth climbing out of your chair for. So basically, I don't think we can enter into negotiations, commence negotiations, then enter into a lease, but then have a report come back to Council. That doesn't make sense. I also feel very concerned for the group who are volunteers, and we are putting this burden on them to enter into a lease where they're not sure what those obligations are going to be for that lease, and I don't think that's fair or part of the process. I think that based on what's on the board, I wholeheartedly will endorse your Mayoral Minute. It's the simplest process to achieve the best outcome. I think we all agree that this group has what it takes to be able to be what I'm thinking in my mind is called the anchor.
They are the anchor for this site. The only concern I have is, as I said, they're volunteers, and I don't want to burden these volunteers with all of the tasks and duties that are associated with undertaking a lease. Not only that, while the core group of people sitting here tonight have absolute competency as a lawyer, I also worry about succession planning and whether anyone coming along down the track would have the skills, the desire or the ability to do what these wonderful people here tonight would be able to do if they entered into a lease. So that is exceptionally important as well. I will not be endorsing this. I'll be voting against it, and if it is lost, I'll be supporting the original Mayoral Minute.
Look, this is not really what I wanted to happen. I appreciate that we need to help this cooperative find new premises. And I get that, and we have to be timely. But as Councillor Lyons-Buckett has said, so many people come to us begging us to find them a home for their group. I agree with Councillor Wheeler that this cooperative shows and has revealed
Has proven your community spirit and your capabilities. And, you know, it transfers as mental health, it's skills, it's social, it's all fabulous. And I don't like the fact that that's been brought up. That's not in question, okay? It's just not in question. What is in question is this is public land. We have an obligation to follow a fair process. Now, I know you've been looking for digs for quite a while, and so have a lot of other people using this. What I thought by saying that if we used an expression of interest process is that you might find another large-ish group. And I'll tell you where my inspiration came from. I used to live in the Blue Mountains, and up the road from me was a community..
. Group, and they were into, I think it's lapidary. They were into gems. Thank you, lapidary. And they were humongous. There were so many members, and they were so good. And I can just, when I was reading this, I thought, I wonder, because this is going to be a huge expense for your group. I mean, this is not going to be a walk in the park. I thought, oh, if we have an expression of interest and it goes out to the community, at least we have another avenue for you to pursue. It's fairness on one hand, but it's also that. And I'm a bit upset, I'm a bit peeved that we won't get that, because I think that might have been an opportunity. With this amendment,
That sort of turns its head on having a space for other community groups, I was thinking that you might be able to do some sort of duplex thing, and you share the DA costs, and you share the maintenance, and you share—it's a sort of a way of saving money, as well as including more people and getting more community users. That was just the idea. Whether that's possible, it's obviously not going to happen if this amendment is adopted, because then you'll be sort of negotiating after the fact. So I can't support this. So I just want to reiterate that it's not because I don't want you desperately to find digs and have a fabulous community facility. That's not— That's not what I believe. I just think we need to follow due process, and I think probably all of you would have expected us to as well. Thank you.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. Could I suggest an alteration to point 2, that instead of saying that Council enter into an agreement, that we instead, that it's said that any negotiations include …
I can say what I like here. It's not going to make any difference. If we don't conduct ourselves to one another in a proper fashion, then that conduct's unacceptable. Councillor Wheeler, you were in the process of saying something.
Look, I'm happy to support this amendment. I'm also happy to support the mayoral minute in its original state. I think what I'm hearing is the concerns around fairness in the community.
I think what this amendment and what the previous amendment have sought to do is to show a level of fairness and openness to other members of the community who, I agree, frequently approach us for space. One of the take-home messages from the Enhancing the Arts working group was the desperate need for space for organisations who are moving out of the Hawkesbury because they can't find, you know, we've lost one organisation to Mount Druitt because Blacktown Council can provide them with storage and performance space and practice space that we can't. So, and this is where I was talking before about us really needing some processes in place where, and needing that property strategy to come back to us too, and some big picture plans for this LGA about how we provide, you know, we've done a lot around the provision of sporting space, but we haven't had..
. We've had a bit of a discussion now. We've got the cultural infrastructure study back that outlines the spaces that we need or that we have for cultural infrastructure. And we know that there are deficits, and that those deficits are growing, and they'll continue to grow, I think, as our surrounding LGAs become more and more dense and people are pushed out to the Hawkesbury for their recreation space or for their... And we also know that we've got an ageing population. The cultural infrastructure study was very clear there. And this is an organisation that is providing space for those groups that rely heavily on both mental and social supports in order to continue to be active and healthy members of our community.
So I think that there's lots in favour of this, but I do hear the need for fairness in the use of that space. I think this is probably the best way forward at this point. I don't want to see us do this all the time, but I think in this instance this is probably... The groups that want to hang out in a facility that is full of noisy, dusty woodworking equipment will probably be similar groups. I don't think that anyone is going to be wanting to store their valuable brass instruments, for example, in a shed at Woodlands. I don't think that it's going to be a likely performance space for a lot of people. This will probably be workshop space for other people who want a similar thing. I'm not surprised that this can't be located at Skyville.
That's... That's not what Skyville's for. I would contend that your average piece of army equipment is well able to get quite dirty and dusty, having washed lots of them myself in the past. But there's an advantage, I think, in us taking this opportunity to have what is a dedicated hands-on craft workshop space available to members of the Hawkesbury community, which is what potentially we have on offer here.
Thank you. Councillor Creed. Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just again, like, we seem to be putting stuff on the negotiations before it's even begun. Like, it's coming back to Council. It's going to come back to us, and we can bring this up, that if there's not a lease termination part of the agreement, we can bring that up and part of that meeting. I would suggest that we just enter negotiations, let staff do their job, and then that comes back to Council, and then if we're not happy with the negotiations that staff have done, then you can add this stuff in. I just think we're making things bigger than Ben-Hur. We've been, like, what time is it now? We've been on the mayoral minute for, you know, 90 minutes. It's insane .
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Yeah, my question is, if tomorrow somebody from our community who's looking for another group in our community rings you tomorrow and says to you, What about us? Can we start negotiating with you about this land? What will you say?
We're proposing in the amendment here to ask an organisation that we're proposing to give a lease to, that's proposing to raise funds to build a building for their purpose, that we want them to add additional space for an activity that we don't know what it is, that they're going to pay for. Now , and on top of that, part two is the following completion of negotiations, the matter be reported back to Council. If those negotiations are unfruitful, then I suspect the report that comes back to us are saying that this is not a satisfactory site for the purposes being whatever. All the stuff that we've discussed, I can assure you, has been discussed by the people who've spoken tonight and the people they're associated with.
They understand the frustration in relation to our community expectations. If this was a shed in Windsor, I wouldn't be putting this up like this, I can assure you. It is not in Windsor, it's out of town. It's a piece of land that hasn't been used, not likely to be used for any purpose, and we've got an organisation that for not one or two weeks or days, it's years been looking for a site, and we've managed to find one. And to frustrate that down the track, we can put out expressions of interest and all those sorts of things. Whether an organisation would be prepared to build on it or go through the same process that's going to be negotiated with these people, I don't know. But I do know that land's been there a long time.
It has been vacant, and if there's an issue with that, we can cast the blame between 12 of us. That land's been there a long time, and none of us have picked up on it, along with other land. And we need to be more involved with the community when there's wants to resolve those issues. And those of you that are involved in those community groups are working on just some of those things in other areas as we speak. But in lots of cases, it doesn't only revolve around us. There's state and federal consequences. We've got Crown lands, all that sort of stuff. So, Councillors, I didn't put this up overnight. Over a month I worked on it with our staff and went through the questions you've asked tonight, or I would not have put it up.
So I ask for your support. And if there's other community groups out there who are trying to find a piece of land, they've got the same opportunities. Come to us and we'll see what we can do. There's not a lot of options, I know, but if we don't get on with this in some format, when the next people come, we're going to go through the same process again. We're going to have a ladder we can't climb up. If people come to us, we look for plans and process. These people have done that over time, and anyway, this is what I've come up with. I would put the amendment, which is on here, that was moved by Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Those in favour of the amendment.
The Deputy Mayor, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Creed, Kotlash, Veigel, Regan and myself. The motion is lost. The amendment is lost. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.
I'm yet to have spoken on the original motion. You're right. Mr Mayor, I think you just really nailed it when you said you've been working for over a month with the staff, that the big issue here is that it didn't come to us. This sort of thing. This is public land. If you've been working on it for that long, why no briefing? Why haven't we been told about it? We're in the dark. We come here tonight, we're faced with a pickle, so to speak, because we want to help these people, and yet we know we're burdened by many other people asking for the same sort of help. So I would ask you, why did you not tell us about it? I understand there's a process to work through, but I find it a little bit offensive that you sit there saying that nobody's found this other land.
I've asked often, is there any council land available? And we're told no. So you've known about it, but then you're connected with the sports council, so I guess that they know about it. I am sorry that amendment didn't go. The commitment to having some extra space would have allowed some revenue for the woodwork people and down the track, and presumably they could do that anyway. I'm disappointed that we are faced with something that is taking a long time, but the idea of having specifics for negotiations is they feed into the negotiations. You don't do negotiations, bring it back to council, then say there's something not in there, because that means you go back again. So I don't see what was wrong with including some points for negotiations.
They may or may not have got up. But anyway, a very disappointing process all round, but I do hope that the woodwork cooperative find a suitable place to go.
Councillor Buckett, I do apologise, and you're dead right. It should have gone to all of you. The discussions I had with the staff, I left the staff; they come back, I think, just before the paper went out. with the information I required, and I did not offer it to the rest of you. And I will try my hardest that that sort of thing won't happen in the future.
Councillor Creed. Thanks, Mr Mayor. I just want to touch on what Councillor Lyons-Buckett said. All 12 of us are involved in different parts of the community, and we all get approached by different members of the community. They're asking for council for different things. A mayoral minute is no different to a notice of motion that councillors can put up asking for council to support certain community groups in certain ways, whether it's grant funding, like what we did with the Women's Cottage with Councillor Wheeler that Councillor Wheeler put up, I think, before end of last term. We all get approached in different ways. I mean, I was approached by the woodworkers. I went out and met with them.
I've been approached by many other community organisations. So we don't always, you know, tell each other what's going on, and it might just be because we're busy, but, like, notice of motions come up in council business papers, and the first time I see it is in a council business paper. It's not like some sort of secret squirrel business or anything like that. It's just we all do it. I mean, I just think it's a bit much to turn around and say, you know, how dare we weren't told when every councillor around this table has put up notice of motions when they've been approached by community groups for certain things, and we haven't then turned around and told all councillors what we're doing, what's going in, and all that sort of stuff.
So I just wanted to touch on that, but again, supporting the motion, the mayoral minute.
Thanks, Councillor. Thanks for those comments, but I think what Councillor Lyons-Buckett was touching on, a mayoral minute is not quite the same as the motion that's put up. On the floor by Councillor, and I believe that it needs to be done in a proper fashion. With the, I thought the expertise that I was after to put a resolution that a mayoral minute is warranted to put. So I take on board your comments and thank you, but I understand Councillor Lyons-Buckett's issue. Thank you. Councillor. I'd
Like to congratulate you, Mr Mayor, on your mayoral minute. This group are an asset to the community, and I'll be fully supporting your mayoral minute.
That's okay. That's right. I've adhered to that. All right, that's okay. Something that when you said that, you know, you knew about this matter, or you about a month, and gracefully apologised for it. Does that mean that four of us, when we voted , and what you have said about knowing, you know, this matter for about a month, does that mean that, you know, our vote will come to null and void, and we have to start all over again?
Well, that upsets me. I mean, if you knew about this matter about a month before any one of us knew, I don't know whether it would have any bearings if we knew about it. Maybe our thoughts, or maybe it would reflect to the discussion. I mean, tonight we wasted almost what? Two and a half hours
Well, whatever it is, I mean, the simple thing is that, you know, these people are desperate, you know, for somewhere to carry on with what they are doing, contributing so much for the community . And here we are, some councillors, just for whatever the reason, I don't want to mention names, or just want to make themselves look important and do something. And this happens all the time. I was just about to pack up and go. I had enough of this. You know, these people are desperate, you know, they're looking for.. . And here we are, Madam General Manager told us that this thing is not going to end up in a month or two or three, four, five. Maybe it will keep going for the next six, seven, eight, maybe a year.
And what if somebody comes along and makes an offer, you know, to that piece of land? So what are they going to do? Where are they going to live? I mean, we discussed, you know, so many things, irrelevant things. Why can't we just tell them, you know, what we could offer? Okay, that's what we are discussing in here, but we've got another list in here that, you know, I don't know how long is that going to—we're talking about all these things. Can we not find some—every single one of us are aware of vacant sheds. I know a couple. Could we not approach the owners and maybe come to some kind of an agreement that these people could move in temporarily until, you know, this land is, you know, put for expression of interest or the application, and that's—just be practical.
I again, as I always say, that thank you very much to Councillor Bucket when she told me very early on in my days that it would drive me crazy with all this bureaucratic talk and to me, or whatever.
Thank you, Councillor. I know some of the Councillors spoke, including me, spoke a few times on the matter. You're quite entitled to do that, and the community expected to do it, and it's our obligation to listen. Thank you, Councillor. Any further discussion? I'll put the motion, which is the Mayoral minute. Those in favour?
Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan 2025
Les Sheather
Councillors . Thank you, Councillors. The next item on the business papers is 10.3.3, Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan. There's three people to speak. Mr Kevin Conolly is first. Councillors, do you want to have a five-minute break?
I was the person who put in a submission dealing with this matter that proposed a number of road measures, road improvements for flood evacuation. And I'd like to express my appreciation, first of all, for the consultant for identifying some of them as having merit and saying they should go forward in the plan for further investigation. I'd like to comment on a couple of others of them,
Particularly the one described as F, which was a left-turn ramp from Colonial Drive in Bligh Park onto George Street. And the consultant's comment was that he or she didn't think this would achieve the benefits expected. And I think that's probably because I didn't very clearly explain the benefits that I thought would come from it, and that might be my fault in an abbreviated submission. The reason I proposed that ramp is that at the moment there are two lanes effectively out of Bligh Park, South Windsor. In a flood evacuation situation, George Street itself and Thorley Street evacuation road, each of them would carry a lane of outbound traffic. Under the current circumstances, if we had a flood today that was a very large flood and caused evacuation, George Street would be cut at 15 metres.
The Thorley Street road would stay open till 18.5. So we would have one road left, one lane left, when the bulk of the evacuation had to happen. In Bligh Park, there are between 4,000 and 5,000 cars which would have to be evacuated in a full-on evacuation. There would be some thousands coming from Windsor and South Windsor down George Street as well. To get that number of vehicles through two lanes is challenging enough. But if you cut down to one, at the very time when you need them most, we have a real challenge getting people out safely. So the suggestion that I made was to keep effectively George Street open a bit longer by cutting from a point on Colonial Drive that's between 16 and 17 metres, cutting across what looks like a nature strip of Crown land to George Street a bit further down where it's higher to again come out between 16 and 17 metres.
Keep the road open longer. The SES work on a formula of 600 vehicles per hour through each lane. So if you can raise the road by a metre, 600 vehicles can get out. If you can raise it a metre and a half, 900. So that was the point of doing that. There are actually a couple of different ways of achieving this. I put in the one I thought made most sense, but there is another one available too. I would ask councillors, if you wouldn't mind amending the recommendation to put— Proposal F, back in the plan for further investigation. It's not a commitment to build anything, simply to give it further investigation, because it fits with the other ones that I had put together already. It's actually a sequence of measures flowing from Windsor through South Windsor area to Bligh Park and out onto the main road network.
So that's the first one I wanted to comment on. The second one was Wolseley Road at McGrath's Hill, and the consultant has quite rightly said, that's very expensive, and it is. I don't think there's any cheap way of addressing the issues at McGrath's Hill. Currently, McGrath's Hill in my mind is a huge risk. The evacuation road is Windsor Road. It's only 13.5 metres. We had floods of that order of magnitude a couple of years ago. There was one where an evacuation of McGrath's Hill was called. Hardly anybody bothered to comply. They didn't leave because the floodwater wasn't affecting them yet. People didn't believe it was a real challenge, a real problem for them. And yet, if we'd had a sudden extra surge of rainfall and the river had risen further, those people would have been cut off completely and potentially at real risk in McGrath's Hill of people being inundated.
To alleviate that risk, the only way you can do anything about it is by providing a higher road. Now I fully accept that it's probably a project that council can't afford, and so it won't go in this plan, which is council's. But I'd like to get it out there into the discussion around flood evacuation and perhaps lobby for it at other levels, so that if there's an opportunity at some stage where a state or federal government would like to fund the project, we've already identified one. So I'll take that away and progress it at other forums, but that's why it was in the plan. And I'll move on to the last point I'd like to make. I did wrestle with the proposal about the flood planning level, whether the paper recommends going to 19 metres.
Now, my first point of thinking about this is we cannot justify in the Hawkesbury having a lower flood planning level than the rest of the state. If the standard around the state is 1 in 100 plus half a metre freeboard, I don't think the highest risk area in New South Wales can have a lower standard than that. So I think it's untenable to do anything lower than 1 in 100 plus half a metre. I think we should adopt that. The other risk I identified and thought about, and this is different from what I put in my submission, is that because the larger floods have so much greater height here than elsewhere, 1 in 100 plus half a metre out west is probably equivalent to a 1 in 500 metre flood. Here it's less than a 1 in 200.
That's our difference. So I would suggest we require flood-compatible building materials up to the 1 in 200, but still allow development at 17.3 plus half a metre. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr Conolly, for that. Can you just—I'm interested in your point F, and I think—can you just repeat what, because the consultant has said suggestion F would not provide the expected benefits
Thank you. Thank you, Lord Mayor, councillors, council staff, for the opportunity to speak tonight on behalf of the university. My name is Michelle Lee. I am the Executive Director, Infrastructure Strategy and Planning for the university. We, and the opportunity really to address the council in relation to the draft study and plan under consideration. Our Hawkesbury campus plays a vital role in education, research and innovation within Western Sydney and for the local community. And our campus has been operating as an educational establishment since 1891 and predates much of the development of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River floodplain. We have an ongoing commitment to programs in agriculture, science and the environment and a focus on new areas of opportunity, including agri-technology.
The 2021 census identified education and training as the second largest industry in the Hawkesbury and accounting for almost 10% of all employment. And we make a significant contribution to employment to the local area. The university is concerned that measures recommended in the draft study restrict or prohibit opportunities for future programs and projects on the campus. And when I say would, they may restrict, given that this is a draft study, as well as the impact on current projects that we have underway. In our submission, which was prepared with an independent technical expert supporting us, we raised several concerns around the draft study. And our submission also highlighted that there were some areas of misalignment with Council strategies and plans, we believed, in our review of the draft study.
And they include the employment lands strategy, the local strategic planning statement, rural lands strategy, and both the net zero emissions and water efficiency strategy as well. These strategies identify the need for jobs and economic growth within the LGA, catalysed by the university and the RAAF base, along with other businesses and industry in the Hawkesbury. The university is concerned that the draft report does not adequately respond to the issues we raised in our submission and that there is no explicit consideration of the impacts to education and, by way of education, also employment uses. We echo some of the concerns raised by the Hawkesbury Business Group in their submission around a one-size-fits-all approach to flood management could inadvertently stifle businesses that can operate within flood-prone land, and that the plan must acknowledge and support these industries and their ability to be able to create strategies to balance flood mitigation and economic sustainability.
So, acknowledging that the university is progressing several catalytic projects currently, including the Agritech Precinct project, which has federal funding support and will deliver an advanced sustainable food system education and research hub, together with attracting industry and creating new jobs and economic activity for the local community, we have Stage 1 concept approval, which was approved by Council in November last year. However, the draft study will require that future development within the precinct must achieve a significantly higher flood level and floor level for development. So this impact also extends to other initiatives that are related. So, for example, the Circular Economy Hub, which is a partnership with Council and Sydney Water, in relation to what activities were envisaged could occur in the Agritech precinct, as well as other projects such as the Agri Culture Education Centre of Excellence that we're planning for on the campus with the Department of Education.
We believe that the campus play strategy that we developed in 2024 with input from community, industry and Council is at risk of not being able to be fully realised because of the implications of the flood study. So , in closing, our view is that there is insufficient detail in the draft study about the future flood planning controls and the implications that that might have. It makes it difficult for us to understand the totality of the impacts arising from those recommendations, and we acknowledge the importance of mitigating flood risk, and that it's a critical consideration for the local area, but we ask that economic and educational growth are factored into that consideration.
Thank you for coming along. I teach at the Ag STEM school next door to you, so I'm very sympathetic to your concerns. Because the attachments that Council has received anonymised many of the written submissions that we received, I can't tell whether you've expressed these concerns in the form of a written submission. Can you affirm that a written submission was made? Yeah, it's in there. All right then. So I might ask staff if they could point me towards the specific council officer response that was made relevant to that submission, because it's not identified by name. That's not a question for you. I just needed to clarify. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Michelle, for that. Is your main concern just about various things that are underway already, or just around the classification of some of those agritech or tertiary activities? Is it just a lack of detail you're mainly concerned about, which could be developed in a development control plan, or is there another issue in there that I'm not picking up in the submission?
Thank you for that question. We have thoroughly reviewed the draft study, and we've been looking at it in the context of current projects that we have underway that we're planning to deliver. So the agritech precinct is an example of that. We've also considered it in the context of the future directions for the campus in terms of the overall planning that we've undertaken and the potential impact that might have. In relation to how we might grow and further develop into the future. So for us, it's really about both of those considerations, current and future state for the campus, and perhaps, you know, whether there's an opportunity for a more nuanced approach in terms of consideration of that land use, education and employment by way of what we can do on our campus.
Thanks, Mr. Mayor. You might wonder why a Kurrajong resident would have too much interest in this discussion, but late last year I was asked by a number of friends and clients in Windsor and Richmond to review this draft study, probably because no one wants to read these things, 120-odd pages, to explain what it meant and then to make a submission with regard to a couple of the recommendations. So this draft study is based on the larger government, New South Wales Government Hawkesbury-Nepean River Flood Study 2024, which is detailed modelling of flood behaviour in the river corridor. That document sets out expected levels and flow rates for a full range of flood events for different locations.
For example, you can look up the projected level of a 1% average exceedance probability. That's quite a one in 100 event for Windsor, and you see that it remains unchanged from the 2019 study at 17.34 metres. This draft study before the council states as a given, this is interesting, that the current one in 200 level plus half a meter of freeboard will be the equivalent of a one in 100 flood level in 2030. So in other words, what they're saying is that a one in 100 flood event in Windsor, in five years' time, will have increased from 17.34 to 19.29. And it's recommending a change to the flood control level based on this given. I can see two clear problems with this. Firstly, that assumption is hardly credible.
There does not appear to be an evidence citation in the draft study for that claim, and I couldn't find an extrapolation like that in the source flood study of 2024. The second problem is that the flood control level moves with the main river study flood levels. So if your draft study is correct and the one in 100 level is increased by two metres in five years' time, so too presumably is the one in 200 level, then the recommended flood control level at Windsor finishes up at something like 21 metres. I think we possibly should have had this discussion before the last one, because your land at Wilberforce will be absolutely sunk if you adopt this new flood control level. They won't be building anything at Woodlands Avenue.
Anyway, I think it's important to understand that the flood control level that council adopts is the basis for determining flood hazard categories for individual properties. So this flood control level won't just be used by council. It's used by banks, insurers, valuers, surveyors, flood consultants, and property purchasers, obviously. So if you raise the flood control level by two metres now, and possibly four metres, if the baseline flood level changes as they predict, then you're putting thousands of properties into much higher flood hazard categories. The consequence of that is obviously destroying property value, making properties unsaleable, finance becomes an impossibility. A couple of my friends and associates who are small business people say the viability of their small business is based on the value of their property.
And then effectively this, particularly if you raise the flood level four metres, this basically blocks any sort of redevelopment, improvement, or change of use in the Macquarie towns. So I urge council not to adopt the recommendation to change the basis of the flood control level. Stick with the one in a hundred level, and then if the one in a hundred level moves, the flood control level moves with it. You don't need to get ahead of the curve on this one, I don't think. And I guess the final point I'd like to make is with regard to risk. If you're not familiar with the Hawkesbury flood-related development control plan of 2021, I can assure you that that upgraded development control plan is incredibly restrictive.
And then the other thing I'd like to comment on is that the draft report set out a table of stated benefits, but I think these are illusory. Changing the flood control level does nothing to protect the already developed townships, Windsor, Richmond, Pitt Town. Has no relevance in a catastrophic flood event, and changing the number doesn't change the risk. And to ex-Councillor Connolly's point, I think the big thing here is really beyond Council's remit, and it's evacuation planning Thank you very much.
Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe the staff have some wording that I would like to move as the recommendation for this evening, please, if they could put that on the board.
Councillor? I will do so, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Point one, that Council, point one, adopt the Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan 2025 to commence on the 11th of June 2025, except for the following options identified in the Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Plan: Part A, Option PM2, flood planning levels. Part B, Option PM3, revise Hawkesbury Local Environment Plan and Development Control Plan. Point two, a separate statutory process that will further consider the recommendations of the Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan 2025 in relation to options PM2 and PM3 be undertaken, with consideration of the land use planning work underway by the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority resulting in changes to the planning legislation and public consultation.
Now, if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about when I reference PM2 or PM3, please turn to page 53 of the business paper. And what I'm basically referring to is that tonight we adopt the study and plan, but for changing the flood planning levels to the one in 200, and but for revising the Hawkesbury LEP 2012 and development control plan,
While PM3 is important, PM2 is the one that I think needs emphasis. I haven't started speaking yet. I've just been moving the amendment and explaining it. That timer needs to stop. We'll readjust. I've got a lot more to say.
I was just explaining that what the amendment is essentially doing is adopting the plan, but for the 1 in 200 change to the flood planning level. When that's up, or now, let me know when you want me to start speaking.
Thank you, Councillor. Okay, so the reason I am moving this as the recommendation tonight is after discussion with some colleagues and obviously discussion with community members who are quite fearful about Council changing our 1 in 100 levels, which everyone knows based at Windsor is a 17.3 metre level, to the 1 in 200, which is a 19 metre level at Windsor plus a half a metre freeboard. And even just saying that sentence right now, I know that half the community who are listening to this are confused. And that's what we have to stop and eliminate in this process, is our community being confused. So the 17.3 metre one in 100 flood level that we're talking about is the current level for development planning controls, or flood planning levels, based on residential living.
The recommendation to raise that up to 19 metres, to me, would have a detrimental impact on our community. Those impacts are mentioned in the report. The concerns would be around basically an additional 1,823 properties identified in the report in the Hawkesbury possibly not being able to be insured, the values of those properties significantly decreasing, and those property owners having a potential inability to sell their properties. Now, there are other areas in the state that adopt the one in 200, but I don't think having a one in 200 measurement for all communities is the right measurement because every single community's one in 200 measurement is at different metres, based on different topography and based on a different landscape.
So I don't think that that is something that we can measure that by. I think it's important tonight that as a council, we tell our community we are not implementing the one in 200 because the fear is that the state government can always come over the top of us and implement it anyway. And our community needs to know that as locals who live in this area, this is not something that we would want to adopt. Now, I appreciate that the data in— I just want to actually say to the staff, first of all, that bit aside, the one in 200, this is an amazingly detailed plan. It has some really comprehensive data in it. That's why the rest of the plan, in my opinion, should be adopted. After eight floods in four years, this information and data is crucial to our community.
It also takes into account some of the information available from the New South Wales Government studies. What does bother me in adopting this now before the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority brings out the disaster adaptation plan, otherwise called the DAP, which is supposed to come out later this year. It does concern me a little that we're adopting this before we know what the DAP looks like, but I think we do just have to get on with it. As I said, it's a comprehensive amount of work in this plan. And what it does, for other people who don't understand, it's not just talking about flood levels or planning controls. It's talking about mitigation measures and mitigating that risk. And if I can emphasise that again, it's about mitigating the risk in the Hawkesbury.
There are modification measures mentioned in this report that are very important. There are three of them. One is a flood modification measure, the second is a property modification measure, and the third is a response modification measure. And those different measures list different ways to mitigate the flood risk in the Hawkesbury floodplain. Now, it does mention in there, and I'm very grateful that it mentions, that levees are a bad idea. Mr Minns, if you're listening, Premier Minns, levees are a bad idea. Take your option off the table and start listening to our community. I will re-emphasise here that the only data available in the past showed, especially under the Resilient Valley, Resilient Community study, that the mitigation option that would have the best result for our community is raising that damn wall.
And I know that it's off the table under this Labor state and federal government, but I will continue, and I know the mayor will with me as well, continue singing the praises of raising that damn wall. And I just flew over the Hoover Dam, was it last week in Arizona, and I can tell you now, if they can build a damn wall, we can goddamn build a damn wall here too to protect the Hawkesbury floodplain. I am sick and tired of hearing that. Protection of flora and fauna is more important above people and property, and I will continue saying that over and over and over again. I do not like that this report continuously refers to climate change impacts. That is something that we do not all agree on in this chamber.
It is not a science that I believe is factual. Our planet goes through cycles. You can have—oh, we want to claim bullying now, Councillor Wheeler or Councillor Lyons-Buckett . No, you didn't.
Mr Mayor, I'm going to say this one more time. Every time I raise their bad behaviour, you point at me. Please point at the source. I will continue with my speech.
I would like you to point out to Councillor McMahon that she, like the rest of us, is required to follow the code of meeting practice, and that includes speaking to the matter, not speaking directly or across the chamber to members of the council, and not repeatedly casting aspersions on those councillors, bringing us into disrepute, bullying and insulting us.
What I would like to do, Mr Mayor— Yes, I do. But Mr Mayor, I was speaking and I had some other councillor who I identified in the chamber and has admitted it make a noise like a two-year-old child during my speech.
Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. Let's put that on the record. I hope that my speech, my time was paused while that was— oh my gosh, the hypocrisy. I was just doing my speech until noises were made from the other side of the chamber that I called to account. Your time has expired,
Mr Mayor. Point of order. I agree with Councillor Wheeler that this standard of debate is not what the community expect, and I'm calling on you to enforce some decorum by bringing councillors who are out of line to heel.
We'll take this up after the meeting. I'm not going to discuss it here tonight. We achieved nothing by this. I'll speak to the two councillors involved after the meeting.
Middle of a speech. I know meeting practice. I know the code of conduct, Councillor. I'll take it up with you and the other councillor. That's right. And
Correct, because I was dealing with that. Anyway, the point is that's what I'm moving as the recommendation, as per the words on the board. Thank you, Mr Mayor .
Councillor Zambrogno. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I wish that people would not build or live on land that is at serious risk of flood. That concern goes all the way back to Governor Phillip. Governor Macquarie caused a proclamation adjuring people to cease this wilful and wayward habit of living on flood-prone land as early as 1810. But I'm really torn about this plan because I want to put the good work in this plan to work, but I can't ignore the effects on the 5,000 homeowners who have the misfortune of living on land that is below the current 1 in 100 level because they built there before those flood height controls even existed. A really good example would be a media report that I read from September of last year, where Malcolm Chew has a 10-acre property in the Hawkesbury District and then was told by his insurer that his premium rose 47.5% in one hit, and that he was being asked to pay $6,600 a year for flood insurance.
Further, that his insurer was disinterested in any mitigation measures that he had put into effect to try and mitigate that risk on his own property because the insurers really only rely on a dot on the map, and that's it. Many people have contacted me with similar stories. I note that in many of the public submissions to which we see the responses here, the staff response was, The management options identified will not change existing flood risk and therefore have no influence on property insurance or value. I think that statement's wrong. I think it's madness to think that this will not have an impact on people's property values or their insurance premiums. Of course, it doesn't change the actual risk, but the word risk entails a subjective assessment of what that risk is.
This does change our perception and definition of that risk, so it's not a tenable statement.
If you want proof, the Insurance Council of Australia gave a submission to a federal inquiry that was held between May and November last year into the impact of climate risk on insurance premiums and availability. One of the findings of that parliamentary inquiry said that insurance companies should be forced to disclose insurance premium calculations, including how mitigation measures affect prices. The way that insurers calculate risk and therefore premiums is opaque, and this inquiry discovered precisely that.
Furthermore, the fact sheet put out by the Insurance Council of Australia to discuss flood risk for a lay audience says that the way that insurers calculate that risk is by using the National Flood Insurance Database, which is not a public database. And furthermore, it's up to individual insurers to decide what criteria they use to determine flood risk, and it may include information from many sources, including local government flood mapping. The Insurance Council of Australia effectively says that they are looking keenly at what we say, and that it affects premiums, estimation of flood risk, and therefore has a knock-on effect to property value. This is the same organisation that opposed raising Warragamba Dam, which was still, provably, the only capital measure that would significantly mitigate flood risk.
The state government put out a media release prior to the last state election, saying that they would seek $225 million into the construction of levee at Peach Tree Creek, McGraths Hill and Pitt Town. It doesn't escape my attention that this comprehensive report scotches that idea, says it's a terrible idea, says on page 22 that it was the least favourable of all the proposed options, and on page 59 that a levee would need to be nine kilometres long, 14 metres high, to protect the townships of Windsor, Pitt Town, McGraths Hill and Wilberforce, and would create almost zero mitigation. Some properties would be slightly more protected, many properties that were not at flood risk would become at risk of flooding, and therefore that idea...
And of course, we now have a state and federal government that is disinterested in offering us any capital solution that will mitigate our risk. It's against that context that I feel quite torn about whether we should support this, with or without the carve-out that Councillor McMahon has suggested. So I'm going to be listening very carefully to the debate. I am undecided. Thank you, Councillor.
Councillor Veigel. Yeah, thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you, Councillor, for broaching the dam issue. I totally agree. Suggest to take a 2-in-1 into your 100 plus a 500 freeboard, and to say it won't impact personal value of property within the Hawkesbury is utterly wrong. It's already impacting premiums, as we all know, and it's been spoken about by many councils in this place, and the people who are listening are well aware of it. The Pitt and Flood, I think about '16, saw a massive increase in the premiums to people, and those increases were done very secretly. I know because it impacted my premium where I live, to the point where when I asked the question, why did it go up? Oh, we're taking the PMF level now to get insurance risk against you.
Based on what? Based on the further risk and a whole raft of other issues. So the further away you're from the 26 metre level, the more you pay. So it's interesting that I'm at 19.1 and they chose to double the premium. Until you go into a discussion with these people, you think that, oh, you're a loyal contributor with multiple policies, they're doing you a favour. Well, I can assure you they're not. And when you challenge them off it, they will bring it down. So for that point, I absolutely agree this is creating anxiety out there in the community.
Not to mention the value of the houses that I've mentioned, the red tape, and dare I say, what's government about? I always thought that government was of the people, by the people, for the people, isn't it? Part of that is to look after the people and to take care of them and protect them from, dare I say, any risk that may be there. So, I know we're a arm of government, and we do our very best with the lack of resource, dare I say, but this squarely falls on the state government and the federal government.
The state and the feds need to do one thing: protect the community. And by doing that, dare I say, is to mitigate that risk. And the only feasible way that I can see is cost effective is by increasing the dam wall to mitigate any loss within the Hawkesbury. And the economic loss is huge in the Hawkesbury if we have a very large flood, more so than five of the major catastrophes this country has seen probably in the last 60 years, including Cyclone Tracy, I think it was Cyclone Yasi, and the hailstorms in Sydney, dare I say.
That's one reason, but the other thing that we should be focusing on is the flood evacuation routes. It's very clear with Penrith Council discussions I've had just casually, they have a real problem if the flow of traffic needs to come through the Penrith area. They haven't got the road infrastructure nor do we. And I thank the speakers for raising the flood evacuation routes. They're inadequate. We seem to talk about a lot of flood evacuation in the state, and they never want to commit to the money or a very timely response to building that infrastructure. Dare I say that I'm glad they're doing something about Pitt Town after, what, how many years? Fifty years they've been talking about it, a new flood evacuation route just to save one.
So , dare I say, I'll be supporting this. Thank you. I totally disagree with raising the one in 200. I still suspect that the one in 100 will suffice. If anybody can tell me different, I think there's only one other flood after the 1867 level was probably at '61 it was 14.95, let's say 15 metres. I haven't seen anything go much further, so I can't see the reason by taking it up any further than 100. So, yeah, I'll be supporting this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Kotlash.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. I won't be supporting this motion. I mean, whilst this is a very complex study, and I agree with Councillor McMahon that it is very detailed and it has really got some really good data and some good recommendations in it. But one of the things that I'll concentrate on, the two areas that are in this motion to be excluded. And I just want to say that I think everybody's misconstruing what a planning level is. This— we have very few areas , levers, if you like, that we can pull in local government. This is our— determining a flood planning level is probably our biggest lever , our most effective lever. This is within our remit. My understanding that changing that flood planning level to the one in 200 would mean that— it wouldn't mean that the development couldn't occur.
It would mean that the development that needs to occur in that zone, and we've established that that's 1,800... Whatever 72 properties, that they have to build in such a way that mitigates the risk of flood. Now , the way I think about that is that if we stipulate that, those properties are not going to be worth less, they are going to be worth more because they have a higher level of protection because of what we have done. This is a planning tool that we should think very carefully about getting rid of. This is something that we can do to help our community. Put aside raising the dam wall, put aside all of the levy, all of that. This is on us now, and if we don't adopt this level, we are saying to our community, Don't worry, just, you know, you can build the way you always have.
No, that is just not good enough. We have to, as community leaders, say, No, we're going to take responsibility for this . I'm not going to feel that I'm causing angst in the community by doing this. If people are worried about this, I think they should understand that as a council, we have to look at the future. And I just think this is, I think we have to do this, and so nobody else has done it, let's lead on this. Let's take the opportunity to tell the state and federal governments that this is what we want for our community.
When we were talking about this in the briefing, there was some confusion, I think. I think I can say that. There was confusion about what it really meant for people that have already built in areas in the one in 100 level. They can still put in development applications and do different things, but they'll be encouraged to do so using what we have learnt from doing this study. Now , I know I'm talking in general terms because I don't want to get into the specifics of it. I don't think that we should take any notice of insurance prices. I think that's a furphy to scare everybody. I know lots of people that have ridiculously high insurance premiums. They live on a floodplain. They choose to live there.
They love it. They don't want to move because they love living so close to the river, and that's their choice. I mean, we have to kind of start to, I think, consider people's right to live where they want to. But on the other hand, we can guide our community in what we think is their best option to protect themselves from flood. Getting rid of PM3, the
Existing LEP, I think—no, that has to remain in there as well. Consistent terminology, updating our flood use planning constraints category, all of that should remain. I think this is a no-brainer. I won't be supporting the motion as it is. Done. That was pretty good timing. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. I'd just like to clarify a comment that you made, Councillor. The 1,800-odd homes that you spoke of are existing. There's only 181 in the area that we're talking about between 17.3 and 19.5. Oh
Thank you. I just meant that that was, yeah, about 1,800 properties that were in that zone. I didn't, I don't think I referred to them as being developed or undeveloped. Well, I didn't mean to. Thank you for that clarification.
Yeah. Well, just touching on that, they are there, and, like, I've been involved in floodplain structures, I suppose, since the early '90s. I mean the early '90s. The documentation we got, this document's a little bit different to the others because it relies a lot on climate change. The assertion that climate change is going to have a massive impact on us, and a lot of this and the reason is that they're speaking about, or proposing within the document to raise it to that 19.5. But we go around in circles with this. There's been three ESs done, and God knows how many studies. And pages have been rearranged from the first document, and different photographs put in there and the like. The bottom line is that nothing's changed.
We talk about levees. Well, you go build a levee, you know what happened up the coast. They protect people to a certain height, and when you have extreme weather conditions, which happens, you're in big trouble. Levees aren't a good option. Road improvements. When you look at what the state government do, and one of the councillors spoke about evacuation routes, if you want to have a look at what the state government's proposing, it comes right up to our boundary in Blacktown and right up to our boundary on the Northern Road and stops there. We can't get to evacuation routes. The only thing that's happening in relation, and it's only most recently, is Springwood Road and the bridges there are being proposed in some of the state, which will give us access out over the new proposed bridge at Grose Vale, over the Grose, and that'll be only to a one in a hundred.
Voluntary purchase. Very little of that happens anywhere, and it only happens if council does a study on the area to individually. It doesn't and can't happen under the proposal the state government's put forward.
In relation to house raising, same deal. All that happened back in the early 80s with the first EIS to come out. Liverpool was the only place that did it along the Georges River. There was house raising and buyback there. The house lifting in the Hawkesbury, none of it happened here. The houses you see in Wilberforce Flats were done individually and personally, and they were done well after that time. Flood proofing.
Anybody that lives on the floodplain is well aware of it, and besides council's conditions put on structures, they pretty well flood proof their buildings. And the examples of our buildings on the floodplain, mainly on the sporting grounds, is a good example. They're built out of brick and steel and concrete. You hose them out when you're finished, and it's in use for sure. But the jibrock down there, there isn't any and has never been. Flood awareness. I don't know how you convince people. But the last week, I suppose, if anyone's had the time to sit in front of a TV, we've been blasted with the proposed bad weather in Queensland. And it was bad for a few, but it was nothing like what was predicted, and that's something else we need to be cautious of, that if we do that too often, when we want people to do something, they won't do it.
Evacuation plan. That's the only thing we've got left here. The raise Warragamba is something that I've been pushing all my life, and it irks me when the government expects us to toe the line in relation to what's proposed here when they're not prepared to. All the houses that we're talking about that will be affected by raising a level as proposed, not in the motion but in the document, is existing. So it's a problem.
Warragamba would deplete water Windsor by a metre. There's been talk that I proposed about a causeway between Wulbur Force and Sackville. It increases the water level downstream by 600 mil. That's not good, but it depletes Windsor by a metre. So if you've got four to five metres out of Warragamba on a one in 100, plus a metre, that's five metres, and possibly six. Our flood level is 17.3. Take six metres off that, and it's down below all the floods we've had recently.
Hilarious. Mr Mayor, I apologise to Councillor McMahon for scoffing, but when someone makes a statement that climate change is a science with no facts, I have trouble. It is what you said. I wrote it down. Point
It doesn't matter what a councillor's justification is if she doesn't believe something another councillor said. It is not an excuse for making a sound like an animal or a child
First of all, I will foreshadow a motion, should this one fail, in which I would move the recommendation in the business paper, including former Councillor Conolly's point, which everyone else has failed to include, which is around point F of including that. So I would include that because I think that's a valid point. This motion tonight I am opposing. It has echoes of when we adopted the 2012 award-winning flood study, which we adopted—well, I didn't; the Council adopted at the time—without the chapter on planning controls. And that took another six years until we actually got any planning controls in there. Planning controls do not stop development. As Councillor Cotter just articulated well, they allow us to control how we get better development, how we build resilience in what is a floodplain that we all know we have very vulnerable people.
I think when we're looking at this study, to have adopted it in its entirety doesn't change the flood planning level in itself. It requires us to move on to make a DCP, which would then be out for public consultation, which can then look at the sorts of controls, particularly the things about how we can increase resilience in those buildings that are being built. We also know it doesn't impact anybody who's already at that level from renovating and extending their building. I sent a series of questions to the staff, which they answered and it clearly clarified all of those points, which were sent to all councillors. So there has been quite a bit of scaremongering going on when people go around saying your land value will go down, et cetera, your insurance will go up, because we know the insurance will skyrocket after this latest event up in Queensland.
Queensland again, and it'll go up for everybody, as it did after the Brisbane floods, as it does after every natural disaster. Those of us who live in flood-prone areas also pay high insurance. That is a problem with the insurance system . It is not a problem with the flood planning level. And the flood planning level is different from the flood height level. They're two particularly different things, and yet they get intertwined. And I think really what we need is a community education campaign to people to understand what we're trying to do here. You know, we can be on the side of the people now who want to make a difference, who want to increase resilience within our community, and who want to, you know, make this a safer place.
Because we know from the flood inquiry, we know from various flood conferences, and I've attended every flood conference for over, for probably the last 12 years, I think, and we know the only two ways to protect life are to stop putting people in the floodplain and to be able to get the people who live there now out. They're the only two things we can really do. So we need to be working on the evacuation routes, and I thank Mr. Conolly for raising those and specifying some in there, which gives us more clarity around which ones local people think really need to be addressed. And we know that the SES has also been working on that.
We're missing an opportunity if we don't introduce this. This isn't, we could wait for the reconstruction authority and for that flood study. It's quite likely it's going to impose a one in 200 level anyway. But we have this as a decision. It's our decision to make a DCP in which we really put some good controls into place. I think that, you know, we know insurance is done on the actual risk to any individual property, and that's based on a number of things. It's around whether, what, you know, what materials the house is constructed of. It's around the position of the house on a block of land. It is not done by flood planning level. It's often done by postcode, and I think that that's where, you know, the insurance industry should be called to account on many things it does, but that's certainly one of them.
If we leave things as they are, we're just, we're really missing an opportunity, and we can't come in here and say we're all about protecting people and saving lives if we're not prepared to implement something that will do just that. I mean, if we're not prepared to make new development in that area stronger and more resilient to flooding, then we're not doing our job.
As to house values, house values are not determined on a flood planning level. We know many things determine a house value, and a lot of that is to do with the, you know, the value of the actual house. But changing a flood planning level is a tool. It's not something that is going to— if our people could understand that, and it's not helped by various people going out into the community and giving this misinformation and fuelling this notion that it's a really bad thing. By not adopting clause 5.22, which is an optional clause in to the LEP, that leaves us with the flexibility about what sort of, you know, we can have some flexibility around development that we're having, and we're not including that at this stage.
The clause 5.21, which is a mandatory clause, deals with a lot of issues around the planning controls anyway, and we have to include that. So leaving that out means that we've got some flexibility. When people are rebuilding or redeveloping their property, if they fall in that new zone, and as you've just alluded to, Mr Mayor, there's only 181 lots that are subjected to any new development within that area. So those lots, if they were to be developed, it doesn't mean they can't be developed. It just means they will have to be developed in accordance with the latest practices of securing them to be flood resilient, whether that's the materials, whether it's the height, and for anyone who saw the 7.30 report last night, you'd see up in the Northern Rivers the advantages of the people who've opted into the house raising.
And the difference between the people who had their house built up as opposed to the people who didn't take that option up. So there's many ways we can mitigate, but we most certainly must fulfil our obligations by doing everything we can to make our people safer, and most certainly to educate people within our community. And we cannot ignore climate change, Mr Mayor. It is a part of life, and whether people believe the science or not, I most certainly do, and I think a very high proportion of the community do, and we know things are changing. And in the interim, when we didn't adopt the previous planning controls, we were just lucky that wasn't a time when we had— Are you doing something at me?
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I listened quite intently to everything that's been said, and especially when we did our workshop the other day, and the host there said that this is a prediction from good science in relation to the raising, raising the level and the probability of our floods increasing in volume and height. He went on to say that, you know, for every one degree our temperature rises gives us 7% more moisture in our environment that's most likely will be stored in ground, in the ground, and that is not good for flooding because that increases the runoff and increases it greatly. And he also said that we've got to be prepared that there'll be a 22 millimetre— A year rise in the predicted flood heights.
So we must take all that into consideration. And to me, this has to be a turning point in which way we deal with flooding. The levees, they give people false hope. The suggestion that we put a drainage thing through Currency Creek and all that, they've already ruled that out, that it's just too expensive for what happens, and it has some impact on people downstairs, down river. We have a duty of care for our people here in the Hawkesbury to produce, to give them the opportunity to build their homes and not be impacted by flooding. I can understand that there are people that are already in these areas, and I've lived on the floodplain all my life. I've seen people and what they've gone through, and I've seen lives lost due to flooding.
We have that duty of care to make sure that we do not inflict this on our people. I take on board that Mr. Conolly, in relation to his flood evacuation routes, we need to get an Australian standard of what a flood evacuation route should be, even for evacuation for bushfires. The width, the road signs, and everything that involves in that, and a regular audit of these flood evacuation routes so that they can be kept fit for purpose.
And council needs to get onto this because we are fooling with people's lives, and I would put lives over— people's value of their property every day of the week. And this is where I'm coming from. I will not support the lowering of this level in this report. I'm quite happy to see it go to 19.3 metres because we've taken steps over the years. We've gone from 15.3 to 16.3 to 17.3. Now we're taking the double step to go up. Over those years living in the Hawkesbury, I really haven't seen much value lost on homes with insurance. I made some inquiries myself because I have been impacted by this, and I've been told quite bluntly that there is a whole range of issues that insurance companies take
Into consideration when they are setting the premiums, and my premiums living at Pitt Town have gone up quite a deal. So I'm fully in support of moving this up to the 19.3 with the freeboard on top of it for future members of our community. And I don't want to see this have to go in steps and steps and steps, and we need to control our development so our future community is safe and know that we have done a great job in the period we've had now. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. A couple of questions. First, please, could I have some idea from the staff what the separate statutory process that we further consider the recommendations that's listed in point two would entail?
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
So the first key part of that will obviously be to see what the outcome of the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority's work is in regard to the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. And then from that would be to then develop the either LEP or, particularly, development control plan provisions that are reflective of that, which in turn would then have to go through a public process in terms of bringing to Council for consideration and then out to public exhibition.
But we would still have to prepare changes to the LEP and DCP if we adopted the management plan that's before us now. Sorry, the flood study that's before us now.
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
So, yeah, in terms of the flood risk management study and plan, the recommendation would be to prepare DCP provisions based on the raised flood planning level being the one in 200 plus the 500 millimetre freeboard. So, yeah, new development control plan provisions would be required to enact that, yeah.
And that's, and would be doing that this year, or we'd be doing that with the input of the stuff from the Reconstruction Management, the Reconstruction Authority anyway .
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
Well, no, if it went through as per the plan here, Council would be undertaking that work itself. I guess the point in point two here is to await the outcome of the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority's process.
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
Well, it will depend on what the actual outcome of the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority process is. They may actually introduce a SEP or which one overrides Council's planning documentation. Yeah, so we've got to see what the outcome of that process is.
Thanks. And an additional question, which I think Councillor Lyons-Buckett has largely answered for me. Mr Connolly's suggestions regarding the evacuation routes at F and the for Bligh Park and South Windsor and Wallsend Road for McGrath's Hill are not covered by this motion. Is that correct?
That's correct. Thank you. I'll speak against the motion. Firstly, I want to say that I think Mr Connolly's points are particularly relevant in this instance. It's really, as we've already heard, it's vital that these evacuation routes are improved. We talk a lot about west of the river and the need for and getting people west of the river across the river during times of flood. But the real danger, the real need to get people to high ground and safety is actually in McGrath's Hill, South Windsor, Pitt Town and Bligh Park. And we ignore those areas at our peril because we have already packed people in there below the one in 100 flood level and well below the recommended level here of the one in 200 plus freeboard.
And I think that has to be front of mind in all of our decision making. Some of the points that have been raised, one in 200 is a risk. It's not a fixed height. At this point, it's a height based on a recommendation that's coming to us from a flood study. But it's not a height that exists across New South Wales. It's a risk that we're working across. Insurance values , insurance is calculated not on council planning values. If it was, then insurance rates—sorry, insurance premiums—wouldn't have gone up yet, because we haven't changed anything. The Hawkesbury-Nepean flood study caused a sharp jump in when that risk was clearly articulated and the insurance companies jumped on the back of that.
The floods in Queensland caused a sharp rise. The floods that we have had here have caused a sharp rise. I know we have this sharp rise because I live just above the flood level and I have to pay it.
Insurers are quite capable of assessing risk without a planning height. They push up premiums because they don't want to take the risk of insuring properties. When you get an insurance quote of $30,000, that's an ambit claim by the insurance company that is designed to stop you from paying the premium. They don't want to insure you. Don't think that any tweaking on your part will pull that insurance premium down. It won't. This isn't about raising the flood planning height. It isn't just about raising the flood planning height. There's excellent information in this document about retrofitting for homes to be more flood resilient and for infrastructure to be more flood resilient, and I hope that everyone reads that and takes notice of it, particularly those that are planning to build, including the University of Western Sydney.
But the focus of our discussion here and the sticking point is the flood planning level. There is no changes. There are no changes to existing land use zones. Council isn't zoning anything as flood affected. It doesn't mean that development is prohibited. We aren't sterilising land. We are simply increasing the habitable floor height. That will require a new chapter of the DCP, which will have to be exhibited and adopted before it takes effect. Everybody will still get to comment. We will still get to debate it. You'll still be able to extend or modify your house, but you'll need to build a higher floor. It's about protecting people and their biggest investment, their home. There are 181 properties sitting below the proposed level.
That's not a ghost town. There's 1,642 properties that will still be habitable and extendable with dwellings on them already. Value of property is determined by the market, not by a planning height, and people will continue to buy those properties and spend a lot of money on them. The flood planning level is exactly that, a planning requirement. It doesn't alter the likelihood, the height, the velocity or frequency of flooding. Councils are not God. We're not nature. We don't control the weather or the tides. If you're telling people that council determines flood risk and therefore insurance costs, you are overestimating council's role and misrepresenting our influence. Insurance companies don't use our flood risk.
They use their own measure of risk. And in the event of an incident, prices rise. Australia's public policy has focused on personal responsibility. We've shifted the risk from governments to individuals. Governor Macquarie in 1810 said that ordered colonists to change their behaviour, wilful and wayward habits. He said that anyone who built below the flood level was wilfully and obstinately blind to their true interests and undeserving of government help and protection. Now I think this edict should be directed at those with the power to make those planning decisions. Will we be wilfully and obstinately blind to the true interests of the people on the floodplain, or will we have the courage to answer what is fundamentally a moral question?
Thank you, Councillor. Just a question to the staff. There's a comment made by Michelle Lee from the university and Mr David Jones in relation to the likelihood of the same impost on buildings that is now below what's below 17.3 will have a similar effect in relation to building applications if it is moved to 19.5. Would the same impediments, for the want of a word, be sought in relation to development of that?
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
I understand the question correctly, I think. So, yeah, the proposed development controls we would formulate would basically be based on land use types. So, you know, what is the actual land use type? Obviously residential is significantly higher risk to life in particular. So it's formulated around land use types and whether the development is actually new or to existing development. So, if it's new development, then there's obviously a lot higher expectation that things. It can be designed to be, you know, at a certain level and to accommodate a number of factors. If it's existing development, then it would obviously be mindful of that existing situation, but improving that situation as much as possible. Okay
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
So under 17.3, the flood policy, I'll probably have to take that on notice in terms of the actual specifics of that, but, you know, there are provisions that allow for a certain square metreage of increased to additional floor space. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. Just a question to the Deputy Mayor. In relation to the comments that have been made around the floor and the comment that was made by Mr Conolly, would you be prepared to include F, which is the Colonial Drive Park turn left, it would be addition of F to the second paragraph on page 51?
I would be very happy to do so, Mr Mayor. Just turning to page 51 now. Would you like that to be a point three, because it is a separate point? Yeah, point
Yeah, that Council agrees to support road improvements, A, B, C, D, E and F as listed on page 51. I know the staff don't have that in front of them. It's actually—they actually aren't particularised, A, B, C, D, E and F either. They're just dot points.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. I would think that more stringent planning controls definitely have an increase in costs, I would have thought. But I feel that there is something a little not perfect about endorsing the study as it is. For years now, the community has been asking the state government to implement some sort of mitigation in the hopes that maybe slowing the inflow from the dam or maybe to speed up the outflow from the Hawkesbury, or even just to look at an earlier release of Warragamba, similar to what just happened with Queensland dams just last week. But conveniently there's little of sufficient substance from mitigation from the state government. I would have preferred that this report followed some sort of study of evacuation routes at the very least.
The report seems to lead in with a comment saying it was to investigate mitigation and came back with a recommendation where the impost lies with the average property owner. We constantly talk about affordable housing, yet every time we turn around there is a new impost on the homeowner. I understand that now 40% of the cost of building a home is regulatory. There's a fair bit of info in this report on costs, giving rise to the impression that the state government wants to look like supporting mitigation while shifting expense to the people. I have concerns around the perceived development changes, and the community will want to know exactly what this will look like. And I have concerns on the consideration of a rise of the flood planning level to 19 metres at Windsor, when we have only ever had one event since recorded history above 17 metres and only two events over 15 metres.
So I'm leaning towards supporting the amendment. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. Thank you to all the councillors for their contribution this evening with their different points of view. I appreciate that. What I have gathered from the debate tonight is that we pretty much do have a divided chamber on this point of whether we stay with the 1 in 100 flood planning level or we opt to change that to the 1 in 200 planning level. Obviously, the motion I put forward tonight is very clear on my point of view, and I thank those councillors who are willing to stand up for the fact that that flood planning level should not be changed. I do want to make a couple of other points during my right of reply, a contentious one, but I'm sure I can say it in silence, is that the fact that I do not support or believe in climate change is not something that I should be vilified, or any person who does not support or believe in climate change.
And it is referenced throughout this report. Therefore, it is relevant. Should not be vilified, attacked or bullied for expressing my opinion. That is the opinion that I hold, and I do not believe that climate change should be consistently referred to when we're talking about such issues, and I've made that clear before. It is certainly no surprise. I do want to go back to the point that what this report is reflecting on mostly is mitigating risk. I said that in my opening speech, and I reinforce that again. It is about mitigation. It is about risks. It is about discussing the consequences on our community. It is about calculating damages. Now, as I touched on before, my support for the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall has not changed.
To do so now is probably looking at about a $3 billion cost to do so. Yet each and every flood event we have, and we have had eight of them over the last few years here in the Hawkesbury, you are looking at a bill of between $1 to $2 to $3 billion per flood event when you are looking at paying people for the damage they have suffered, helping small businesses with the damage that they have incurred, and of course fixing the damaged infrastructure that local councils like us have to endure, such as bridges, roads, parks and sporting fields. So when you are talking about mitigation, you are also talking about decreasing economic cost, social cost, environmental costs. You are talking about all of that.
And I think that we need to be very cautious in what we do and don't support as a council moving forward, because even though it may not come from the ratepayers' purse, it is still coming from the taxpayers' purse. The other thing I do want to emphasise as well is the property modifications that are listed as part of the suite of three different modification measures in this report, which discuss voluntary purchase, house raising and flood proofing, all of which I do wholeheartedly support. Just because we say in this report that we will support it doesn't mean that they're funded. And I think we need to make it very clear to the community and anyone listening who may be living in a flood zone, the fact that this report may be adopted with those measures in place does not mean they're funded.
There is no way council can fund that, nor should we. It is not our core business, and we will need to be relying on New South Wales and the federal governments to support those property modification measures.
I'm concerned that tonight's debate will leave our community vulnerable in whatever way it is. There are a lot of people who have and are still suffering the traumatic effects of the flooding, whether they had their home or property or business personally impacted by the floods, or whether being cut off and losing employment time or being separated from loved ones had that traumatic impact on them. It is a very sensitive topic for our community. All 12 of us in our roles have been out and about helping people during these flood crises that we have endured. But it is exceptionally important that when we are presented with data like this, really comprehensive data, as I stressed previously in my opening remarks, that we adopt the parts that are relevant to adopt without hurting and harming the rest of our community.
I'm sorry, Councillor Kotlash, but to say that we cannot take notice of insurance premiums would fly in the face of every resident who's come crying to me that they can't afford the extra $30,000 to ensure their property for flood damage every single year. And that's not something that I'm prepared to do. I can see my time's about to expire. I therefore put the motion, and I thank councillors who are willing to support that. Thank you.
Councillor Brodle, Councillor Djuric, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Creed, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Regan. Councillor Dogramachi and Councillor Sheather, those against? Councillor Conlish, Councillor Lyons-Buckett and Councillor Wheeler. The motion is carried. Sorry, Councillor Ryan. Councillor Ryan, if I miss you, don't be afraid to speak out. Thanks for that. The motion is carried.
Look, I'll move the recommendation in the business paper, but with the alteration that before it goes on public exhibition— Sorry, I'll move the motion in the business paper with the addition that before it goes on public exhibition, the CSP be discussed with local Aboriginal groups to ensure that all, well, that'll do. And I'll make clear why I've asked for that shortly
What I'd like to know: who wrote the page where— Where it's referred to Bark gunyahs and people living in clans of 50, of 50 people . Where did that come from?
Right , because that seems to me to be an appallingly patronising and colonialist hot take on 40,000 years of Aboriginal history, and I can't support that.
Otherwise, I think this is actually a really good document. It's not particularly deep . It's , and I have to say that I have felt largely shut out from this process. We had a short discussion, or we had a workshop session with post-it notes, and we had a bit of a discussion again at our strategic planning weekend, and then we had a briefing when the document was effectively done and dusted. Not the same process that we've been involved in in CSPs previously. There's stuff in here I don't , that aren't what I would pick.
I think, for example, we've got sustainable environment and heritage and a thriving economy. I'd rather have a thriving economy and protected heritage and a sustainable... Sustainable economy . It's, I think we've got, for me, the focus is backward. There isn't mention of the community in those four big. It's a great place to live, and it's a great place. It's a thriving place to do business.
We are to infer that the community exists across that process. We're not tools of the economy. We are members of a community. And, while the language in the rest of the document, I think, largely supports that, I don't think that those headings leap out as saying that. There's, I'm deeply concerned about the representation of Aboriginal people in that timeline. Whitefellas get two pages. Forty thousand years gets less than an inch, and a really off 1975-ish comment about people living in bark gunyahs. I think we need to be a bit better than that. There's a much better statement, for example, on page 18. A much more respectful statement on page 18.
There's a bit of an otherness in some parts of the writing that I think could be easily fixed. For example, on page 16, regarding remote and outlying towns, they're referred to as these regions. These remote areas, far better our remote areas. This is our document as a community. Let's not talk about spaces and places in the abstract or as an other. They are all part. They are all an equal part of the Hawkesbury. So if that language could be changed, that I really would really appreciate that. The same as, you know, our, these natural assets, they are natural assets. They're the Hawkesbury's natural assets.
There's a pedantic point, the Windsor Bridge photo, mostly it's a photo of Windsor. It's not really a photo of Freeman's Reach. It says Windsor Bridge at Freeman's Reach. It's really Windsor Bridge at Windsor. For the bulk of the photo, I think there's a corner of Freeman's Reach in the picture. Great place to live. I'm not quite seeing where we're protecting our unique identity. I'd like to see that beefed up. I hope some of that comes back in some of the submissions . There's also a reference to the heartbeat under sustainable environment and heritage. Heartbeat's a word that's been used by council staff. It hasn't extended to use by elected councillors or the community. Let's call it what it is.
It's effectively a healthy catchment. I don't know if Councillor Kotlash wants to suggest a different word, but we're not talking. The river as the heartbeat I don't think is well enough explained to just be taken as a point. We're only mitigating and understanding our contributions in that section, and that's not really showing much leadership, I don't think. The economy section, not being that keen on the thriving economy title, I'm really pleased with the focus of that section, especially around placemaking and the circular economy. It's exactly where council should be pitching our input, so I thought that section was particularly good. And I'd like to see some mention of trust and transparency under leadership.
I think that's what the community and what we hear from the community that they're really looking for from us. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. Councillor , this is the Community Strategy Plan, and the comments reflect attitudes and comments from the community. And I’ll ask the staff to comment on it. We had a good response. When I read it, overall I thought the document was a good document, and I’m sure the community are glad the stance that you take in relation to the Aboriginal community and some of the other aspects you spoke of. I’m not sure that they weren’t those words that might have been spoken by them. My most recent experience with some of our community, that the words they choose to use as somewhat might have been offensive perhaps, for the want of a word, in the past, where they would prefer — the people I spoke to would prefer to use in everyday life as an experience and understanding of what life is and was.
But in saying that, I would ask the staff to just clarify some of those comments you made in relation to the words used and the documentation.
Thank you. If I can just clarify, you’re speaking with specific reference to Councillor Wheeler’s discussion with regards to Aboriginal history. We would need to take that on notice in terms of the source of the wording, but very happy to investigate further. I’ll also refer to Council’s corporate plan for further comment.
Just in terms of that timeline, that is as per the current adopted CSP as well. So that comment exists as an adopted CSP comment and was just pulled over into this draft with some editing.
I'd just like to say that a lot of work has been done on this Community Strategic Plan, and I was most impressed with the workshop I went to at Kurrajong, and you were also present, Mr Mayor. I think the community have made comments and they've been taken on board. I'm quite happy to move the recommendation.
Sorry, I just wanted to get clarification on Councillor Wheeler's second point. I'm sorry, I'm just not sure I understand the— so we're asking, prior to placing the DCSP on public exhibition, consult with the local First Nations people. In what regards? That's— I just wanted to clarify that, that's all. Sorry .
With regards to the language used in the document, really. There's one specific page. I get that it's being used in a current CSP. It's really not appropriate language in this day and age, and I would like— it's one of those, you know, if we're going to talk about Dharug people, we need to ask Dharug people how they want to be talked about. No,
Thank you. I just wanted to clarify what you actually meant because it just sort of says in the thing, I just thought it meant the entire thing. That's why I just thought I'd clarify. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. It's a difficult one, this one, because of course it is the community's plan. But given that we all represent the community, I agree with Councillor Wheeler. I don't think we've had as much input as in past times in the other strategic plans, in the sense that we bring a lot of different perspectives as well from the community. So I get that there's the straight up and down consultation with the community, but there are other areas of input. That being said, my biggest issue with a document like this, and I understand it's level being very high, you know, it's a high-level document, not a specific document, and it is a reflection of the community. But I just think there's a gaping hole in that it never actually addresses the balances that have to be made in this community.
So we make statements, and we've just seen an item here where there was a very divided chamber and obviously a divided community as well. And so when we have statements about increasing resilience and everything, all of that is open to interpretation because it's not something that's ever defined. There's no definitional analysis around any of that, and I find it really hard when the community has told us they want to preserve things or do things and the decisions we make are contrary to that. So I know I've said that before, and I'm saying it again because it's quite a beef of mine. But I don't think it addresses the fact that we have competing interests in many of those spheres that we talk about, or that the community talks about.
I don't think it's reflective of the challenges, perhaps, that the community has to face into the future as we see the transitions around us occurring. And it's nice to have it all positive and everything. I agree with that, and I know we need a document to move forward, but I just sort of get a little bit funny about it because I think, you know, we say it, it's there, it's a document, a decision comes out, it's not in line with that, and we're meant to explain it.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just a question. Just the language and the spelling, sorry, but are we landed on how Durrumbinsville? Because there's two different spellings in here and— Yeah, what is it? Are we going to go with the DYAR , DYARR, double IIN, or are we going to go back to Deerubbin Centre ? What is it?
Can somebody give me the lesson on what we're going to land on? Surely it's common. Yeah that's okay if it's two different things, just explain it to me.
Thank you through you, Mr Mayor. Certainly, if we're referencing the existing building, it will always be spelt as D-double-R-U , I-W-I-N. That was the current Aboriginal name, or spelling of the name for the river, the thinking at the time that that building was named. It's understood through regular engagement with our local Aboriginal community that the current spelling is the D-Y-A spelling that you just mentioned. I apologise, I'm unable to read it, so reference it, but yeah, thank you.
Which is different to how we've been spelling Deerubbin in the past. I've only seen it spelt this way most recently, but apparently it's the way that it's been interpreted and passed on to us.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm going to do my... Four-yearly blurb about biodiversity because on page 18, when we talk about our region, our environment, I often find that we use the term biodiversity kind of incorrectly. We've used it here. Look, biodiversity is every living thing: microbes in the soil, you know, bacteria, up to us, up to everything.
Waterborne critters and creatures, terrestrial plants, everything. But we describe it here almost as rugged sandstone cliffs, deep gorges and globally significant Wollomi pine. That isn't biodiversity. That's just describing a diverse habitat, and that's okay, but don't label it biodiversity because that's actually not what it is. And it's really hard to get this right, and whilst I'm being a bit critical, we just have to think about it. We've talked about the first term, rich natural landscapes. Okay, that's kind of could be misconstrued as biodiversity, and it talks about diverse ecosystems, connections to the land and water. That sort of talks about more First Nations people and their connection to country.
Okay. Then it jumps to biodiversity again, and it describes, it has here, the Blue Mountains, Yengo and Kattai National Parks further contribute to the region's ecological richness, providing critical habitat for native flora and fauna. Well, the flora and fauna are the biodiversity. I mean, we've flipped this. We talk about one thing and then talk about it again, like it's, so the concept is kind of lost. Then we flipped to waterways, heart of the Hawkesbury, and since Councillor Willer gave me permission to have a rabbit on about heart of the Hawkesbury, I think we should kind of talk about our waterways more in environmental terms. But in this terms, it sort of like talks about it in terms of economic landscape, which is unfortunate because it has in its own right much more to it in terms of the environment, which is the chapter.
We really aren't talking about turf farms, orchards, market gardens and livestock grazing. So I guess I wouldn't mind having a crack of rewriting that, but at this late stage, I guess we will let it go. But I just want everybody to think about biodiversity as it's not a— biodiversity doesn't equal the environment. Biodiversity is a measure of the richness of life in whatever region you specify. We have to remember that. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. That's my speech Just before we go on, this proposes to go out on public exhibition, and considering the discussion with some of the comments that need to be made, we have the ability to make those comments and the like. So I suggest that we might do that, taken on board there are concerns, and we've got time to do it. We are limited in relation to the time the council is supposed to get this out on public exhibition and presented within a— The first term of the first council. Councillor Creed. Okay,
Thank you. You sort of kind of touched on what I was just about to ask. So, just through council staff, through you, Mr Mayor, to the staff, what is the timeline that we have to have this out on exhibition and then adopted? General Manager.
I'll pass that through to Council's corporate planning coordinator. I think, in broad terms, council, if I can offer an opinion on the motion to consult with the local Aboriginal community, we'd be more than pleased to do that. What we'd like to be able to do is get the document out on exhibition, because we have a very tight and carefully sequenced plan where we have the delivery program and the operational plan and budget coming immediately after it.
Okay, that was my next question. If this motion was to get up, if you consulted with the First Nations people and they just asked you to change some of the language, does that need to come back to council before it goes on public exhibition, or can you just change the language and put it back out on exhibition without having to muck around and come back to a council meeting and then— yeah, do you know what I mean? Yeah
I think—sorry, through you, Mr Mayor, I think the intent would be that we would proceed out to public exhibition based off the amendments that we would have made in consultation with the Aboriginal community.
Okay, any further debate? We have a motion and an amendment before us. The amendment is the recommendation in the business paper. Moved by Councillor Reardon, and yeah, the amendment is the business paper. The motion is
The amendment is lost. Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett . Sorry, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Cree, Councillor Veigel, and Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor Durick. Sorry, Councillor Ryan, and Councillor Ryan. The amendment is lost. The motion is Councillor
Right of reply, I take it, Mr Mayor. Thank you. I think one of the reasons why we're sort of going around in circles a little bit here is that when we had a briefing on this, we didn't have a document in front of us. And I think it would have been much easier to thrash some of this stuff out in a briefing and make sure that we'd covered some of these bases and therefore give you less work. We've effectively given you six or eight submissions on the floor of the council chamber to now deal with. Had we had another bite at the cherry, I think this might have been easier. I understand the time pressure. I do thank the councillors for supporting this going to First Nations people. I think it's really important that we get the language right.
If we've had a CSP out for three years that has that sort of language in it, then we really need to tighten up some of our processes. Now we've got a working RAP committee, I think that should make things a little bit easier. But the better we work with that segment of the community, the easier it is for all of us going forward to work together on other projects and other things that benefit the Hawkesbury. There's much that's good in this document, I think. I'll be really interested in seeing what the community makes of it. I hope we get the engagement that we need. I know we've had some engagement already. It's one of those difficult, amorphous sort of documents that people don't really understand, and then it comes back for the next four years.
Everything that comes to council is measured against this document that looks like this pie-in-the-sky thinking that nobody really gets what it's actually for, and you can probably, you can, I guess a good CSP, you can say whatever you need it to. We've seen that plenty of times as well. You can pull out the clauses that appeal to you. But look, at the end of the day, you know, I think this is the document that we as Council get to write. We've got so little left for us to have any influence over that getting this right and having it as an articulation of what the community sees for happening for itself over the next decade is really, really important. Thanks.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Wheeler, seconded by Councillor Djuric.
That:
1. The Draft Community Strategic Plan - Our Hawkesbury 2045, attached as Attachment 1 to the report be approved for public exhibition and that Council give public notice of the exhibition for a minimum of 28 days, in accordance with Sections 402 and 406 of the Local Government Act 1993.
ORDINARY MEETING 10. REPORTS FOR DETERMINATION
Meeting Date:
11 March 2025
2. Prior to placing the Draft Community Strategic Plan on public exhibition Council consult with the local First Nations People.
I don't think it's necessary to say as much. It's all been said before. This is a very important conference where councillors from all over Australia gather to discuss. I think, in particular this year, it's going to be very interesting given whether there is a change of government or not. But regardless, it now has the addition of the National General Assembly on the final day, which is when the ministers attend and when councillors can ask questions directly of the ministers. And I think that's a really valuable reintroduction. We didn't have it for 10 years and then it was reintroduced, and I think that that's really important. I think that the more over the past few years, what I've noticed is that there's more and more issues that are so similar across the whole nation, whereas there used to be some quite distinct differences once.
But everybody now seems to be battling and grappling, and of course most of councils are grappling with the financial sustainability into the future of their council. So I'll move that, and I guess we nominate who wants to go once that's passed, I understand.
Sorry. Councillors, before the motion is put, the conference is a good conference to go to. Councillors who are interested in going, would you indicate by raising your hands.
Councillor Creed. So I just wanted to ask about the budget. So the budget balance of 30 March 2025 is $6,486. Does that not pretty much wipe the entire budget?
Yeah. Through you, if I may, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I don't know that that's going to be sufficient funds. What we'll probably do is do an internal adjustment out of the councillor training budget. That tends to have surplus funds available in it. We'll find the budget
It's unanimous. Those against? It's carried. Those in favour was Zamprogno, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett, Ryan, Djuric, McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Veigel, Regan, Dogramaci and Sheather.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I declare a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in this item. My son plays for the Hawkesbury Hawks, which has its home ground at Turnbull Oval, but there is no pecuniary interest in the matter. Thank you.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Veigel.
That:
1. Councillors Sheather, Lyons-Buckett, McMahon, Wheeler and Zamprogno be nominated, and staff as considered appropriate by the General Manager, to attend the 2025 National General Assembly of Local Government from Tuesday, 24 June 2025 to Friday, 27 June 2025.
2. After participating in the 2025 National General Assembly, delegates provide a written report to the General Manager detailing the proceedings and findings, as well as any other aspects of the Assembly relevant to Council business and/or the local community.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. I declare a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in this item. My son plays for the Hawkesbury Hawks, which has its home ground at Turnbull Oval, but there is no pecuniary interest in the matter. Thank you.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Kotlash, seconded by Councillor Reardon.
That Council:
1. Submit the Draft Plan of Management for North Richmond Park (Turnbull Oval), attached as Attachment 1 to the report, to the Minister for Crown Lands for review and endorsement ahead of placing the Draft Plan on public exhibition.
2. Endorse the Draft Plan of Management for North Richmond Park (Turnbull Oval) for the purpose of public exhibition.
3. Report the matter back to Council for consideration following public exhibition.
Thanks, Mr. Mantle. Just a few points that come out of this document. This is, I think, a really useful piece of work. I think it's useful for people to understand when they read this and comment on it that it's about litter, not about illegal dumping, and that that's a different matter. So all of those people who are going to come back at us and say that the tip's too expensive and we should pick up mattresses for free, and I notice that that's yet another topic of discussion on Facebook today, and that we should have ten free council pick-ups every year. This isn't about that. This is about picking up your stuff and taking it all the way to the garbage bin, or taking it back home with you.
The visual litter has really increased across the Hawkesbury, and I think that's really sad. It's really evident at the entrances to the LGA as you come into town. Much of it is takeaway food containers and wrappers and things. All those calories and people still don't have the energy to make it all the way to the bin. There's still cigarette butts, which I just can't get my head around, the idea that when you have finished with something, you just pitch it out of your car window. I'll never understand that mindset. There's still cans and water bottles, despite the container deposit legislation. But the thing that seems to be on the rise that I find really concerning is the incidence of balloons and plastic party waste, particularly near our river and waterways.
We spend a lot of ratepayers' money maintaining these areas, and we're trying to spend a lot of both, particularly the state government's money, on making some of these places better. And it just disgusts me, frankly, that people come and use these areas and they think that it's fine to leave all their stuff behind. Clean up after yourselves, people. We know that we in our LGA generate this waste. It's not outsiders. We can't blame people coming in from the Hills and Blacktown like we did before COVID. COVID taught us that this rubbish is generated inside our own LGA. We've got community groups doing some fantastic stuff. You know, I attended Clean Up Australia Day with Hen, and Navua was surprisingly clean, actually.
I think we only found one fish hook and one bag of rubbish, and much of that was cardboard that would have just deteriorated with time anyway. So that was a really good outcome for Navua. Not so South Creek and the area near Fitzroy Bridge. There's several ute loads of stuff were hauled out of that area. The Girl Guides did a whole lot of work, and so did the local community in Bligh Park. And I'd really like to commend those groups of people for their care for the environment and for the Hawkesbury. I think there's some additional stuff that we need to be aware of, though, that comes out of this. We need more and better bins. We need to look at either compacting bins, as Councillor Lyons-Buckett suggested about eight years ago, and particularly as we get more and more people coming to our recreation areas on weekends, we need to make sure that our bin emptying cycles keep up with the usage.
We need a quick clean-up focus, and we need to put some resources behind that because litter begets litter. If people think that it's okay to chuck their stuff out of the car window as they go past because somebody's already done it, then more people will do that. But above all else, we need pride in the LGA. We need people to really associate their actions with keeping the— I don't know, they sound a bit twee and naff, you know, that tidy towns and keep Australia beautiful, keep the Hawkesbury beautiful, but these are real commitments to the place where we live. Your mother isn't coming to clean up after you, and frankly, council shouldn't have to come and clean up after you either. Clean up after yourself.
It's not very hard. It's the grown-up responsible thing to do.
Any further discussion? Just a question through you, please. How many fines do we issue for littering in the LGA? And have you got a number? That's a good one. I see the number as in how much do we get
I will ask the Manager Resource Recovery. I suspect the number issued by our council staff is very low, if not nil. There was a question around potential penalty notices issued by the EPA, but I might just get the Manager Resource Recovery to fact check me there.
Yes, that's correct. So as far as I'm aware, we don't tend to issue a lot of litter fines. However, the EPA does allow the report online. However, that is just associated with vehicles, so that is dealt directly through the EPA, where you see someone through the vehicle. You can actually record their number plate and then put that through that way, but we wouldn't have the stats from that.
Correct. May I ask— sorry— can I ask an additional follow-up question? So, chucking litter out of windows, I mean, I'd like people to be fined for that, but I fully understand we do not have anything like the resource to do that. But are you also suggesting that illegal dumping is never brought to account? Well, all right then. So, okay, so this is different, but I'd still like to know whether, in the cases of illegal dumping, whether fines are issued within our LGA.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I think I'm really pleased to see this happening, and I acknowledge the good work being done at West Rock, Councillor Kotlash and the general manager and I were at the recent West Rock meeting, and we had a presentation on what I guess is really the regional sort of strategy around it, and it was some really good work. Of course, this is allowing us to have a local plan, and that's exactly what we need. I would really like to see a big emphasis on the riverway. I see that it's on the riverways, it's not a big percentage when you look at the figures for the litter, but I think there's a lot of hidden litter in waterways that we may not, we don't see, particularly away from the major waterways.
So sometimes I'm near a little creek or something, and there's often far too much litter, and it's washing down from people. Often people in more rural areas are disposing of their own rubbish on their own property, and it gets into a waterway. I think having adequate bins in the right locations—there's a few locations I've asked for bins for, and I'm still hopeful about that—and of course the compacting bins is my thing. I would really love to see one day all that being compacted and done away with. But I'm really looking forward to this going out on public exhibition. I do think litter is something that people actually are quite mindful of and they care about. And of course we're quite fortunate in this area to have a number of people who take it upon themselves to actually go out and pick up a lot of litter.
Councillor Wheeler and I used to do that, and we must again. So thank you for the comprehensive report and the strategy. It'll be interesting to see what feedback we get.
Thank you, Mr Mayor, and yeah, thanks to the staff for this report. It's great, really, really love it. And I'm going to take this opportunity to ask for a sneaky look at possible sub-catchments that might be able to be mapped, and actually give us a bit of an idea about why we get so much litter to the river. And I know the Director of Infrastructure is grinning at me, but this might be an opportunity just to use a couple of our smaller sub-catchments in the river to actually find out, like, do we have gross pollutant traps on these catchments? Do we have adequate bins within these catchments? Are there lots of parks? Are there dog-walking parks? Are there off- you know, like, just characterise the catchment.
And then, you know, you get an idea of, well, there's 20 birthday parties a year on, you know, in somewhere in that catchment. And then we can come to sort of- and that data is always useful about how we target . But this is brilliant stuff, and it's such a good way forward. So, you know, I'm not going to stop talking about my sub-catchments. I'm going to get my sub-catchment mapped. And under this plan, it might be possible. Thank you. Sorry, I'm being persnickety.
Yeah, thanks, Councillor. Yeah, someone needs to read this about a case order at my place, usually Thursday nights. Someone who goes to Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you want to see- The results of poor catchment—well, the catchments are certainly doing good jobs, but what they catch. There's work been done at Colby Park in Bismark Street. There's an open drain, a fenced open drain that runs probably 150 metres down into the China ponds. And over the last decade, there's over a metre and a half, the full length of it, and collected by reeds in it, all sorts of debris that's come out of McGrath Hill alone. And we've got a—what do you call them
A gross pollution trap there as well. So it is concerned because we've been talking about cleaning our drains and waterways out. That will cause problems in relation to litter entering the river. So there's a few things that we need to do to get this right.
Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just very quickly, I think it's worth mentioning that one of the things that COVID gave us was an undoing of a whole lot of the really good work that had been done on single-use plastics. And we're now seeing that again in our—you know, we went for all of that work on, you know, keep cups and that Green Cafes initiative where people brought their own mug, or they used a reusable mug that they could return down the track or whatever at local responsible cafes. I think the program was that HEN was involved with. That was all undone by this need to, quite rightly, to switch to, again. stopping infection spread, but we're now back at a point where we're back to single-use plastics and things that ostensibly look like they're recyclable but actually aren't, and they're certainly not biodegradable.
So when they end up in the environment, things like coffee cups, they've still got a lining of plastic. They still end up in the gullet of something that lives in that system, or they end up in a thousand tiny pieces of plastic as they slowly decay. Polystyrene's another big one that fits that bill. You know, the big chunks disperse, but it ends up as very small microparticle pollution. I'd love us to do some more work on those gross pollutant traps, and also on some of the natural water slowing and debris catching methodology where we slow the water and pull the debris out that's in it. You know, some of that will just biodegrade, but some of that will be plastic and litter and cigarette butts and stuff that we could then clean through and stop it going into our waterways because they do clog up.
You know, all of this plastic and garbage clogs up our drains and we end up having to remove them anyway. So this isn't just about aesthetics. Another thing that I'd like to see us consider is putting some signs on drains in our towns. It's quite commonly used, was used all along the Duck Creek catchment when I lived at Granville, where it was just a stencil. We could get made in-house, and someone went along with a can of spray paint, and just about everything you put in this drain ends up in Duck Creek. You know, everything you put down this drain ends up in the Hawkesbury. Just enough to make some people stop and think twice. You know, the same as those campaigns about people pegging their cigarette butts out of the windows and causing bushfires.
You know, some of this is just awareness and making people stop and think and act more responsibly. So I think this is a really good start. I think we've got a lot of work to do. Thanks.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Wheeler, seconded by Councillor Lyons-Buckett.
That Council:
1. Endorse the Draft Hawkesbury Litter Prevention Plan, included as Attachment 1 to this report, for the purpose of public exhibition for a period of at least 28 days.
2. At the expiration of the public exhibition period, the following action be taken:
- a) Should any submissions be received regarding the Draft Hawkesbury Litter Prevention Plan, a further report be submitted to Council, or
- b) Should no submissions be received, Council adopt the Draft Hawkesbury Litter Prevention Plan, attached as Attachment 1 to this report.
I need to raise something, but I do not suggest that it's anything other than crossed wires. I wrote to you on Tuesday the 18th of February and copied staff in, stating that I wanted a question with notice placed on notice so that it could be reported in this business paper. You intercepted me saying, Oh, it's about the new LEP. We're about to have a briefing on that question. You may have thought that that obviated the need for this to be a question on notice. I wanted it to be a question on notice because it's well and good for us to receive a private briefing about
Councillors, that was the case, and what Councillor Zamprogno indicated I thought would resolve that, and he's not satisfied. Councillors prepared to accept his request to have that addressed this evening? Well, if you put it in.
No, no, no. I'm not suggesting we debate it. I just suggested that I'd put some questions that I'd like to be included in the public business paper so that the public can read those answers. Can it be addressed at the next? Yes, it can. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. On page 97, there is a reference to Origin Energy and an annual estimated cost of $17,000. Through you, Mr Mayor, is it going to cost us 17 grand a year to run those gas lamps?
Mr Mayor, if one was to go to Origin Energy webpage, they would see that they charge $33 per gigajoule for gas. $17,000 divided by $33 equals a gas consumption of 515 gigajoules. If one was to then go to the page 16 of the National Greenhouse Accounts Factors of the DCCEEW, page 16 shows that one gigajoule of gas consumption creates 51 kilograms of CO2. So 515 gigajoules times 51 kilos equals 26 tonnes, not 3,600. Now, if I've made a mistake in my calculations, I'm happy to sit down with staff and they can show me where I've gone wrong. But in the absence of this happening, I'm hoping that any future reference to CO2 production from the gas lamps might reflect a figure much closer to 26 tonnes rather than the overstated estimate.
Through you, Mr Mayor, the calculation of the emissions was from the Origin Energy bill, so that's reverse engineered, I suppose, from what Origin are telling us in terms of the emissions per megajoule of gas consumed.
Any further? Councillor Creed. Sorry, just in regards to the bottom part of Councillor Lajurek's question, can Council be provided with the specific breakdown? I think we actually, you actually asked, can we actually see the gas bills at the last meeting. Is that still possible or not, given that what the Director has just said? I'm having trouble hearing you, Councillor. So, Councillor Lajurek's second question, can Council be provided, I think the actual specific question was, can councillors actually see the gas bills of what the gas lamps are actually seeing? Can we still get that? And I think the General Manager said, yeah, we can work that out.
No, I never committed to that, Councillor. What I'm happy to send you, all councillors, the most recent bill, but paints a much, much worse picture than what you've got in your business paper today, because what the bill that we received was a six-monthly bill that was awfully difficult, and the reason why the Director of Infrastructure Services staff had to go out and read their own meter and do a whole lot of work with Origin Energy to extrapolate it. So, in effect, the reason why we haven't provided you the bill is it's actually meaningless
Mr. Mayor, the only reason I bring it up is that the figures are hundreds of times overstated from manufacturers' specs to what these gas lamps were designed to run at, and I would think impossible, but— Who knows?
I ask a follow-up question for clarification? Yes. When we talk about tonnes of CO2 and the consumption of the gas lamps, Origin Energy make their calculations based on the CO2 from a widget of gas, not the gas lamps. So that's, I think we're talking cross purposes, and we have to, yeah, and we have to get that sorted out because I don't like this sort of misinformation. And if the staff say the gas bill is rubbish, it's rubbish. I think we have to take that on good faith.
Mr Mayor, can I just add to that that we need to be cognisant of the fact that we're talking about CO2 equivalent, not CO2 directly. This is not carbon that's being burnt, it's methane. Methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years. So it's, and its carbon equivalent is four times that of CO2, just based on its chemical formula. That's where science is important, and it's not interested in what you believe. I'm still waiting for a response to how much it cost to get the gas lamps working, and where that money came from, if it didn't come from the livability project. Could we revisit that, please?
Thank you, Mr Mayor. In regards to item 15.3.1 regarding the proposed sale of a closed road adjoining 112 Horans Lane, Grose Vale, whilst in closed session the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Creed, seconded by Councillor Kotlash, that Council approve the sale of Lot 21 in Deposited Plan 1301274, being the closed road adjoining 112 Horans Lane, Grose Vale, which comprises an area of 4,440 square metres, as shown in Attachment 1 to this report, to John Mahaffy and Peter Young in the amount detailed in the report. For the motion were Councillors Zamprogno, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett, Ryan, Djuric, McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Vargel, Reardon, Dogramaci and Sheather. Did we have to reconfirm that again? Nope.
