‘Not happy’: Cairns councillors clash over revised emissions targets
A climate change strategy to achieve net zero by 2030 has been ditched by Cairns Regional Council with councillors debating for almost 30 minutes over whether to revise the policy again.
A climate change strategy to achieve net zero by 2030 has been ditched by Cairns Regional Council with councillors debating for almost 30 minutes over whether to revise the policy again.
The council finally voted 7-3 in favour of the plan which will set a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and reduce the amount of renewable energy the council must use.
Earlier, Deputy Mayor Brett Olds and Division Two Councillor Matthew Tickner had called for emissions targets to be scrapped altogether, with Mayor Amy Eden proposing a procedural motion, to allow further time to review the policy.
But chief executive Ken Gouldthorp warned that the motion would merely delay the vote with the same strategy to be reviewed at a later meeting.
“(Council) officers don’t write a new report,” Mr Gouldthorp said.
Eventually, the strategy passed with Mr Olds, Mr Tickner and Division Five councillor, Rob Pyne voting against it.
Division Seven councillor, Anna Middleton said she voted for the strategy “with a heavy heart”.
“My concern is that we wouldn’t end up with a strategy at all, which could have happened today,” Ms Middleton said.
“It’s better than nothing, but it’s still a watering down. At the start of the year, we were already at 49 per cent emissions reduction.
“We unfortunately sold off our carbon credits. Now we are aiming for 43.
“I think it lacks a bit of common sense that we’re actually setting a target that was lower than where we were sitting when I entered into this council.”
Setting bold emissions targets risked a major financial blowout that would force the council to buy more carbon credits, Mr Olds said.
“Like we saw with our last climate change strategy, the reason we’re watering this one down is because it was impossible to meet the last one’s targets,” he said.
“You’ve got to do the best you can, when you can, in a fiscally responsible manner with ratepayers’ money.
“We’re not going to sit there and blindly just throw goals on the wall and say that’s what we’re going to hit because it makes you feel good.”
Aligning the council’s emissions targets with the Federal government could lead to further changes to the strategy at the next election, Mr Tickner said.
“I understood … that we would move away from specifying targets regardless of what those targets were at a point in time,” he said.
“Even this Federal Government may decide to change them tomorrow to 60, 70 per cent.
“We don’t know. So hard writing them into this document, to me I’m not happy with that and in that case I’ll be voting against this motion.”
Developed under former Mayor Bob Manning, the previous climate change strategy was developed over two years alongside stakeholders with 107 actions included.
The council’s report noted that just seven of the actions had been completed since the strategy was endorsed in 2022.
Originally published as ‘Not happy’: Cairns councillors clash over revised emissions targets
