A likely court case, a $1.761 million overspend and a pay rise. Not bad for one Wednesday afternoon.
For anyone who missed Walcha Council’s October meeting, here’s the highlights. It opened at 1:31 pm on Wednesday 28 October and went into closed session at 3:45 pm. In just over two hours, Council refused a development against its own planning advice, discovered it had overspent on staff by $1.761 million, and then gave the person in charge of the staff a pay rise. It was, by any measure, a productive afternoon.
The public gallery was unusually busy. Among the visitors were the president of Voice for Walcha and familiar campaigners from Voice for Walcha and the Walcha High Country Guardians. Both groups have campaigned against the caravan park plan as a workers’ camp in disguise. Anyone may attend a council meeting, and it’s healthy that people do.
Still, the visitors would have felt right at home. One councillor is married to a founding Voice for Walcha’s member. Another has spoken publicly for the Guardians. It’s rare for a lobby group to watch a vote with quite so many familiar faces on both sides of the rail.
First up was the caravan park redevelopment. Council’s planning manager had assessed it and recommended approval with conditions. The planning manager also explained, patiently and more than once, that the developer could already appeal to the Land and Environment Court, because Council had run past its deadline to decide.
There were real community concerns, and fair questions about whether this is a workers’ camp in a caravan park’s clothing. But councillors had ideas of their own. One proposed rezoning the site first, until the planning manager pointed out that the zone suggested is for public land, and its private-land equivalent doesn’t exist in Walcha’s planning rules. A second idea, forcing the developer to lodge paperwork the law says it may lodge later, was ruled likely unlawful too. Undeterred, a councillor moved to refuse the application as “not in the public interest”, and the motion passed 4–3.
One councillor who voted against refusal warned it would probably end up in court, “an extremely expensive exercise”.
The motion to refuse was moved by the first of those well-connected councillors and carried with the vote of a second. Neither declared a conflict of interest. In fact nobody declared one on any item; the only declaration all afternoon came from the General Manager, on his own pay review. Council’s Code of Conduct says a conflict exists where a reasonable and informed person would perceive one. Evidently none were on duty.
Walcha has perfected one-stop campaigning. The group watches from the gallery, its friends move the motion from the chamber, and nobody has to declare a thing. Later that afternoon, councillors unanimously noted that their annual interest returns had all been lodged on time. The paperwork, at least, is in perfect order.
Minutes later, councillors turned to the audited financial statements. Staff costs for 2025–26 came in at about $12.5 million against a budget of $10.7 million, $1.761 million over. The explanations offered were a restructure, recruitment costs, new apprentices and an under-budgeted aged care facility. One councillor observed that unless the apprentices were on a couple of hundred thousand dollars each, the numbers didn’t add up.
Finance couldn’t yet account for the rest, and couldn’t promise an answer by mid-November, being flat out with other reports. The fix floated was more help in finance, so that more staff could work out why staff cost so much. A councillor told the meeting, “we can’t sustain this”.
To recap: Council can’t explain its wage bill, and had just voted to invite an expensive court case. The vote for a detailed explanation was unanimous.
At 3:45 pm the public were shown out, and Council reviewed the General Manager’s performance behind closed doors. Councillors judged his leadership above average. They added $30,000 a year to his package, taking it to $330,000, and threw in five extra days of annual leave for all that hard work.
Earlier that afternoon, a councillor had asked when the monthly management reports would return. Councillors haven’t seen one since March. How they measured “above average” without them is a mystery. Perhaps by vibe. Still, after an afternoon of red ink, it’s reassuring that at least one figure at Walcha Council is above average.
So there you have it: one refusal likely headed to court, one overspend nobody can yet explain, and one pay rise that needed no explanation at all. If the Office of Local Government is looking for something to watch, I recommend the October recording. It’s free on Council’s website, which makes it the only thing at Walcha Council that came in under budget.
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