Speaking at council’s latest monthly meeting on May 15 in which she successfully moved a motion to adopt council’s 2022/23 budget, she praised council staff for the development of the community strategic plan that considers the priorities of Federation community.
Action 5.6.8 of the operational and delivery plan, however, which includes the development of a climate adaptation plan, drew strong comment from Cr Hughes.
“When I attended the LGNSW conference in Sydney a few months ago with Mayor Bourke and councillors Fahey and Kennedy, our president Darriea Turley AM gave a strong direction that take we take leadership on climate action,” she told councillors.
“In this plan I found only two references to the issue of climate adaptation: a Climate Adaption Plan and secondly, I note that several comments appeared in the community survey. This was interesting because the questions in the survey were not about climate adaptation.”
Cr Hughes proposes the pillars ask to consider how climate will, and is already, affecting each pillar.
“Let’s start with (pillar) Built Federation: Severe weather events will impact our infrastructure such as roads bridges, drainage, sewerage and buildings - we have felt this impact from recent flooding events.
“Economic Federation: Changing weather patterns affect our largest industry – agriculture - it will impact tourist visitation and in turn our local business owners.
“Social Federation: Extreme weather events affect the elderly. Climate sensitive food, water and vector borne diseases are projected to increase under climate change. An example of this is the Jap encephalitis that has arrived due to the changing weather pattern.
“Natural Federation: The increased severity of droughts, floods and fires will impact our natural resources requiring increased action.”
Neighbouring councils of Indigo, Wodonga and Towong have been through this process and developed Climate Action Plans which give the community reassurance for their future according to Cr Hughes.
“Recently Joan Palmer David Sloane and I conducted climate conversation with four community groups,” she said. “David Sloane presented rainfall data collected by the Sloanes on Savernake Station since 1875. Over this period of 147 years that there has been an 8 per cent decline in rainfall. Summers and winters are becoming wetter and more humid while autumns and springs are drier.
“We asked attendees questions specifically around climate change. We conducted a simple questionnaire and had 59 responses.”
Findings, she said, included: 96% support Federation Council transitioning to renewable energy; 73% of people want council to provide more information on the council website about climate adaptation.
“I would like to know whether during this consultation period it is possible to add more reference to climate in the pillars to communicate our commitment to climate adaptation,” Cr Hughes asked.
Council’s General Manager Adrian Butler said the request, and all other requests which may arise from the public before 5.00pm Tuesday, June 14, will be considered in seeking formal adoption of the draft 2022/23 Operational Plan at council’s next monthly meeting on Tuesday, June 28.
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