SNOWY Valleys Council will urgently engage with peak community bodies to develop a new advocacy plan for the local government area after Cr James Hayes put the motion forward at last week’s ordinary meeting.
Cr Hayes said it’s a simple but effective concept in which the community and the council are asked what they see as priorities. The priorities are then listed down, with a small spiel on each one, and advocated for.
“It’s not new, it’s simple and it works,” Cr Hayes said.
“We’ve just had three years where we’ve had a plan not to have a plan. We need this council to have a plan, to know where we’re going. This is the first step.”
In speaking against the motion, deputy mayor Hugh Packard said the council needs to firstly resolve whether it is actively seeking a demerger or not.
“Because to do an advocacy plan which Tumut could be seen as superimposing upon Tumbarumba or visa versa, would be counterproductive, I think,” he said.
“Secondly, I went to a Snowy Hydro [information event] and there were four Tumut people at it, so it’s not easy to get Tumut people to come and consult.
“It’s not something that can be done quickly or easily. Even to the point of which groups do we talk to and how do we talk to them, there needs to be consideration.
“I’m not anti the concept of it, but just making sure that it’s done so it’s legitimate for the communities of interest which we end up with in 18 months.”
Cr John Larter said it concerns him that the idea of demerging always seems to come up whenever the council talks about anything that’s forward thinking.
“At the end of the day that’s like saying what are we going to do with the money when we win Lotto… we can map it all out, but we don’t know that we’re demerging. That’s about five years down the track and probably another three governments, who knows,” Cr Larter said.
“We shouldn’t even be talking about a demerge unless we get some green light from the government saying, ‘yep, we’re paying for this, we’re going to do it and we’re good to go’.
“If they do that, good, otherwise we just get on with business and start concentrating on what we need to do.”
Cr Trina Thomson said the council already engages with the community through the council’s community strategic plan.
“That belongs to the community, it’s not council’s strategic plan, it’s the community’s strategic plan. So we do already have avenues of engaging with people,” she said.
“In order to know who we’re going to be engaging with urgently, we need to understand what are we looking for, who are we seeking to engage with, what are the peak groups across the Snowy Valleys? Because then the advocacy plan is not about Tumut, or Tumbarumba or Batlow, Khancoban, Brungle or Talbingo… we need to understand and that’s something that needs to be developed.
“When you do something as a matter of urgency, that’s sometimes when we get it wrong because we start forgetting things and we start overseeing things.
“I don’t quite understand the urgency or who the peak community bodies are that we’re looking to engage with.”
Cr Hayes said the council already has parts of an advocacy plan which would make a good starting point.
“An advocacy plan isn’t something that starts and finishes; it’s ongoing and it grows, and you tick things off,” he said.
“We cannot sit here and fester in the pus of our own indolence and not allow things to go on. We’ve got to bloody well do some things, and you start off by saying, ‘this is our plan, this is what we’re going to do, that is what we’re going to advocate for’.
“When we go and sit with the Minister of Local Government, have we got a booklet where we can say this is our vision for our community? We need that.”
When asked if the plan might have a significant cost attached, interim general manager Steve Pinnuck said while the advocacy plan itself would have no cost attached to it, once the plan is put together, the council would look at what the projects are and the impact they might have on the council.
“That might help frame which projects end up in [the plan] and which ones don’t,” Mr Pinnuck said.
The motion was carried, seven votes to two, with Crs Thomson and Packard voting against.
