Climate Matters: Hills Shire

  Laws and regulations as well as principles of integrity and transparency require that councillors who have a personal interest in a matter under consideration by council declare that interest, usually recusing themselves from debate, influence and voting on such matters. For all our sakes that is as it should be and we congratulate councillors for respecting this requirement though the course of 2022. Such personal interests may take a number of forms and are not limited to pecuniary interests. There is nothing extraordinary or improper about councillors, from time to time, having a personal interest connected with matters that come before council.  After all they too are residents in our shire - or at least most of them are. However the extent to which councillors’ have personal interest in matters that come before council may become a matter of legitimate concern for the community. The publicly available minutes of council’s 24 meetings in 2022 reveal a total of 29 individ...

  This is a brief chronological recap of the most notable(*) outcomes from the 21 ordinary and 3 extraordinary meetings of the Hills Shire Council this year.  Notable, that is, from the point of view of this page - in other words connected or relevant to climate and environment.  So, of course, it is very selective - there have been many other matters considered by council that are not relevant to our mission and not described here. Regrettably, this account is mostly negative.  There have been one or two positives, such as steps towards a community recycling centre (yet to be realised), but overall this council’s consistent and continuing denial cannot be disputed. Do they value their "intuition" above solid, incontrovertible science?  Or do they simply value material wealth above humanity and nature?  Or their sense of personal power above the well-being of all other people?  Or their twisted, contorted "ideology" above the continuance of a safe and ...