Mayor Jesse Fitzpatrick said Council’s approach to Bowral South New Living Area was
focused on careful, evidence-based planning, rather than pushing through a predetermined outcome.
Council is leading the master planning process given the fragmented land ownership across the area, allowing housing, infrastructure, environmental and community needs to be considered together, rather than allowing development to occur on a piecemeal basis.
The latest flood assessment has identified areas where the draft Master Plan needs to
change, including 12 proposed lots within the Defined Flood Event area that would need to be removed or modified.
The assessment also identified potential residual flood risk in an extreme Probable
Maximum Flood event and recommends further refinement of the draft Master Plan,
including landform and layout adjustments and the potential removal of approximately
35–50 lots in the south-western part of the site.
At the upper end, this represents around 2% of the proposed lots in the New Living Area.
These findings will be taken seriously and will inform the next stage of the master planning process.
“Judy Hannan MP has been extremely vocal about the Bowral South New Living Area,
despite it having formed part of Council’s planning strategies for more than seven years.
Yet, all too often, her public statements have failed to reflect the facts.
Following her misleading statements in Parliament – statements that called into question
the community’s trust in this Council, I wrote to Ms Hannan with a detailed list of questions and invited her to substantiate her claims. Those questions remain unanswered.
Ms Hannan has questioned whether the community can trust Council. I now call into
question whether the community can trust Ms Hannan to present the facts accurately and responsibly.
Standing in floodwater nowhere near the Bowral South New Living Area, posing for a photograph and then using that image to create fear and mislead the community is not responsible representation, it is a political stunt.
Mayor Fitzpatrick called on Ms Hannan to explain to the community why she chose to present the issue in this way, why she has failed to answer the questions put to her and why she has allowed a misleading impression to remain uncorrected.
The community deserves facts, not fearmongering and political theatre,” he said.
