LETTER : Batemans Bay Masterplan crashes and burns under
independent scrutiny
The Eurobodalla’s ‘flagship’ town planning document, the Batemans Bay Masterplan 2025 has crumbled under scrutiny. Australian-based governance and integrity specialists, Centium Pty Ltd, have delivered a scathing assessment of the Masterplan in the Batemans Bay Masterplan Final Probity Report, February 2026.
At close of business last Friday, Eurobodalla Shire Council’s General Manager, Mark Ferguson, released the Final Probity Report into the governance and decision making of the Batemans Bay Master Plan 2025. Spare a thought for Mr Ferguson. Less than two months into his new job as Interim General Manager, he referred the Masterplan for independent review in May 2025, on the back of widespread community and councillor concerns. Nine months later, he has released the Final Probity Report, a transparent and welcome move, given the Report exposes a trail of incompetence around five years in the making.
The independent review by Centium into the development of the Masterplan has found a litany of poor governance and decision-making inside the Council. Worse still, it would appear the Probity Review has been unable to do its job as well as it might have. The Council did not provide the Probity Review with critical decision-making documentation, such as council resolutions or executive leadership team decisions. Had it done so, these would have provided the reasons for the master planning work and related public spending, and the objectives of the Masterplan itself.
Centium found no Project Management Plan among the documents it was handed, and no approval documentation to explain the scope creep of the Masterplan. No milestone updates. No clear direction. No rhyme. No reason. No evidence. For five years from 2020 to 2025. The omission of these records is hard to explain. On the surface, this looks like local government mismanagement and incompetence on a scale I doubt many in the Eurobodalla have seen before. The Final Report states the Council did not provide the documentation to the integrity review. One might ask; did the governing documentation ever exist? Did someone’s dog eat the work? Why didn’t any of Council’s leaders in the last term of Council ask for this material? Or, was our Council just winging it for five years?
If this sounds like poor governance, it gets worse. Centium found that the integrity and transparency of community consultation was seriously compromised. The Report states, “Information on the outcome of community engagement, community concerns and issues, and how these were considered in the Masterplan was not made available to the Review”.
The Probity Review found that fundamental aspects of a town planning process were not considered in the Batemans Bay Masterplan including geotechnical requirements for buildings, infrastructure limitations for water, power, sewerage and telecommunications and the demand for health services, schools, waste management and community services. Environmental and climate risks, such as coastal erosion, were not adequately considered while population projections were overstated and misleading. One can only imagine, had the Masterplan gone ahead, Batemans Bay would have been a “ticking-time bomb” of expensive and potentially life-threatening planning problems waiting to happen.
The Review found that conflicts of interest driven by developers interested in developing real estate in Batemans Bay were not resolved in the Masterplan.
Now spare a thought for the Eurobodalla community. For the past year, talented and committed community members with a broad range of expertise and interest have given their time free of charge and favour to call out the very same findings found in the Centium report. These can be found in community submissions to the public exhibition held from April to June 2025, and presentations to Council public forums throughout 2025. The community has been vindicated for calling out this nonsensical Masterplan. Once again, Eurobodalla General Manager, Mark Ferguson, prioritised transparency and the public interest by publishing on the Council’s website all the submissions to the Masterplan. Unlike the special interest group consultation supposedly held by Council, and found to be without substance in the Probity Report, the public exhibition drew out community submissions of quality and substance. The outcomes of these two consultations could not be starker.
Turning to the current group of councillors, led by the Deputy Mayor at the time, Councillor Anthony Mayne, and supported by the current Deputy Mayor, Colleen Turner, new Councillors, Mick Johnson, and Sharon Winslade and long term Councillor, Rob Pollock, who together stood up for the community and shined a spotlight on this troubling process. By speaking up in the Council chamber, these Councillors have enabled independent scrutiny, transparency and better governance for our community. Without them, the community would likely be none the wiser. They too deserve “a tip of the hat”.
We are very lucky to have all these people in our community.
Yet what of our other elected councillors? Mayor Hatcher has been the Masterplan’s chief cheerleader.
As the leader of the Council for the past five years, he is responsible for overseeing council operations and is accountable for the Council’s performance.
A lot of people’s time, goodwill, and resident’s money—potentially running into the millions of dollars—has been wasted over the past five years.
Many in our community, from residents to business people and investors, have been misled by the failed Masterplan. The Eurobodalla community deserves better and it deserves answers for this wastage.
On 1 April 2025, Mayor Hatcher, told us the “Masterplan was more than click-bait headlines”. Now it appears to be making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Cid Mateo
Bingi