Tonights Public Forum -“Consultation” or Delay? The 102-Tree Debate in One Public Forum

A Grant for Shade — and a Council That Reaches for the Handbrake

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Sometimes local government hands you a rare gift: a clean, practical win that doesn’t require ten years of committees and “strategic frameworks.”

That’s what the Greening our City grant should have been.

Shoalhaven has funding to plant 102 trees to add shade and reduce heat in hard, asphalt-heavy public places like carparks. It’s the sort of thing most councils would implement quietly and then boast about later with before-and-after photos.

Instead, it landed in Shoalhaven’s favourite arena: process.

What Mr Hughes actually said

At the public forum, resident Digby Hughes made a simple point:

this should be a good news story. He told councillors he was “perplexed” that an opportunity like this wasn’t being “grasped … wholeheartedly.”

He also nailed something true about the Shoalhaven brand. When people visit, they don’t come for concrete and heat-soaked footpaths. They come for trees, bush, nature, the sense that this place still breathes. His message to Council was basically: lean into that. Plant the trees. Congratulate the staff who won the grant. Deliver it well. Then go back for more.

He even poked fun at the idea that trees are somehow scary: “Maybe they’re a day of the triffids … trees might scare some people, but they’re not to be scared of. They actually add value to our life.”

So far, so straightforward: grant + shade + reduced urban heat.

Cr Kemp’s response: consultation first, then species, then “statistics”

Councillor Kemp’s questioning is where you can see the familiar Shoalhaven dynamic take hold. It wasn’t really about cooling carparks or improving amenity. It was about who gets a say — and whether “consultation” becomes the gatekeeper for delivery.

Her first line was to establish that the project didn’t personally affect Mr Hughes: “does this affect you in any way at all … with the four areas mentioned in the report?” When he said no, she pivoted straight to whether shop owners and residents “should have a say.”

When Hughes suggested the bigger point was to expand the program (“102 trees only go so far … go for another grant next year”), Kemp pressed him again, cutting in with: “I’m aware of that. I’m aware of that.”

Then she sharpened the question to a near-veto framing:

“No, as to putting a tree in front of their shop, don’t you think they should be consulted?”

Hughes tried to answer in a broader way — saying Council has methods of communicating with communities and could keep those channels open. Kemp wasn’t satisfied and pushed back: “No, that’s not the question. Sorry.”

At that point the chair had to rein it in:

“We’re not here for a debate, it’s questions only.”

Kemp responded: “I just asked a question.”

If you want a snapshot of the tension, it’s there: a speaker trying to talk about outcomes and Council capacity, and a councillor repeatedly narrowing the conversation to consent, frontage impacts, and who gets the right to say yes or no.

Why the 45-degree rule matters here

A quick bit of context helps. Kemp’s questions sit inside a longer-running Shoalhaven debate about trees near homes — most visibly around the so-called “45-degree rule”.

In plain language, the 45-degree rule is a Development Control Plan exemption that (in certain circumstances) allows people to remove or heavily prune trees on private land without the usual council approval if the tree falls within 45 degrees of an approved building. Council tightened the rule for a 12-month trial from August 2023 (including extra notification and arborist requirements), then later moved to revert it back to the pre-trial version.

Whatever you think of that rule, the political theme is clear: when trees are framed mainly as risk or nuisance near houses, the pressure shifts toward removal and away from retention or new planting.

You can hear that same framing in Kemp’s forum questions. The first instinct isn’t “how do we deliver shade and lower heat in carparks,” it’s “do affected residents and shopfronts get consulted before trees go in out the front?”

Species selection and the “statistics” claim

Kemp’s second theme was species and survival. She raised the principle of “right species for the right area” so that trees will survive, and suggested that “in the past the statistics haven’t been really good.”

In principle, this is legitimate. Carparks are harsh environments for trees: compacted soils, reflected heat, restricted root zones, vehicle strikes, vandalism, irrigation gaps.

If Council has a history of poor establishment or species choices, the right answer is not to abandon the project — it’s to improve the plan.

But this is where the argument needs to move from vibe to evidence.

In the forum, the “statistics” weren’t produced by Cr Kemp. No survival rate. No timeframe. No program. No breakdown of why trees fail.

If those statistics exist, they should be tabled and used to strengthen the grant delivery — species selection, establishment watering, protection, replacements. If they don’t exist, then “statistics” is doing the work of an argument without the burden of proof.

Consultation: design refinement, or a handbrake?

Hughes wasn’t arguing for bulldozing residents. He was urging Council to go forward with a plan — and to treat this grant as the start of a bigger, practical urban cooling effort.

The workable middle ground is obvious:

Consult on placement details where it genuinely matters — access, sightlines, underground services, pedestrian flow, known sensitive frontages. But treat delivery as the default. Because this grant isn’t about running an infinite process. It’s about planting trees that survive and deliver shade in the hottest, least forgiving public spaces.

The risk with a “right of say” framing is that it quietly becomes a right of veto. And once you build veto logic into a grant project with deadlines, the outcome is predictable: delay, dilution, or doing less.

What Council should do next (if it wants to look competent)

If Council is serious, the path forward is simple and measurable:

1. Publish the species list and site plan for the 102 trees.

2. Publish the establishment and maintenance plan (watering, protection, inspections, replacement triggers).

3. If councillors are citing “statistics,” publish those too: survival rates at 12/24 months by site type and species, with recorded reasons for failures.

4. Run consultation with defined boundaries and timelines: feedback, not veto; design refinement, not paralysis.

Because otherwise residents are left watching the same pattern again: a practical, funded improvement arrives … and Council reaches for the handbrake.

A grant like this shouldn’t be controversial. It should be competent.

And competence, in the end, is what Shoalhaven residents are most entitled to expect.

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