Hawkesbury City Council has no less than 17 different Committees.

They’re a mess – some have been around since Noah. Some have forgotten the reason for their creation. Some took it upon themselves to re-write their own terms of reference. Some are chaired by Councillors, some are not. Some take in members of the broader community as voting members, some not.

Some of the committees do good work, and enrich the decision making processes of Council. Some… not so much. Each committee requires staff resources to prepare agendas, minutes, and convene meetings.

A proposal was advanced at tonight’s Council meeting to restructure our committees for the first time in decades. It was a great idea – it streamlines the number and remit of committees, taking on detailed feedback received by a Council review over the last year.

It ensured that our committee meetings were public and open to public address (they aren’t now). That agendas are pre-published, and that documentation was available in a timely way to Councillors and the public alike.

It promotes the importance of existential threats like floods and bushfires to become the concern of the whole Chamber – not just a subcommittee.

I agreed. Many times I’ve been in a committee meeting and thought ‘I wish all my colleagues were hearing this‘.

I disagreed on one critical point – the proposal, as it was moved, sought to abolish our Heritage Committee.

Our Heritage Committee, which I’ve been a member of for four years, carries a disproportionate weight for Council. HCC doesn’t employ a full-time Heritage Officer. The members of this committee are a rare and special fraternity of heritage wisdom, including scientists, heritage architects, historians, and planning experts. We’re very fortunate to have them give their knowledge to us around the year, completely gratis. Put it this way – if we had to pay for their advice, we couldn’t afford it. The work this committee does fills a huge gap that would be impossible to fill if the committee was dissolved – and the motion before me sought to do just that. It sought to amalgamate its function into a committee with no community representatives and which shared billing with Waste and Environmental Sustainability – fairly poor bedfellows.

So, when the vote came, and despite my support for committee reform generally, I voted for a deferral so we could talk as a group of 12 about a better outcome that both permits reform, and protects our unique Heritage (and this committee). I expect the matter will come back to Council before Christmas.

Picture: Summer Noon, Hawkesbury River; Arthur Streeton, 1896.

Every two elections (~8 years), the NSW Electoral Commission re-draws the boundaries of seats in our State.

This is done so that each seat in the NSW Parliament has a roughly equal number of voters (generally within 10% of the average of 57,193). Demographic change and urban growth cause population distortions in some seats (like Riverstone and Camden, which are oversubscribed by about a third).

It is important to note these are changes to the NSW State seats, not Federal seats relevant to a Federal election.

The process is undertaken by the Commission, which is a statutory authority and forbids gerrymandering, which is a very stark contrast to the broken and corrupt systems used abroad.

This process can be painful for elected MPs, as suburbs they represent are transferred to neighbouring seats (or, heaven forbid, weaken their margins or necessitate the reallocation of party branches into or out of their seats.)

But it affects voters as well, as the MP they are used to may no longer represent them, or it may change the complexion of an electorate, so it’s worth paying attention to it.

The Commission has just released the draft boundaries they want to employ for the next State Election due in 2023, and they are now on public exhibition. You’re welcome to give feedback until the 23rd of December 2020.

Many people find this process confusing, so I thought I would offer an guide, and provide some resources for people who like to play with Google Earth.

The above link will take you to a ZIP file which decompresses to a Google Earth .KMZ file that can be double clicked if you have the free Google Earth program for MAC or PC.

My visualisation allows you to toggle the old and new seat boundaries, the strength of the two-party-preferred vote in individual polling places, and suburb names, allowing you to explore the changes across NSW.

I’m offering this video and downloadable map layers in an effort to help people understand this process. I’ve confined my more detailed analysis to a few seats in north and western Sydney.

I have drawn this data from places such as:

https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/redistribution/Proposed-boundaries-and-names

https://datasets.seed.nsw.gov.au/dataset/nsw-administrative-boundaries

https://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/sg1901/la/home

This analysis is like other ones I have done in the past like:

A Google Earth Map of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River

and

A Google Earth overlay of the OSO-M9 and BLOR-Castlereagh corridors

I was pleased to launch the Blue Mountains Shale Cap Forest Project at Bilpin today, as the Chairman of the Hawkesbury River County Council. 

The Shale forests stretching across Berambing, Bilpin and Mountain Lagoon are State listed endangered ecological communities, even more threatened in the aftermath of the fires. They are typified by an unusually rich diversity of plant, insect, and vertebrate species.

People forget that the Hawkesbury has more of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area within its boundaries than the Blue Mountains LGA.

My first paid job as a teenager was at Dutch’s farm at Mountain Lagoon. I still remember being captivated by the size of the huge Angophoras fringing the property. It’s satisfying to now lead an organisation working for their preservation.

This initiative is funded over a multiple years to identify and map the ecology, educate and incentivise landowners, provide on the ground help to assist in bush regeneration, conduct weed control, and track progress.

The project will aim to found a dedicated Bilpin Landcare group to carry the work forward, and the locals who attended today were curious and positive about it.

This grant (over $100K) is the first-time a private property engagement that focuses on conservation and land management has been done on this scale. Over 400 private properties have been contacted covering over 2,835 hectares in the Hawkesbury.

It’s also great to see this is a team effort between Blue Mountains City Council, Hawkesbury River County Council, Hawkesbury City Council, the Hawkesbury Landcare Network, Greater Sydney Local Land Services, and the NSW Environmental Trust.

If you want to get on board, contact HRCC.

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I was honoured this week to be re-elected as the Chairman of the Hawkesbury River County Council for a second, one year term.

This is a great honour. I am the first Hawkesbury Liberal Councillor ever to be elected to this role, let alone re-elected. It’s been a challenging year, with most of our meetings still occurring via Zoom. Balancing the welfare of staff with maintaining on-the-ground operational capacity has not been easy.

The HRCC covers 3,823sq.km over four municipalities (Hills, Blacktown, Penrith and Hawkesbury). It has responsibility for waterway health through the control of weeds, and increasingly takes a role in terrestrial weed control as well under the Biosecurity Act.

In this last year alone it conducted 3,949 property inspections. With its specialised assets like weed harvesters, and using new and innovative techniques like biological control (Salvinia eating Weevils, anyone?), it plays a major role in caring for our local environment.

I thank outgoing Deputy Chair, Robyn Preston MP – Member for Hawkesbury for her work with the Board, and congratulate Hills Shire Councillor Samuel Uno for his election as the new Deputy Chair.

Last night the Mayor moved a Mayoral Minute to try to make our rating system fairer. We failed. The vote was defeated 8:4.

Some suburbs in the Hawkesbury are suffering under Council rates that are anywhere between 50% higher to 300% higher or more than other suburbs.

This is despite those families having similar incomes and similar access to Council services.

The point I made was that the guidelines laid down for fairness in rates requires us to be mindful of both the ‘Benefit Principle’ and the ‘Ability to Pay’ principle. Rates should be proportionate to both.

Unfortunately, our area is suffering from a good deal of land speculation caused by our adjacency to the North West Growth Sector, something I’ve written about and made videos many times before.

Let me encourage you to listen to the Mayor Patrick Conolly and myself as we make our case.

Colbee Park in McGraths Hill is one of our most used, and most neglected sports fields. I should know, as a Soccer Dad whose child’s club was based at the park for a decade.

Despite near constant use from the Oakville United Soccer Club, the Oakville Raiders Baseball Club, the Hawkesbury Hornets BMX Club, frequented by dog-walkers and near the pleasant wetlands of Killarney creek, the park also suffers from limited parking that turns into a quagmire with a breath of rain, insufficient seating, has little shade, an open drain that cuts the park in two, and buildings so inadequate that sports clubs have had to use shipping containers to stow their club’s gear. The baseball club lost all their uniforms and gear when it flooded earlier this year.

Hopefully, this can begin to change. Council will consider the exhibition of a new masterplan for Colbee Park at our next meeting.

The plan includes upgraded fields, new play equipment, better parking, proper amenities and storage for clubs (including a female change room), seating and shade structures, a Pump BMX Track, and a footbridge over the Creek for nearby Arndell school.

The only thing missing is funding to make it happen within ten years. I’ll keep advocating on that front.

The draft Masterplan can be seen as attachments to our Business Paper for our Council meeting of 8/9/20 (Item 170), at this link.

I’ll let you know when the plan is open for public comment. If you’re a user of Colbee Park, I encourage you to have your say.