In a day-long hearing on Thursday in the Land and Environment Court, solicitors argued there were problems with the process and reasoning used by the NSW Government’s delegate during the consideration of the state’s amalgamation proposal. 

Counsel for Shellharbour Geoffrey Kennett, SC, submitted that there had been problems with the notification process for the public inquiries about the merger.

He said newspaper advertisements about the public meetings held in Shellharbour and Wollongong had been “masterfully vague” and did not give an address for the two venues where the inquiries were to be held. He also said the advertisements about the inquiries were placed during the school holidays, arguing this did not give residents enough time to be able to attend the meetings.

The lack of transparency regarding the government’s controversial KPMG report – which has been a common theme in other councils’ cases against the government’s merger – featured heavily in the council’s case.

Mr Kennett argued that the government’s delegate, Mike Allen, had erred by failing to put this document – which has not been made public – to one side, and said his consideration of it was unfair because other parties (such as the council) had not been able to critique the figures and assumptions of the KPMG report.

He also took umbrage with Mr Allen’s reasoning process when weighing up the financial impacts of a merger on Shellharbour residents, saying he had failed to consider the “advantages and disadvantages”, as required, in his report. Instead, Mr Kennett said, the report considered the “potential” of the merger to bring financial benefits, and did not consider the potential downsides.

But Crown Solicitor Noel Hutley argued that if the delegate had considered benefits of a merger, this meant he had implicitly considered detriments too.

He also said legislation did not require the delegate to have information, like that contained in the KPMG report; it just required him to undertake an inquiry on the proposal and report on it, so it did not matter that the information was not made public.

“Life’s tough,” he told the Shellharbour’s counsel, in regards to the report not being made public at their request.

Addressing their complaints about insufficient notification, Mr Hutley said there was no need to include an address for a venue “in the modern age” as a child would be able to look up this information on Google, and said there was “an absolute absence of one human being who said they didn’t get proper notice” of the public meeting because it was school holidays.

Mr Hutley also submitted an undertaking from Local Government Minister Paul Toole, saying he would not make any recommendation about the Wollongong-Shellharbour merger until the second business day after Land and Environment Court judge, Justice Tim Moore had delivered his judgement.

Mayor Marianne Saliba attended the hearing along with general manager Carey McIntyre and other council staff.

As it wrapped up for the day, she said the council had had a fair chance at putting forward its concerns.

“We now need to have a couple of other matters to be dealt with and then we’ll wait for Justice Moore’s determination,” she said.

“But I’m still comfortable that we’ve done everything we possibly can to ensure that Shellharbour community is being heard.”

She said she thought it was “confronting” to hear from Mr Hutley that the delegate may have based his determination on Wollongong City Council’s submission that there would be “possible benefits” and also expressed surprise at his suggestion that “life’s tough”.

“Look we’ll wait and see how it all progresses now, and hopefully it will come out favourably for Shellharbour,” she said.

Justice Moore adjourned the case until 9.45am on Friday.