Council
16 October, 2025
No love lost in council chamber
You could cut the tension at Wednesday night’s Wingecarribee Shire Council meeting with a knife. It was a meeting dominated by numerous points of order, thinly veiled criticisms and a flat-out refusal by some councillors to answer questions or to apologise.
You could cut the tension at Wednesday night’s Wingecarribee Shire Council meeting with a knife.
It was a meeting dominated by numerous points of order, thinly veiled criticisms and a flat-out refusal by some councillors to answer questions or to apologise.
‘Disrespectful’ and ‘sanctimonious’ were just two of the words being thrown around the chamber.
On numerous occasions councillors claimed they had been misrepresented or accused one another of ‘getting off track’ or having a conflict of interest.
At times it was entertaining – some would even describe it as ‘spirited’. At other times it was churlish and plain cringeworthy.
Mayor Jesse Fitzpatrick seemed particularly keen to get through the business paper and to get home and at times was almost brutal in shutting councillors down.
Councillor Sara Moylan asked the mayor, as the chair of the meeting, at least three times to slow things down because people were getting confused or missing out on the opportunity to speak.
Cr Fitzpatrick powered on regardless, prompting Cr Moylan to accuse him of not listening.
Cr Kent said he was sick of Cr Moylan raising the same point time and time again and suggested that she was the only one getting confused.
Debate over DA approvals had tensions soaring.
Cr Fitzpatrick refused to concede that a commitment to improve DA processing times had been his own.
He said a Mayoral Minute from September last year had been passed by council – and it was therefore a commitment made by everyone in the chamber.
Cr Rachel Russell suggested Wingecarribee Shire Council send a team to Picton to understand why Wollondilly Shire Council is doing a better job at processing DAs – prompting angry responses from the mayor (who was keen to point out that Wollondilly isn’t dealing with a massive DA backlog) and from Cr Kent (who said it was time to accept that we are not Wollondilly and that our neighbour is a shire full of “cookie cutter houses on the side of highways”).
Cr James Farrell said it was time for councillors to stop “bashing” those staff responsible for processing DAs – although Cr Kent said there were only “a couple” of councillors to blame and he was obviously not one of them.
Cr Fitzpatrick said the insinuation that council wasn’t getting on top of things was “bizarre”.
Cr Moylan said she wasn’t insinuating that council wasn’t doing anything and that she just wanted a more aggressive action plan to get on top of things.
Cr Russell described the suggestion that councillors were not supporting staff as “sanctimonious” and “unhelpful”.
Even the staff were keen to get involved. Council’s Director Communities and Place, Michael McCabe, said staff were doing a great job and suggested councillors take a closer look at the data. He said it was important for the organisation’s “political arm” to show its support for operational staff.
Referring to SMART – the acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely – Mr McCabe said: “We’re all smart people, let’s get SMART goals”.
A report on the September 22 meeting of the Floodplain Risk Management Advisory Committee also produced heated debate over the Bowral South New Living Area.
Cr Moylan said the committee lacked any transparency but Cr Kent said it was a well-vetted committee full of experts and any move by council to override what it does would be “disrespectful”.
· Keep reading The Southern Wire for comprehensive coverage of Wednesday night’s meeting.
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