Empower councils for a fairer share 

As Collingwood and Penrith fans celebrate two cliffhanger wins, the Byron community has scored their own equally hard fought twin victories. 

The NSW government’s long-awaited planning regulations have finally seen short-term rental restrictions imposed in Byron Shire. The aim is for affordable long-term rental returns to again be competitive with windfall holiday rental. It promises fairness for investors while improving housing affordability. Unlocking up to 14 per cent of Byron housing which stands empty, waiting for holiday makers, can only help alleviate homelessness which has doubled in the Shire.

The second Byron win was one of the sweetest I can remember. 

Elderly residents of Feros Village who have been resisting eviction from their Marvell Street home for months, achieved a Nathan Cleary-style come-back in their epic battle with Feros Aged Care, who hoped to develop this prime real estate. 

Thanks to an incredible campaign by residents, their families, the local community and backed in by Byron Council – the NSW government has removed Feros Aged Care as trustee of the Crown Lease and opened an Expression of Interest process to appoint a new manager to operate an aged care service on the site. 

Make no mistake, this is one of the biggest David vs Goliath wins I have ever seen. Sure, it was the right decision, but it was against the odds and required enormous faith and solidarity to get this outcome.

The Byron community has a proud record of standing up for its values and fighting to protect the character of its villages and towns. But should it have to be this hard and stressful?

How can we get fairness and logical outcomes for community as a matter of course? Without having to go to the barricades for commonsense?

I have got myself into hot water in the past, believing the Northern Rivers needs a more powerful voice, and suggesting this could be achieved via Council amalgamations. I quickly dropped that idea after treading on too many toes, and being briefed by every Council that they did not want to amalgamate with the folk next door. Or they wouldn’t mind stealing a slice of this part of their neighbour’s territory, but not that territory. It was clear that amalgamation would create turmoil across the region. 

However, the aftermath of last year’s floods reinforced for me a more powerful voice for the Northern Rivers is needed. 

Essentially, the Qld Labor government was able to force then Prime Minister Scott Morrison to co-fund a $741 million flood resilience package, which included buy-backs in flood plains. This agreement was reached just six weeks after the floods. 

Meanwhile, it’s a year and seven months later in the Northern Rivers – and we still have not got a similar funding agreement. 

Why not? For once, I do not think it was bloody-minded politics. 

A really big problem has been the patchy capacity of our local councils to do the planning work and package the data needed to apply for and secure, an innovative program of funding. 

We are not like Brisbane Council, with an office block full of highly paid planners responsible for an entire river system. 

We need funding just to apply for the funding – and even then, we cannot put forward a Richmond River catchment plan because there are five different council areas in the basin. 

And none have the staff capacity to collaborate, let alone lead. It was much easier for Brisbane (one council) and Gold Coast (one council) to have the resources and the mandate to do that work, and get faster decisions which make better use of funding.

If the Northern Rivers wants to have that same capacity (and our flood experiences make it screamingly obvious that we do), but we don’t want amalgamations, then we need to restructure our governance so that our councils can work as a region. 

Having a bigger voice means that the state and federal governments will be forced to listen. Whether it is flood recovery, coastal erosion, border closures or Airbnb, our communities have special issues, and we should not keep having to go to war for fairness and common sense.

Unnecessary struggles 

I have become exasperated by so much unnecessary struggle. It should not be this hard to deliver disaster relief, and build resilient infrastructure. The NSW government needs to let go of micro-managing our communities (they are doing a really bad job) and hand stronger authority and appropriate resources to councils so they can do the job. 

It is ridiculous that it has taken so many years just to achieve a cap on Airbnb in Byron Shire. The difficulty is government needed to make rules for the state, and it is hard for them to work out a patchwork of rules that suit individual shires. 

The solution? Let local communities make those decisions themselves, through their councils. 

The same is true of Crown land management. Give councils management of all public land and let them derive income, subject to state oversight. Third, allow councils to derive income from local economic activity. 

Hunter Valley councils get a financial return from mining. Why not allow the Northern Rivers a return from tourism? 

Cities all over America and Europe have bed taxes hypothecated to support tourism marketing and infrastructure.

These ideas as a package would to enable us to be stronger, sustainable and more resilient. 

My point is our local governance arrangements need a lot of improvement – let our councils be panthers, not wallabies. Then we can fully tackle these issues.

♦ Catherine Çusack is a former NSW Liberal MP and Lennox Head resident.