For 20 weeks or so each year, politicians come from far and wide to converge on Canberra. They come armed with memorised talking points, cracking insults and Dorothy Dixers, ready to stand up and speak to issues that they have no lived experience of.
A group of mostly wealthy white older men — the average age in Australia’s 47th Parliament is 51 — debate fossil-fuel projects that will have far-reaching ramifications on the frequency and severity of the climate crisis.
My generation will bear the brunt of those decisions.
On Monday, I stood beside independent Senator David Pocock as we launched a campaign to establish that the government owes young people a duty of care to take our health and well-being into account when making decisions that will contribute to climate change. The bill that Pocock will put to Parliament comes off the back of years and years of youth advocacy, in which young people have taken to the streets, met with their MPs, and walked into courtrooms to advance one message: “This is our future. We want it to be safe. We want it to be liveable.”
The bill would prevent decisions that would harm the climate if they posed a material risk of harm to the health and well-being of current and future generations. As a young person who has experienced immense climate anxiety, I’m so proud to have led this charge.
We have all felt the climate crisis over the past few months — heatwaves in Europe, floods in India, news that the Gulf Stream may collapse as early as 2025. And throughout it all, it continues to be young people who step up to the mark. It’s young people who refuse to take this news lying down, who take every hit and come back with more motivation to play a part in shaping our future and ensuring it is safe and liveable.
And yet, standing beside Pocock as this bill was tabled, I may as well have been not just a young person, but a completely invisible one as the press gallery fired off questions to Pocock about how this bill could benefit young people. The young person standing by his side was ignored.
The irony here is that these proposed laws are for young people, and the media will still turn away from young people when seeking comment. This new bill exists because of the advocacy of young people, but it’s not young people who get to speak about it.
There are many criticisms levelled at young people. We’re lazy, always on our phones, obsessed with TikTok. We’re told to find a hobby, find a passion, find something to be ambitious about. And when we do, when we break out of these criticisms, you still look the other way? When we try to take our future into our own hands and use the wealth of knowledge that exists at our fingertips for good, you still ignore us?
Ignorance and obstinacy has been strategically weaponised against young people to disempower us as long as climate activism has been perceived as a threat to the interests of powerful people, donors and lobbyists.
We’ve taken to the streets with banners and signs, looking up at Parliament House and yelling as loud as we can. We’ve sent millions of emails and requests for meetings, briefings on our work, pleas to work with us and hear us out. Our politicians have sent back template answers, made empty promises and looked the other way.
We’ve walked into courtrooms, conferences and roundtables. We’ve dressed in corporate clothing and rote-learned big words and intelligent phrases in the hope we might be taken seriously. Still our politicians have insisted on ignoring us.
Now we’re in Parliament. Now there’s a bill that we’ve helped bring about, that the government of the day will be forced to answer to.
This bill is an offering, a generous invitation from today’s young people to the government. We’ve heard the rhetoric and promises to end the climate wars and act in the best interests of young people. But actions have fallen far short of promises, as the government continues to approve fossil-fuel developments and funnel taxpayer money towards these expansions.
This bill gives the government an opportunity to put its money where its mouth is, to make good on its words.
Young people are out in force, growing in power and finding new and creative ways to hold our governments accountable. And this time we won’t be ignored. This time we won’t be made to step aside.
