Shellharbour mayor Marianne Saliba said she “air-punched for Strathfield” when she heard the NSW government planned to withdraw from legal action over the merger of Strathfield, Burwood and Canada Bay councils.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
On Tuesday morning, Minister for Local Government Paul Toole’s legal counsel conceded there had been errors in the Boundaries Commission inquiry process into the Sydney merger, telling the Land and Environment Court the government was withdrawing from the case and would pay Strathfield Council's costs.
However, by the afternoon Strathfield elected to push on with its case, saying “serious matters” had emerged from documents produced by the NSW government.
Cr Saliba said she was watching all council’s court cases “very closely” as they covered “some issues that are all the same and individual issues as well”.
“I have to admit, I did air punch for Strathfield, like ‘yes, you little ripper’ that they have been able to demonstrate that the delegates report was flawed,” she said.
“I hope the court considers all the information that is presented to it, because we believe … the delegate did not consider the well-being of the people in Shellharbour, nor the views of the people in Shellharbour when making its determination.”
Cr Saliba also hit back at Kiama MP Gareth Ward’s comments that the legal action was a “Labor vanity exercise” and rejected his assertions that it was costing ratepayers too much.
“Gareth Ward has been hammering me over the past couple of days over court costs, and our court costs are quite within our legal budget,” she said.
“Yet the state government has spent millions upon millions of dollars conducting these merger and they haven’t got it right. [Gareth Ward] needs to go back to his people and tell them to desist with their action.”
Likewise, Labor spokesman for the Illawarra Ryan Park said the Strathfield legal decision meant Mr Ward could not give guarantees about the report into the Illawarra merger.
“Here we have Gareth Ward wanting to do notices of motion urging Labor to pull the plug on legal proceedings and this is exactly why we won’t,” Mr Park said.
The Strathfield case has been stood over until Wednesday morning by Justice Tim Moore to allow the parties to draw up their arguments about what he said were “serious matters”. There were no clues as to which issues had emerged from the documents.
Shellharbour’s case is due to be heard in the Land and Environment Court on Thursday.