Did Mayor Melissa Hamilton fight to keep decreased rural housing setbacks in the recently-returned planning scheme or did she indicate support of rescinding them to the deputy premier? This seemed to be the question Cr Joel Richters was asking in chambers during the last meeting when he made a surprise motion to table a letter of his own in the correspondence section of the agenda. The mayor found it “offensive”.
Cr Richters commented on the volume of correspondence but then announced that “there is one that I find difficult to reconcile with the position this council actually adopted thought.”
“The deputy premier has advised that our new planning scheme may proceed only if the 60 metre rural dwelling sent back is reinstated. Council debated his. Council made a decision. The majority position was 20 metre and may you were entitled to disagree and as yourself you're entitled to advocate your own view. Um, but when a mayor walks into a minister's office as the Southern Downs Regional Council, they carry that democratic decision from this council with them.”
He was concerned whether the council’s decision was “faithfully represented or was it effectively left behind?”
Cr Richters pointed out that in the mayor’s correspondence she “chose to emphasize the protection of agricultural land” even though council had resolved to change setbacks to 20 metres despite the mayor’s opposition to that change at the time.
“It is difficult to accept that the emphasis could have been seen as politically neutral” and, Cr Richters went on, the mayor did not mention to the deputy premier that it was council’s majority position to support the 20 metre setback policy.
Cr Richters says he doesn’t pretend to know what happened in the meeting between the mayor and the deputy premier but that he expected that the democratic decisions “were carried into that room even when the mayor personally voted another way”.
Cr Richters says people are paying the price of the state overturning the setback change. Cr Cynthia McDonald concurred and asked the mayor to convey to the deputy premier that “we had voted on those for very good reasons and the logic that was used is very sound.”
Cr McDonald referred to other LGAs that have small setback policies.
Mayor Hamilton, however, was having none of it.
“I find it offensive that Cr Richters would suggest that I would not support a majority decision of council and would not reflect that in my advocacy. I was in the minority of three councillors who voted to keep the setback. However, once the decision was made, I supported the majority decision of this council in all of my actions in in my advocacy”.
The mayor then claimed that Cr Richters is “the councillor who shows the least respect for majority decisions made in this room. The damage he does publicly agitating against majority decisions is his choice, but it has implications.”
Cr McDonald raised a point of order: “I don’t believe you can say that”.
Mayor Hamilton doubled down saying that if councillors supported majority decisions then the state government would have “seen our example”.
She said council would debate the planning scheme in the next meeting and that she would not “at this point” go back to the state.
