Brisbane’s only Greens councillor is finding it hard to bring new ideas to the table.

A council meeting this week gave some insight into what it looks like when the new guy wants a say.

Greens Councillor Jonathan Sri (The Gabba) asked if anything could be done to assist with an urgent shortage of accommodation for young homeless people.

Cr Sri said the city needed medium-term accommodation for 10 to 18-year-old homeless kids, orphans, or those requiring live-in carers.

“There’s nothing like that at all on the inner-southside and nothing on the inner-northside,” he said, asking fellow councillors if “something like that” to be included in the upcoming Dutton Park-Fairfield Neighbourhood Plan.

He wondered; “What is our capacity to do something about this?”

Committee chair Julian Simmonds said if Cr Sri wanted to re-zone something, he should read the Queensland Planning Provisions like “everyone else”.

“Have a look at those zones and if you think there’s one you want to propose, you can do that in a submission, then we can debate it, or you can put it up in a motion, or you can put things in your strategic intent to try and encourage certain uses,” Cr Simmonds said.

Labor’s Shayne Sutton said she would like to read that submission.

“So why don’t you put your submission in, put it to paper, and actually then circulate it to committee members and then we might be able to have an informed discussion with some evidence-based research and actually something that you’ve actually concrete put on the table,” Cr Sutton said.

Cr Sutton said Cr Sri should “put pen to paper and give us something we can actually work with”.

“I’m all for having the discussion but rather than having these thought bubbles that come up in this committee where you’ve got no documentation, no research, no data and no stats.

“Pull something together and actually give us something concrete to look at, because you know what, that’s how you make change, you actually flag an issue, do the work, do the research, to actually convince others of their argument.”

Cr Simmonds said “Shayne’s right. You’ve got to give us something to work with.”

“We’re not heartless people. We want to debate the big issues too but you can’t debate thought bubbles.”

Cr Sri’s ideas include:

Using public golf courses as community fruit orchards

Allowing alcohol consumption in selected public parks

Installing swings at bus stops

Participatory budgeting, where constituents have a say on how to spend public space infrastructure money

Publicly-accessible power points for phone or laptop charging in public parks and squares

Neighbourhood tool-sharing schemes

Better inter-suburban public transport links

Allowing pets to travel on public transport

Making the Brisbane River clean enough to swim in

Reducing the speed limit on Montague Rd

Setting up a barrier-separated bike lane grid in the CBD