Updated climate change action declaration not voted on by Albany council, will be brought back at later date

More work will need to be done on a planned update to the City’s climate change action declaration after it was left on the table at last week’s council meeting. The scheduled update was delayed after Cr Chris Thomson proposed amendments to the draft update. He has proposed that the City should publicly report on its performance every two years and implement as many actions as it could from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report. The first declaration, published in October 2020, contains a commitment to update the document every two years. A draft was on the agenda of last week’s council meeting with proposed changes to the outline of what the City of Albany will do and the wording of the declaration. Cr Thomson said his changes were modest and would make it clear to the layman what was already in City plans as well as anchoring the declaration to a specific IPCC report and ensuring that “we don’t just review the declaration”. “It gets a little bit down in the reeds but still keeps it to one page,” he said. “And importantly it presents to the public exactly what we plan to do rather than just referring to vague strategies or vague IPCC reports.” Cr Malcolm Traill seconded the amendments and spoke in favour of them before Cr Sandie Smith spoke against the amendment. Cr Smith suggested the Youth Advisory Council should be given a chance to look at any amendment “because it was a joint process and suddenly we’re changing it without their input”. Cr Robert Sutton then proposed a procedural motion to lay the item on the table so that the council could seek further clarification. His motion was supported 8-5, meaning the declaration will be brought back to the council at a later date. As the council will soon enter a caretaker period, the declaration will most likely be revisited after the October local government election. Before Cr Thomson put forward his amendment, Cr Smith said the changes in the draft were “reasonably subtle”. “I do think that down the track there is potential to change the declaration into something else because some people would like to see it become more detailed which would require it to become a strategy,” she said. “I’m very supportive of the subtle changes we’ve made.” Cr Paul Terry said the process to update the declaration had been good, including working with the YAC as required in the 2020 declaration. “I think how we workshopped it a month or so ago was quite effective and I think we’ve landed really well with the wording that has been proposed in the update, including mention of the intercontinental panel on climate change,” he said.