Melbourne ratepayers stump up almost $700,000 for professor charged with making city more global warming ‘resilient’

MELBOURNE Council ratepayers will be slugged almost $700,000 to help pay a Swedish professor who has the job of making the city more “resilient” in the face of global warming.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said last year that Prof Coenen would boost Melbourne’s ­credentials. Picture: Jason Edwards

MELBOURNE ratepayers will stump up almost $700,000 to help pay a Swedish professor who has the job of making the city more “resilient” in the face of global warming.

Melbourne University approached the City of Melbourne with the idea of hiring a “chair in resilient cities” to help the city deal with the impact of climate change.

But critics say the council should be focused on rates, roads and rubbish rather than spending hundreds of ­thousands of dollars on ­academic research.

Professor Lars Coenen, from the innovation and research centre at Sweden’s Lund University, began work in the role last month.

Tomorrow, the council will vote on changes to his contract but it has agreed to pay the university $137,470 a year for the next five years to help fund Prof Coenen’s position, even though the City of ­Melbourne has a chief resilience officer, Toby Kent, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Prof Coenen’s salary this year is $232,304 and will rise to $264,005 in 2020.

He will also have an annual $10,000 research allowance.

Council documents show that Prof Coenen has the task of helping Melbourne to plan for, act during, and recover from extreme events and ­natural disasters.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said last year that Prof Coenen would boost Melbourne’s ­credentials.

“We look forward to Prof Coenen’s insights into global perspectives that can impact on resilience building and policy making,” he said.

But Institute of Public Affairs spokesman Evan Mulholland said the council’s spending was “astonishing”.

“Instead of funding an academic to study resilient cities, the council could spend more time focusing on the resilience of roads, rubbish, and keeping rates low,” he said.

“At a time where voters are increasingly sceptical of the political class, it is astonishing that the City of Melbourne would choose to spend ratepayers’ money in this way.”

The head of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at Melbourne University, Prof Brendan Gleeson, said that Prof Coenen had a global reputation: “His particular expertise is the sustainability in- novations needed to futureproof cities and contribute to their safety and livability in the face of environmental changes and the many economic and social challenges these raise.”

The professor’s job description requires him to undertake research and responses “that acknowledge the interdependencies of physical, societal and economic factors in framing effective policy action to sec­ure and enhance resilience”.