Lismore Council privatises waste and keeps debate confidential

Possibly one of the most curious aspects of last night’s Lismore Council meeting was item 13.1 regarding the Waste Operation Review. The not-unexpected result of the vote – swinging the way of the Mayor’s voting bloc – was announced to the public at 11pm and the official Council media release, with nine paragraphs of carefully considered and eloquently worded comments from the mayor himself, was emailed out less than 10 minutes later – one would assume that it had been written well before the vote took place and indeed before the meeting even opened.

The second most curious aspect of 13.1 was that it was to be debated in a confidential session.

Worker unite to protest

Another event that happened was a protest outside the chambers by around 40 council workers and supporters who opposed the outsourcing of waste services to private enterprise, which is the bones of what the Waste Operation Review is about.

Union members employed at Lismore Council have told the USU they want to keep their jobs and are prepared to fight to make sure Council dumps this proposal.

Council workers are concerned that privatising waste services will take away not only jobs but all the knowledge and experience that working for the Lismore community over decades has gathered. Cr Vanessa Ekins said before the meeting that she was concerned. ‘Council is a major employer and investor in Lismore. If we hand our profitable waste services – and collections do make a profit – to a private company, all the local businesses we invest in, like Frank Vance for tyres, Northcoast Petroleum for fuel, South Side agencies for trucks and parts, will no longer have Council business. What message does that send? 

Council not investing in local economy

‘Council is not investing in the local economy, we are giving a profitable business to a huge private company instead. It makes no sense.’

Speaking against the motion to outsource waster services came from an unexpected resident. Michael Lynch, who is the chairman of the Northern Rivers Autism Association, spoke against adopting the move to privatise waste services. ‘I may not have the same level of education as some of the other people who are speaking tonight, but I can use Google to research a subject. 

‘Outsourcing has been with us as part of the government landscape since Jeff Kennett sold off the state electricity commission of Victoria in 1994. There was then a rash of services that were outsourced or privatised, and none of them have reduced costs for the end user as a result, and recently we saw this in the corporate world, that outsourcing Qantas jobs was illegal. 

‘I have two primary concerns with your current proposal, and they are cost and community connection.‘

NSW Government Parliamentary Research Services paper

Michael Lynch continues: ‘The New South Wales Government Parliamentary Research Services wrote a paper on the government outsourcing and it says among other things, “local councils indicate that individual authorities are almost as likely to experience increases in costs as a result of outsourcing due to increasing contract management, internal management, transition and redundancy costs”.

‘It goes on to say there are areas of the government that should not be carried out with a view of making a profit. These include areas of core service – waste collection is a core service of councils. 

‘Concern number two – the existing waste collection drivers are close to this community and there is evidence that this closeness helps bind us. 

‘For those of you who are new to Lismore City Council let me explain the value that your waste collection drivers have brought to members of the Autistic community. As an autistic person, I notice only too well. 

George loves the trucks

‘George, a young autistic boy within this community, will be known to those of you who have witnessed this compassion, kindness and personal effect by the waste collection drivers of Lismore City council. George just loves the waste trucks and each year the waste collection drivers make a special effort to celebrate his birthday by driving the trucks past his home and tooting for him. 

‘This contributes to George’s sense of belonging to Lismore. It makes his family proud and brings important attention to the fact that we all need to be recognised and appreciated. So not only is the removal of waste a core service to Lismore City Council, that should be not outsourced, so is the provision of connection and care and compassion. 

‘Once a major corporation has taken over how will people like George feel valued as part of this community? 

‘Hypothetically, let’s assume it’s Brambles the owners of Cleanaway that are successful – a company is all about profit. Will they then have the time, willingness or interest in connecting with the members of the community and celebrating people like George?

Go back to the drawing board

‘I ask you to go back to the drawing board and instead of making waste truck drivers the scapegoat, do more work on saving improvements to operations instead.’

The agenda had put five items at the end of the meeting to go into a confidential setting – several councillors felt this was inappropriate and argued that the public should hear what councillors had to say on such an important issue.

Cr Vanessa Ekins proposed an urgency motion and spoke against the debate being held behind closed doors. She said it needed to be in view of the public.

‘I think in the interests of our community. We need to have this debate openly so that our community can watch us debate a really significant matter, which is our waste strategy going forward. 

Local Government Act favour public open meetings

Cr Adam Guise said the item shouldn’t be confidential. ‘The Local Government Act puts a very strong presumption in favour of public, open meetings. 

‘That’s what local government and elected councillors is about – engaging with our community and having debates open in the community. And the question of whether we privatise services or not, whether we restructure, whether we lay off workers or not, is in the overriding interest we have in the open chamber. 

‘These aren’t commercial in-confidence deals about particular companies, about particular individuals. This is about our Council waste strategy, our waste future and must involve our community. 

‘We’ve written community strategic plans that lay all that out. We’ve written waste strategies that lay all this out. We’ve had extensive consultation with our community. Nothing in there points to privatising, outsourcing, contracting or partnering our waste services,’ said Cr Guise.

‘This is out of our [waste] strategies. It should be seen and communicated with the public and shouldn’t be hidden behind closed doors as a done deal. It’s a dark day for democracy if we head down this path. It will result in election blowback. So I ask you, Mr Mayor, and your fellow councillors, to resile from your position and bring this to the open chamber and actually practice debating this in an open transparent manner.’

A very sensitive matter

Cr Andrew Gordon said there was a lot to say on the subject. ‘There’s lots to be considered. And this is a very sensitive, sensitive matter. It is a sensitive matter and it involves a lot of discussion, which might be deemed hurtful. It might not be directed at anyone personally, but it could be perceived as being hurtful. And that needs to be to treated with the utmost sensitivity.’

The debate over the debate

It was deemed important enough to debate whether to have the item debated in the open.

Cr Guise said that the Conservatives pride themselves on the three R’s of council roads, rates and rubbish. ‘Yet here we are doing away with rubbish. 

‘It’s meant to be the last domain of Council to have oversight and control over, and to go ahead and turn our waste policy, that we only adopted some 18 months ago, on its head, and completely have an about-face and adopt a different tack, this does not accord with our strategies, does not accord with the discussion we’ve had in our community, and is what I consider an ambush, because it’s come completely left of field.’

The waste strategy

Cr Guise continued: ‘It’s not mentioned in our waste strategy. Our waste strategy talks about all those aspects of waste. It sets out the plan for years to come. We haven’t actually made any efforts to explore them in real ways. 

‘From day one, I’ve asked for business plans of the different arms of our waste. We’ve got a top-level strategy which we’ve adopted, and we were told that those business cases would be forthcoming – instead, what we get is a secret workshop sprung on us before the September meeting, where suddenly we’re told that we’re going to throw away our waste strategy and privatise our waste services. 

‘This is absolutely antithetical to our adopted strategies. This has come left-of-field and is a dangerous path to go down in a race to the bottom.’

The slippery slope of privatisation

‘If we privatise waste, what else are we going to privatise in Council?’ wondered Cr Guise.

‘It’s a slippery slope, people. And if you think we can cope with the likes of Visy or Veolia, or Cleanaway, operating our waste services, holding us over a barrel – if we think we can compete against the likes of them…’ He said it was unrealistic to think Lismore could retain control of its waste and prevent it being sent to an incinerator proposed for Casino if the service was privatised.

‘The waste incinerator at Casino is still on the Labor government’s books. They haven’t taken it off… To think we sell off our waste services and think we have control of our waste. Mark my words, they are scrapping around for people to give them their waste, and I guarantee you, private operators will do anything to lessen their financial burden. 

‘So to do this behind closed doors is dodgy and wrong and will come back to bite you for those councillors who vote for this. Stop shying away from the light. Have this debate in the public in the open chamber and stop doing deals behind closed doors.’

It’s about the timing

Cr Elly Bird wanted to add her voice about moving into confidential. ‘My point really is the specific wording of the motion that is in the confidential session, which is purely to proceed with the implementation of a particular model that was presented to us. 

‘It’s about timing. It’s not about the model itself. It’s not about the actions that are included in that model. It’s about bringing it forward. That’s the essence of the decision that has been brought to us in the motion that we’ll be discussing in confidential, and we can have that conversation in the public domain, because it’s about timing, it’s about consideration of information, it’s about the fact that the motion was brought to council – we received the business paper last week, we’ve had one two presentations from some consultants. 

‘We haven’t had time as a council to talk with each other about the implementations, the timings, the deliverables, the impacts of different models. This motion that has been put to us in confidential is to proceed. So on that point, I think we can have that argument in the public domain because it’s timing it’s not detail. It’s not aspects. It’s not implications. It’s just about whether or not we go ahead with a particular model or not.’

Cr Ekins reiterated that she thought the item definitely needed to be in a public debate. ‘Our adopted waste strategy has been extensively consulted with our community was heavily workshopped with Council and went through quite a lot of workshops, meetings and other forms of inquiry before it was adopted. 

A complete reversal of our existing strategy

‘So we have an adopted strategy, now all of a sudden after two very brief workshops and no specific detail at all we’re presented with an option to proceed with a complete reversal of our existing strategy, no consultation with the community. No details. I asked for specific background documentation which was provided to us nearly a week or so ago – they are a very heavy read I’ll have to say and I’ve got a many, many questions and I’m sure our community do as well.

‘So we really need to have this discussion in open context where we can, as we’ve asked before, or defer it to another workshop so we can actually ask those questions not in a formal meeting process.’

Cr Ekins continued. ‘I have many, many concerns about privatising our waste because that’s what we’re looking at doing. And it makes no financial sense to me at all. It’s not investing in Lismore. It’s taking a profitable business of ours and giving the money to a private company. That’s what we’re talking about. It needs to be discussed in the open where everyone can hear the views.

‘Hopefully councillors who’ve moved this and put this forward will actually speak to it and let people know, well, I don’t know how they’re going to let people know – well I don’t know what your actual reasoning is, I don’t know who’s actually made any sort of inquiry into all those background reports and documents. 

A matter of significance

‘I think it’s a shame that we’re hiding behind closed doors to debate a matter of such significance to our community,’ said Cr Ekins.

‘We’ve shown some real leadership in the waste area over the last 20 years. We were the first Council to introduce a bins system after our staff went down and emptied wheelie bins and went through rubbish… with their gloved hands. And we found out that 70 per cent of the waste in our real wheelie bin was organic matter that could be diverted from landfill. 

‘That showed real leadership, 20 years ago. That was a waste strategy outcome the community is very proud of, and the education that we’ve done around our three bins system is significant. 

‘When we tried to take waste and recyclables from Byron and Ballina it didn’t work because those bins were heavily contaminated, because their community hadn’t been through the extensive education campaign that ours had, that this Council drove. 

‘We’ve got huge buy-in from our community into our three bins systems, and we’re rightfully proud of that. And when we went and asked our community about a waste strategy, they said they wanted a circular common economy. They were really proud of our waste systems and they wanted us to take responsibility for the waste that we generated, and turn it into something useful. They wanted to do it here,’ said Cr Ekins.

An opportunity to show leadership

‘We have a real opportunity to show some leadership in this area and manage regional recycling and organic matters,’ she said.

‘I really believe that this is a future investment opportunity for us, future jobs, and it’s actually showing our community we care about how we manage our waste. 

‘This is a public debate. We need to have not a quiet little conversation in this room with just these people here saying “now let’s do something else because a consultant told us it might save us a little bit of money in the short term”.

‘I say we need to invest in our communities. And this path that we’re going down just sucks money straight out of our economy to a private company, and if you want to make that decision, do it in front of the community that elected you and see what they have to say about it.’

Cr Darlene Cook agreed that the debate should be public. ‘We should not debate this in confidentiality and privacy, away from the face of the people directly affected. 

Is this a secret?

‘This is not a secret. The waste staff are perfectly well aware of what is happening. They’ve been up there [outside the chambers] this evening. They are worried about their jobs. They’re worried about their futures. They’re worried about the lack of communication by the Mayor, by the General Manager, and they’re worried about what we’re doing behind closed doors about their futures. They are heavily invested in this community. 

‘These are people who stood up and help clean up this city after two floods, even when their own houses were underwater. They stood up and they helped clean up the city. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish they went through, they worked overtime, they worked weekends. They pulled their guts out for this city – they have pride in the city, in its recovery, its rebuild – and this is how we thank them by outsourcing their jobs to profit-making private companies? 

Cr Cook continued: ‘There’s not been one outsourcing contract to private contractors in NSW where the prices to the ratepayers have not dramatically increased. And the employees of those companies are not under the local government award. They’re under Fair Work. And they’re paid close to $100 a week less than council employees to do exactly the same job. 

‘And if we can’t redeploy our staff in-house, if that’s the decision we make tonight, they lose their jobs, they lose their certainty, they lose their super, they lose their pensions. 

‘This is how we repay loyalty by going behind closed doors? To say “ah, we can’t afford to replace the fleet. It’s too expensive to replace the trucks”

‘The minister was willing to discuss it. The Minister for Local Government was willing to discuss it, the treasurer was willing to discuss it and I believe the mayor didn’t ask them for the funds. 

‘We’re going into confidentiality on a rushed document. We want to read and revisit our waste strategy – fine. It does need reviewing after the floods – It has changed a lot of the dynamics of the circular economy, waste strategy we already have. It needs a review. Actually at the briefing we had a couple of months ago Mr Logan jokingly said he could rewrite our waste strategy in four pages. I thought he was joking. Tonight we’re being handed one page. Is that our waste strategy for the next 10 years? Privatise the lot?‘

Why the rush?

Cr Cook continued. ‘Why is it being rushed through? Why couldn’t we have a proper waste strategy to go out to the community and discuss it? Let them give us the feedback on the options, let them decide whether or not roads, rates and rubbish are the core activities of this Council. Or has Council decided it can’t be asked to do the core parts of its remit?

‘They’re going to chuck out rubbish? We don’t do roads very well. We don’t do rates very well, people whinge about it. And we’re going to chuck away rubbish. What’s the purpose of us?’ she wondered.

‘We should do this in public, in the public eye, in front of our employees who have been waiting to hear what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and give them the answers they deserve in the public arena.’

Vote to be open fails

As expected, the vote to uphold that the debate go into confidential was supported by Councillors Colby, Gordon, Hall, Bing, Rob and Krieg, and htose who wanted it in the public’s view were Councillors Cook, Guise, Bird and Ekins.

Vote for outsourcing gets up

After the confidential session, the Mayor announced that the motion was resolved – that Council proceed with the implementation of the Balanced Regional Model C as presented to Councillors. The vote went the same way.

An immediate media release

Immediately after the vote a press release arrived in The Echo’s email inbox from the Mayor. He said it was the right result for our community.

‘It is long overdue, and the most in-depth and comprehensive review into our waste and resource recovery services and plans ever undertaken by Council.

‘The endorsed actions mean Council can now get on with the business of improving our operations to deliver more efficient and sustainable services for our community. It is what our community expect and deserve.

‘The reality is, with successive leadership changes and through a pandemic and natural disaster, the overall operations of our waste services and resource recovery for the city has not been prioritised as it should.

‘Not only has the overall service operated at a significant operational deficit for several years, but in the past five months alone, we have taken calls from more than 1500 residents about missed bins. Neither of these outcomes are good enough for our residents and ratepayers.

‘We now can adjust how we operate and get back on track to delivering sustainably for our community.

A campaign of misinformation by the unions

‘Crucially, given the recent campaign of misinformation by the unions, we can clarify that there are no Lismore City Council staff job losses proposed as part of these actions.

‘We look forward to working with our teams over the next 6 to 12 months as we start to formalise what this transition toward more sustainable operations for our waste and resource recovery services will look like.

‘This is a big picture body of work to ensure the health of our region and the sustainability of our services well into the future.’

After the meeting

After the meeting Cr Ekins told The Echo that the whole argument is about Council investing locally and in our own facility. ‘It’s hard, but contracting services is lazy and easy.’

Cr Guise’s thoughts were very pointed. ‘The Krieg regime’s move to outsource our waste services to profit-driven corporations is a slippery slope towards the privatisation of council assets and services.

‘Krieg needs to explain how privatising our waste services won’t result in sacking workers yet still provide cost savings to Council? Waste managed by profit-driven operators will see a race to the bottom in cost-cutting and the loss of control over our waste.

‘With Casino still nominated for a waste incinerator, big corporates are circling looking to source as much waste as possible to fuel their toxic furnace.

‘Rather than selling off public assets and services to pretend it’s a cost savings, we should be investing in waste facilities and services that enacts our circular economy waste strategy,’ said Cr Guise.

Toxic waste legacy

‘Instead of councils being at the arse end in dealing with corporations’ toxic waste legacies, the government needs to enact product stewardship legislation that makes manufacturers responsible for the waste they create,’ he said.