Toowoomba councillor Megan O’Hara Sullivan proposes plan to plant one million trees by 2027

Council will explore drastically ramping up its tree-planting with the help of the community, after a councillor’s controversial motion got enough support.

A councillor’s controversial proposal for the Toowoomba community to plant one million trees in just five years has been met with both praise and scorn from her colleagues.

Councillor Megan O’Hara Sullivan put forward a motion at last month’s council meeting for the council to develop a report about what would be required for Toowoomba to plant 200,000 trees a year.

In her initial motion, Ms O’Hara Sullivan said the concept could help combat issues around tree clearing and also improve the region’s green footprint.

“Recent examples of urban development across our region have shown that it is too easy to remove existing vegetation to make way for the homes and services required for our growing

population,” her motion said.

“There is an urgent need to rebalance the ledger by planting far more trees than is currently planned in council’s budgets.”

The council currently has a planting quota of 5000 trees a year, which it sometimes does not meet.

Ms O’Hara Sullivan said her vision was for the entire community to contribute to the initiative, not just council.

“In the report to be brought back to Council matters that would need to be made clear would be the cost of such a program in terms of acquiring sufficient seedlings, the logistics in identifying candidate sites and areas that could be used to plant new trees and the community organisations across the region that could be mobilised to undertake planting programs,” she said.

But the proposal was met with significant criticism from some colleagues, including councillor Carol Taylor.

“I hate to speak against planting trees, but we’re talking about a million trees – how will they get them planted, how will they keep them alive?” she said.

“Where are we going to find the resources and the land?

“In five years it’s not possible, it’s not realistic, why are we setting ourselves up to fail?”

However, councillor Bill Cahill said the motion should be considered from an aspirational viewpoint.

“Unfortunately, boardrooms have a tendency to analyse rather than explore — we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said.

“Let’s be brave enough to explore and not just analyse – there’s different ways to look at implementing something like this.”

After Ms O’Hara Sullivan’s original motion was voted down, deputy mayor Geoff McDonald moved an alternate that simply moved the concept through the budgetary process.

This was moved 6-5, with councillors Sommerfield, Carol Taylor, Melissa Taylor, Tim McMahon and mayor Paul Antonio voting against it.

Ms O’Hara Sullivan said securing funding for the report was a win, saying she was “bloody proud” of it.