Council
26 September, 2025
Councillors clash over roads
A proposal for Wingecarribee Shire councillors to take a bus tour and view the condition of local roads prompted an angry exchange at council’s September meeting.
A proposal for Wingecarribee Shire councillors to take a bus tour and to view the condition of local roads prompted an angry exchange at council’s September meeting.
Cr Sara Moylan submitted a Notice of Motion at the September 17 meeting requesting council’s general manager arrange a one-day bus tour for councillors and relevant staff to assess the condition of roads across the shire.
She said the road network was a “major source of community concern” and an inspection involving ‘community observers’ in each of the shire’s towns and villages would provide a “stronger foundation for decision-making and advocacy”.
Cr Moylan said roads were the top priority in council’s community strategic plan but some councillors had “different perspectives” on the issue.
She said the aim of the bus tour was to bring councillors “onto the same page” and to help them make decisions from a shared perspective.
“I feel that based on some of the comments we’ve made and based on what can only be described as a reluctance to reallocate funds to our top priority of roads that we are now out of touch with the community when it comes to their number one priority,” she said.
She said meeting with residents and listening to their stories was “critical for us to be able to discharge our role as councillors advocating for the community and holding council to account”.
Cr Moylan said in terms of wants and needs, roads was an obvious ‘need’ – as opposed to a number of other items on council’s September 17 meeting agenda which were ‘wants’.
“I urge you to take this small step of a tour so that we can put into perspective what is the need for this community.”
Cr Nicole Smith took offence to the suggestion that councillors were ‘out of touch’.
“I don’t think that’s a correct representation,” she said.
She described Cr Moylan’s Notice of Motion as a ‘farce’ and suggested the motive behind it was nothing more than a photo opportunity.
“We do not need to put councillors on a bus,” she said.
Cr Moylan raised a point of order through Deputy Mayor Erin Foley, who was chairing the meeting in the absence of Mayor Jesse Fitzpatrick.
She said she had taken “great offence to the insult targeted at me by Cr Smith” and asked for an apology.
There was no apology.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to apologise for,” Cr Smith replied. “I said it was a farce and I said you were misrepresenting council.”
Cr Foley instead asked councillors to be ‘mindful of the language they use when expressing their opinions on this matter’.
Cr Smith that “hopping on a bus tour” would have no material impact and was not a good use of council resources or council time.
Cr Kent was also keen to enter the fray.
He said he agreed with Cr Smith’s comments about council being misrepresented and he couldn’t recall any councillor having said there was nothing wrong with the road network or that local roads didn’t need fixing.
“I don’t recall that being said and I don’t think it’s good practice to throw things around like that”.
Cr Kent said a one-day bus tour was impractical given the size of the shire.
“There’s no way we could be getting close to visiting all the towns and villages in a day,” he said.
“I think we would be causing more angst amongst the community than we would be solving by necessarily selecting areas to visit and leaving others out.
“We have a massive road network, we wouldn’t be able to cover more than a quarter of it in a day and we would just be causing more angst and people saying ‘But why are you visiting them and not visiting me?’,” he said.
“I don’t think this Notice of Motion is leadership at all,” Cr Kent argued.
“Real leadership would be to look at the detail of the budget, make a proposal as to how you want to reprioritise money – if that’s what you want to do – and to actually liaise with your fellow councillors.
“I did not have any correspondence from you on this Motion before today.”
Cr Kent said submitting a Notice of Motion without discussing it with fellow councillors beforehand was the equivalent of ‘show and tell’.
“It’s about really working with your fellow councillors to get things done – not doing ‘cold requests’ like this.”
Cr James Farrell said he was sure Cr Moylan had submitted the Notice of Motion with the best of intentions, but described the idea of a bus tour in his opinion as ‘dumb’ – prompting Cr Moylan to raise another point of order.
“I did prefix it with ‘my opinion’ and it remains my opinion,” he responded.
Cr Farrell said 80 per cent of roads across the shire had potholes and other damage.
“Road repairs and maintenance is a complex undertaking and would not be solved by us spending a number of hours driving around in a bus,” he said.
Cr Farrell said he had driven all the roads in the shire and acknowledged there was a ‘real problem’.
“We all need to work with council staff to come up with the solution,” he said.
Cr Rachel Russell was the only councillor to speak in favour of the Notice of Motion.
She said it was “very stressful” driving on some of the shire’s roads “because of the perfect storm of events that have unfolded in this area”.
She said the intention of the Notice of Motion was for council to get local knowledge in the short-term.
“We tend to rely on technology a lot these days and sometimes we can just go back to using the best resource at our disposal – local knowledge – to help inform our priorities,” she said.
Cr Moylan used her right of reply to say she had “no doubt” that staff were extremely hard to address road maintenance issues but she wants councillors “on the same page”.
“This is about the councillors – not about the staff,” she said.
She again claimed there was a “disparity of views” and said some councillors had suggested it would be “bizarre” and “reckless” to reallocate funds towards roads maintenance.
“Our actions don’t seem to be matching our words as councillors,” Cr Moylan said.
“We actually need to take action to make them (roads) a priority,” she said.
“It’s a simple matter of needs versus wants. We are directing our spend towards wants instead of needs.
“We need to start exercising financial discipline and align our decisions with the community’s priorities.”
Cr Moylan said she didn’t dispute that council faced challenges.
“We need to start looking at solutions and not analysis of our challenges. There has always been rain, there has always been natural disasters, there always will be. This is not the problem.
“What we need to start controlling is our own budget. That’s within our control and we can do it right here, right now.”
Cr Moylan’s Notice of Motion was lost.
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