Ballarat Council election scorecards
Since candidates have started announcing they’d run for Ballarat City Council in October’s elections, BCAN have been sending out a survey designed to gauge how effectively they would lead and support council to reduce the impact of climate change. The survey consisted of three qualitative questions focusing on priorities and measures of success and ten yes/no/maybe responses with a specific focus on climate change. A reminder email was sent to encourage the highest number of responses. All of the respondents offered some positive responses to climate change and accordingly the bar for amber and green ratings was set high. There was a great deal of consistency in the responses to the yes/no/maybe questions, but far more variation in the qualitative responses. In determining the scoring, responses have also been compared with those stated by candidates in The Courier on Friday 2nd October and with responses at a number of online candidate forums, especially where brief answers made scoring difficult. A number of candidates did not respond. This may be because they overlooked the survey, or because they anticipated rating poorly. We have not made assumptions about these candidates. We recommend if you are considering voting for them that you scrutinise them for their “green” credentials.
• Candidates that received a red rating, all showed some support for strategies that would reduce the impact of climate change.
• Candidates that received an amber rating showed considerable concern about climate change and listed a number of individual initiatives that they would like council to be engaged with.
• Candidates that received a green rating, showed considerable concern about climate change and in addition showed understanding of the leadership required for a whole of council approach to tackling climate change, which included such strategies as widespread community engagement, initiatives to link Covid19 recovery with strategies that also reduce the impact of climate change as well as support for a whole of local government response to reducing carbon emissions.
We hope this survey is useful for your decision-making! If you’d like to share these ratings on social media, you can use the consolidated scorecard at the top of this post, or the individual ward tiles below.