Yarra City Council push for residents to go vegetarian, ‘decolonise’ streets

Councillors and executives dined on roast beef before a vote urging ratepayers to go vegetarian to tackle the climate crisis. Now, after questions about the menu, the council has introduced a new policy.

Yarra council has been serving meat dishes, including roast beef and casseroles, to executives and councillors before its monthly meetings, despite urging ratepayers to go vegetarian to tackle the climate crisis.

Yarra’s top brass and councillors are offered dinner dishes of beef, chicken or lamb ahead of the Tuesday evening meetings.

But late on Thursday, the council, after queries from the Herald Sun, said meat was off the menu and that only plant-based meals would now be served before its meetings, starting from next month.

Until now, caterers have also offered vegetarian dishes and a salad was usually on the buffet menu. But meat has been a regular option – sliced roast beef was served earlier this week before the vote on its Climate Emergency Plan.

Roast beef was served before the climate vote. Picture: iStock

The meat buffet revelation had sparked claims of hypocrisy from ratepayers.

Yarra Residents Collective spokesman Adam Promnitz said the council wanted to “have their steak and eat it too’’.

“This council needs to go on a diet rather than setting the menu for everyone else. Yarra’s menu should be fixing the roads and drains, ’’ Mr Promnitz said.

Yarra’s Greens Mayor Edward Crossland would not comment on the meat buffet, instead referring inquiries to the council media department.

The council this week passed its Climate Emergency Plan – its second – and urged ratepayers to adopt a vegetarian diet as a way of tackling the climate crisis.

Residents urged to ‘act on the climate emergency’

The Yarra City Council will look to traditional Aboriginal land management practices in order to bring the municipality back from “the precipice of climate and ecological collapse” and “decolonise” the urban landscape.

It plans to increase the number of people travelling the streets of Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy on bikes and scooters by 20 per cent by 2027 and by 40 per cent by 2032.

The 81-page Yarra City Council Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030 — which was passed and carried unanimously at Tuesday night’s Yarra council meeting — calls on residents to “act on the climate emergency” by moving towards a vegetarian diet, using active and public transport, “consuming resources consciously”, and shifting their banking and superannuation away from fossil fuel investments.

Yarra Council wants to ‘decolonise’ the streets of Richmond and Collingwood.

“In the development and implementation of this Plan, we aim to deliver a climate emergency response which is commensurate with the scale, urgency, and severity of the crisis … this Climate Emergency Plan (the Plan) is our assurance that we’ve heard the calls for climate action, and for a more equitable and just society,” the document states.

It says the council itself, and all its officers, will make every decision with the climate crisis in mind.

“For Council, consideration of the climate emergency must be embedded into all decision making, so our assets, services, operations, and policies actively reduce emissions,” it says.

A partnership with the Traditional Owners of the land that Yarra occupies, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung nation, would be central to addressing the municipality’s climate crisis by learning how to best manage the land, it says.

“Council is committed to its formal relationship with the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung. This Climate Emergency Plan is an opportunity to strengthen this relationship by embedding Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung knowledge and practices in the ways that we care for Country, and by collaborating on and co-designing projects,” the plan notes.

The council says consideration of the climate emergency will be embedded in all its decisions.

“To move forward we need to look backwards. Around the country, Traditional Owner knowledge and practices are being adopted to inform and improve land management and promote sustainability … We need to change the narrative, and the way we look at our environment, adjusting our view to align with Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung knowledge and practices, passed on through stories. The most astounding transformations happen right before our eyes, like the Bullum Bullum (white butterfly in Woi Wurrung) emerging from its cocoon. We see on the horizon the fruits of this endeavour — the more beautiful world we know is possible.”

Greens Mayor Edward Crossland said Yarra was proud to continue to be a leader on climate action in the local government sector and was committed to embedding climate action in everything the council did.

He said Yarra City Council was one of the first councils in Australia to declare a climate emergency and had achieved a 70 per cent reduction in emissions since 2001.

In 2012, the council became the first Victorian council to be certified carbon neutral, Cr Crossland said.

Traditional land owner practices will be used to fight climate change. Picture: Supplied

The council’s Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030 says that in rethinking the “world view”, the way society is organised must also change.

“A crucial element of rethinking and revising our relationship with nature is the decolonisation

of our landscape, so that our city increasingly reflects Wurundjeri land,” it says.

“This means prioritising climate resilient indigenous and native vegetation, including trees, grasses, and ground covers, which will provide suitable habitat for our native wildlife, while minimising resource-intensive maintenance practices. Simultaneously, decolonising our outdoor spaces means ensuring that the knowledge and practices of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung are embedded into land management.”

The council has a 2030 target of 100,000 new plantings a year in open space areas — with many Victorian and Australian natives — to provide cool shade, provide wildlife habitat and encourage pollination and biodiversity.

Among those trees, 200 a year will be selected specifically to provide winter foraging opportunities for the endangered grey headed flying fox.

“An adequate climate emergency response means rethinking our relationship with nature. It means facing up to the harms caused to Country since colonisation and working towards remedying these harms with the knowledge and support of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung. It means providing ample habitat for biodiversity to thrive, and ecosystems to heal. It means ensuring that everyone in our community feels connected to the natural environment, has access to cool, green spaces and waterways, and is protected from extreme heat through nature-based interventions,” the plan states.

It says a major source of emissions which are not captured in the municipal emissions inventory are those associated with food consumed within Yarra.

“There is substantial evidence to suggest that the emissions associated with current dietary patterns — particularly the high and increasing rate of consumption of animal products — are likely to make it impossible to limit global heating to 1.5°C, even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated completely,” it says.

“The emissions impacts from animal agriculture arise from deforestation for the expansion of pasture for ruminants, methane emissions from livestock, the refrigeration and transportation of products, as well as the vast amount of land and resources directed towards producing crops for livestock consumption … It is widely understood that a shift to plant-based diets is critical in responding to the climate emergency.”

Originally published as Yarra City Council push for residents to go vegetarian, ‘decolonise’ streets