impassioned address to Council prior to their vote on the Newey Plan of
Management at last Thursday’s Ordinary Council Meeting.
Cobar resident (and former Cobar Shire Councillor) Julie Payne addressed councillors prior to the December Ordinary Meeting last Thursday imploring them to take free camping at the Newey Reserve off their agenda.
Mrs Payne made an impassioned plea for councillors to delete free camping from the Newey Reserve’s Plan of Management (PoM) which was an agenda item of discussion at last week’s meeting.
“I have always been a strong advocate against camping at the Newey.
“Councillors have a fiscal responsibility to the rate payers, not just the business operators of Cobar, to ensure they commit to the budget, which as you know is struggling at the moment,” Mrs Payne said.
She questioned if the plan were adopted, would council need to take funding from other services such as the library, swimming pool, museum and youth centre?
“Implementing free camping at the Newey with possible grant funding for capital works still leaves the ratepayer to pick up the extra ongoing costs,” she said.
“One must consider if it is worth the expense for 13 free camp sites.
“You only have to see in the budget how much it costs to minimally maintain the Newey at the moment.”
She suggested that by including free camping in the plan, Council would have the burden of extra garbage collections, mowing etc to maintain the area for visitors.
Mrs Payne said Council currently cannot afford to maintain the Newey walking track, let alone fund any other improvements there.
With a large number of campers having access to the area, Mrs Payne outlined her environmental concerns, worries about vandalism and questioned who would “police the numbers of campers accessing the site”.
She said previous debates had suggested that all boats and jet-skis be banned at the Newey as the noise upset free campers, and said if this was made law, then Council’s loyalty was not to local residents who use the Newey as a water recreational area.
“Once a plan of management is adopted it cannot be rescinded, it can only be amended or revoked by another plan of management,” Mrs Payne reminded councillors.
When the Plan of Management was put to the vote at the meeting, there was minimal discussion by councillors (other than a couple of questions of clarification from Cr Nigel Vagg), and the vote was unanimous in favour of the motion to place the Draft Newey Plan of Management on public exhibition and report back to the February 2026 council meeting.
Mrs Payne said she was bitterly disappointed at the lack of discussion on the issues she had raised by councillors.
Following the meeting, The Cobar Weekly questioned three councillors who attended the meeting, Cr Bob Sinclair, Cr Chris Deighton and Cr Lillian Simpson, as to why they offered no discussion on the matter.
All three responded that the motion before them was not to adopt the plan in its current form, but only to put the draft plan on display (which included calling for public submissions on the plan) and that they would await to hear the public’s responses on the matter before making their final decisions.
