Firstly Lord Mayor, there’s no conceivable reason that this should be done by way of Mayoral minute. For the amount of expenditure involved it should quite properly stand on the agenda and be considered with proper notice. The Vanuatu cyclone happened nearly two weeks ago.

I’m entirely sympathetic to the plight of Vanuatu and its citizens, but better people than us who know what they are doing have it in hand. We should worry about our own disasters closer to home.

It seems that in addition to being Mayor of Western Sydney to advise them on Freeways, you now have another roving commission, you have appointed yourself Foreign Minister. I will be sure to let Julie Bishop know. She informed me that she was visiting the site. It’s all in hand Lord Mayor. That is someone who sees a problem and solves it.

Our Commonwealth aid contribution for this disaster now exceeds over 20 million dollars including indirect costs and growing. What the City of Sydney is doing getting involved when our most capable Foreign Affairs Department has it in hand says as much about them as it does about the state of the City of Sydney.

The rats run wild, the garbage doesn’t get picked up on time, the homeless remain homeless, the consultants reports pour in on every non-core function of this organisation you can imagine and we worry about everything other than what we’re supposed to be doing.

At the tail end of this minute we receive all manner of unattributed assertions on factual matters. The United Nations said this, a meteorologist said that. All I can say is, I hope Simon Allen from the Bureau of Meteorology is voting in the next election, because the storm that’s heading in the direction of this Administration shouldn’t be underestimated.

We are now at the point where this is no longer a city to be reckoned with. When I viewed a number of Global Financial centre rankings, I noticed we are just above Buenos Aires. When I walked down Oxford Street last week, reactivated I was told by this chamber recently, I saw further evidence of its terminal decline under this Administration’s watch.

I have a suggestion for you in respect of this and every other non-core item that you are suggesting. Before you go out to lecture western Sydney, pretend to be the Foreign Minister or Climate Change Minister or Energy Minister or any other portfolio in your self appointed commission of inquiry, may I remind you that our functions are to the people of this city first and I would ask that we can demonstrate that the fire at our house is put out before we go to our neighbours to extinguish theirs, particularly when our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has done an excellent job already.