Speech to Chambers

Delivered by Councillor Seal Chong Wah, to the full sitting of Brisbane City Council during General Business, Tues 16th September 2025

I am speaking to the ‘Climate-related disclosure’ on page 27 of the annual report, which states that this council’s operating carbon emissions were 3% higher in 2023/24 compared with the base year of reporting 2016-2017. 

This LNP council administration misled its own residents into believing that it was carbon neutral from 2016 until 2024. We all know it was fake news. Even the carbon credits were fake.

International research into Verra, the company selling the offsets, found the majority of credits were “phantom credits” and did not represent genuine carbon reductions.

Buying carbon credits was really a way of diverting attention from their actual carbon emissions.

In 2017, this LNP administration introduced a target to reduce council’s operational carbon emissions by at least 30% by 2031-32  - from 2016-17 levels.

This was part of its Brisbane. Clean, Green, Sustainable 2017-2031 initiative.

However, the annual report tabled today, shows emissions are actually 3% higher than the base year of 2016/17.   

Let me repeat: this LNP administration committed in 2017 to reducing its own operating carbon emissions by 30%. After 8 years, emissions have not lowered at all - they are actually higher.  

Results over the last 8 years are all over the place, demonstrating no actual commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

Of course, there is no way this council will meet their 30% reduction target if the LNP remains in control of this council. Like all of their so-called green sustainability claims, the targets are election propaganda.

This LNP administration also set a target in 2013, to reduce household emissions, separate from the council's own operations. The target was an average of six tonnes per household by 2031 – a cut of about 50 per cent. I wonder how that’s going?

From this year’s annual report, also on page 27, household emissions actually increased in the last two years of reporting. From 10.86 tonnes per household in 2022-23 to 11 tonnes in this report. 

How far have we progressed since the target was set in 2013? Well, it's very difficult to find this data, as this council was very reluctant to report household emissions - despite it being an official target.  Over the last decade the only mentions of actual ‘household emissions’, are about 11 or 11.5 tonnes. So since the 2013 target of 6 tonnes per household was set - we have seen virtually no downward trend at all.

This is no surprise. How can this LNP administration expect residents to reduce emissions when the council itself cannot? How can households cut emissions when this council fails to provide the sustainable infrastructure to enable it.

As I have said in these chambers before, Brisbane now sits below Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, in multiple international sustainability rankings.

You would think the largest local government in Australia would have enough strategists, planners and sustainability managers to advise the LNP Cabinet on how to meet their targets. So who is responsible? 

There is only one person in the current LNP civic cabinet who was there in 2016/2017.

It was the Lord Mayor, who was Deputy Mayor at the time.

It was the Lord Mayor who helped launch the ‘Brisbane. Clean, Green, Sustainable 2017-2031 initiative’ in 2017.

I note that the Lord Mayor is absent from these chambers, but I am still addressing you.

Lord Mayor, through the Chair, who else should take responsibility for failing to meet these targets, other than yourself?

Who else is responsible for failing one of the most important targets of any government during an unprecedented climate emergency?

It is this Lord Mayor who oversees a council that completely disregards climate change, treating it like a game with fake election propaganda, misleading the residents of Brisbane, as if there are no consequences. Parrotting words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘carbon neutrality’ as if no one will call him out. 

Lord Mayor, through the chair, today I am calling you out to take responsibility for this critical failure.

You do not deserve to hold the title of Lord Mayor of Brisbane. You are failing our children’s future. 

Your administration is failing Brisbane residents at its most dangerous and critical time. Will you take responsibility?