This item should stop at the half way make with the words, “The City should take a leadership role and help mobilise our staff and the broader community to generously provide support to ensure those affected by this devastating disaster receive the help they need.” The rest is irrelevant and an attempt to maximise PR.

Lord Mayor you’re turning COS – that’s the City of Sydney into COS the Climate Observation Society.

Last Council, in the midst of their greatest crisis, we insulted the people of the Blue Mountains by having more than half a Lord Mayoral Minute blaming the fires on climate change. The people of the Blue Mountains took it on the chin, didn’t blame anyone and have been reluctant to seek out financial assistance.

I remember the Lord Mayor attributing the lack of rain on climate change. Now it’s raining again and no doubt the Lord Mayor will attribute the rain to climate change. Lord Mayor – it’s called the weather – it changes quite a bit.

Do you know we spend more time in this Council talking about Climate Change than we do about foreign investment, tourism and getting people into the city to spend money? 77% of our rate haul comes from business and we’re failing them.

Last week we had a valid discussion, and it will continue tonight, on the C40 Climate Change Summit. The Council didn’t have the courage to say, this is a practical group, we’re experiencing benefits from previous conferences like great cost savings from the LED street lighting initiative and the Smart Apartments program. That’s why we should go: We’ll learn and bring more great ideas back that will stack up financially.

The item should have stopped at paragraph three. Instead we had all the irrelevant IPCC Mumbo Jumbo put in, and the community started to say it sounds like a junket.

Here we are again blaming sea level rises in the Philippines for the Typhoon. Lord Mayor, precisely what is the sea level rise in the Philippines?

Lord Mayor you’re exploiting this disaster for cheap PR – free advertising for yourself. For if my amendment goes through they’re won’t be much PR in it because you’re simply helping people in need – instead we have the promote your climate agenda by a feeble attempt to link rising sea levels to this disaster.

Edward Mandla
November 2013