Councillor Big Rob's urgency motion, as reported on Monday on the Lismore App Councillor Rob to put urgency motion to meeting on Tuesday for housing crisis, was comfortably voted for at last night's Lismore City Council meeting which was a continuation of last week's monthly meeting to complete the agenda.

The matter was a unanimous vote and then ruled urgent by Mayor Steve Krieg so the motion could be debated and voted on.

Councillor (Cr) Rob said in his opening statement that, "The blowback that has come back from that (last week's rescission motion against Hepburn Park) has just been incredible. It seems there is a serious lack of understanding out there about who does what and who is responsible for what and in particular, in relation to emergency housing and council's role in that."

Cr Rob explained that Resilience NSW can go to any landholder anywhere and ask to put some emergency accommodation on their land and if the landholder agrees they can move forward. They do not need to go to council.

This is the difference between council-owned land and private help land. Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke and the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC) CEO David Witherdin both believed that Hepburn Park was the obvious, easiest and quickest build for emergency accommodation to be built in the 2480 postcode. However, Lismore City Councillors have voted against the proposal three times in every form it has been brought to them in the last six months.

Cr Rob also accused Minister Cooke and Resilience NSW of not doing her job. "Miss Cooke MP needs to get her act together, get her organisation doing their job, not just identifying the land, building on it or putting things on wheels on it and get people in houses out of the floodplain."

The end result is that Lismore City Council will hold a workshop to discuss available land that can be used for temporary emergency accommodation and invite Resilience NSW, the NRRC and Landcom so a solution can be found and work started. Cr Rob wanted to have something back before the December meeting which is the final council meeting for the year.

This appears to be a moot point as Cr Rob had spoken about previously because if it is not council-owned land then nothing needs to be ratified by Lismore City Council. That power rests with Resilience NSW.

In an ideal world, the land would be identified and paid for by NRRC's $100 million Resilient Homes Fund, Resilience NSW would build the infrastructure needed like power, water and sewage while Landcom would come and build homes that are affordable.

In this way, we could be building temporary emergency accommodation in the same area where we will be developing long-term housing solutions.

One issue may be the size of the $100 million Resilient Homes Fund, as General Manager John Walker pointed out, this is for the Northern Rivers region not just for Lismore plus the two organisations have separate roles where Resilience NSW looks after emergency housing while the NRRC looks after medium to long term housing options.

While councillors debated on who will take credit for the meaning of the motion and for keeping it affordable, we are nearly nine months after the natural disaster. Realistically, will any work begin before Christmas? You would think not, especially with what we have seen so far.

The people who will miss out on the Christmas present of a safe home for the holidays in their own local government area are still paying the price of politics and bureaucracy.