I think that the Victorian Farmers Federation got the wrong end of the stick when it recently attacked a climate change study in regional Victoria (and good on Bass Coast for responding appropriately). By all means, identify waste in local government, but this kind of community planning is exactly the sort of thing that is needed, in an arena of debate where there is little real data:
Six councils in the Gippsland Local Government Network – Bass Coast, South Gippsland, Wellington, Baw Baw, East Gippsland and Latrobe – are each contributing $80,000 to the Gippsland-wide Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Project.
Bass Coast Council’s 2012-13 Budget even shows it plans to spend even more employing a full-time Climate Change Project Officer to “implement a framework to strategically address the impacts of a changing climate on council operations and infrastructure and the community”.
