Public Forum

Thank you, Councillors.

Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Dharug people as traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders past and present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of the country. General Manager.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Members of the public attending the public forum this evening are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I’d like to advise that in accordance with clauses 4.2 and 5.3.4 of the Code of Meeting Practice, public forums 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 public forum. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the public forum.

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Finally, it is also requested that if you’ve got your mobile phone on you this evening, can you please either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you.

Tonight, there’s been some changes to the Local Government Act. To allow speakers from the gallery to speak on matters not only before Council, but matters that they may wish to bring to the attention of Council. It'll be concluded over an hour, with no extensions of time. From time to time, the time allows for five minutes for 12 speakers. That's probably not going to be practical if it ever happens, but the standard needs to be set and firm. If someone speaking or addressing Council expects or directs questions to be asked, that they should limit that time to three minutes. Excuse me. The five minutes, any overtime extension, even moving away from the speaker, would intrude into someone else's time.

So it's pretty important that there's respect and understanding that the time is allocated for five minutes, and that's all it is. So tonight we've only got one speaker, which is to speak on a matter. It's the provision of sport fields for Junior Rugby League, Michael Pullen. Michael, if you address Council here, and you do have five minutes. If you wish questions, bullet short.

Yeah

Thank you very much. Well, I said before, as I wasn't nervous, but I probably am a little bit now. I feel very honoured to be the first person to speak in front of you guys, in this format, so I will continue. I just want to say I am the CEO of Windsor Leagues Club. I've been so for two years, a little over two years now. I've been in the industry for 30 years, senior management for 25 years. I've worked in very big clubs, most of them sporting clubs. The thing I want to bring to your attention now here is that whilst I've worked in a lot of big clubs, I'm now working in a small club. Windsor Leagues is 5,000 members, 5,000 to 7,000 members, but we're punching well above our weight in the sporting community.

We are the third largest, I think, the third largest football area in the world. That's probably things probably most of us wouldn't know. And that's, for us to do that, would be the third biggest in the world. We've grown, you know, so much. We've grown 100% in the last five years by focusing on our juniors. And what's happened is basically, whilst we are growing at this great rate, financially it's quite a burden, really, to be honest, and it's unfortunate. It's ironic because we're there to do everything and we do the best we can for our community, and it's actually costing us. We lose $300,000 from football to do what we want, which is what our charter is, to promote rugby league, which is what we're doing and we're growing.

And, you know, we were kids. Long story short, we don't have enough fields, guys. You know, we have 50-odd teams. We're going to go 58 probably, as you know, with the closing down of the Magpies. A lot of those kids, you know, they don't want to give up football and they live in this area, so they're going to come and want to play for us. So we've got to accommodate them and we won't be telling anyone no. I mean, what we're doing with kids, I think is the best thing possible, having them in an inclusive arena where they grow, they learn, they learn life lessons, mental health things, all those things are popular things for young people. And we've got more girls playing now. We're going to have five girls' teams.

So I guess, like I said, I'm not here to demand anything or anything like that, but we do need you guys to start focusing on, I guess, more an allocation of sporting fields more reflective of our growth. So at the moment, we're training on our one and a half fields. We've been fortunate enough to train off Colonial and play off there, but that's issues in itself with car parking and whatnot. We have got, we've got, we've been, I think unofficially told we can probably use Vineyard, but I'm not sure when that's going to be available. We had Londonderry, but that's been taken back by brothers. So yeah, we're really struggling at the moment to cater for all these kids.

I don't know how long that is, guys, but— It's two minutes and forty seconds

To go. Oh, really? And four seconds, sorry.

Well, I'm happy to take questions, but it might be easier for me to take questions than if anyone would like to have them about what we do and what we're trying to do.

Councillor.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Councillor Creed. You've got— Councillor Creed. Oh, sorry. New things, sorry. You said you use one and a half fields. How many kids have you actually got? 880. Right. Sorry, is that including trainers? Okay, so one and a half fields. How many days do you use it? Of our field?

We use it every weekend. Yeah but they train on it every day of the week, Monday through Friday. So it's safe to say that you're pretty much bursting. Yes, at the seams, yes. No worries, thank you. No problems. And I just want to mention too, the field that we are interested in is called Derubbin, which you're to know about. And I only say that because, you know, our general manager of football, Dean Jones, has been tasked with obviously looking for wherever we can find venues that we can train on. So that was one of the ones we were hoping that perhaps we could get a relationship with whoever the— so the rugby union club that is currently playing there, so we could see if we could share or have some arrangement, because that may be a solution. Because obviously, I'm not here just to bring you problems, but perhaps solutions as well.

In Scottish.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. This is a bit odd, isn't it? We don't usually stand. You're not odd, sorry, Michael. We're trialling this new code of meeting practice, and we don't usually stand. My question is about, you talked about growth. Are you expecting your club to keep growing at that rate? Because 100% increase is quite something. Sorry, does

The— must cut out, do you, when you speak. So going back to COVID times, we had 25 teams, and the club realised that they were spending too much money on senior football, so the more semi-professional sides like the Massey Cup and whatnot, so they dropped that and they went back to juniors, because that's where we were losing them. These kids want to play for Penrith. You know how successful Penrith have been in the last five years, that's where they want to play. We want to be able to house them, and now we are. When you're talking about future growth, well, I think ladies, females is probably the biggest area we're going to grow in. And not only is that going to be hard numbers-wise just for fields, but also we need different facilities for, you know, to be appropriate for young ladies to be playing.

So the answer to your question is, I couldn't say definitively it'll be 100%, but we're growing exponentially, yes.

I guess I was trying to figure out whether you've had your growth spurt, now it's time to sort of, you know, to think about consolidating, but it sounds like you aren't over your growth yet.

I don't think so, no. Okay,

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Goulburn

30 seconds, Councillor.

Okay. That's all right. Thanks, Michael. Did you say you're the third largest club, or the third fastest growing?

No, well, I think we're the third largest in the world.

In the world. That's amazing. I think that's almost enough for us to have a big football as a big thing here

Well, you know, not everyone's a rugby league fan, but I know that AFL is Australia's biggest winter game. But New South Wales and Queensland, it's clearly rugby league.

That's amazing. Sorry, I'll ask my sensible question, which was: is there an option for you to access the playing fields at schools?

I'm not sure if Mr Jones has asked about that. They're usually asking us for access, so, because they, you know, do you mean about bead holding or—

Any schools. I think all schools seem to have an oval.

I honestly would have to ask Dean about that.

Okay .

Thank you. Thank you very much. No, no, you're welcome

Thank you. Thank you, Councillors. That's the only speaker for this evening. Under the code of conduct, Council can go straight into the Council meeting. Council agreed.

Just to answer the question that Councillor Lyons-Buckett asked, the schools, they are used by the sporting grounds when they're available, and they do make them available fairly often. Windsor High School is a good example, and some of the junior schools, Hawkesbury. So, yeah, whether they're viable, they used. Okay, councillors, he's just left, but it was remiss of me, we did have a former mayor in the gallery a while ago, Patrick Connelly.

Okay.

Councillors, that's the end of the public forum.