Clarence Valley News
Community group fears attack
Community group fears attack
By Tim Howard
A Clarence Valley community group, already the target of Clarence Valley Council legal action, has concerns another attack is coming.
The Yamba Community Action Network said a notice of motion from Cr Karen Toms in the business paper of this month’s meeting, claiming the group flooded council staff with emails, could be seen as a further attempt to muzzle them.
The group’s secretary, Lynne Cairns, said the Notice of Motion (NOM), following the threat of defamation action the council launched last year, was a concern.
“Is it appropriate to request council to use needless time and resources, targeting a local community group, by requesting council provide a report about the allocation of resources to respond to Yamba CAN Inc’s GIPAs and RFI requests,” Ms Cairns said.
Ms Cairns said it was ironic Cr Toms was concerned about council staff spending time on these requests, when her NOM would require significant time and effort.
“Cr Toms, please explain the purpose of expending needless time and resources to obtain such a report,” she said.
Cr Toms’ NOM, a question with notice was: “councillors receive a large volume of email from Yamba CAN executive members in excess of any other individual correspondent, much of which has related to the Yamba Community Centre Precinct project. Noting that staff introduced the Yamba Community Precinct to the current council on January 5, 2022.
“To better understand the volume, my question with notice relates to a report about the council resources applied to managing the expectations of Yamba CAN members.”
Cr Toms’ NOM read:
That the general manager advise, by way of a report the:
- allocation of resources required to respond to GIPAs submitted by YambaCan since January 2022.
- allocation of resources required to respond to RFI (Request for Information) submitted by YambaCan since January 2022.
- any cost implications of delays to delivering the Yamba Community Precinct project since January 2022.
Ms Cairns also pointed out Yamba CAN was only formed in October 2022, well after the January 2022 date Cr Toms stipulated in her NOM.
In the report the council’s general manager, Laura Black, in a supplementary comment said a member of the executive support team would collate the information sought.
She said both GIPAs and RFIs have resource allocations documented, and therefore this information would need to be collated.
She said cost implications for delays to the Yamba Community Precinct could be included in the assessment including items such as: “designs costs, materials and contract increase, time allocation to meetings, report writing etc. Some matters will be estimate only.”
Yamba CAN secretary Lynne Cairns and president Col Shephard.
“I anticipate it will take a couple of months to gather the information and present it in a way that is meaningful, and therefore the report would likely not be before council until May 2024, if resolved,” Ms Black’s comment read.
However, Yamba CAN, which is questioning the council in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week, suspects the council might be attempting to muzzle it.
Ms Cairns said the information Yamba CAN sought should be publicly available and the community had a democratic right to have access to it.
She also said having a single group requesting access rather than a number of ratepayers would actually ease staff workloads.
“When Yamba CAN Inc formed on October 2, 2022 it became a voice for its members and the community,“ Ms Cairns said.
“More time and resources would be expended if each resident submitted their requests for documents individually.”
Ms Cairns said Yamba CAN was proud of its record of getting the council to reveal information it was initially reluctant to provide.
She said, if Cr Toms NOM is successful the report should include:
- the number of times the Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) has supported Yamba CAN Inc when council refused or only partially provided documents.
- the number of times council has incorrectly redacted documents.
- the number of searches council undertook and the time it took Council to locate documents.
- how many times council could not locate documents at all.
- how much council has charged Yamba CAN Inc for the documents in GIPA requests ($30 each) and when council overcharged for processing, as IPC previously informed Council and Yamba CAN Inc.
Ms Cairns provided a couple of examples about Council’s processing of GIPAs and RFIs, one where Council undertook three searches and couldn’t locate an email and then after eight months the email was provided accidentally in another GIPA request.
Another is when lodging an RFI, Council informed due to the large volume of RFIs it will take some time to process Yamba CAN’s RFI, as there were 290 RFI’s in front of Yamba CANs.
The Northern Rivers Times print deadline does not allow a report from Tuesday’s ordinary council meeting to be printed. It will appear in next week’s paper.
For more Yamba news, click here.
Mayor to “eyeball” AG over courthouse hours cut
By Tim Howard
Clarence Valley mayor Peter Johnstone is brushing up on his diplomatic kung fu, after his fellow councillors voted to have him “eyeball” the NSW Attorney General over a state government decision to cut service hours at Maclean Courthouse.
At its March meeting, the council indicated it was not satisfied with the government’s response to a letter to the Attorney General, Michael Daley, in December 2023, advocating that face to face services at Maclean Courthouse, remain the same.
Instead the parliamentary secretary to the Attorney General, Hugh McDermott’s reply, indicated the cuts to services would remain.
“The Attorney General has asked me to respond on his behalf, Mr McDermott wrote.
“I’m informed that in May 2023, court services in the Department of Communities and justice initiated a change in the level of face to face service delivery at Maclean based on the low level of demand for this service.
“The service was reduced from five days per week to five days per month.”
Crs Debrah Novak and Ian Tiley combined to provide a motion to stiffen the council’s opposition to the decision.
After fine tuning of the wording, the council settled on the motion: That council:
- notes the report.
- makes direct representations to the NSW Attorney General, seeking support of the Member for
Clarence, Hon Richie Williamson, objecting most strongly to the service hours reductions at Maclean Court House, and the mayor seek to meet the minister to convey these concerns.
Cr Novak said the decision was clearly not in the interests of Clarence Valley people.
“We have the key issues here in front of us in black and white,” she said.
“So this motion now is to go back to the NSW Attorney General and the minister with Richie on one side, the mayor on the other side to the minister saying we’re not happy with what you’ve determined.
“What you think is in our best interest because at the end of the day, it is not in our LGAs best interest to have this service downgraded.
“It’s in the state government’s best interest because it’s a cost saving measure.”
Cr Tiley said the council had little to lose and a lot to gain.
“It’s a matter of great concern, especially to the people of the Lower Clarence, as Cr Novak has well articulated that yet another important service will be lost,” he said.
“Perhaps the next one’s Ulmarra Ferry if we meekly acquiesce on this. What next will we lose?”
The approach was not to the liking of all councillors, including unlikely allies on this matter, Crs Karen Toms and Greg Clancy.
Cr Debrah Novak is leading the charge to keep Maclean Courthouse open five days a week, moving that the council confronts the NSW Attorney General Michael Daley over plans to cut hours of service.
Cr Toms worried the motion made it seem the council was throwing a “tanty” when a ruling didn’t go its way.
“I find this a little interesting that we’ve actually been there done this,” she said.
“We’ve got a letter back which tells us the reasons, but we as the local government council have decided we don’t like the reasons and we’re going to have another go and we’re going to get up face to face with the Attorney General.”
Cr Clancy said he was more concerned that continued opposition was “pushing a snowball uphill”.
“Are we just putting our finger in the dyke?” he said. “Because unfortunately, the modern world is moving in the direction of less face to face, more phone or internet connection.
“The response is fairly straightforward.
“And it’s to do with the demand and the cost of keeping it open when there’s no demand.
“It would be nice to keep everything opened forever. But I really think that we’ve taken this far enough.”
Other councillors showed more fight.
Cr Steve Pickering said cutting courthouse hours was just a start to further cuts.
“It’s to cut to cut the courthouse hours from five days a week to five days a month is the start,’ he said.
“Obviously, the next step will be zero days per month and then everybody in Yamba and Maclean will be traveling to Grafton to use the courthouse there, while it’s still open.
“Who knows? In two years time will we still going to have a courthouse in Grafton?
“Maybe we’ll be traveling to Coffs Harbour, but as a council we need to stand up for our community it’s not about having a tantrum.
“It’s about it’s about doing what our community would expect us to do.
“And when we receive a response that we’re not happy with, we need we need to challenge it.”
But Cr Alison Whaites disputed that Grafton could lose its courthouse, because of the presence of the new jail at near South Grafton.
“Because we’ve got Serco here and it’s busy every day I drive past and it’s packed,” she said.
‘So anyway, so I want to vote against his motion and I really don’t see the point of moving forward with this and the mayor going down and speaking to that person.”
Deputy mayor Jeff Smith said he supported the motion because he believe the community expected its leaders to fight for them.
“I was I was voted in to be an advocate for the community,” he said. “And there’s often complaints around the LGA that are were very Grafton centric.
“Well, in this case, we’re fighting for something that’s in Maclean.
“And I’m sick of this valley losing out all the time. It loses out to Coffs and it loses out to Lismore and seems to lose out to Byron Bay constantly.
“Let’s just fight it. Let’s have another go.”
The mayor made a rare foray into debate, arguing the council needed to stand up for the region.
“I think we should go for it, shouldn’t we? he said. “I need to brush up on my martial arts skills.
“We should be fighting for our community and we need to fight for our community because otherwise we’ll be seen as a soft touch.”
Summing up, Cr Novak said in the past decade the region had lost many services to Coffs Harbour and Lismore.
“What that actually means to those people because we’ve lost those services, is people now have to travel,” she said.
“So there is a cost imposed to those people who need to access those services.
“We have a high rate of people who don’t have access to computers, who don’t have access or the skills to access computers. All that sort of stuff.
“That just pays puts the onus back on to the potential clients and I think that’s unfair.
“And and we just need to be out there fighting for what we believe is a service that should remain here in the Lower Clarence Valley.”
Council voted for the motion 6-3 with Crs Toms, Clancy and Whaites against.
For more local Clarence Valley news, click here.
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