On
17 June 2024 the NSW Parliament Legislative Council's Portfolio
Committee No. 7 - Planning and Environment Inquiry into "Planning system and the impacts of climate change on the environment and communities" held a hearing at which representatives of community organisations" Yamba Community Action Network Inc and Valley Watch Inc gave evidence.
Because
mainstream media by necessity will not have the column space to address the issues raised in depth, here is the full transcript of evidence given
by Lynne Cairns and Helen Tyas Tunggal on the day.
Note: This is an uncorrected copy of the transcript retrieved from the Portfolio Committee No. 7 webpage on 23 June 2024.
The
CHAIR: Welcome to the eighth hearing of the Portfolio Committee No. 7
– Planning and Environment inquiry into the planning system and the
impacts of climate change on the environment and communities. I
acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional
custodians of the lands on which we are meeting today. I pay my
respects to Elders past and present, and celebrate the diversity of
Aboriginal peoples
and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of
New South Wales. I also acknowledge
and pay my respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people joining us here today.
My
name is Sue Higginson, and I am the Chair of the Committee. I ask
everyone in the room to please turn
their mobile phones to silent. Parliamentary privilege applies to
witnesses in relation to the evidence they give today. However, it
does not apply to what witnesses say outside of the hearing, so I
urge witnesses to be careful about making comments to the media or to
others after completing their evidence. In addition, the Legislative
Council has adopted rules to provide procedural fairness for all
inquiry participants. I encourage Committee members and witnesses to
be mindful of those procedures......
Mrs
LYNNE CAIRNS, Secretary, Yamba Community Action Network Inc, affirmed
and examined
Ms
HELEN TYAS TUNGGAL, Member, Yamba Community Action Network Inc,
affirmed and examined
The
CHAIR: Welcome back. Thank you for making the time to come and give
evidence today. Would either
of you like to start with a short opening statement?
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Yes, I would. Thank you for the opportunity to provide
evidence to this meeting. I
would like the folder previously provided to the Committee to be
tabled, please, along with a document that I will be summarising. On
behalf of Yamba CAN, the information I provide is a summary of what
has been recently
occurring in the Clarence Valley Council LGA in relation to concerns
with processing of development applications
on the Yamba flood plain. I won't be reading directly from that
document because I have summarised it. Helen will then provide
historic information.
Firstly,
it appears there is a systemic problem whereby stakeholders in the
development application and planning
process are predisposed to favouring approval of developments. It
appears that council is inclined to accept what a developer provides
and presumes in a DA without fully considering and assessing the
impacts on existing residents and whether an adequate evacuation plan
is in place. About three-quarters of the township of Yamba is on the
flood plain, a delta of nearly 690 hectares. Yamba has a population
of about 6,500 people. In February 2022 Yamba residents on the flood
plain woke and, without warning, the only evacuation route, Yamba
Road, was closed by stormwater flooding, along with many other
internal roads closing or closed. The M1 to Yamba township is about
16 kilometres. Homes on the Yamba flood plain were flooded by
stormwater—and some with sewage—that have never been previously
flooded. The Clarence River flood crest reached Yamba about two days
later and inundated and flooded homes again.
Last
week the Northern Regional Planning Panel met to determine a proposed
development, Yamba Gardens, for a 284 small lot subdivision on the
flood plain down Carrs Drive requiring more fill. Last month, in a
council meeting, councillors passed a resolution voting five to two
in favour of council making a submission to the panel to not support
this proposed development. The resolution was based on council's
assessment report that was over a year old and contained some 22
noncompliance and unresolved matters. Then, seven days later, on 4
June 2024, council's up-to-date assessment report recommended
approval of the subdivision. Councillors were not provided an
up-to-date assessment report for a very important decision.
Submissions objecting to the development totalled 328, and two votes
for the development. People had two weeks to review 38 documents and
1,750 pages, and 12 people addressed the panel objecting to the
development being approved.
The
development's documents and council's assessment report provide that
the proposed development complies with the required planning
instruments. However, upon close scrutiny of the documents there were
anomalies, errors and contradictions, and totally overlooked was the
stormwater flooding. For example, council requested the evacuation
plan for the development to address clause 5.21 (2) (c) and (d) of
council's local environment plan. The clause reads:
(2)
Development consent must not be granted to development on land the
consent authority considers to be within the flood planning area
unless the consent authority is satisfied the development—
…
(c)
will not adversely affect the safe occupation and efficient
evacuation of people or exceed the capacity of existing evacuation
routes for the surrounding area in the event of a flood, and
(d)
incorporates appropriate measures to manage risk to life in the event
of a flood …
The
evacuation plan does not address 5.21 (2) (c) and (d) because it did
not take into account stormwater flooding. The Flood Risk Management
Manual recommends councils collect data and review flood behaviour
after flood events to capture lessons learnt. Council did not collect
post-flood data in Yamba in 2022.
The
plan states the development proposal will not exceed the capacity of
existing evacuation routes for the
surrounding area in the event of flood, yet then states the capacity
of Yamba Road is the constricting factor during an evacuation.
Council's assessment report—it actually says it has considered
acceptable, noting capacity of the evacuation routes and warning
times and then states it meets 5.2 (1). The plan states, "The
flood evacuation centre is the bowling club." It further states,
"The club has not been assessed for its suitability for the
number of people the club may be able to support and the plan assumes
sufficient capacity can be made available." This contravenes
clause 5.2 (1) and residents couldn't even reach the bowling club
because the roads were closed. These
developments will be isolated mound islands in flood events.
The
calculation of people on the flood plain requiring evacuation in the
plan is incorrect. It is not 6,396; it
is 8,618 people. The figures in the plan have not been properly
calculated. Also, the current approved and proposed
dwellings on the flood plain is not 570; it is 1,329. The plan states
Yamba has an older population: 32 per cent are aged 65 and over. One
existing manufactured housing estate has over 200 residents and the
average age of residents is mid-seventies. The plan doesn't even
acknowledge this estate and it is next door to it. The estate has one
road in and one road out and was cut off by flooding in 2022, and
this has never happened before. The plan states Yamba experiences
four peak seasons in a year, with a potential population increase of
more than 100 per cent. What if this occurred with the flood? The
evacuation routes won't cope. And what if it coincided with a king
tide?
It
also states Yamba in a flood would be cut off for two to three days
and is large enough that it has sufficient accommodation, medical
services and food for this period. In the 2022 flooding, Yamba was
isolated for
seven days: two days by stormwater and five days by river flooding.
Coles ran out of food and closed. Residents were not able to see a
doctor for about seven weeks. Doctors are not taking new patients.
Yamba does not have sufficient accommodation off the flood plain.
Flooded residents evacuated to neighbours' and friends' homes.
Toilets wouldn't flush and power was cut. Not all streets are
included in the plan and there is no mention of what streets were
closed. Residents are discovering they are unable to obtain home
insurance or the price of insurance has become prohibitive.
Continuing
to fill the flood plain and increasing the population in Yamba will
increase the burden on SES
volunteers in flood events. Yamba CAN commends the SES for the work
they do. At the recent Yamba CAN flood
awareness and resilience meeting attended by over 250 residents, SES
workers offered to attend a further meeting to collect data and
information from Yamba residents about the 2022 flood events.
Another
example of a development application is Parkside—136 dwellings,
manufactured housing estate, 2,600
truck and dog movements. The development was provided to the Northern
Regional Planning Panel in 2022 just after the floods and was
deferred twice. The first time an evacuation plan was requested, as
the site is in a floodplain area and would become isolated from
escape routes and it floods adjacent properties and safe evacuation
could not be guaranteed. The second—it was an independent peer
review of the evacuation plan provided. The third time it was
approved. Three members on the panel virtually dismissed the peer
review, which stated the evacuation "is divergent from State
guidance and practice" and "Based on these findings, the
current proposal is unsatisfactory from a flooding and emergency
management perspective."
There
are a lot of concerns about this development which is now occurring,
filling the flood plain. Overlooking
the peer review is one. National Parks weren't even contacted by
council, when the stormwater is going to be funnelled into the nature
reserve. There is no consideration of stormwater flash flooding
without warning, and there are a lot more other concerns. What is
suggested—considerations, reforms in the planning process, an
immediate moratorium on developments on flood plains. The State
Disaster Mitigation Plan 2024-2026 hastened the provision of local
disaster adaption plans. There is a document that has just come out
recently, Climate Valuation, which talks about the majority of homes
that are highly vulnerable to becoming uninsurable due to
climate-exacerbated riverine flooding—uninsurable homes.
We
really should need a review of the Sydney and regional planning
panels' operational procedures, ensuring
all DAs comply with council's LEP. Concern is that council and the
developers currently use the same outsource
companies to research, assess and formulate documents in relation to
development applications, flood modelling and evacuation plans.
Council needs to ensure accurate modelling and mapping to include
stormwater flooding. Councils also need to have better community
consultation and engagement, as it is inadequate, and council should
be required to advertise development applications and approved
developments in the local papers.
The
CHAIR: Ms Tyas Tunggal, did you want to—
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: Yes, now I'll have my turn. Thank you for the
opportunity and, after more than two decades of questioning council's
decisions, being here today feels like a positive step towards seeking sustainable
solutions to what is an extraordinarily unsustainable situation
evolving in Yamba. With more than 10 million tonnes of fill being
dumped onto the Yamba flood plain for medium- and high-density
housing development, the question being asked by an exponential
number of Yamba residents and visitors when they see what is
happening is "How has this been allowed to happen?" A
factual historical response is that council's planning processes over
the last two decades have resulted in more questions than answers,
and the outcomes are visually shocking.
Throughout
the planning process there has been a lack of overarching scrutiny by
any authority; advantage taken of technicalities and loopholes in the
State planning system and regulations; failure to implement what
should be council's endorsed preventative strategies in the LEP, the
DCP and the FRMP—the floodplain risk management plan; realistic
assumptions and crucial information missing from the flood modelling;
the ignoring of long-time and new residents' lived flooding
experiences over decades; and the ongoing destruction of up to seven
endangered ecological communities identified by a comprehensive
government report. Community group Valley Watch has been working hard
to delve into the magical workings of local government planning over
the last three decades and has produced for educational purposes a
summary of this in the PowerPoint presentation, "A
brief history of community concerns around floodplain development in
West Yamba".
My
presentation focuses on West Yamba, but we could also be looking at
Park Avenue, Orion Drive or what is the Yamba Quays estate, which is
a total other can of worms on a zombie DA. It started in 1995 with
the Maclean
council commencing planning for development of West Yamba. Then, in
2005, a slim majority of councillors
on the newly amalgamated Clarence Valley Council overturned years of
planning and voted to increase the density of the proposed
development, raising the target population ceiling to 13,000 from the
11,000 set in 2001. You may recognise some of the faces in that
council: past and present MPs in this Government. That's just an
aside.
In
2006 the New South Wales Department of Planning and the Department of
Natural Resources undertook an assessment of the conservation values
of the vegetation at West Yamba in the context of the proposed zone
amendments for the LEP. The assessment found overall conservation
values to be high, containing or in close proximity to seven
endangered ecological communities and vegetation communities of high
conservation value and planning concern, including coastal saltmarsh,
freshwater wetlands on coastal plains, and five different forest
types. The assessment found that development proposals would be
highly detrimental to the conservation values of a number of
endangered ecological communities, would remove the largest remaining
near-coastal remnant of this forest type, would likely result in
severe and irreversible detrimental effects on flora and fauna, and
would negatively impact on the function of the only vegetated
corridor linking conservation areas to the north and south of Yamba.
A
comparative aerial analysis between 2000 and 2005 showed clearing and
poisoning of vegetation. Unlawful
clearing—and it's in this report—uncovered an Aboriginal midden
archeologically reviewed to be a burial
site. CVC director of environment and planning, Rob Donges, told the
media that action was being considered.
Nothing happened; no action was taken. In fact, the largest
landowners in West Yamba, the Birrigan Gargle LALC, were totally left
out of the whole rezoning process over 10 years. I know this as a
fact, as I was closely involved with them at the time.
There
was hope in 2006 when the new, compulsory State government LEP
included legislation designed to
avoid unnecessary environmental impacts on flood-prone and riparian
land. This included development of flood-prone
land—compulsory, if it applies; acid sulphate soils—compulsory,
if it applies; excavation and filling of land—compulsory; heritage
conservation—compulsory; and water bodies on riparian
land—compulsory. But our council staff said that, technically, the
draft West Yamba LEP, as an amendment to the Maclean LEP 2001, is not
required to comply. What does that tell us?
In
2007 Valley Watch and others formally objected to the endorsement of
the draft LEP for West Yamba, detailing
concerns with the site being well known as a flood storage area,
climate change predictions and cumulative
negative effects on the residents and environment. Local knowledge
vehemently disagreed with council's mapping of natural flow lines and
floodways as no studies were undertaken. In 2007 The Sydney Morning
Herald did this article, "Coming to this swamp: suburbia".
It states:
… even
the proposal's architect, the council's environment and planning
director, Rob Donges, acknowledges it is out of step with today's
planning regime.
"There
are acknowledged problems there. It is flood-prone, low-lying land
with a high water table," he said. "We have never hidden
the fact that if we were to start the process of West Yamba today
there would be doubts as to whether council would proceed."
The
then mayor said:
"It
may be that people who are flood-proof at the moment will be put at
risk …
"A
great deal has happened since the council [first] decided to increase
[the area's] yield. From the middle of last year a great awareness of
climate change issues [has surfaced]. It is a whole different ball
game."
This
is 15 years ago, again pushing these loopholes, pushing things that
haven't been completed. The article continues:
The
council has not yet received the findings of a flood risk management
plan, commissioned to examine the effects of altering the area's
natural drainage corridors, but Mr Donges has recommended the draft
local environment plan go ahead anyway.
He
insists the wheel has turned too far to stop now.
"It
has a long history and commitments [have been] made by the council."
Of
most concern to the community has been the lack of implementation of
the current Yamba Floodplain Risk
Management Plan and study that were unanimously endorsed by council
15 years ago at their 24 February 2009 meeting. The WYURA DCP states:
Extent
of any development potential is to be consistent with a final
Floodplain Risk Management Plan.
When
asked why isn't the Yamba FPRMP being implemented, for years the
senior council staff—the last three years, at least—have insisted
this study has been superseded by the 2013 Grafton and Lower Clarence
flood model et cetera, and so these queries in relation to this study
are no longer relevant. But Yamba is not in the Grafton FPRMP, so now
it has been confirmed that the Yamba FPRMP is the current legal
FPRMP. Had it been implemented as intended, we could have largely
prevented the huge problem currently occurring in Yamba. It
recommends, prior to the proposed west Yamba rezoning and
development:
A
practical method of evacuation approved by the SES during the
planning process needs to be in place prior to development consent
…
Filling
for building pads within existing zoned areas is permitted … as
long as it does not affect local drainage. Filling on a larger scale
should only be permitted following a rigorous hydraulic and
environment assessment. Council should maintain a database of filling
to monitor its cumulative effects.
The
proposed master plan to be developed before subdivision must also
address water-related issues. None of these things happened, and the
study also warned:
• Any
further development will exacerbate the flood hazard,
• The
proposal is not compatible with two background reports.
I'll
leave out the next few things that were happening, but the lack of a
master plan—2½ thousand signatures were collected calling for a
moratorium on development until it did that. Yamba Valley Watch had
to take the council to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal
because they wouldn't release the floor-level studies that were
collected in 2014. They only gave it to the Insurance Council and to
the consultant. There's one thing here that I really think shows it
in a nutshell, if you could just give people that. This is the
Clarence catchment. It has 55 sub-catchments, and there's so much
concern that the current flood model is lacking accuracy. It doesn't
include stormwater run-off. It doesn't include flash flooding or wave
motion, all of which are not included in there. There are some
modelling assumptions supposedly compatible with current guidelines
and accepted best practices that don't
make any reasonable sense. You can see where Yamba is here and it
actually says:
Tributaries
of the lower Clarence River are only represented in the model in so
far as allowing backwater from the Clarence River to extend into the
tributary catchments.
All
of these significant catchments around here in the lower river—the
Esk River, the Clarence coastal, the Broadwater,
Sportsmans Creek, Swan Creek, Coldstream Creek, Shark Creek and Lake
Wooloweyah catchments—eight
of the 55 sub-catchments assume that there isn't going to be any
water coming out of them and that the flooding from the Clarence
River-Boorimbah is going to go back up those catchments.
In
conclusion, the community has been asking the same questions for 15
years to no avail—it's on the back
page—about the fill, about the stormwater, about liability, about
the master plan. At last week's NRPP assessment
meeting, a Yamba resident, whose home now floods during rain since
the fill started coming into West
Yamba a few years ago, asked, "When my home becomes uninsurable
and then uninhabitable, who is responsible?
Who is liable?" The NRPP Chair's response was, "We can't
answer that question." The planning rules must change now and
there needs to be an immediate moratorium on floodplain development
until things are properly sorted out with embedded physical climate
restarter in all decisions. Thank you.
The
CHAIR: Thank you very much. We'll have some questions and we also
have some Committee members
who are participating by Webex today, so they may have some questions
for you, too. I also put on the record
now that we have had the benefit of travelling around with members of
the community, and some Committee
members did have the great benefit of witnessing these sites
physically. Thank you for bringing us along and showing us some of
those sites. Also, I would put out there that I also attended the
Northern Regional Planning Panel in relation to the 284 lots of
development that are being considered at the moment.
I
think that it is fair to say that you've painted a very clear,
detailed picture of a planning system that really
just has not properly worked. Even looking at its own structures and
systems, whether you agreed with them or not, I think that there is a
clear picture that there's just been a failing from one document to
the next, from one study to the next and then the absence, if the
ultimate objective is to achieve good, sound planning outcomes that
don't put people in harm's way. What is your view? And I asked other
witnesses this. You've painted the picture of what has happened to
get us where we have got to there, but what would you say, as a local
community, how is it—I know that's a big question, but even just
some inputs into how the planning system has responded the way it
has, and driven development to this point where people are asking
those sorts of questions that they're asking at the
assessment meetings?
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: I'd just like to say something that I ran out of time
for. Some months ago, one of the councillors put up a notice of
motion to seek support from the State Government to back the land
that wasn't developed there and that he had good legal advice.
Apparently the council got similar legal advice. The motion
was defeated and replaced with something so airy-fairy I can't even
think of it. That seemed like a really hopeful situation at the time
where it wasn't to the detriment of the developments that were
already in place, but it was going to prevent what we were destined
for in the future under the present planning regime. That was very
unfortunate because legally it seems that that is a possibility, and
the council is not liable. I can't understand why our council did not
pursue that option, especially when they got their own legal advice
confirming that.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Can I just say, too, about what Helen was saying, that the
legal advice that council actually
got was stronger than what the councillor himself had got, so why did
that go ahead, or not happen, I should say? The back-zoning did not
happen. But also, what the people of the town—the Yamba CAN and
Valley Watch—what we're feeling is that it's got to stop now. There
needs to be a moratorium, stopping development
on the flood plain. In Yamba—and I know that other areas have got
similar problems—people are so
fearful. They are so stressed. I talk with the locals a lot. Every
time we get a heavy downpour of rain, the ones who were flooded and
had sewage through their homes are anxious that they cannot insure
their properties now or it's too prohibitive. So it has to stop, it
really does.
The
CHAIR: You've identified there that council is, perhaps, feeling some
hesitancy or looking at State government
leadership. Is it a matter of absence of leadership? On the papers
that you present and on the materials, it does seem quite clear that
we have headed in a particular direction. Some developers' consultant
reports seem to suggest, "It's all okay; we're satisfying the
requirements." But then the community, the evidence from the
ground and the experience that people have lived through doesn't seem
to play out.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: The council's LEP has been contravened for years. There is a
section that talks about when you have rainfall on a property it is
not to be disperse onto any other properties. That has been
contravened for years. Unfortunately, we seem to have this
environment now, or this mentality, that it is them, council staff,
versus the ratepayers. This is why we've been asking and asking why
wasn't there any post-flood data collected.
And
there wasn't. This is why the SES has now taken up the ball and said
to us, "If you hold another meeting—Madam
Chair, you would
[sic]
there at the Yamba Get Ready – Flood Awareness
and Resilience meeting. SES weremthere asking us to have another
meeting so that they can collect the data—what is there—but it is
over two years on. A lot of this data is probably gone. People have
moved on and sold up. They haven't got their photos and can't
remember where the flood height was on their properties or how long
it stayed there. That is what is appalling. It really should have
been done.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: Regarding the DA under consideration—this came from
last week—the best
assurance that the CVC staff have, regarding the 22 issues of
noncompliance last year, is that their belief is that, according to
expert opinion provided in the reports from the developer,
noncompliance issues have been addressed consistent with the controls
for west Yamba, which are obviously inadequate for current needs.
There is something else I would like to add that might help explain
things, but I don't know whether I'm allowed to say it.
The
CHAIR: You have the benefit of parliamentary privilege, but remember
what we say at the outset: Whatever
you say in here, you're not covered as to what happens outside.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: No. It's factual—to mention the name of the planner.
The Sydney Morning Herald
called him the "architect" of West Yamba in 2007. He is
also, in the last few years since he left council, the consultant for
the developers. It's been very interesting. I don't want to cast
aspersions if it's not necessary, but it does make people a little
bit concerned. A lot of these things were put in place to allow this
to happen decades ago. Even when we do have the LEP 5.21, it is just
ignored. Expert opinions are ignored.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Sue, you heard me talking about this evacuation plan that is
totally inadequate. Council's
conclusion of their assessment actually says, "Following a
thorough assessment of the relevant planning controls, issues raised
in submissions and the key issues identified in this report, it is
considered that the application can be supported."
The
CHAIR: I also heard that there are a lot of older residents that are
living in supported residential accommodation,
and that any evacuation plan would be of military scale if a flood was worse than the 2022 flood. I
heard that and found it very compelling, because all of the
evacuation routes are blocked. Let's face it: The 2022 flood had
characteristics that were potentially quite generous to some of our
local areas—i.e., it could have been so much worse in terms of the
flood heights and levels when we're looking at probable maximum flood
heights.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: It's interesting. The last riverine flood was not as
bad for us as, say, for Lismore.
It was mainly the stormwater that came for days beforehand. The fact
is that data hasn't been collected and lived knowledge hasn't been
sought, like Tweed council is doing to get a better picture. There's
a home in Golding Street where the 1974 floodmark is 78 centimetres
higher than what our current flood model is. You saw what I said
about these eight lower catchments, assuming that the floods are only
going to go up them and not come down them. That came out of the
SES's flood evacuation dated 31 May 2024. So it's recent. That was
based on a report from BMT. They're the council's consultants as well
as the developer's consultants. The information was passed on by
council, according to the documents, to the SES. It's just incorrect,
and none of it includes stormwater.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: This evacuation plan was done by BMT, and their figures—their
calculations and their
multiplication—are not right. It's inaccurate even in the document.
It quoted 6,300 and whatever. There are 8,600 people on the flood
plain that they feel will require evacuation. How can that be
possible with one road in and one road out? Looking at where cars
drive in West Yamba, where this 284 small lot subdivision is, there
is one road in and one road out. Some of the people that you were
talking about in that manufactured housing estate of over 200 require
medical treatment from a nurse if they have wounds to be dressed on a
daily basis, or maybe antibiotics or whatever. They were cut off as
well. One particular old fellow who had a four-wheel drive actually
drove through the floodwater and risked it. There were no managers on
site during this event. We were cut off for seven days. He went up to
the pharmacy to get medication that people were running out of.
That's not good. When council is saying "no substantive risk to
life", how can that be guaranteed?
The
CHAIR: We really are talking about life and death.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: I have one thing about BMT that has come out of a
Valley Watch submission a few years ago, because we could not make
head nor tail of their flood modelling and hydrology. There
were so many omissions and mistakes. We got to the last page of the
164-page document, and the FIA states,
"This report is prepared by BMT for the use of BMT's client.
Where this report has been prepared on the basis of information
supplied by the client or its employees, consultants, agents and/or
advisers to BMT for that purpose, BMT has not sought to verify the
completeness or accuracy of such information." It doesn't give
you confidence.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: How do we overcome this? Is it a conflict of interest?
The
CHAIR: These are all matters that we will consider. We've run out of
time. I want to say one last thing and ask for your comments very
quickly. After the 2022 flood, both the Premier and the Prime
Minister said there
will be no more development on flood plains. What's your response to
that, given we're now in 2024?
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Honour your commitment. Honour your promise.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: It must stop until things are sorted out. We're heading
for a disaster.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Moratorium.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: It's really, really scary. We keep asking the council.
They talk about making decisions in good faith. The sincere belief is
that they're making decisions based on accurate information. They
can't deny the information that has been given to them by groups such
as Yamba CAN and Valley Watch, and
residents—photographs and videos. I can't see how anything can be
decided in good faith when there's all this evidence that it's wrong.
LYNNE
CAIRNS: Compelling evidence that it's wrong.
HELEN
TYAS TUNGGAL: Compelling.
The
CHAIR: Thank you both so much. The secretariat will be in contact
with you if there were any matters taken on notice. Thank you for
tabling the documents. Thank you for your time.
Complete transcript of 17 June 2024 hearing can be read and downloaded at:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/transcripts/3300/Transcript%20-%20Planning%20systems%20-%2017%20June%202024%20-%20UNCORRECTED.pdf
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