“I take the view that having spent $1.5 million doing up the Town Hall, or thereabouts, to find $7,500 each year to get some events to come to this shire then we should seriously consider it,” Cr Jones said.

Cr Jones moved that council reinstate supporting ANW for a year and do an accurate assessment on the benefits derived from it. His motion was seconded by Cr Mal Peters who said Inverell had lost about 14 events by not being a member of ANW, and had lost potential revenue generated by those visitors to the town.

“For a lousy seven and a half grand, that seems to me to be a terribly short-sighted decision,” he said.

Cr Jackie Watts said she thought it was perhaps more helpful to say there was only a possibility that Inverell had missed out on events.

Cr Paul Harmon said a call was put out for community members to lobby councillors and sign petitions for council to become a member of ANW.

“Out of a population of 18,000, we had six people put in submissions and one person made an appointment,” he said.

Cr Harmon said council then decided to ask an ANW representative to a committee meeting to explain the benefits of ANW membership. 

“At the end, when asked ‘What can you guarantee you will bring to Inverell?’ she said ‘I’m writing grants now that don’t include Inverell. So, even if you are a member for this next 12 months, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get anything to your shire at all’,” Cr Harmon said.

“She couldn’t even say ‘If you become members, I will see what we can do to make sure you get some productions coming to your community’.

“I actually was prepared to support them, as Cr Jones has said. But I couldn’t support spending ratepayer’s money on something that we may not get anything for. And they admitted that; that you have to be in it for two years to actually see any benefit.”