Image: LGNSW Board meeting in Sydney.

Farewell to 2022

In this last President’s Message for 2022, I and my fellow LGNSW Board Directors would like to thank you for your efforts and support throughout the year.

Together we have achieved so much for the benefit of our sector and for the communities we represent.

Of course, there is little time for reflection in local government with another busy summer ahead and a State Election taking place in March next year.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and look forward to catching up in 2023.

Election priorities

Christmas Day this year will actually mark three months until the NSW State Election takes place.

It comes a critical juncture for our sector: our councils and communities are facing unprecedented challenges as the impact of the last few years really hits home.

You don’t need a crystal ball to predict 2023 will bring its own fresh challenges, making it all the more difficult to serve our communities as we all want.

With that in mind, the LGNSW Board has endorsed election priorities highlighting critical issues facing the local government sector.

The priorities set out what must be done if councils are to continue providing the essential infrastructure and services our communities deserve.

Let’s make sure local government speaks with one voice, loud and clear enough to be heard by all those who seek to represent us in Parliament.

I look forward to sharing those priorities, developed in consultation with you at our recent annual conference, very soon.

Release of misconduct review

The Minister for Local Government Wendy Tuckerman has released the Councillor Conduct Accountability Review, which looked at ways to improve the state’s councillor conduct accountability framework.

The review contains 49 recommendations, many of which align with those LGNSW made in our submission to the review.

This includes the creation of an independent statutory body that will deal with councillor misconduct and the introduction of tougher sanctions for those found guilty of misconduct.

We welcome the review as any move that ensures the highest standards of integrity and probity should be supported.

However, it is imperative that the framework and standards set out in the review are also applied to state and federal politicians as well.

I would like to thank the Minister for commissioning the review and for her commitment to engage with the local government sector further on this vitally important issue.

As part of this consultation process, it is essential that all councils have until the end of February to comment on the review. This will provide each council with the opportunity to consider the review’s recommendations at their first meeting of 2023.

NRMA join our calls

A new report from the NRMA has backed our calls for more funding and support to fix our crumbling road network.

Using 2020/21 data from all 128 councils in NSW, the NRMA’s Fix Our Broken Roads report found that $1.9 billion in funding was needed to maintain local and regional roads.

Concerningly, NRMA calculates that the backlog is $1.1 billion for 2021/22 with only 60 per cent of regional councils providing data so far.

Based on its findings, the NRMA has called for more funding to support councils through a streamlined process, the adoption of new standards and materials when fixing roads to ensure roads are more resilient to damage, and a technology-driven audit of the entire road network to support targeted future upgrades and evidence-based, predictive maintenance.

We welcome these recommendations from the NRMA which align with our Statewide Roads Emergency, and thank it for shining yet another spotlight on the challenge every council in this state is facing in trying to maintain our roads.

NSW Government’s latest planning power grab

The announcement by the NSW Government of the new Rezoning Pathways Program is an early Christmas present for property developers.

This program will allow developers to put forward rezoning proposals for more than 1,000 dwellings on sites in metropolitan NSW and at least 300 dwellings in regional NSW, without councils and communities running a critical eye over them. Instead they would be assessed by the state’s planning department.

The government has tried to sell the program as a way of unlocking new homes faster, but the majority of delays with new housing projects stem from infrastructure delivery issues and hold-ups by government agencies – issues that are not addressed under this new program.

The NSW Government is also directly contradicting its own rationale for removing council powers to determine development applications, which it claimed would allow us to focus on strategic planning including zoning issues.

Councils are unequivocally best placed to make planning decisions in the interests of their community, and I think the Government’s real intent is increasingly clear.

Sidelining our sector from this critical role will only benefit developers and further degrades the community from having any say about what developments occur in their areas.

Changes to Local Planning Panels

This week the NSW Government announced mandatory changes affecting the operation of Local Planning Panels which will come into effect in April 2023. The changes will require councils to have additional panellists (experts and community representatives) in their planning panel pools.

These changes coincide with the release of the Auditor-General’s latest audit which focused on local councils’ development assessment processes. The report found the audited councils were functioning effectively with respect to their development assessment roles and they are at least as transparent as the NSW Department of Planning and Environment and in some cases more transparent.

While we fully support integrity and transparency in the planning system, it remains our firm view that councils should have the option of allowing one of their elected councillors to perform the role of community representative on local panels. Councillors are democratically elected every four years to represent their community and can perform this function as members in the councils’ pool of community representatives.

EOI to join StateCover board

A reminder that StateCover - an insurer dedicated to serving councils - is seeking expressions of interest from eligible and suitably qualified councillors (of councils that are members of LGNSW) to join its board.

To be eligible for appointment, applicants must be a councillor of a council that is a member of LGNSW and a policy-holding council member of StateCover.

Prospective applicants must obtain an information pack containing further details about the position and the detailed selection criteria by emailing Vanessa Smith.

Applications close at midnight Wednesday, 21 December 2022.

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