Rayner ‘sceptic' blast

TWEED Shire council’s general manager Mike Rayner has come under fire from one of the area’s leading conservationists.

TWEED Shire council’s general manager Mike Rayner has come under fire from by one of the area’s leading conservationists, Caldera Environment Centre co-ordinator Hop’e Hopkins, for adopting what Mr Hopkins says is the stance of a “climate-change sceptic”.

Mr Hopkins accused Mr Rayner of either being one of “four in every 100 people who are climate-change denialists or sceptics” or of playing up to climate sceptics among the councillors in a bid to shore up his $270,000-a-year job.

“I think he should be independent and providing leadership,” said Mr Hopkins. “Why doesn’t he seek information from his own scientists on the council? Why is the council paying them to formulate policy if the general manager doesn’t believe what they are saying?”

Last week Mr Rayner ruled out a push from Greens Party councillor Katie Milne for a separate edition of the council-funded newsletter Tweed Link “to explain the science of climate change to the Tweed community”.

Mr Rayner said the Tweed Link was not an “appropriate mechanism” to explain that because of the associated social and political debate.

However he said the council was “developing a sustainability-themed edition”.

Mr Rayner said, through a council spokeswoman, he was “not a climate-change sceptic”. Mr Hopkins said he did not believe Mr Rayner was “administering the shire effectively if he is not believing in climatic change, which the rest of the world has come to accept”.

Originally published as Rayner ‘sceptic' blast