No junkets in Japanese exchange, says Richards

IT’S just for the birds, and the schoolkids – not for council junkets overseas.
So says City Hall’s Andy Richards about a wetland exchange program Geelong shares with the Japanese city of Nagoya, which has sent a delegation of officials and students to check on migratory birds in the region.
The delegation, one of several to Geelong since the exchange program was struck in 2007, included Nagoyas’s director of environmental planning, Ramsar society members and high school students from the Japanese city.
“Environmental issues are not constrained by borders or culture,” Cr Richards, who holds the city’s environment/sustainability portfolio, told the Independent.
“The goal is for Australian researchers to find out what the migratory waterbirds do when they’re in the northern hemisphere and for researchers in the northern hemisphere to find out what they do when they’re in Geelong and the Bellarine.”
Cr Richards said the City had no plans to send any councillors or officers to Japan under the exchange program.
“I can categorically rule out that we will be sending a councillor or council officer to Nagoya in the  term of council,” he said. Ratepayer-funded councillor trips overseas have proven contentious over recent years, notably former councillor John Doull’s trip to the Copenhagen climate change summit after which he filed a report drawing heavily on website information.
Cr Bruce Harwood, a former mayor, drew considerable attention for trips to the United States in biotech missions and Europe’s Tour de France prior to thge UCI road world championships in Geelong. Cr Jan Farrell has criticised, too, for overseas travel to a gaming conference.
The Nagoya delegation visited Barwon Heads’ Jirrahlinga wildlife shelter and Queenscliff’s Marine and Freshwater Discovery Centre.