The NSW Government's proposed Crown Lands overhaul could end up forcing councils to impose “user-pays” fees on public assets like Wollongong Harbour, Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery has warned.
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A bill before the NSW upper house gives lands minister Niall Blair the power to hand over Crown land – which may include parks, golf courses, racing tracks, beaches and caravan parks – to a government agency.
The decision can be taken if the minister decides doing so is in the public interest or that the agency is "an appropriate owner and manager of the land".
Cr Bradbery said it appeared the government was seeking to "cost-shift" Crown lands, and worried they would hand-off the costs of maintenance to local councils.
“It’s my understanding that the government’s going to create the opportunity for Crown land to be moved over to councils and that’s an exercise in cost shifting,” he said. “The pressure would then be on the councils to dispose of it, or make it operational land.”
He said Wollongong Harbour was an example of an area of Crown land which badly needed government resources, but said users and ratepayers would lose out if the responsibility was shifted from the state government to the council.
“If the harbour was in our hands, we would have to find the money to restore the [broken] walls and to maintain it. It might mean the council would have to find money within its funding base – ratepayers – or impose costs on the users of harbour.”
Meantime, Cr Bradbery’s byelection Labor opponent Paul Scully said the overhaul could lead to developers taking over public land.
Mr Scully said Labor would “fight to strike this clause out of the legislation”, as it put the future of the Illawarra’s lake and beach foreshores at risk of being sold without public scrutiny.
He called on the Baird Government to guarantee it would not sell land around Kully Bay or beachside land to developers.
In 2014, the government transferred Kully Bay to its Government Property department, after the Lake Illawarra Authority was disbanded.
“This land is public land and it must remain that way – no ifs, buts or maybes,” Mr Scully said. “Foreshore land in the Illawarra is highly valued for its environmental and recreational value and our community does not want to see it sold off to make way for high rise developments.”
- with SMH
Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
