Clarence Valley Council and Community Consultation

In December 2024 Clarence Valley Council changed the structure and operation of its community advisory committees with the number of committees reduced from ten to four. In the past a councillor chaired the advisory committee meetings and a council officer from middle management attended and managed the committee’s business.  The new committees are still chaired by a councillor but the council officer attending has been upgraded with the General Manager Laura Black now the council officer generally in charge of proceedings at all advisory committee meetings.

Community members were appointed to the four committees in mid-2025 with the first meetings being held in July.

Having been a long-term member of a pre-2025 advisory committee (Climate Change), I have been interested in the effectiveness of the new arrangement.  I have looked at the operation of the Environment and Sustainability Advisory (E&S) Committee, chaired by Councillor Novak.  

Five applicants were appointed to the E&S Committee with two resigning early in the piece.  Several further advertisements saw more applicants appointed.  There are now six members.    Two meetings were held in 2025.  In 2026 there have been three meetings – one of which went ahead despite the absence of a quorum. Two further meetings are scheduled for this year.  It seems council, which originally wanted only four two-hour meetings a year, has finally twigged to the scale of the matters it wants this committee to discuss.

Having attended all but the first meeting in July 2025, I have seen changes in the meeting process and the committee members’ participation.  Frustration about the timely provision of information prior to meetings saw members finally complaining – leading to this being improved. Another concern raised was the failure to present the Koala policy to the committee before it went to a council meeting and then on public exhibition. 

A major positive is the increasing assertiveness of committee members while a major negative is the Chair’s determination to end the meeting well before two hours.  Another problem is the proposed Working Groups. More on that another time.

-        Leonie Blain

Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent   24th  July, 2026 , under the title "Council and Community Consultation".

  

 Update: 

1)  There are now seven community members of the E&S Committee

2)  A further meeting was held on 1st September.  Another meeting is scheduled for November.

3)  Meetings are held in the Council Chambers in Prince St, Grafton.  Community members may attend these meetings as observers.

 

RECENT CLARENCE COUNCIL RESOLUTION ON ENERGY OPTIMISATION AND ELECTRIFICATION

 

MEDIA RELEASE

26-3-26

The  Clarence Community Climate Group congratulates Councillors for the motion on energy optimisation and electrification which was passed at Council’s meeting on March 19.

 In welcoming this decision, Convener of the Group, Rob Mylchreest said, “This comprehensive motion looked at ongoing renewable energy electrification possibilities for both Council and the Clarence Valley community. While both Council and many householders are already making use of renewable energy, we know that building on this process and getting more of the community involved will bring major individual and societal benefits.  These will include cost savings and improvement in health as well significant reductions in carbon emissions when the electrification comes from renewable energy such as rooftop solar.”

The motion, which passed on a 7-2 vote, was submitted by Cr Peter Johnston as a follow-up from the visit to the Clarence last year by engineer and author Dr Saul Griffith, co-founder of RewiringAustralia.

Dr Griffith, is an important promoter of renewable energy and the value of electrification in both the United States and Australia. He does not advocate a sudden holus-bolus move by households away from reliance on fossil fuel energy.  He promotes a gradual shift from the use of gas/oil/petrol and its replacement with more efficient household appliances and transport vehicles when the existing ones have reached the end of their service life.  This he says is the most cost-effective way of transitioning for households.

“The installation of rooftop solar has been a game-changer for many people,” said Mr Mylchreest.  He pointed out that access to clean, cheaper energy provided an incentive to use this energy on as broad a scale as possible leading to installation of more efficient and cleaner electric appliances like induction cooktops and heat-pump hot water systems and also to the purchase of hybrid and electric cars. When solar panel prices dropped over recent years, more householders could afford them so that now around 41% in the Clarence have them installed.  And more recently the government subsidy on batteries has made them more affordable as backup for those with rooftop solar. 

However, Mr Mylchreest acknowledges that more needs to be done with electrification as there is an equity issue with a significant number of householders – those who are not well-off or who rent their homes – not benefiting from the transition.   He wonders whether the various levels of government are planning to address this issue in the near future.

On the Clarence Valley Council front he says that while Council has been making progress with aspects of electrification there are at least two areas where improvement could be made. Council could improve cost savings if it changed some energy usage in the caravan parks it manages.  Secondly the LGA is poorly served in relation to public electric vehicle charging facilities – probably less of an issue for local EV owners but certainly a disincentive for those visiting the area as tourists. 

Our Group hopes that a mooted community Renewable Energy Expo comes to fruition locally. 

 

Clarence Community Climate Group:  ccccgrp@gmail.com

IN DENIAL OF THE FACTS

In November I attended Clarence Valley Council’s meeting when the majority of councillors voted to support a motion to ask other affected councils to join in lobbying the State Government to abandon the planned Great Koala National Park (GKNP). 

Whether those councillors really believed the government would yield to their demand after more than two years of intensive planning and consultation, I don’t know, but the nonsense spoken supporting the motion was unbelievable, especially the assertions that current native forest logging is sustainable.

The low point was when one councillor blithely claimed to disagree with the findings of research undertaken by Professor David Lindemayer and his team from the Australian National University.

 

Lindenmayer is a world-leading expert on forest ecology and resource management. He has published 49 books, some 1440 scientific works, including 943 peer-reviewed papers in international journals. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2008 and appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2024. He’s been awarded the Eureka Science Prize three times, the Whitley Award on 10 occasions, the Serventy Medal for Ornithology, the Australian Natural History Medallion, and was awarded the prestigious Whittaker Medal from the Ecological Society of America in 2018.

 

With councillors refusing to believe the experts, what chance do we have of them making sensible considered decisions?

 

As for the sustainability of the native forest timber industry, Forestry Corporation’s 2024-25 Annual Report, tells the real story. Another $32 million loss from its hardwood operations last year, bringing the total loss over the past four years to $85 million; not to mention the tens of millions paid to sawmillers for transport subsidies and mill upgrades over that period.

 

These losses, along with their ongoing failure to honour Wood Supply Agreements, shows that Forestry Corporation’s native forest logging is an economic disaster.

 

On a positive note, the week after our council's meeting, Coffs Harbour City Council unanimously and enthusiastically embraced the Great Koala Park initiative and all the benefits the entire community will enjoy as a result of its creation.

 

-        John Edwards

 

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 10 December,  2025.

 

 

NOTE:  At Clarence Valley Council's December meeting, it was noted that Council had written to the other local councils (Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Nambucca, Kempsey and Port Macquarie) urging them to join Clarence Council in opposing the creation of  the GKNP.  These councils had all responded to the CVC letter. While some indicated that they did not have a formal position on the creation of the GKNP, none of them indicated that they would join Clarence Council in formally opposing its creation. 

WILL CLARENCE VALLEY COUNCIL EVER LEARN

 Clarence Valley Council’s delayed April Council meeting (held on April 24)  approved two significant development applications on land subject to flooding.  One was on the floodplain close to Maclean and the other in a low-lying area adjacent to Rushforth Road in South Grafton.  Concerns about flooding and other matters raised in submissions by many community members about these developments were disregarded by the majority of Councillors who voted to approve them. These representatives appear to have learnt nothing about the folly of continuing to develop on the floodplain.

The Maclean development - a 24 hour, seven days a week Service Centre – is close to the motorway’s Maclean exit.  As the site is on the floodplain in a flood storage area, the Service Centre will be built on a raised mound using an estimated 66,000 cubic metres of fill.  Shades of the West Yamba disaster! 

The three councillors who opposed the development referred to a range of detrimental effects it would have including noise problems for nearby residents as well as clearing of important vegetation in an area of endangered ecological community (Swamp Open Forest of Broad-leaved Paperbark) and the potential for fuel spills and leakage to enter the adjacent wetlands and the Clarence River.

One of the submissions opposing the development commented on the location of Service Centres and their proximity to urban areas, stating that the criteria for Service Centres is that they be constructed well away from residential areas to mitigate noise and light pollution.  This is necessary because of the volume of traffic – and particularly the numbers of large trucks.  Motorway service centres at Chinderah, Ballina, Halfway Creek and Nambucca Heads are away from urban areas. So how did Maclean come to draw the booby prize?  Why was it not sited further north, and adjacent to the motorway on flood-free land?

In relation to this continued folly of floodplain development, it’s interesting to remember how assorted Federal and State politicians in 2022 proclaimed building on floodplains would have to stop.   While they are ignoring the problem, our council is rushing ahead making the existing problem worse.

-        Leonie Blain

Adapted from an article originally published under the title "When will they ever learn" in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent ,7 May, 2025.