This north shore council was ordered to repay $36 million for unbuilt park. Instead, it wants to sue

Hornsby Shire Council is considering legal action after the state government ordered it to repay $36 million from a controversial grant program intended for the municipality’s long-standing Westleigh Park project.

An outraged Philip Ruddock, the Liberal mayor of Hornsby, said he was “as disappointed as I am flabbergasted” by the government’s decision to rescind the funding, and the council was reviewing options with its legal team.

It makes Hornsby Shire the second north shore council looking to use the courts against the state government after neighbouring Ku-ring-gai Council commenced legal action over planning reforms aimed at increasing housing density around train stations and town centres.

“In my 50 years of public service, I have never seen anything like this,” Ruddock told a council meeting last week, noting Hornsby was co-operating with the housing reforms. “To take back funding that was already given to us and has been allocated seems quite ridiculous to me.”

Ruddock subsequently told the Herald the council was obtaining legal advice as to whether the arrangement entered into by the previous government could be negotiated by a different government.

“We believe that it’s appropriate that we should fully understand the legal consequences of what has occurred. It has been misrepresented by the government. It was compensation, not pork-barrelling,” Ruddock said.

Philip Ruddock, the Hornsby Shire Council mayor.Credit: James Alcock

Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig last week announced Hornsby would have to pay back all money yet to be spent from a $40 million grant issued by the former Coalition administration in 2018, estimated at $36 million.

The grant came from the $250 million Stronger Communities Fund, which was later found to have awarded 96 per cent of funds to Coalition-held electorates ahead of the 2019 election, and was the subject of a scathing assessment by the NSW Auditor-General.

The fund was ostensibly designed to support councils the Coalition had forcibly amalgamated, but Hornsby was never merged. However, Hornsby lost part of its land to the City of Parramatta in a 2016 boundary change, which Hornsby Shire Council now calls an “annexation” of its territory.

Westleigh Park comprises about 36 hectares of cleared open space and was to be turned into a new sporting and recreation precinct for football, athletics, rugby, AFL and cricket, including five fields.

The development application is yet to be approved, and Hoenig said Hornsby had been too slow to act. The government has rejected its request for an extension of time and demanded the funds are repaid. Hoenig also called the Stronger Communities Fund “one of the most egregious examples of pork-barrelling” he had seen.

Other councillors at last week’s meeting argued the council should try to recoup the funds through another grant. “I have grave concerns over the legitimacy of this funding,” Greens councillor Tanya Salitra said. “It comes as no surprise the Labor state government must recall the funds.”

But Ruddock dismissed that view. “This is not a matter for us to be trying to identify whether it was compliant or non-compliant,” he said. “It was a grant provided by the government, and it’s a matter for the government to deal with.”

Hoenig’s office referred the Herald to his previous comments. “At a time when we are facing a cost-of-living crisis, every dollar counts,” he said last week. “Hornsby Council has had years to utilise this funding and the original deadline written into the grant guidelines has long passed.”

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