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G'day my name is Michael Malone I am the director of infrastructure and environment here at Wallin Delhi Council and one of my key responsibilities is looking after around six hundred and thirty million dollars worth of community assets the largest proportion of which is around four hundred and thirty million dollars worth of roads and when it comes to a road pavement the most important part of the pavement is the part that you can't see which is the road base and when we put the road base down we put a protective wearing course on it that's bitumen based that can be a spray seal or asphalt the challenge of putting bitumen bases it starts to oxidize when exposed to the weather the Sun the air the water much like your favorite plastic deckchair but plastic coated wire on your clothesline or the plain on your house as it oxidizes it starts to crack and that's bad news for a road pavement because that lets in more moisture that breaks down the road base eventually the roadway starts to come out of the pavement's no longer suitable for being driven on so as a part of looking after our pitch Manwaring courses we look at Road pavements that aren't in too bad a condition that are starting to oxidize and we apply a rejuvenation seal to make sure that we're in course lasts us for 10 to 15 years if not longer so this year we're doing a range of roadworks across the Shire we're doing about 5.2 million dollars worth a full pavement reconstruction were covering about seven locations about three and a half kilometres we're also doing another two point five million dollars worth of heavy patching and resurfacing works across 16 locations and they'll take care of about another seven point seven kilometers of road with the rejuvenation products that we're talking about today we're doing another 29 locations covering another 7.1 kilometres of roads across the Shire only three hundred and seventy thousand dollars trying to make sure that your roads stay in as good a condition as possible I hope this has helped explain some of the things that we you have any questions on our roadworks program please have a look at our website at one NSW give us a call on 46 double seven double one double zero thank you
Hi guys I'm just here to give you a quick update on the severe weather that we're expecting to impact the shire over the next 24 to 36 hours there's currently a severe weather warning in place that includes wallanderi and we're expecting to receive in parts various parts of the shire between 150 and possibly over 200 mils of rain in various spots in the shire in the next 24 to 36 hours and on top of that they're also predicting severe winds that might be in excess of 90 kilometers an hour gusts all of that rain that is predicted has caused a flood watch for moderate to major flooding to be issued and we're asking all our residents to prepare now we know from past history that if that flood watch becomes a flood warning and it is at that major level when we have major flooding we that's when we start seeing things like blackstone crossing comedy bridge all of the major bridges start being impacted and major flooding within the pixentown centre is obviously a concern as well at the ses unit headquarters at bridge street in picton or you can also pick them up if you're in the north of the shire at silverdale rfs station on marsh road sandbagging has commenced for the picton town centre a lot of the shopkeepers have started doing that this afternoon and rfs and ses are coming in this afternoon later on this evening to help with that sandbagging effort council staff have also been working extensively um to make sure that we've got the gutters cleared and the drains are cleared both in the picton town centre and across the shire at the moment we're unsure exactly what the impact of this weather system is going to be although we do expect that it will come across as an east coast low and is potentially going to have a significant impact on the shire council is working very closely with the ses and our other emergency services partners to try to prepare and we're really encouraging all residents to do the same and take the opportunity now to prepare because between the wind and the couple of days it might be very difficult to move around the shire we've also got our council crews out on the roads we've got all of council's crews plus a contract crew working almost around the clock at the moment trying to do emergency repairs to the road network we know that there has been significant damage to our to the roads not just in wellington but more broadly across the region and we're doing everything we can to try to keep them together as much as possible if you do see a road that is in need of urgent attention and is a safety issue please let us know please report it through the portal we're expecting that we're going to see can continue to see problems with the roads over the next couple of days with the volume of rain and we're already starting to see some road closures with the oberon stock route likely to be closed later on this afternoon the next couple of days could be quite difficult for everybody so please do what we always do times and I hope everybody stays safe and we'll give an update as the situation changes thanks guys
Council is placing is 2018-19 operational plan on public exhibition for the 24th of April until 20th of May to give the community to comment on its plans for delivery over the next 12 months the operational plan sets out how the council endeavour to deliver the aspirations on the community strategic plan and sets out the background of the Shire the various projects and programs the council will be delivering over the forthcoming financial year a section on the financials including the budget and the trophies and charges that would be applied on the next financial year and the capital works budget in addition it's a support this document council has released its five-year transport capital works programme which can be accessed off our web page by clicking on the Transport capital works program link in this page sets out the phases that we endeavour to use to deliver a better series of roads across the Shire the five-year program is accessible from this link which sets out the roads have my next five years the breadth length the approximate length of the road the town or village undertaken the total estimated cost and when that various components of the job will be undertaken this is quite an extensive list of works to be completed next five years it may be easier to look at it on a map which is also accessible on our website by clicking this link here which opens up the Google map you can scroll to the location that is of interest to you or use the search function and the page will zoom to the road in this case bins Road and you can look at the various works that planned such as this work on Finn's Road at Dawson Road to remember its driveway which is planned to be undertaken in year 2022 2023 please feel free to pass any comments or questions about the roadworks program to counsel at Wanderley NSW govt au thank you
G'day guys and welcome to the february council meeting wrap up the first ordinary meeting of council for 2022 was held in the newly refurbished council chambers in the shire hall a great way to start the new term of council we will be looking into the viability of holding community forums in different villages around the shire to give residents in both awards the opportunity to raise ideas directly with council in my mayoral minute I reaffirmed our strong policy position on growth in happen that any imminent rezoning is inappropriate and must be halted and that any major growth there should not occur before 2036 at the earliest inappropriate infrastructure must be in place before any development we adopted the recommendations of the traffic committee in relation to road closures for anzac day the chemical clean out event and the thermia festival of steam our section 355 committees will also be continuing in their current format until the 4th of july council will be consulting further with residents that live near victoria bridge in relation to proposed traffic changes and any other potential solutions we need to in picton due to the growth in tamar and thermi and although the bypass is the long-term solution we need to address the issue before then in a way that has the minimum impact on the community council has been consistently calling for the state government to consult with wellington residents clearly about badgers creek airport the planning controls and the impacts from the airport council plans to inform residents within wallander affected by the western sydney aerotropolis set outlining the impacts on their properties I will also be meeting with other mayors in affected areas so we can advocate together on this issue if you'd like to find out more about what happened at tuesday night's council meeting head to the website to read the minutes or see the recording thanks guys and see you next month
it's a fantastic deal for Western Sydney it's going to make it a brilliant place to live it really is an exciting time it's above politics it's about different councils coming together labour liberal and independent councils and mayor's are all working together with the state and federal governments there's eight counselors working together that's what's happening to you the great thing is is that it's not self-interest it's the interest of the whole western region that makes us the powerhouse of Sydney and it's Sydney's future groceries everybody in western Sydney knows that the population is booming particularly out here in the heart of the southwest growth centre over the next two decades the population will increase by over half a million people but it will also mean there's more opportunities to harness that growth and to have more employment opportunities through a wider diversification of jobs the Western city will benefit substantially from reduced travel times for our workers and our community public transport is the key together with new and improved roads this Western economy the city deal will allow Western Sydney to look at its infrastructure now and for the next 20 years the airport gives us the opportunity to plan for the future also we know the businesses are coming to the area and they've already started arriving around the airport you'll see an aerotropolis it's going to be a real game-changer it's really going to enhance tourism because having people being able to access the wonders of the Blue Mountains and things in the area it will really drive some economic growth in the tourism industry I think agriculture and sustainability are a really big part of it as well and they're really important factors for a smart city then we want to be the city of the future we all have to work together and that's what's happening liveability is the key it's about making it a great place for people to live work do business get educated and it's not only us that are excited but I'm excited to show some delivery to the people our community of historical moment I'm excited the other mayors are excited let's get the whole community on board
Wallendilly shire council and the new south wales rail museum are proud to present the thelmia festival of steam join us on the second weekend of march with events for the whole family over saturday and sunday celebrate over 30 years of rail history see and ride on up to weight heritage steam engines a fun day out with amusement rides live entertainment markets street parade and so much more for tickets and details go to thermia festivalofsteem.com
welcome to the wall and le Shire a little-known but amazing destination to visit and an even better place to live work and invest Walland Alicia is blessed with vast environmental and cultural resources our assets extend from food production manufacturing and an established mineral resource industry through two iconic water catchment dams such as Warragamba dam indigenous culture and natural bushland our rural landscapes and proximity to Sydney Wollongong and Canberra make us the perfect location for business including agribusiness and especially tourism located in easy traveling distance to the new Western Sydney Airport we are in a very unique position and we would welcome you to take a closer look as part of the greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area our ecological environment native fauna and river systems lend themselves to agricultural ecological and adventure tourism Wallen Billy is also home to many unique and diverse events and festivals and a thriving cafe culture this is a time of unprecedented growth for the area with major new developments underway at Wilton and across many parts of the Shire such as the towns of Tama and apon investment need for job creation increased infrastructure and access to all levels of education and diverse medical services our vision as a council is to create opportunities in partnership with the community business and government to promote livability productivity connectivity and a sustainable future at Wallin le shire council we are committed to embracing opportunities and at the same time building on the incredible sense of community that makes this place so special we make approximately 500 to 600 thousand litres of apple juice a year we grow necrons peaches apples and persons we have a fourth-generation farm and I see a great future I loved the way the community pulls together I love being my own boss born and bred in Sydney have worked there all my life I just needed a change and found this opportunity and took it the less traffic quietness and the people very easygoing slower pace than Sydney that's all the space you want there's room for the kids to run around it's close to the city it's close to the country it's got everything you need I often joke procrastinating over CD purchases than the decision to come and move to the lowland early I decided to move to picton after spending just one day here now I've never regretted that there wouldn't be anybody on planet earth and at some point or another it doesn't have a connection back to a rural lifestyle the Farrelly family got here at eighteen fifty five from ever ever since we've been daring and beef cattle and timber and vegetables we employ about 25 people so that's supporting 25 families and we employ as many locals as we can we're only an hour and a bit from Sydney we're 40 minutes from Wollongong we're 40 minutes from barrel and there's just so much to do in the Wallen deli but the great little towns but we've also got the nature areas there's always some of the chat there's always someone you know friendly people it's just a great area to grow up you you won't want to move anywhere else you won't want to be anywhere else it's the best beer in New South Wales the whole area is grown substantially so these big potential for us to do and grow a lot more as much as you put in you got back so I encourage you to come and to take a closer look you
Good morning everyone and welcome to the recovery response and resilience expo proudly brought to you by wellendilly shire council windja caribbe shire council resilience new south wales and the national recovery and resilience agency my name is kim hill and I am the local recovery support officer with the national recovery and resilience agency good morning everyone my name is natalie I'm the community recovery officer at mullen jilly shy council good morning everyone I'm karen the community recovery officer for winter caribbe council we are very excited to have you join us for this virtual event from the many lands on which we meet today I would now like to invite melissa whom is the aboriginal community development officer with winter caribbe shire council and a very proud arakul banjalang woman to deliver our acknowledgement to country on behalf of winter cabby shower council and willendale shire council I would like to acknowledge the ganongara and daraa people as they are the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work I acknowledge the spiritual connections to the land waters and sky I like and present and to the future generations I'd also like to extend that respect to all aboriginal and torres strait islander people that are watching today in my language jinguala welcome thank you melissa we now have a message from wallendale shire council ceo mr ben taylor and winter caribbe shy council general general manager lisa miscample hi everyone I'm ben taylor I'm ceo for well in delhi shire council I'm very pleased to see everyone come along to this event I hope you get a lot out of it I've got to say for wallendale shire council this is extremely important for us as we support our community through all of the challenges we've had over the many many years um just gone we're working closely with our friends at windy caribbean as well as resilience new south wales and the national recovery and resilience agency to support our community as they cope with the challenges of bushfires of floods of covert 19 because that's what communities are all about is coming together to support each other through times of crisis time of emergency is to support the the combat agencies the lead agencies as they deal with the emergencies at hand now two years on from from the horrific green waddle creek bush buyers I want to really pay tribute to those to those lead agencies who put their lives on the line to support our communities and support our shire our role as a council is to support them and help them do their job as best they can because they are extraordinary at what they do we also have a lot of other support mechanisms in place so for council we have the mirror relief fund which is set up to support our community and provide that every extra level of assistance through the green waddle creek fire council raised over 250 000 which was directed directly to support communities on the ground and support them in their recovery from a time of immense challenge I mean personally I can I can remember back to that to those days in in late 2019 early early 2020 uh and how hard it was for our community um how hard with an enormous challenge ahead of them and still two years on our community is um is seeking is still recovering from the impacts of such an extraordinary crisis um for council we've been very active in the resilience space so we have um our activate wall and deli recovery and resilience framework in place which sets out our plan um to support our community and also to ensure that we're prepared for the challenges that will inevitably come in in the years ahead and we also have a great committee in our recovery and resilience committee of community members who who volunteer their time their effort and their expertise to advise council and to coordinate efforts as well on the ground as we support our community recover from the challenges on the ground and the challenges that still exist many years after um the extreme events that our communities experienced um for all of you I hope you get a lot out of this um out of this forum it's a really important expo and um and training forum for you to learn and understand and recover from the challenges that we've had but also to prepare yourselves and become even more resilient for the years ahead lastly I'd like to finish by thanking particularly our our emergency services for all the work they've done to support our community and to keep our community safe it's extraordinary what you do having witnessed firsthand your passion your dedication your hard work and your expertise I really want to personally thank you and also thank you on behalf of well and delisha council for everything you do for all of you um I hope you enjoy the expo I hope you enjoy the the forum that's ahead of you make the most of it and as you know as always council's here to help and hopefully I'll be able to see you one day soon good morning and welcome to our online bushfire response recovery and resilience expo my name is lisa miss campbell and I am the general manager of winter caribbe shire council together with wallendilly shire council resilience new south wales and the national recovery resilience agency we just over a week's time summer is set to commence and shortly after that we will acknowledge the second anniversary of the green model creek and moreton fires these bushfires threatened both the winter caribbean and wallingdilly shires for weeks over the summer of 2019 and 2020 in the two years since the black summer fires we've discovered that recovery is an ongoing process everyone's circumstance is unique and for many people their journey towards recovery will take years as a community we travel together on the path towards recovery and build our resilience for future events whilst we hope for the best it is important to plan for the worst and that's where this weekend's expo is important over the next three days you'll hear from experts about rebuilding after a natural disaster disaster of preparedness support services legal aid and much much more it is also an opportunity for participants to share their stories and experiences and to make new connections and contacts this expo is part of our recovery journey winter caribbe shire council is committed to prioritizing infrastructure projects and continue to implement environmental initiatives to help our landscape recovery and promote social connections to build our communities even closer together we continue to implement recommendations from the new south wales bushfire inquiry and our own independent review into the green wattle creek and moreton bushfires we understand that recovery and building resilience is a shared journey in closing I would like to say a special thanks to all of the emergency first responder volunteer and combat agencies for all of their efforts during and since the black summer fires our role at council is to support these lead agencies and each time an emergency faces our shire it's these agencies who are at the coal face of the crisis I urge everyone to participate as much as you feel comfortable over the next three days your experiences may well help someone else take that extra step along the road to recovery I trust you find the expo beneficial thank you for those messages this event was scheduled to be a face-to-face event however due to the current covert situation we decided to keep everyone safe to deliver this a face-to-face event in april of 2022 and we hope to see you all there please just keep an eye on council's websites for updates in this space today's virtual event will be recorded so that you can come back and view it later if you wish for today's event you will hear from various speakers around rebuilding after a bushfire at the end of the program around 12 15 pm we will then be joined by all of our speakers as part of a panel to where you can write questions in the comments below and then we can direct them to the relevant person to answer if we cannot get to all the questions please know that we will take them on notice and come back with an answer all of the questions and answers for each day will be listed on council's expo web page you will also find on that expo web page links to various agencies along with video content messages and links to useful information I would like to welcome our first speaker jody from jd dang architect jd will it was formed and the services that they provide building material for bush prone areas jodie has spoken to wall and dilly before we're very excited to have jody back again today jody has over 10 years experience in architecture jd knew that sustainability was going to play a major part in the roles and the projects that she pursued in her career focusing on small to medium-sized projects jd has gained a strong reputation in good sustainable design in new south wales jody wishes to continue sharing her knowledge and experience in architecture and help each of her clients to realize their dream build through creating responsive and sustainable architecture welcome jody thank you I'll just share my screen hi everyone thank you for attending today my name is jody and today I'm here to represent architect assist I'll start my talk today explaining what is architects assist who I am uh what I could offer and then we'll move into material selection to bushfire prone areas so architect assist was an initiative started by around 600 architects in response to the devastation of natural disasters so architect assist is supported by the australian institutes of architects that everyone who signed up to assist assistant signed up to offer assistant needs to be a registered architect in order to request by assistance uh you can visit the website and click on the tab request for assistance from the directory you could choose from a range of architects and architecture studios which you think best suits your needs it is good to note that providers closer to the disaster stones are usually much more popular and that further away architects like more city-based ones are usually more readily available you could choose directly and contact the architectural studio directly or you could give them a call each studio and each architect offers a different range of services so you actually need to discuss what you like to do and then the architect and the architecture studios would come to an agreement of what assistance they will offer you so it could vary from just simple advice all the way to the full scopes of design in order for my services I offer from basic simple a development application to start building your new home you could contact me directly by my website or via email and my number is also on my website if you like to call me directly on the architect assist website there's also a lot of links that information you can access to help you rebuild this includes building codes sustainable guidelines and other necessary resources that you think will be helpful so just a little bit about myself which was already covered um I'm a city-based architect I'm a certified passive house designer which means I'm certified to design low energy and self-sustaining housing so these days when we start to construct homes we have an expected lifespan of 50 years for that home and in that time they may be subjected to multiple bushfires there are five ways which impacts the building smoke wind amber attack radiant heat and direct flame contact so many of you may have been given a bow rating for your area the bow rating is a construction guide for structures to withstand heat and embers attacks during a bushfire anything to bowel flame zone we are designing to allow our houses to withstand ember attacks and collapsing in extreme heat I'm going to go through how these five elements going to impact our design thinking and construction with wind during a bushfire the winds could go up to 200 kilometers per hour which is close to a category 4 cyclone so when we are designing we need to think about how big our windows are because usually we want expensive windows to capture the views of the landscape but at the same time during these bushfires the windows the bigger the windows the more they'll buckle and crack and ultimately break with ember embers are small pieces of wood and bark carried by the wind to ignite a house it accounts for 75 percent of damages caused by bushfires for structures in the bow 29 and over um we usually are designing houses to prevent embers flying into our home we are small gaps in our structure to allow the embers to come in and basically burn the house from inside out with extreme heat our structure needs the bush fire when the bush fire comes and your neighbor unfortunately gets ignited your house would also get in contact with the radiant heat caused by your neighbor and the direct impact of the flames today I'll be going through the highest building in the highest bowel rating which is bowel flame zone so we'll go through the walls windows floor decking and roof one of the biggest considerations we need to um consider is following the australian standards 3939 2018 construction of buildings in bushfire prone areas and this guide will kind of advise us on which building materials are allowed and all those buildings standing codes that we need to adhere to so for external walls it states that all external walls has to be non-combustible and a minimum thickness of 90 millimeters so this really does limit our structural selection to either brick or concrete if we want to use lightweight materials that is available as a choice but it is quite complicated to decode what is allowed in the in the australian standard so it is best to consult your architect or fire flaws and deckings in a bowel flame zone area has to be completely enclosed so this does away with all timber decking as it allows small gaps for embers and grass files to seep through to the house the most important coat to look for when you're selecting tiles as well is it doesn't conform with as13 1530 which is a non-combustible and bushfire compliant material so with your windows in a bow flame zone and bow 40 all windows needs to be screened so the house can be completely closed off during a bush fire you can either go for external metal window shutters or you could go for a perforated mesh window screen you can't just go off and choose any perforated metal screen the mesh needs to have a maximum aperture of two millimeters and made out of corrosion resistant steel so with all these rule in place it feels like your building needs to be an enclosed fortress I will now show you an example of a home built in a bowel flame zone so this is a house this is a two in the blue mountains in a malagong valley and this is an example done by anderson architecture so the entire co the entire construction the entire structural frame is actually concrete to comply with said and you kind of see how close it is to all the trees and the grassland around it the construction is also slab on ground so that allows embers and grass fire not to be able to penetrate the floor during a bushfire the design of the concrete is then cladded in in basically timber composite material so it's not actually timber it's a modified composite timber which is a non-combustible material and a decking which looks like timber is also a composite which is non-combustible so there are varieties of different materials that you could use that is not just brick and concrete to give the entire design a little bit more lighter feel and more inserting to the landscape all the windows on the facade are right about 40 and then additionally they have metal screens which allows the order windows and the house to be completely enclosed off during a views when there's no bush bushfire and to enjoy the beautiful landscape but it also allows it to respond to the bushfires and allow it to comply with about fz and have the entire house completely enclosed timber is allowed to be used but only for the interiors and that allows the house to be soft enough and you could use it for shelving units and internal cladding the floors however four barrel f set still needs to be either mainly tiles in this case the design went for polished concrete so that's the end of my talk today uh you could contact me directly if you would like to have more information about building in bushfire prone areas and I would like to finish off by thanking will and dilly council and ryan caribe council for having me today thank you thank you jody that was such an interesting presentation I definitely learned that and that house was incredible um if anyone has any questions for jody please type them into the chat um we will have a question and answer time later on this afternoon um to introduce the planners from both wall and dilly and woody harry shy council our planners today will discuss rebuilding after a disaster and what you need to know also how council is here to support you in that process apologies everybody the computer restarted just before we're just reopening the presentation sorry everybody sorry about that yeah so this is um the map that shows the extent of the bushfire and yeah more or less covers more than fifty percent of voluntary as well as um their neighbouring councils so in the aftermath council nominated us as the bushfire recovery office contacts and the painting directorate for all customers inquiries related requiring assistance in regards to the rebuild process this was set up so that bushfire victims had the same contact from start to finish when interacting with council during the rebuilding phase this service remains open to this day and customers are invited to contact council if they require any form of assistance so the first part of the planning approval process the rebuild you need to obtain development consent from council uh the same as you it that all applications required for rebuild developments destroyed by the bushfire events would not incur any assessment fees and we would try as best as we could to prioritize those preparing a da for council's review is a specialist task therefore we recommend that customers engage the services of relevant professionals such as just people planning consultants and the like jody's presentation before us was all about architects assists so we've put that link there and they help with providing professional services to help and support those affected by the natural disasters and bushfire events in addition to engaging professionals to assist in the preparation of the required development application council's advice is that one of the most important professionals to engage is a b-pad accredited bushfire consultant bushfire consultant will be able to help you determine your bushfire attack level help you during the construction process and advise you in regard to ongoing bushfire maintenance and survival plans the fire protection association provides a list of accredited practitioners than being accredited bushfire consultants on their website so you can be sure to engage a relevant page is attached we also engage the new south wales rural fire service in our assessments um so during the assessment period for development applications for rebuilds council will refer the applications to the rural fire service for their review and advice to make sure that the rebuild complies with all the relevant legislations such as their document planning for bushfire protection as well as all the current industry best practices it's very important to ensure everything is correct at the va stage to ensure the rebuild runs smoothly and that the proposal will be adequately protected and built correctly in line with the current legislation in response to the bushfire events new south wales government also introduced new south wales world fire service 2019 2020 bushfire rebuilding climb scheme which is known as bow capping concession in summary this allows owners of the rebuilding to build to a lower bushfire attack level provided other offset measures are implemented during the rebuild which could substantially reduce the financial cost for the rebuild councils have in support of this policy and react with the support of the new south bushfire consultant and liaison new south wales fire rule fire service if you intend to explore this rebuilding option using the bell capping so once you've obtained approval from council to rebuild prior to starting any of the building works you need to obtain a construction certificate from either council or an accredited certifier council provides this expert service which is also free of charge for bushfire victims if you nominate council as your principal certifier we'll inspect the rebuild at mandatory stages to ensure compliance with your approval council will also require the nominated bushfire consultant to inspect the rebuild at certain stages of construction with our council officers to ensure compliance with the bushfire protection construction measures throughout upon completion of the rebuild and prior to you moving in you will need to obtain an occupation stevia from your principal certifier as advised council provides this service free charge for all building victims priority issuing the occupation civic will inspect to ensure the building is safe to occupy and to ensure that conforms with all the bushfire protection measures that are being required and that they your nominated bushfire consultant to inspect rebuild once completed to ensure compliance with the bushfire protection construction measures that have been stated by the relevant consultant so ongoing maintenance so even with a brand new reboot home once you've moved in it's very important to ensure that a bushfire survivor plan bushfire survival plan sorry is created to ensure all the required bushfire protection measures are maintained as intended uh examples of these measures include ensuring the curtinage of the rebuild remains cleared and maintained ensuring bushfire water supplies are full access driveway is maintained and gutters are cleaned regularly council staff are dedicated to supporting the bushfire and disaster victims wherever we can the main contacts if you have inquiries are natalie mccullum which is council's community community recovery officer myself team leader of building privileges and certification jake abrahams is one of our senior building surveyors and kim hill kmuc recovery sport officer wallin delhi and winch caribbe from the national recovery and resilience agency and lastly uh information that council's um provided in our activate wallendilly uh long-term community recovery and resilience plan need to know in regards to bushfire and disaster recovery and that's the end of our presentation and we can take uh questions now but probably later at the end of the uh at the end of the day yeah so no worries thanks so much steven and jake so um yeah we did have a few technical issues issues there at the start so sorry everybody but the presentation will be available for people to view later um so if anybody has any questions for the planners and please note we also have the winch caribou planners on on board as well it's just that they were having a few technical issues getting on board so any questions please type them into the chat and then we can come back to those for our panel later on at about 12 15 today thank you boys online so we're just going to thanks matt so just while we're doing that too just to add as stephen and jake mentioned that there's a big team of us here at council that are happy to support when and jake mentioned feel free to get in touch with any of us at any time we'll definitely help you walk you through that process wherever we can and we try work together as a team as much as you can through that process so there's a lot of support here within council um to to help those rebuilds happen so thank you both so much we also have a really great rebuilding after bushfire document that has just been finalized with our graphic designers um that has been developed in collaboration with our planners and certifiers with the with the nwra so we'll be uploading that to our website as well in the expo content so we've just had ross bro winter cabbage eye council join us so ross if we can hand over to you just to touch on the rebuild and planning supports available through winter caribbean council that would be great hello um my name is ross johnson I'm the ethnic coordinator of certification at windsor caribbean um are you able to hear me yes we can hear you and see little bit of a technical problem we haven't been able to get up our presentation but we'll we'll send that through to the attendees a bit later I'm um pretty much uh winter caribbe has a similar policy to wall and dilly in that any applications that are provided to or submitted to us do not incur any fees and they do get a priority listing to uh for assessment and go through the similar processes what um was explained for wall on dilly there being referred to rfs and any of the other associated state government sections that are required to go to but that'll be all on our handout when it comes through shortly thanks so much ross we'll um attach all that information we'll attach all that information to the content for people to have access to via both council websites so and then again if people have any questions please type them in the comments so that we can come back to those for you to get some answers thanks kim so just checking before I move along sides for the planners for both councils thank you yes can you hear me jim yes I can oh so there we go I'm nancy I'm the acting manager for planning certification and compliance I just wanted to reiterate um what ross says and how seriously we've been taking bushfire resilience in australia our director king is very keen to help people in the shower with this issue um we've had a number of sessions um help sessions throughout the show to try and help our community um and we've got we've tried to put as much on the website in the past as we could during the actual during the worst of the fires um we were very very busy um as you as everybody was I think um trying to um has it just dropped out I think it has now we can hear you oh okay that's great thank you I think I'm not sure what happened with my link but it wasn't working very well there we go I think it says hello that works now normally of as I was just saying we we do have a number of resources already on the website and that will be improving over time um we have recently improved our website and but it's a bit of a work in progress um we've actually been getting some help from wall and dilly which is great so thank you so much the team at one dilly um we do we're obviously going through a lot locally as you did with this issue we do we've tried to bring in things as ross mentioned around free fees can you turn your sound off ross thanks um free fees which covers everything not just the d.a fee specifically but associated fees um for those in recovery um to try and help people and also a certain a team that will specifically look after and concierge those applicants when they put their applications in and to try and fast-track them just I think in the same way that wall and dilly has um so we're doing what we can to try and help as best we can but certainly sorry we haven't echoed this end ross can you turn your sound off please yeah thank you nancy thank you so much as we said we'll have um everything available on the council's website for people to access via both presentations so sorry there was a few i.t issues the joys of today's technology so we'll move along now to our next guest speaker so um I would like to introduce catherine so catherine gorey is with the bushfire consulting service catherine is the managing director of the bushfire consulting service which she established in 2010 holding bushfire planning and design accredited practitioner catherine is a qualified environmental health and building surveyor with over 16 years local government experience most recently with blue mountain city council as a senior development assessment officer and building certifier catherine is also the managing director of the registered training organisation building up skills and has designed and implemented the swimming pool inspector course as a registration pathway for new south wales swimming pool inspectors for the department of fair trading formerly the building professionals board catherine has and western australia building commission and delivers her own bushfire seminars to council officers building certifiers and architects and in partnership with the master builders association continuing professional development program for builders and in-house consulting for cpd for architects catherine has actively contributed to the technical advisory committee 20 bushfire safety of the fire protection association of australia for more than seven years and is a member of the western sydney university external advisory committee built environment and the former planning for bushfire protection implementation group welcome catherine and thank you very much for your time today thanks kim so I'm expecting my video to start playing yeah thank you hi my name is katherine gauri and today I'm talking about the role of bushfire consultants and what they can bring to your development process I'm a bushfire consultant and building surveyor and worked for 16 years in local government doing assessments of applications for development as well as construction inspections I worked for seven years at blue mountains council and I developed a particular interest in bushfire as you can imagine and studied for a graduate western sydney graduating in 2010 I then applied for and received accreditation as a recognised bushfire consultant bushfires are part of life in australia they're influenced by many factors including warm and dry conditions extreme heat strong winds and low humidity housing design and materials fuel loads and their management climate change is increasing bushfires throughout australia and this has resulted in a higher number of days of high or extreme fire risk over the last few decades climate change also brings an extension of the fire season we can still implement better land management learn from the techniques and past practices of indigenous fire management principles and continue research into our changing climate and bushfire behaviour and aim to avoid the catastrophic loss of life that has occurred in the past and never more so than the most recent bushfire season there are a number of strategies set in place by the government to manage bushfires in new south wales such as fire prevention in other words doing something about arsonists warning systems community preparedness prescribed burning monitoring and maintenance and using the planning and development control system I'm only talking about the measures that are in place to increase the bushfire resilience of housing stock at the development assessment stage your local council is responsible for preparing bushfire prone land maps for their council the commissioner of the new south wales rural farm by prone your local council can supply you with a section 10.72 and 5 planning certificate which will confirm whether your property is on bushfire prone land but you can also find out if your property is on bushfire prone land by searching the new south wales planning portal it's really important to understand that the map can't show you the bushfire risk applicable to your property which is worked out individually for each building project by bushfire consultant or the council it's easy to find out if the land is bushfire prone by going to the new south wales planning portal this fairly recent resource has got a lot of great information about all land in new south wales so go to the browser and follow the prompts until you find the new south wales planning portal click on for nine glenrock clothes picton so you start typing in the address and it auto fills once enough information is entered so you select that property from the drop-down list so when the property comes up some layers are already active which is usually the zoning layer so there's a little icon there to unselect all the layers so that when we get to the bushfire prone land map it's clear so scroll down the menu on the left hand side until you see the word hazard click on that to expand menu then select bushfire prone landmap now you can see the bush bioprone land map around this property we can make a few little adjustments to this website to make it easier to read this is what I normally do so I'm going to click on the bush fire prone landmap layer and make it a little bit more transparent then on the bottom on the right hand side you can select an aerial map to see under it so this just shows you how the red layer is the bushland the yellow layer around that buffer or the red layer is bushfire prone land it is not enough to know that the land is bushfire prone you also need to gain an understanding of the bushfire attack level and its implications for your new works this might be about the cost of the building works but also the materials that you can use it is important to understand the bushfire attack level for the location of the new work at the planning stage a complying development can only go ahead with a maximum bushfire attack level of 29 ball 40 and bowel flame zone require a development application to cancel if the bowel is 40 or flame zone you will not be able to have a granny flat a family daycare airbnb or similar development types the maximum bushfire attack level for these type of developments is about 29. the method for determining the bushfire attack level is set out in the new south wales rural fire service document called planning for bushfire protection 2019. the calculations are made from the fire danger index for the locality the type of bushland vegetation the slope the new work from the bushland putting all these things together gives us an understanding of how bushfire might behave in relation to your site there are six bushfire attack levels ranging from low through increasing race risk to bowel flame zone the bushfire attack level is a measurement of the severity of a building's potential exposure to ember attack radiant heat and direct flame contact you can find a list of accredited bushfire consultants by visiting the bushfire protection association of australia or the fire protection association of australia like any other industry ask for recommendations from people you know a bushfire consultant will come to your site and take photographs and measurements around the site and wherever physically possible out to 100 metres into the bushland causing the hazard the bowel must be determined by an accredited bushfire consultant or the council your bushfire consultant can bring many years of expertise to your project negotiate with the rfs and council on your behalf to get the best result for your site they can also help work with ecological factors that may impact your site this means providing situation they can go on to help you choose appropriate building materials and check in on your works as they progress to ensure bushfire measures are in line with the development consent conditions once assessed your new works will have one of the six bushfire attack levels applied the lower bushfire attack levels from 12.5 through to 29 mainly deal with ember attack so measures applied to your building works are designed to keep embers out of the building the higher bells being bell 40 and flame zone also deal with ember attack but radiant heat effects as well so this means that it's anticipated that flame may contact your house or building work so the building materials themselves need to be able to risk the resist the effects of this heat once the bowel is established you'll be referred to as3959 for the construction requirements for each bowel the components that are addressed in as3959 are all of the external building elements from the subfloor to the walls the glazing through to the roof verandas and decks so each bushfire attack level has its own set of general section at the beginning of the standard which applies to every bushfire attack level in new south wales planning for bushfire protection overrides some of the requirements of the standard you can find these from part 7.5 of planning for bushfire protection 2019 it's also a legislative requirement that each development must satisfy the objectives of planning for bushfire protection 2019 this rural fire service document can be downloaded from the rfs website these bushfire protection measures include asset protection zones the construction standards and design gaining access to the property having sufficient water and utilities to facilitate firefighting activities having landscaping that is consistent with the asset protection zone and having some emergency management practices in place which depends on the development type so for example emergency management arrangements are different for for example schools than they are for single dwellings your bushfire consultant makes an assessment of this in their bushfire report some of the reasons for using an accredited bushfire consultant include getting the most accurate bushfire attack level for your new works your bushfire consultant will be familiar with views of the rfs and as well as australian standard 3959 we will also aim to find safest position on your site for the new works in cases where there is a choice of positions we will try to reduce the bushfire attack level if it's possible and can suggest ways that this might be achieved for example redesigning a project if possible or minimizing the hazard also if possible we can also assist you find a better bushfire protection outcome where the risk is very high and the works are very minor using an accredited bushfire consultant gives confidence that you're dealing with a accredited and insured person who's an expert in their field we can also find an alternate solution sometimes for more unusual or challenging situations this photograph is from a dwelling that we worked on in conjolla park which was affected by the bushfires on new year's eve of 2020 we worked with the builder and owner to make sure that the building was constructed in accordance with the development consent which was a mixture of flame zone and forty and of the many buildings that perished uh with resisted the bushfire attack and remained standing with only very slight damage we hope to be able to help you with your next bushfire prone land project thank you very much catherine that was a really fantastic video I think for people that are not only rebuilding after disaster but just building a new house all the acronyms and the abbreviations and things can be so overwhelming so that presentation was really great and and I think the upcoming presentations are really going to assist as well just to break down some of the that overwhelming nature of when we look at this process um because there are so many people out there who can support you through that process so thank you very much catherine and look forward I'm sure you can have a lot of questions in the panel at the end so our next presentation is a joint presentation from lisa chu from the new south wales rural fire service and lou short from black ash they'll be talking to us today about bushfire attack levels or bowel ratings as as we've to help the community lisa is a supervisor development planning and policy for the new south wales rural fire services built and natural environment directorate in her role she primarily oversees development and administration of building bush fire protection and associated land use policy related documents and processes for new south wales as well as work in the related strategic planning space since coming to the new south wales rural fire service lisa has overseen significant reforms in associated processes and programs with an emphasis on customer service delivery improved efficiencies and outcomes and engagement with relevant stakeholders prior to her current role lisa worked in various roles at the then state forest of new south wales in areas that involve bushfire and has also served in leadership positions internationally and recognised volunteer organizations lou from blackash is a highly regarded expert in bushfire planning and design with over 20 years experience in local government the private sector and state government lou led the development assessment and planning for bush fire protection for the new south wales rural fire service at a state level he was responsible for the assessment and bushfire prone mappings in new south wales liu has extensive experience providing national leadership in building community resilience lou's technical expertise is in bushfire consequence management risk assessment and mitigation and specifically the planning and design of new developments in high bushfire sorry high bushfire risk areas to comply with legislative and planning requirements lou is an expert in designing solutions for complex and challenging projects where environmental engineering or design constraints need consideration when planning for bushfire lou has a deep operational understanding of how fire works in the australian landscape he has multi-faceted insight into how governments respond to this straight loo provides unique strategies to comply with regulatory requirements and safety outcomes loo's skills lie in developing strong working relationships with clients providing innovative solutions and clear communication to deliver optimum project outcomes lou's expertise lies in understanding the complexity of building in bushfire growing areas and helping clients navigate this challenging space some of our community members might be familiar with black ash as they've been assisting residents who are rebuilding after fire to obtain uh their bushfire uh which fire and I will I'm just going to set you both up as panelists lou I might ask you to start first if that's okay um we're just waiting for lisa to jump online so lou if I can hand over to you to start the presentation and then lisa I'll ask you to present afterloo of course um bear with me for two seconds okay have you got me there yes we do all good to go lou thank you excellent thank you um look a lot of this has been covered by other presenters this morning so I think I'm trying to just pull together various elements and give a couple of examples and I'm not going to read through everything and I'll just paraphrase some of the important points that people can take away the the important thing is that all new development in bushfire train areas across new south wales have to comply or consider these planning for bushfire protection standards um so it's not just residential houses it's aged care hospital schools that the whole gamut of increase resilience of communities planning for bushfire protection is called up in legislation um so it's actually a legal document and the the requirement for infill developments are existing houses alterations and additions um rebuilds after fire and things like that it is really to try and respect people's choice as to to where they live and providing a balanced approach to risk so that there's different ways and different considerations in getting outcomes for bushfire that I'll run through in a couple of minutes um this is all bound up in the national construction code and again I'm not going to get all sort of legal and things like that but it's it's not just stuff that council or consultants or the rural fire service make up there's actually a national system that all of this sits within um there's the the national construction standards that give you the different bushfire attack levels so this is not stuff that is just being made up as a new south wales specific response to bushfires or anything like that so there's within um so the the national standard which gives you the bushfire attack levels is an accepted way of coming up with accepted practice accepted standards what what works what's being considered by uh you know through various bushfires and responses to fires as what is going to give a degree of resilience to a structure during the impact of a fire and while while it passes um the important thing to remember with the standard is that even though you might be building to a very a specific bushfire attack level it's not a guarantee that the structure is going to withstand the impact and the fire so it's designed to actually for the fire to come up to the house to impact it and then for the fire to actually pass through and and go beyond and then the house might catch fire but the people can if they're in the house can then move out on the dirt ground or something like that so technically if a house still gets damaged or burns down but the people have been saved the standard and at infill houses so existing houses alterations and additions new houses rebuilds after fire and things like that it's complex because there's existing infrastructure in place the the roads the power the water all of these things that you might consider in a new area are already there um so you can have different people come up with you know looking at the same problem of what's the bushfire attack level that might come up with different solutions um and there's a the framework around that so within planning for bushfire protection there are these um bushfire protection measures so six of these things and and the way that we look at them is uh they're believers what what can you use to try and get the best outcome you can for the site and for existing houses it's mainly around and catherine mentioned this that the landscaping in as protection zones you're building construction and design so what what's the interplay of these things that actually lead to the the risk or the bushfire attack at a structure so your other pieces down here are already in place for existing houses and then the emergency management arrangements are more the operational response of fire authorities um the emergency management arrangements for vulnerable communities like schools and hospitals and things like that where you have quite detailed uh emergency management plans and evacuation plans so all of these things come together to say right this is the risk and this is how you might consider it and this is what you might do to to change or alter that risk in in some way for the infill houses and there's a couple of key words here that I've highlighted that to look at getting better outcomes so for existing houses for alterations and additions new houses what can you do to provide defendable space what what is a better bushfire outcome and this is where people either with council they're all fire service consultants that actually can provide the advice on you know what what's the level of risk and what things can you reasonably do to mitigate or reduce that risk so the risk base is very your own land so you're not actually passing an obligation or responsibility onto an adjoining land holder although managed land golf courses parks you know your neighbors manage land could be considered as part of an asset protection zone and looking at what you can do for existing dwellings to increase the the resilience and the durability of those buildings um to any to a fire that might come through uh catherine mentioned compliant development so I won't go through this very quickly the the main thing is it's only for infill residential development uh you can only do a compliant development for the the lower level risks of below 12.5 down 19 or 29 I didn't actually put that in um but they've got to be recognized by the rural fire services a suitably qualified consultant or a suitably qualified person if council are doing those things um and then if you're in the higher risk areas of balfouri or flame zone you've got to do a formal development application and a bushfire hazard assessment report so there's a a format and you can provide acceptable solutions or performance based approaches in there what what I thought I would do is just step through a couple of examples here and these are a couple of tables from planning for bushfire protection so there's different fire dangers across the state that we would consider so down in the alpine areas you've got this fire danger index of 50 some of the coastal areas and out west are a higher fire danger index of 80 and then you've got some of the coastal areas which is in the neck of the woods we're talking now sydney and sort of coastal areas which is a fire danger index of 100. so that sort of tells us that this is where we need to start thinking about what's the level of risk and and how we work it through so I'll step through a sort of procedurally how you do it so you you look at the slope what what's the slope underneath the hazard so it's what what's actually going to burn and what what so that gets you into this ballpark down here of 5 to 10 degrees downslope so away from the structure what's the sort of vegetation that you're looking at um so there's a couple of different vegetation types that are separated out for the acceptable solutions and this one might and most of the areas around sydney are forest um so you know you're in forest vegetation you've got a five to ten degree slope then you look at what's the distance of the structure from the actual unmanaged vegetation so in this circumstance I've said look it's it's somewhere between 36 and 49 meters so that's the actual physical separation of the the building then you combine all of these things through here so your 5 to 10 degree slope your forest vegetation your separation distance and that gives you the bushfire attack level and and that's been spoken about a number of times this morning of what what is the bowel and we've seen different um images of what what that actually looks like um so bushfire attack level is in terms of what that might look like um there's a couple of different sites here so you'd combine the the vegetation and slope out through here you look at a house so here's the plans and you say right here's flame zone about 40 bell 29 bell 19 and bell 12.5 and you always take the the highest bushfire attack level that's affecting the the structure so in this case this one is a bell 19 house this other example over here again you've got the forest vegetation the slopes have been calculated you've got um bell flame zone about 40 about 29. so this structure here is going into bell 29 and and so you can get an understanding of where you sit in the landscape what the different bow levels are and how that might influence things so the the issue then becomes what can you do about that if if you can do anything um you know I'll just get there we go so effectively the the way you can do something about the within the site itself so you're increasing the separation distance but where you've got an adjoining land holder it might be private property or national park or department of lands crown something like that you can't do anything about it so if you move the building closer to the hazard you go into the flame zone if you're moving the building further away from the hazard then you're reducing the bushfire attack level so there's a little bit of latitude there and when you've got small blocks it's it's quite difficult to do anything about it but you might be able to approach the neighbor and say look can can we manage land out here in which case you need an easement or some form of approval for ongoing management of that land um but so there's a couple of mechanisms if you've got bigger parcels of land it's a little bit easier to look at managing vegetation and residing buildings and things like that but then you start coming into biodiversity credits and issues with vegetation retention you know what what does this look like so following the 2019 2020 fires um we we did a lot of work for the rural fire service in residence near south south wales trying to work within that streamlined process that's been mentioned already so this is lake cajola and the yellow dots are houses that were damaged or destroyed in the fires so then at a precinct level you can actually say right what's the where's the boundary between managed and unmanaged vegetation and then where do these houses sit within the landscape that allows people to then say right well what if I move my house further away or closer in so you start being able to provide a little bit of control if you will around what level of risk that the future house may well be at and what you can reasonably do to reduce your bushfire attack levels and construction costs and things like that so you can start moving around those things and this is where the belt capping very much came into it that's been mentioned earlier as well's not a we get asked this a lot you know what's the various costs of the different bushfire attack levels uh there was quite a good article in fire australia magazine uh some recently that looks at it's a west australian-based research for the different construction levels what is the over and above cost of the various bushfire attack levels for a standard residential house so for bell 12.5 it's about 3.8 and then you're going up to about 40 you know sort of that 10 mark in bell flames is 20 over what you would normally expect but you you would need to go back to your architect or designer or builder and say right what what does this actually look like um what what are the what are the costs of these things and what does that look like and certainly becomes a very important consideration and that is me thank you folks thank you lou um we have lisa from the new south wales rfs online lisa can I hand over to you for your presentation please yep hi everyone my name and policy unit of the new south wales rural fire service development planning and policy oversee all policy related work concerning bushfire protection associated with building development and land use planning across new south wales for the rural fire service we also oversee bushfire prime land mapping for all of new south wales our goal is to provide policy and related support to the public and all relevant stakeholders such as councils and bushfire consultants to enable and facilitate streamlined consents approvals and compliance you might have heard someone mention you need a bell or a bushfire report if you want to do a renovation or construction but how do you know whether you need one and what does it mean bushfire is part of the new south wales landscape as you've been hearing both state and local government recognise this and the new south wales rural fire service works closely with councils to map areas of vegetation hazard across the state including forests and grasslands this is known as bushfire prone land red identifies forests light orange which some people may see as a dark yellow identify as yellow identifies a buffer around the bushfire prone land where homes may be affected by bushfire bushfire prone land identify areas where bushfire has the potential to impact the rural and urban environment it's used as a trigger that requires homeowners and communities to consider bushfire protection when undertaking development in or near the hazard just because an area isn't met it doesn't necessarily mean it isn't bushfire prone and it can occasionally a consent authority such as a council might still ask you for a report considering bushfire even if your home isn't mapped as bushfire prime if your home is on bushfire prone land you need to get a bell rating and may require a bushfire report to supplement your development submission so what is a bell bowel stands for bushfire attack level it is the rating of bushfire resistance for your home and is calculated by considering the vegetation hazard the slope under the vegetation the distance from the hazard to your home and the fire weather characteristics for the area you live in bow ratings are site specific to a property have the same rating bells range from bow low to bowel flame zone also known as bowel fz lower bowels are concerned with ember protection and higher bells risk more exposure to radiant heat as well as embers with bowel flame zone exposure being the most vulnerable to attack from a bushfire the higher the bowel the more your home may be exposed to attack from a bushfire so how will it affect your home if your home is on bushfire prone land you're required to get a bow rating if you're doing development and this includes adding extensions upgrading external parts of your home build or building a new home whether from scratch or knocking down and rebuilding your bowel rating may require you to include bushfire protection measures and the design of your development bushfire protection measures include asset protection zones and these are a buffer zone between vegetation and buildings managed to minimize vegetation fuel loads and reduce the potential of heat and flames access this might be driveways and roads it enables residents to evacuate and it also allows emergency personnel to undertake firefighting the materials you build with and the location you build on your property enhance the survivability of the building landscaping consider the trees the vegetation and landscaping elements such as for example wood chips in your garden to ensure you aren't adding fuel to a potential fire if it gets close to your home and also we need to keep up ongoing maintenance to ensure gardens don't become an additional hazard that could compromise the safety of the home services for example your water supply water is essential to fire fighting utilities like gas and electricity also need to be considered and located away from the hazards so that they won't contribute to the risk of fire emergency and evacuation planning whilst these aren't currently compulsory for residential homes anyone living in bushfire prone areas should prepare a bushfire survival plan the higher the bowel rating your home is built to the less likely ignition from a bushfire will occur however it is really important to understand that even building to bowel flame zone is not a guarantee your home will be safe during bushfires it prepare you your family and your home in the event of a bushfire you should plan to get out as early as possible in accordance with your bushfire survival plan guidance on developing your bushfire survival plan can be found on the new south wales rural fire service website or you can contact your local rural fire service brigade to assist you another way to understand the risk of bushfire to your home is to use the bushfire household assessment tool which is also found on the new south wales rural fire service website our website has a lot of information that can help you understand and prepare yourself your family and your home for bushfire if you wish to inform yourself about building developments in bushfire prone areas our website has information on that too you can find out if your block of land is on bushfire prone land using the bushfire prime land tool on the new south wales rural fire service website but alternatively the department of planning have an online spatial viewer where you can type in your address turn on the bushfire prone land data wales rural fire service and our team the team I'm part of produce planning for bushfire protection it's a guide on the appropriate bushfire protection measures for building development which you would have seen lou just show pieces of um and our website has a variety of policy notes and fact sheets on particular building development issues if you want to get an approximate idea of the bowel on your property you can also use the single dwelling application kit which is also on our website but I do need to say councils may not accept this kit and it's really best used as a guide only or for very minor development such as a small shed on a very low risk site one thing that is important to note is that the new south wales rural fire service we don't prepare bowel ratings the tools on our website can guide you and help you get a general idea however we strongly suggest you talk to an accredited bushfire consultant to get the right information for your site you can find a list of accredited bushfire say thank you and you know please stay bushfire ready thank you both lisa and lou for those presentations um if anyone has any questions for lisa or lou um please have a think pop it in the chat um what we might do is we are running a little bit um ahead of schedule today so nat and I are going to go through both council's um rebuilding after bushfire documents they're both very similar um however we'll go through them with you now just for a bit of info okay thank you corinne so um after the fires winter caribbean council developed a really great document about rebuilding after bushfire which talks about some of the policy and bushfire attack level new south wales rfs and state government restrictions that are in place and also the supports available within each council so I'm just going to quickly share my screen just to show you these documents so we'll be uploading both of these documents onto the um onto our expo session sections of both websites after this as well um our one is ours is is quite a new document so I'm just going to quickly share my screen with you sorry so these documents here are available but then there's also the other sport so as steven and jake mentioned before that there have been feast wave for different aspects of the planning process so one of the things that people can do is to come in for a free pre-ga meeting they can always come in and chat with the duty planner at council as well um to get some more information about that building process and getting started after fire I'm just going to run through these documents so the first one here is a mulch fact sheet that we put together um in with our environment team here at council with some information because it's obviously something that um people have a lot of questions about after a disaster when trees are down and people are getting a lot of trees chipped on their property we've seen it again recently with our storm in bilmir as well so we have this um this mulch will be uploading to our website okay and then multitasking which is cool you can see I'm I'm still learning my zoom my way around soon but we have um so this is winter caraby's building after bushfire document so this was developed in 2020 following the fires and is already available on winter caribbean council's website we will be putting it on the expo section as well but this can be just a really great document to have on hand so it talks about not only the rebuilding process but things around common questions that come up around shipping containers and storage and temporary accommodation as well so obviously with the not-for-profit groups like mind roo and habitat for humanity doing temporary housing options this can be a really great document to refer to when you're going through that process and to make decisions or putting storage containers on property to store things while you go through that rebuilding process um and then we also have the well in delhi shire council version of that document as well which as I mentioned is quite but we will be putting it up today after this expo so this has been based on the winter caribbean document um we've also added in the local context around wall and dilly as well so both of these fact sheets can be a really helpful resource for people when you're first going through a disaster event so some of this information will also apply to flood and storm rebuilds as well in terms of the temporary accommodation options and around those processes and some of the support available to disaster impacted residents so these are really great resources that we'll have up on our website very soon awesome thanks so much for sharing with us that with us matt what we might do is we might break for 10 minutes you might be all dying for a cup of tea or a cup of coffee but what I do challenge you there are 20 over 30 of you online today so maybe as you're grabbing a cup of tea have a think um about just process that information that you've just um experienced there on the way back and we'll introduce our catalyst up and we'll have a conversation around that definitely and feel free to ask questions related to final storm as well so we've obviously just had a significant storm event in filmy um so I know some of these questions are also going to apply to people um in film here as well so I can see we've got a couple of zombie locals online so feel free to pop any questions in the chat for any of our panelists here today thank you everyone we'll just we will see you back at 10 40. yeah sounds good great thanks everyone hi everyone welcome back from the break and thank you all for staying online with us um just wanted to start while we let everyone return back from the break by sharing a video from the nwra so as kim mentioned at the beginning today's expo is a partnership between world jillian winter caribbean councils brazilians new south wales and the national recovery and resilience agency so resilience new south wales and the nra after the 2019-20 bushfires and tomorrow we'll have a presentation from the executive director from resilience new south wales but we're just going to share a video about the national recovery and resilience agency just to give everybody a chance to return from the break we're getting some really great questions in the chat but just going to share this video quickly before we start our panel discussion whether a community has been through a flood bushfire cyclone years of drought or some other disaster like the pandemic recovery for some will take time so a national agency that will stick around for this recovery we'll draw on lessons from previous disasters we'll ask the important question what do you think is needed and will champion steps to listen the impact of future disasters is something that I have long strongly advocated on 5 may of this year prime minister scott morrison announced the establishment of the national recovery and resilience agency and that was in response to a key recommendation of the royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements this historic move means australia's capability to be better prepared for natural disasters and drought and recover from all hazards from our origins after 2019 north queensland monsoonal trough the principle of locally led likely understood locally implemented has guided all of our work we have staff in every australian state and territory and this includes our recovery support officers or rsos as we call them who operate from their agency vehicles they work closely with their local councils and other community leaders government agencies and industry bodies prime minister morrison calls them our boots on the ground and hearts at the table and they make sure people get the information they need and direct them to the right help and support for their particular situation the national network is a critical part of our operation you can't create government policy and services without knowing how they'll play out on the ground and without understanding the people that they're designed to serve the survivors my experience in north queensland gave me a deep understanding of the long-term impacts of natural disasters on regional communities shortly after my appointment I was areas and I came to understand just how devastating widespread and shocking the event was we work closely with mayors council staff community members graziers farmers and small business owners to understand their recovery needs and then to make sure that the government's support hit the mark now as my role takes me to areas impacted by the bushfires floods and cyclones elsewhere often overlaid by years of drought mice plagues and grasshopper infestations and covered restrictions I continue to be impressed by the way people affected by these significant challenges get on with the job of putting their lives and communities back in order we australians are a stoic mob communities are best supported by everyone working together the national recovery and resilience agency works hand in glove with states territories and local governments who also play a vital disaster response and recovery role and who are a key agent in helping communities to minimise the impact of these natural disasters we all have a role to play in the immediate response recovery and preparedness phases and our collective efforts will lead to much better outcomes for australians deloitte access economics estimated that for the preceding decade natural disasters have cost australia over 18 billion dollars per year on average taking into account both tangible and intangible costs while much effort is and must be focus on the immediate cleanup and reinstatement of essential public services and infrastructure we need to do this rely on the future and not just build back but rather build back stronger we need to do this to try and break the cycle of building repairing and replacing only to have to come and do it again when the next storm cyclone or flood strikes as a nation we are good at mopping up cleaning up standing up we are after all the land of drought and flooding rains tragically but it is simply not sustainable for the taxpayers and ratepayers to keep picking up the tap the national recovery resilience agency will drive efforts to minimize risk and the impact of major events it's imperative we do this the productivity commission findings cited by the insurance council australia reveal that 97 of all disaster planning is spent on the cleanup 97 now we need to flip that we need to address the imbalance the science tells us that longer hotter drier summers and more extreme weather are here to stay we can never flood cyclone drought or fireproof the country but we can do better preparedness I know that resilience means different things to different people depending on where they live people who had everything thrown at them across generations don't need a lecture on being more resilient don't need more slogans what they deserve is the support and encouragement to be better prepared and every level of government has a role to play together in partnership with the local communities that they serve preparedness must be the prism through which local communities plan and execute real fair income strategies that work for them and their particular circumstances through the national recovery resilience agency and other initiatives the australian government is throwing substantial support behind local communities these are your communities to help prepare for disasters and to minimise their impacts however there are many players in the recovery space and the australian government is but one state agencies and risk reduction cannot be the work of government alone the public also must step up we all share this responsibility it's estimated that many of us are simply not prepared we have a generational opportunity to address many of the challenges we face the responsibility to balance public safety and our expectations of the australian way of life with what is responsible and possible development is long past you now this is going to be a difficult and at times painful national discussion living life among the gum trees developing on flood plains and cliff tops in coastal areas and building homes and workplaces that are not fit for the risk must be challenged they have to be challenged this is not an exclusive list the challenge is how we collectively prepare ourselves for the next disaster while assuring that we support those recovering from the last because there will always be another major event to challenge us as a country thanks for sharing that that so um so I just wanted to thank so far everybody that's contributed this morning um and what we would like back to the platform so that we can answer some of the questions that have already been put into the chat into the q a section to make it a bit easier I will get nat and corrine to go through those questions from their end and then if the relevant agency or person could please answer those questions that would be greatly appreciated thank you okay so our first one is for the rfs so wondering if rfs or console consultancies have any data related to house losses from the 1920 built to bfp spec specification compared to those that were not bf fears but fire protection matters uh so we do have the house lost data um we currently have research actually being undertaken to try and specifically look at that obviously it's quite a complex data set to deal with because across the state we have a number of councils that we're trying to get information from and it varies from digital to microfiche so there is definitely research being undertaken but there are currently no results available we also have a couple of other to try and provide even more information but they're currently still in the um design phase um and I guess the other thing to say is that the bushfire inquiry for the 1920 fires did state that it considers fewer homes were lost uh because of the introduction of planning for bushfire protection and the bushfire protection measures that several of the homes in these fire affected areas actually did have on their structures that's great thank you lisa that's really interesting to know and very very reassuring as well um our next question is why is it when a private certifier is used that neighbors are not notified of plans on adjoining properties which may impact their property and privacy stephen or jake are you able to provide in any information for that question okay I can try and answer that one for you so when a private certifier is used there are certain instances where they need to notify neighbours that's in the environmental planning and assessment regulation but in some instances and they don't need to notify natives especially in rural contexts reason why you wouldn't be getting notified in overall context yeah 29 can no longer be a sister's compliance development application has to be submitted to the council is a telemedication and then of course uh what falls into play is council's notification policy and whether or not council normally notifies neighbours of submitted applications yes jd um adding on to that usually when a private certified is used for other than going into council for development application compliant development has a lot more stricter rules than development application so usually a private certifier cannot hand over construction certificate unless all the rules are complied to and that includes privacy to neighbors so usually you ask you know I safeguarded on that therefore they could bypass notification thanks shady ross or nancy did you have anything that you'd like to add okay no problem we'll move on to the next question okay so what is what is someone is still at the beginning of their rebuild journey where should they start and who do they talk to I might just jump into that one at even after the green water creek fire we're still seeing residents who are at the beginning of their rebuild journey and I think it's a really difficult one for residents because quite often there's so many external opinions and comments that are made from people about where where they expect people to be at two years or even one year after the fires um so I think this is a really tricky one very complex one um yeah it's really important to note that most people that are in these in situations where they are forced to rebuild never really expected themselves to be in this situation ever in their lifetime they went and bought a already built house for that sole purpose that's just not wasn't in their radar so it will take a number of years almost to understand the whole process what you might want in our home whether you want to rebuild to the same specs it's a really emotional long drawn-out journey and it's really really hard especially when external facts like oh you haven't started I haven't_''_6929.92 been bushfire impacted but it took me many years to understand the whole process and to have a look at what my options were so um yeah that's really it's a very very good question and one that we do all understand um where should they start I think we've given some really good um resources this morning so the architects find an architect or someone um in that in that area of expertise to have a chat with um you could probably add a little bit more to that jody so you're there on that consultation period so yeah a very good place to start is to speak to an architect we understand the entire process of everything and at the same time we could also work with your budgets so um if your land was rezoned from say about 29 to about 40 what are the implications of the cost and what's the implication of the size and sometimes where your house was originally located may not be able to be there again it may have to move on the where their house had to be moved even though they're on the same side on the same site so sometimes navigating through all the different resources and also the steps going for council is quite complicated and an architect is well um you know we do this every single day so we're kind of well in tune with all the different steps on how to start rebuilding from a council point of view jake where do you suggest yeah I think that's a good place to sign the architect playing consultant uh even bushfire consultant at the start so you can yeah you know know where you're going from the start as to where your bail rating would be where the best place to build is uh that sort of thing and also council officers you wanted to speak to us we're happy to help and put you in the right directions and so because our process can be so overwhelming as well we're very fortunate to have in place the recovery support service which was put in place by brazilians new south wales blue mountains after fire events up there and then in 2019 20 across the state uh and then also um positions like my southern korean community recovery office offices within council um so because the process can be so overwhelming and so complex because there's so much emotional attachment too for the residents who have lost their homes the recovery support service can really help with that process by just making some of those additional protocols and helping navigate that path our recovery support service has worked with I think um over 280 people across wall and jilly and winter caribbe um I hope that's the right start daniel um but they so they've seen a lot of this stuff before as well so they understand the role of bushfire consultants understand the roles of council planners and architects they've got contacts like architect assist um and they can help navigate that process as well so from that um I guess that well-being and that personal point of view um before we even look at the process point of view which is where all these fantastic navigate that professional those professional services as well yeah if you are interested in learning more about the rss on sunday please log in they are coming on and doing a presentation on sunday it's three wonderful women that we've both worked um with have been outstanding in this space and just really really well and we all work really well together so reach out I call them bushfire recovery or now disaster recovery personal assistance because they just help navigate that path yeah lisa you've got your hand up as well from rfs yeah I just wanted to mention that um if people did lose their homes during the 1920 bushfires and are trying to rebuild we still have the bowel capping program in place so what that is is whilst rfs don't do uh bowel ratings we've actually um along with lou's company black ash if we have a special email and people can actually email rebuild at rfs.newsouthwales.gov dot a u and we can organize to get free of charge a bell map but it's only for um people who or like for like back on their site it's not if you're you know gonna subdivide the block or anything like that it's it's basically you know like for like so you lost your home during the fire and you need to rebuild it back and we'll you know we work very hard to try and ensure that people are able to get that bowel map so that they can proceed through to to make it hopefully a little easier on them definitely I know some like our certificates have been fantastic we've referred quite a few residents across for those bowel certificates and they've been great they come back um really quickly and with that information it can help people get started so it's definitely a service we've taken advantage of I think in both shows since the 1920 bushfires we did have a question also in the chat that relates to that lisa as well which is around subsequent disasters so in wall and jelly we've had some subsequent natural disaster events including severe storms and floods if events are they able to access the black cash program the the program was only set up for the bushfires uh and it's uh specifically through rural fire service I am unaware as to whether there are you know any equivalent type of programs through ses or the department of planning to assist with flood-impacted structures sorry no problem thank you lisa our next question is why is the process for rebuild so long are the gas getting through I can probably question on that one so um so from council wellington's point of view uh now we would know the exact number or close to but we've had five or six rebuild applications yeah um they've all been improved relatively quickly we prioritize those but it's it does take a long time there's a lot of different people that need to be consulted rfs sometimes when there's street clearing involved there's environmental constraints we have to consider as well neighbor notification so there is things that do make it take a fair amount of time but yeah we do try and a misconception that's out there with community as well so um we had if we look at the the number of rebuilds that we've had we've had only I think around 50 of our total homes lost who have submitted da's to rebuild and there's a whole lot of reasons behind that and it's such a case-by-case basis and everyone's circumstances are so different um and I think there was one da that we had that did take some time to get through but that was because it was our first da that was using bowel capping and I actually think it went through considering that that was our first bowel capping application went through really well um but most importantly it went through correctly and thoroughly and it's so important to get that right so yeah and I think that the planners from both councils who worked alongside rfs um so lisa and david's team at rfs were fantastic through that process so uh it you know it's always good to get through da's quickly but with something right and I think it was great that rfs and council work together through that our capping process to get that that right so that the residents rebuilding have that protection because obviously they've been through such a traumatic event we don't want to add any trauma to that process by quite um taking shortcuts so and I think that that was a really great outcome in the end yeah so I guess yeah the process for rebuild so long for those that aren't actually really rebuilding and asking that question so go back to what we're saying before there is this a huge emotional and traumatic journey behind to getting to that point of actually submitting a da um for just a bit of like um stats windy caribbe lost 68 homes and um only 12 have submitted da's and only three have been rebuilt and so we're talking two years on now so we're only just seeing that process even just starting to happen now there's a few more in the pipeline about to come through but like I said support service they'll help you through that journey matt and I too as well if you need to speak to anyone in council we're a good point of contact to start with because we point you in the right direction as well and get these guys on board so hopefully that's answered your question anything dad that's good other questions oh I'll add something okay my I'm also part of organizations called architects about fronties and worked on areas where more internationally where areas were affected by tornadoes and earthquakes rebuilding a community is not a very fast process so rebuilding community takes up to 10 years before you see a community starts driving again after a disaster has hit them so sometimes when you look around and you see that like your neighbours are not rebuilding or your community center that's been burned down and you're thinking why hasn't things started rebuilding it's not it it does take a lot longer um like the counsellor said there is a trauma associated with it and some people sometimes think would process and that recovery process is a it takes it takes time and seeing other communities that's been hit by natural disasters the average time is 10 years yeah and just so um along those lines too so 30 of our total loss residents have rebuilt so repurchase other homes as well so they haven't maybe necessarily made the decision that they're not going to go back um they still have their land but we have some people who have bought other homes just while they go through that process because it is a huge thing it's a traumatic experience to go through some of our residents for their um during the fire on their block or in their town during the fire so there's a huge emotional process that goes along with making those decisions even about whether or not you will rebuild and totally come along on sunday because anne lederman is talking about that disaster recovery getting over a disaster and what that looks like navigating that medium to long-term recovery process so that she's got a powerful speaker and um oh sorry captain you're just on mute yeah I just wanted to add that um I was speaking recently to someone who had been involved in the blue mountains recovery program after the spring would win relief fires in 2013 and I had this conversation last year and I was told that about 30 percent of residents had chosen not to rebuild so that quite a few years have passed since that fire and the recovery process is certainly very slow I think as well as residents are asking how can they start this process of recovery from from a bushfire consultant perspective I i really encourage people to find out the appropriate bushfire attack level towards the beginning of the process because you can save a lot of time and effort and money by avoiding redesigning something later when you find out with the values so we get a lot of clients coming to us who have completed all their plans including engineering and structural plans and you know we can suggest how they might um improve their prospects of resisting a bushfire which essentially sends them back really dislike dislike it when that happens because I know it's costly for them um so find out what your belly is early on absolutely also been chatting with the neighbor the other week who's not rebuilding after five but was looking to move to a bushfire crane area and thankfully had engaged the bushfire consultant before he purchased the block um which he just said he was so glad that he did because he actually made the decision not to purchase that walk in the end because once he went through that that process and and saw that the property was belle flame's own he decided that um the cost of building on that block was going to be beyond his means so yeah it's not just rebuilding that we need to make these considerations but also just um when buying land or moving to a bushfire prone area this one yeah how long does sorry I just saw another question that I would like to answer because somebody asked I saw earlier why two neighbours might have a different vowel and when their circumstances to try and explain that a little bit sometimes uh residents might think that their circumstances appear to be exactly the same but actually their building might be closer to the hazard or when we look at the slope that impacts the building on each side the the gradient of the slope might be steeper for one compared to the other so often there's things that you you might not readily appreciate in determining the bowel that can actually make next-door neighbours have a different bowel sorry if I butt it in then okay thanks for that um how long should a da take from lodgement to approval how long from da approval to construction certificate okay so I think I've touched on a little bit before but it's very hard to put a number or day number or month number on it some can be four weeks some can be 20 weeks it just really depends on each um each property they're all different they all have different considerations but um you can be assured that council will try and prioritize it as best we having coming in with your builder or your architect and having a pre-da meeting absolutely that's a good idea that way you can um you can sort of nut out the issues that might arise during the assessment period up front and yeah it helps when you have a complete application that way you don't have to ask for additional information during the assessment process as well and one benefit to using council we can often issue the da and the construction get concurrently together so that can save time as well rather than consulting with the private certified later on so something to consider as well yeah and just touching on that additional information that you just said then I think sometimes there's this preconceived idea that you lodge your da to council and it goes through the da process and your certification and there may be a question um regarding the certification of that part and that council will go oh that's incorrect and then refuse the d.a just to reiterate council's actually here to work with you so any of those questions you through those additional information I might be simply providing something ex extra from the um architect or anything like that so yeah we are here to work with you um and through with this process so anything to add that's good good becomes better all right beautiful and so there can be some other complicating factors involved in dealing probably once you carry as well with um with mining subside and so it's sometimes external agencies that need to also approve development applications as well isn't there okay our next question is do counsel rfs jump in for a sec before you before you do that yeah definitely um I just wanted to also mention that if it's a really uh complex bushfire scenario um uh new south wales royal fire service our assessment teams uh you know they can also uh meet and do a pre-da service with the bushfire consultant and the client as well um so there is that as well if you want to just have a double check with rural fire service before you go through the process for very great to know lisa I think we do have a couple of those who get towards ga so we'll keep that in mind dumb track definitely um our next question is do council rfs or consultants believe the bushfire inquiry from 2019-20 will impact or change current bail specifications or create or offer implications or improvements for property bushfire certifications I'll jump in and start if you like yes it will and I can tell you right now that uh several of the recommendations there is currently work going on uh within the department of planning rural fire service and a few other agencies to actually try and come up with better policy and processes uh in order to from a strategic level all the way down to your individual property site level to to try and take what we've learned from the previous fires and ensure that we're building back better to protect our communities I think if if I can jump in there and follow on from lisa it's um it's a very slow process it's not a new south wales levels it's it's within a national framework so the building code of australia the national construction code the australian standard for construction of bushfire um construction of houses in bushfire prone areas is where it all comes from and the the process to change that is quite slow so to actually change the building code um is at least 18 months there's got to be quite a involved process from the various states and territories to actually put forward proposals for change so it's not like a very quick thing so when we're talking about bells so the the rural fire service department planning councils can do things around local environment plans and development control plans and sort of things that are within their control um but the the bowels is a difficult thing so they'd probably be consideration of climate change you know what drives some some of those things what you know is the current fire danger ratings the right level so you probably won't see change in that space very quickly but as lisa says that there's a lot drives that um at a national level so you're getting national consistency that's great thank you lou and lisa okay okay we were asked to clear all trees up to 54 meters in order to rebuild why are the existing non-burnt homes allowed to keep their trees which are close to their homes that were not destroyed it's a very specific question it might be a difficult answer without seeing nothing I can I can have a crack at that yeah yeah correct I love it have a go so 54 is a very specific number and I've just had a look in planning for bushfire protection so that is potentially forest vegetation on zero to five degree slope which gives you about 12.5 so that becomes the the piece about someone being required to clear um I i don't think there's any provisions that council or the rural fire service or others would say you must do these things you must clear the trees um where someone is looking at situating the house the bushfire attack level so if it's about 12.5 asset protection zones so there's a standard around that and that standard would say that you need to manage the canopy trees and the mid-story and the ground story vegetation in a certain way um the other thing to bear in mind is and I think I said this at the start of my presentation this is for all new development so the trigger is you're submitting a da or you're making some sort of formal change so there's a that there's a slow burn here in terms of changing the resilience of the interface over a very long time people can use the guidelines to say I'm in bowel fame zone and I want to put an asset protection zone in and create additional clearing or you know manage the fire but there's a couple of different processes so existing legacy houses that there's no requirement until they actually formally start the process when you start the process the new standards all come into play so you're getting that increasing resilience you know over a much longer time frame so was really good thank you that was I learned something though that was great um so that's pretty much it for the questions that we have up so far are we actually doing one more bear with us while we have a quick look uh here we go sorry one last one given that most of us may purchase existing properties rather than new builds what affordable and accessible tools and services are available to inform potential buyers of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with a particular property I should have worn my glasses today happy to jump in again yeah go for it anyone else um lisa mentioned the um household assessment kit um the rural fire service have so that that's something that people can use themselves to get a bit of an idea of it um if people get that wrong if you call it woodland instead of forest or whatever it is you'll throw the the calculations in terms of what the bowel levels are out massively um so I think that's where you know lisa had said quite correctly and catherine actually understands how to determine about levels it is probably the way to go um I think uh quite a lot of bushfire consultants out there would provide due diligence reports so give you an indication of what the bushfire attack level is to inform people so we do a lot of that um so people are making sort of that informed decision around what the bushfire attack level is going into it um the the rural fire service also have and you might want to correct me here lisa the household assessment tool um so there's an online tool that the rfs have that people can step through what their own circumstances are that sort of tell them what the risk is and you can tweak the tool and change different aspects of it to change the level of risk um so that gives you you know what you can reasonably do around the house and manage the landscape and gardens and things like that so there's a couple of options there that people can use that's that's correct there are a lot of tools in my slides so please feel free to use those um I would also uh recommend that when you are purchasing an existing property you ensure that you get the certificate it's a 10.7 right council um and that will actually tell you uh whether the property has bushfire prime land or fl or flood prone land um and that's a really good way you know you can use that then go on again I had a link in my talk about a spatial viewer you can actually go on and have a look at all those hazard layers in there um just to give yourself uh you know a bit of an idea uh the thing is just because your property has a classification of bushfire prone land that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be you know the end of the world so it's better to actually go and have a look and see what that property has associated with it and then for yourself you know weigh up the risks that you're comfortable with as well but please make sure you on the rfs website uh you know to try and assist you and then you know if you do have an existing site uh an existing home and you're just not sure where to start with your bush fire protection measures reach out to your volunteer rural fire service brigades and see if they can actually give you some help so that you know to to guide you in the right direction because your local bushfire brigades those volunteers you know they're local to your area they understand what the landscape is like what the bushfire is like and they can really be an a huge asset um to talk to to to just appreciate what kind of things you can do uh around your home to make it you know bushfire ready um and there are some other community engagement programs from rural fire service which uh the volunteers may also be able to hook you up with in terms of understanding how better to just do general maintenance around your home to ensure it is you know better protected whether it be doing modifications to the drastically reduce the risk thank you lisa I was going to say the same thing so I'm a community engagement officer with my local rfs brigade and be more than happy at any time to take a call from community and come out and have a chat as I'm sure all of our brigades across the southern highlands would be as well um and we also have some really great volunteers in our wallendally support brigade who do that work as well so yeah definitely contact your local resources and um and we're more than happy to have those conversations there's a very useful document that the rfs has as well called building best practice upgrades and if you have a building that was built prior to bushfire protection measures being required it is a pretty good document on what measures you might be able to take to improve your building's ember protection and you can easily apply it to any house so that's another one it's the building best practice upgrade document thank you catherine that's great jody ah yeah I actually do consult an architect uh prior to buying the 10.7 certificate actually comes with all your sales contract so you could easily just throw that off to your architect or you know in this instance me and they could advise you order risk of having a house in a bushfire prone area the good news is majority of houses in bow 29 and lower if they're not bushfire resilient they could easily be retrofitted to meet the new clothes that's not really going to cost you an arm and a leg so jody some of the things that we get questions about sometimes from people might be around shutters and windows and doors um solar panels whether or not they can or can't have solar panels depending on their bushfire ratings are they the sort of questions that they could take to an architect as well yes yes we would guide you for all the different construction codes what you can do and it's very similar to my presentation when you're putting fire shutters on your external windows and the code says you're go out and get any mesh panel if there are regulations around it and when you're buying your windows and things that retrofit we could guide you around which codes to look for and what you have to be compliant to thank you jody okay we have a question in the chat as well which is around when neighbouring properties might have dangerous trees and um is there any assistance that council rfs can provide um so to encourage or to support with resolving the issue of dangerous trees on neighbouring properties and then um sort of along the end of the lines of that question too if they need to move their building envelope to get away from trees on neighbouring properties can cancel support throughout that process it might be a treated situation yeah I think if it's okay I think it might be one better to be asked to be answered after a bit more research so I'm more than happy to help if we can get the address in that sort of thing about that for sure there's a big site specific in that one so yeah happy to park that if you'd like to email through a bit more information on your property and their contact number and which shy you're from more than happy to walk you through that process that's not working for so yeah and possibly the bushfire consultant to look at the building envelope as well yeah is that right yeah okay great thank you I think we've got another question okay great I think we have answered all the questions um I'm just going to we now have we've got graham mcguigan here online thank you for joining us so quickly here's the manager members of member service for master builders association in new south wales graham has managed the member services department for the past 13 years and has been instrumental in enhancing member benefits and the development of new services in the past five years he's also accepted the responsibility of overseeing the eight regional offices throughout new south wales prior to joining the master builders association he has held senior management roles with repco trade spent more than 30 years in senior management roles with the building and construction industry so over to you graeme if you're ready yes I am thank you um I wasn't sure whether or not that was about me or someone else there um okay so look I'm the manager for member services for the master builders association I um I manage the services department a little bit about the master builders a little bit of history I suppose the association is the oldest registered industrial instrument in australia we've been around for quite a while 148 years and our first meeting was held in the city of sydney in a hotel of all places in 1873 and that was november I believe next slide thanks can't actually see the slides green would you like us to share your slides yes please that's um that's how I thought it was gonna be done they're just bringing those slides up for you now graham won't be a second great thank you just bear with us graham we're just having a few's all good now I've um I'll actually I've covered off that first first part there um is that natalie or kimono dealing with all right so we're about to be located well we're located throughout throughout the state we have 10 offices two of which are in the metropolitan area forest lodge basically houses our all our service departments excluding two which are our training and also our apprenticeship services and they reside at northwest in the business park out in the western suburbs of sydney so all the service other service departments and the master builders are actually housed in forest lodge and they um service our our members which total a little over 8 000 8038 with the specialist services they require or other locations that you can see there we're located in aubry uh where ballina to the north gosford newcastle orange port macquarie aladola and in particular with um relevant to the presentation today the ola dollar office was highly instrumental in the bushfires that occurred down the south coast south of nara right down to the victorian border services they provided locally and how the community tapped into them if we could go to the next slide thanks so the sectors that we service throughout the building construction industry they include residential and the residential sector is um includes your builders and trade contractors that um that produce and renovate new dwellings and also renovate them the commercial sector these are generally larger companies that have high dollar turnover projects and a lot of them are federally funded state government and then you have the other private sector funded projects that happen in that area some of those contracts may include projects such as hospitals schools roadways railways etc all those infrastructure projects the commercial sector are heavily engaged in specialist contractors we also include in there the contractors that service civil projects and civil projects are usually those projects that I fall into that rail road etc area tunnels a lot of the tunnels around the sydney there are they're certainly produced by principal contractors commercial but they also include the specialist trades in that civil sector services sector um pretty self-explanatory there from the notes exactly what they are they produce something for the builders all the people engaged in the building industry that provide the plans designs building consultants that provide either professional or expert witness for for clients suppliers and manufacturers um that's everyone from your local mitre tents through the bunnings and anyone that's producing products locally in australia and sourced from overseas that actually uh want to be members of the association other this is a smaller sector and you'll see in the following slides some numbers around that but generally these are people that want to stay connected with the industry or there are apprentices and students that look towards us to uh for professional support and information next one please next slide so our members what do they look like well by the sector you can see they're from 5010 in our residential sector now these are 5 000 individuals they're not actually numbers of people in the businesses these are just one business one member one record so as you can see there that is very high as far as our member base of these a small business the other 20 is made up of your medium to larger project home builders but the 3 000 of those small mom and dad builders that I would refer to them as that you would see in your local areas with the utes running around the around the neighborhood the commercial sector 285 members um that might surprise some people but commercial by itself by definition is high dollar volume project work um and there certainly aren't as many projects in the commercial sector as to what they are start in the residential residential builds over the last 12 months a total around about 38 40 000 sorry 38 to 40 000 projects per annum so as you can see the residential requires a lot more people in that area to perform that work commercial they are very large builders tier ones there are only about 10 to 12 of these federally and they're accredited to be able to perform and tend to work for the federal government the next category gown will classify them as tier two builders they can tend to your tier threes generally cover off private projects and local government projects 1548 specialist contractors these are individual trades that service the industry and a lot of those mainly fall within that civil sector so they could be anything from bridge builders to post tensioning for bridge they could be rail specialists all a particular area that services the industry 1548 you'll find a lot of these also on commercial projects 388 members in the services sector these are people that want to connect with our member base and provide services to them such as architects designers building consultants we have 156 suppliers and manufacturers and 651 upon me that fall into the other category being the apprentices excuse me students um honorary members and we also have some retired members about 30 or 40 that just want to stay connected with the industry next slide please the service departments that make up the master builders so we have the department that I look after which is member services member is a bit of a conduit really we um we're the first port of call generally for members service or need to have someone speak to them from the specialist departments that we have but generally we're the first port of call for the public and they come through to us seeking information such as where can I get a master builder member to do some work for me or I have a project whereby I want to make sure that the person that we're doing with them is licensed sometimes we're confused with fair trading who actually issue the licenses but we're quite happy to help people out with that search from the public the work health safety department we have six specialist staff in that area that spend the majority of their time on site and assisting members ensure compliance around work health and safety and we work very closely with safework new south wales to ensure that um that our builders and their projects that they're doing and the people that are on their sites are actually compliant and safe a workplace relations department this is um probably a fancy name for industrial relations the old terminology they uh they might relate to putting in place an enterprise bargain agreement for them these are generally commercial larger builders that employ a lot of staff uh award interpretation and they also conduct contractor audits on behalf of those federal and state government commercial projects whereby they need to ensure that the contractors working on site actually have all their paperwork in place and can perform the work insurance department we have our own brokerage which is master builders insurance brokerage education and skills development this is our training resource center out at northwest this can provide qualification trade qualifications much the same as tafe professional development and any short courses that that are required to run their business also located as I mentioned before on that site at northwest is our apprenticeship services department so we actually engage 280 apprentices that we host through industry so that they can get their practical experience but there are actual qualifications are conducted on site at the education and skills development area so that gets them their third three qualifications that can depend upon the trade they do can lead to them also participating a leasing facility or finance also a car search for our members so we're connected through the financial services area with a partnership with macquarie bank uh our events marketing and sponsorship that's uh that's about all the uh events that we put on to either educate our members or provide products and services in front of them and our administration area which manages all our money next slide thanks so our partners who we work closely with well as I mentioned previously we worked very closely with safe work new south wales in the services new south wales area we're working now with with the resilience department fair trading where we talk to them on a regular basis particularly when we're dealing with continuous professional development and licensing questions with fair trading icare which looks after the um home warranty insurance that our brokerage has a relationship with long service leave corporation so that our industry can actually connect and provide themselves with long service and the vocational and education and training accreditation board um v tab where we have our scope of qualifications have a very close relationship is also mates in construction mates provide a suicide prevention and counselling service to the industry that anyone in the industry can connect with and finally these are a um a work um rehabilitation service they also will do inspections on um clients uh office space to see whether or not in fact they're set up with the correct ergonomics and they also provide counselling as well on the next slide so who turned to us in times of need so our customers the general public would be um particularly in these areas where we have natural disasters new our phones usually ring quite quite hot at the time small business owners these these are don't necessarily have to be associated with the industry but will also come to us for assistance with the ward and rates of pay and things of that nature predominantly our members certainly our members rely on us for the services to ensure that they are compliant with legislation and that they are up to date with all the new products and installation techniques and the technical assistance mcc or bca and industry standards and tolerances in the performance of their trade principal contractors engaged to manage projects and I'll talk specifically later about one of those principal contractors that was involved with the bushfires insurance council of australia turned to us particularly in these times where we have natural disasters to look towards us to develop expression of interest interest within the industry with contractors who they can get hold off quickly that want to actually perform that work and services new south wales which I've mentioned before and quite a few departments that we we um that we work with very closely next slide so what can we do well um probably the um the best one that I could talk to would be um what we did with with lango o'rourke who were the principal contractor and they were engaged to as part of the cleanup um clean up the new south wales bushfires so we actually um provided free of charge to lango rock our office amenities down in the aladola area and that included meeting rooms for their project and lunch and things of that nature and full use of our communications through internet and phones lange o'rourke_``_10039.52 took um took residence in our office there from february um 2020 through to october 2020. they had four staff permanently on site and now other dollar office and a host of supervisors who were in and out of the place on a regular basis and they had 24-hour access to that office if required so that's um that's certainly one of the big areas that when we have these things that occur throughout the state whether it be floods or fires that we can actually play a very active part in that we also assist um enquiries for local trade contractors uh provide the insurers as I mentioned before with contractor contacts compile those expression of interest databases for them and keep members um updated on what those local issues are particularly with those fires down there so that everyone was some uh kept well and truly up to date with um what was in front of them all right so some of our contacts which I've we had lynn smith who's our regional coordinator for the southern highlands shoalhaven and snowy mountain chiros the contact numbers are there on the screen for you lee tanks is our original coordinator based in illawarra his patch comes a little bit down towards that now and he had some crossover there as well and my contact details should anyone need them at all they're also available there and that is about me natalie thank you guys sorry I'll jump in there thanks graeme thank you very much for that really appreciate um we there is a question in the chat for you um let me just jump into that um is it can a non-member of the public contact master builders association with any inquiries absolutely we're quite um quite often we'll fill uh questions from non-uh that actually work in the trade that um or work in the industry that are trying to source information we're quite happy to provide that for them but the difference between that individual and someone who's a member they will get as much support or actually able to contact and speak with the actual service departments so they generally log with me as well great excellent so if anybody needs to they've got their contacts there and everything will be all these presentations and everything will be available on council's website so people will be able to access that information so um so if anybody's got any further questions for our group of panelists here today please pop them in the question and answers and the chat and we can send them through to get some answers for you I'll cross over to you nat and corrine thank you thanks kim one thing I just wanted to mention so I did briefly touch before on the recovery support service um so I do have tanya and ray online today and tanya might just get you to pop your team's details in the chat so as I mentioned before the recovery support service I've kind of introduced them when I talk to residents about them being the disaster recovery personal assistants so they've walked with us in wall and case management support and well-being support to individuals in both world and deli and widget caribbea throughout throughout the last two years thankfully they've just been refunded under a new block of funding through the southwest sydney local health district so they'll be around for another 12 months which is fantastic um so if anyone ever wants support with navigating this process it can be really really overwhelming to go through this process and as karine touched on before for a lot of people they never planned on building a house or didn't plan on building a house um under these circumstances or right now so tanya rayleen michelle and alison are a great support and they they can be there to walk through that process navigate that process share their contacts and their their knowledge that they've gained they've seen it all in the last couple of years whether it's insurance issues rebuild issues well-being issues um obviously this is a very traumatic event so they know of all the different services out there financial counsellors the different grants that are available the people it'll be the first time ever needing to access those supports and services so please feel free to contact either tanya or myself or korean council at any point in time or we could link you in with not only the recovery support but some of those other supports that are out there as well and help you walk through that process as well the planning teams from both councils when it does come time to launch those days and to build um I'm just very quickly going to share a slideshow about what's happening in bollingely since since the fires um so my role with council is a community recovery officer so I started with council um august following the bush wise august 2020 and sorry this is just not playing nicely for me here uh started in august 2020 following the bushfires and have been now working through council with council through a number of disaster events so um I'm just going to talk to you a little bit about what we have in place as council as recovery some of the things things that we're doing on an ongoing basis as well so as we mentioned before um stephen and jake mentioned that we have our activate while in dealing 2021 long-term recovery and resilience plan so these plans not only looking at our recovery following the green waddle creek bushfire um but also the subsequent disaster events are now covered 19 as well so um we hear it a lot but the the 2019 25s were unprecedented in a lot of ways uh we've seen severe bushfire events in the past but this one went for a very long time and it impacted such a huge part of the country at one time and then we had unfortunately covered 19 starting just after a flood event in between in our shire so stephen and jake did touch on this a little bit before as well but the impact for bolindilli was significant and winter caribbean so right on the border of wall and jelly and winter caribbean boxton we did lose two rfs volunteers which had a significant impact on all of the shire um we lost 19 homes huge number of outbuildings so 66 our buildings destroying 45 damaged I have a feeling that number's probably much higher a lot of people don't reach out for support so we don't hear a lot about a lot of things um 1276 kilometers of fencing and we know that people are still having issues with replacing fencing now used down the track so the impact was just huge across our shire we actually had the fourth highest burn scar in australia throughout that period so council obviously play a role in in response as well so councils in partnership with state and federal government are responsible for contributing to the safety and well-being of communities by participating in local emergency management and recovery efforts so what a lot of people probably um don't understand I know I didn't until I came on to council was that council plays a really active role in the local emergency management committee and council staff are quite often in those emergency operation control centres during disaster events so it has uh council play a really important role in not a disaster event as well so here in wellington 2016 we're impacted by a major flood event and it was a devastating event for our community and really highlighted for the need for council to really have strong disaster recovery and preparedness frameworks in place so there's a lot of community consultation following those floods a lot of deliberative engagement stations with community that were facilitated by external disaster recovery experts and from there we developed our activate wall and jelly framework and it's that framework that's guiding our recovery from the the green water creek bushfire so I won't go into too much detail but here's a little bit about our activate well and julie framework and that first slide is recovery commences when response commences and so straight away when we have a disaster of any wall in july we really try and quickly set up community recovery information centers to give out that information and information try and link people into those supports and the services that are operating in the area and we we've done that recently following the it partnered up with a number of services who also support community during disaster recovery and a huge thank you to the services that involved in that process our mayoral relief fund which comes into play following a significant disaster event so during the green water creek fire I'll touch a little bit down track but that was a huge um donations from community come in and then council can pass that money out to impacted residents and it really made a huge difference during the fires we so appreciate the support that came from community during that event and we've also been able to use funding to support our thermal storm impacted residents as well so the community recovery information centres I touched on we also have a local recovery and resilience committee so that committee has been in place for a very long period of time so following that 2016 flood or storm it doesn't always meet on an ongoing basis so during the fires we actually were unable to um actually able to reinstate that committee um before it was uh in december so but prior to the fire impacting bustin embargo so we were straight away able to have that committee up and going so we had that community representation about what the needs were in community and a really broad cross-section of community working together to support the community through that recovery process and we're still meeting now um two years on from the fire we meet bi-monthly now that um the work isn't as urgent in nature but we're still always focusing on those ongoing needs in community and adapting to those ongoing needs to say change and also looking at how we can work together with communities as how council can work together with different community organizations to plan for a stronger response in the future and also our preparedness as well so we have a number of um preparedness tools so we have uh our get ready well and daily website and there's a lot of information on our website too around preparing for disaster we're doing things all the time like partnering with rfs and ses so we have two get ready workshops are in partnership with new south wales rfs mscs and also the red cross so they're really exciting and deliberative engagement so that's something that we've committed to do following all disaster events which is really the chance for us to engage with community talk about what worked and what didn't work and we've done a lot of that since the fire so we had two series of community forums that were held by or hosted by and led beta who's a disaster recovery expert and will be speaking for us on sunday so she's been a part of our recovery journey from the early days so um and she facilitated those sessions which gave us some really great feedback around what has and hasn't worked for our communities following the 2019-20 bushfires uh and how we can improve our response and the things that we need to do a lot of that information has already gone into planning for some of our grant applications and some of our future project work and we will be using continuing to use that information happening within council about our response during the fires and then also looking at ways for us to improve practice going forward training it will deliver for staff and our different grant projects that we have as well so as I mentioned before so recovery commits is when response commences so I won't go into too much of this I have touched on it already but um yeah so everything from our outdoor staff we're on the ground during fires clearing trees clearing roads reopening roads we're opening public spaces that recovery and resilience committee and our recovery information points as you can see during the 2019-25s they happened right before christmas as you all know so we're able to um be a donation point for um for presence and give those out to community which is great but that's one of the areas that we're really looking to improve on moving forward and partnering with groups like give it to manage our donations so we can improve that community information's recovery information point process and partner with existing services in the community extremely generous following the green waddle creek bushfire we had around 454 thousand dollars of donations that came in which is incredible um absolutely amazing and 186 individuals or families were supported through that mass relief fund 100 of all donated funds were distributed so that's really huge and you can see some of the things that it helped out with there whether it was clean up replacing white goods clothing bedding all those things that people just hadn't planned for that they needed support with tools so that our our trade construction is obviously a huge industry for will and dilly a lot of our tradesmen lost tools or trailers and vehicles so the mayor's really fun could even help with helping those small business operators get up and going it was just amazing and the impact of that funds was huge so the activate wall and daily plan looks at four different elements of recovery so economic recovery social recovery built recovery and natural recovery so it really spans all of our council teams and it's uh it's it councils are huge organizations different departments so obviously build recovery with our planners our certifiers our strategic planners recovery with our environment teams so we we're not only looking at things like the grants that we're giving out the grants we're applying for sometimes for community projects but sometimes there are things you don't see around managing vegetation regenerating the environment that was impacted by the fires and a lot of really great projects going on with our environment team our economic recovery so during our planning for economic recovery it's really about getting business back up and going so with our grant projects we try to encourage the the funding to be if there's services being purchased so for example we gave out funds for regeneration to residents so we set criteria that encourages spending with local businesses and obviously we can support through tourism and development as well we've been successful with a number of large grants through the bushfire local economic recovery fund that will encourage tourism and spending it with our local businesses in social recovery that comes down to a lot of some of that is supporting the not-for-profit organizations in the area and the work that they do and trying to provide them with funding or resources or knowledge that can help them to deliver services it's around providing that well-being support sometimes ourselves so um karen and I we do a lot of work going out with residents so for us ourselves we try and go out but we're also trying to link people into services so really getting to know our communities what their needs are so we can make sure that appropriate service providers and community groups are up and going in our communities and we can link people in and that we're communicating and working together as well um social cohesion is a huge role in in how communities recover from disaster so a community that is well connected and has good social cohesion can bounce back faster so what we're trying to do is even things like planning events just to provide some fun and some opportunities for social connection following the natural disaster and that's been even more critical in of the little things that we did at council that has just been one of the things that I've enjoyed the most is linking our residency with our community nursery so there's been a huge amount of grief for our residents with the the impact that the fires have had on the natural environment around their properties and we're now seeing that with the thermis storm event as well where people move toward dealing because they love the beautiful natural environment the trees the plants the wildlife and it's something that they're used to having and it also provides uh privacy and security around people's blocks as well so when we have an event like the floods or the fires it really impacts that natural environment the wildlife the ecosystems and it's really a big source of greece so it's been nice for us at our nursery to be able to give out some native plants to people to help regenerate their gardens we've also tried to do that in partnership with picton rotary as well with giving out some vouchers of our very lovely bush fire impacted residents coming down to collect some native plants preparedness is obviously a huge part of the community recovery officer role that karin and I both do with council and we are really I know for me it's becoming a big focus we're in bushfire in storm season at the moment so just trying to get the message out around preparedness so this was a recent campaign that we did in partnership with the new south wales rfs which is around bushfire preparedness and just some get ready street banners that we developed that we have up in embargo tarmal and picton we're hoping to get some more of these banner polls so that we can start to do more community awareness work I'm looking forward to partnering with the scs and doing some storm and flight preparedness campaigns as well uh we have a mobile recovery and resilience hub project which we've received funding for and that will involve outreach work across all the towns of wallander and really providing capacity building and resilience building opportunities education around and our partnerships with rfs and ses and red cross will be critical with projects like that and as you can see we're signed up to the resilience new south wales get ready council project as well so we try and share a lot of social media messaging around getting ready for disaster too another project that we've um very happy to be a part of which is resilience new south wales lead is the disaster dashboard so we need to carry we also have a dashboard so this is a project for us um we're about to go live with um we're due go live three weeks but we've been a little bit um we've shifted really into recovery mode which has just set us back launching this but so our disaster dashboard is something that brazilians new south wales have developed for councils across new south wales and it's designed just to be that one stop point for information during disaster events so it draws information automatically from new south wales ses new south wales rfs fire and rescue so we information we're not having to go out and do our own posts it's really about creating a central point where people can access to get information directly from the response agencies and those combat agencies like rfs ses fire and rescue new south wales health department of prime industries um so this is a project that we're really looking forward to sharing with the community hopefully in the next two weeks um and that will be on our website for every everybody to access it also have live traffic conditions as well so and we're just working really to um to make sure that all those road closure informations that are critical for us um as we all know we um during evacuation during the fires there was some issues around roads and getting people out quickly so we want this to be a place where we'll hopefully be able to look for that live traffic information and get that really quick information there as well so there's just a few of the different projects that which that we're working on from the uh winter carry are going to share some more information about what they're doing um in tomorrow's session as well which will be really great uh but we're really excited to be partnering with the nwra and winter caribbean council and obviously resilience new south wales who support the community recovery officer position and the recovery support service uh it's really a team effort in wall and dilly and we do caribbean to support the community through disaster events in recovery and um and and preparedness work as well so today's session is really a great opportunity for us to look at our built resilience and how we can uh build better or build back better or improve the our existing properties to make them more fire resistant so thank you so much to all of our speakers today the information has been absolutely invaluable and we really look forward to having this as a resource on our website going forward because I think it's going to be just invaluable for people who are going through that process so if anybody's got any chat or they can email them through to either um natalie corrine or myself um auto thrive council and uh and then we can go back and uh and get those relevant questions answered for you so um thank you again for all our speakers today is there anything that any of you would like to include don't all good wonderful so everybody who has been on today there is links on the council website to their agencies and their contact details so you can access all of that information on there so thank you very much to everybody who's come along today and who's participated and taken part in this um very much appreciated very much appreciated to the um well and dilly I t team who have uh brought this together as well so we had a couple of glitches but that's just normal in this platform now in this day in life we're all we're all learning to adapt to things like this so thank you everyone and we look forward to hopefully seeing you online for our saturday and sunday'll see you tomorrow morning thank you bye everybody thank you you
Good morning everyone this is the wrap-up of the October council meeting today it's actually raining out there so that's what are the most exciting things to tell you about at the council meeting on Monday night we talked about the voluntary planning agreement up at Marsh Road at Silver Dollar and finally that whole program is in place we talked about Elton Dale and the need not to have the 9000 houses go ahead there talked about the possibility of maybe putting some agriculture in that particular visit area there was an application some time ago about West Tamil and it talked about land size we actually developed some land size we thought was suitable and they came back asking for smaller councillors stuck to what it originally said we looked at an eco-tourism site out on Barker's Lodge Road and while councils really proactive about the ecotourism we're just worried about some technicalities and we've deferred it until we get those sorted out one of the most exciting things was there as an expansion of our operational plane so there's a whole extra sections of roads and I'm sure everybody will appreciate that we had notices of motions that covered the raising of the dam wall people are concerned about the construction going on and also about the loss of our indigenous artworks up there we've had to walk right to the state government we were undergoing in new LEP but our concern is that once we've developed that the state government push us outside what we've decided so we've asked them to confirm that they'll back us up once we've done the work we talked about the koalas and there's a little bit of pork barreling going on and the Labour government have said they'll have a koala National Park we've asked them to confirm exactly what they mean and exactly over what areas at the moment it looks like it doesn't extend into the wall and Dilli but we're asking them to go that bit further down Ellen's Creek we talked about go get cars orange council has put some council cars out that people can use going to talk to orange council and also the person that started going to get cars one of our major concerns is about harvestable water most people would think that if water fell into your damn it was your water and you could use it but for our farmers they have limitations on what they can actually use government set these limitations and we don't want them to be novels by government when we're especially in a drought situation so in all a great October meeting and we look forward to bringing you than November wrap up thank you
"Good morning once again everyone and welcome to day three of the recovery response and resilience e(...TRUNCATED)

Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English (CoANZSE)

Announcement

The dataset has limited access and requires access/download permission from Harvard Dataverse - Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English.

Please acknowledge that the dataset owners are Steven Coats and Jeremy Yuenger. This repository is only used for study and research purposes for Southern Cross AI.

Any commercial use is not permitted by the dataset owner. Any distribution of this repository is not recommended. For more information, please read License and Terms of Use, or visit Harvard Dataverse - Community Norms and the original dataset page.

Overview

Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Computer and Information Science; Social Sciences; Other

Keywords: Corpus Linguistics; Dialectology; Spoken Language; Speech Transcripts; Australia; New Zealand

The Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English (CoANZSE) is a 196-million-word corpus of geolocated automatic speech recognition (ASR) YouTube transcripts from local government channels in Australia and New Zealand, created for the study of lexical, grammatical, and discourse-pragmatic phenomena of spoken language, as well as for content and language analysis in digital humanities and social science fields.

Annotation includes individual word timings and video IDs of transcripts, making it easy to instantly view the video(s) for any given search. The corpus was created from 55,896 ASR transcripts from 472 YouTube channels, corresponding to almost 24,007 hours of video. The size of the corpus is 195,583,873 tokens. The channels sampled in the corpus are associated with local government entities such as local, city, county, district, and regional councils, and transcripts are from a range of video types. Recordings of public meetings are well-represented. Related resources are the Corpus of North American Spoken English and the Corpus of British Isles Spoken English.

Data Source

The current dataset is cleaned by Xinyu Mao and Yifan Luo. The dataset can also be found on GitHub.

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