House debates

Monday, 2 December 2019

Statements by Members

Climate Change

4:42 pm

Photo of Ms Catherine KingMs Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | | Hansard source

Australia and nations all around the world need to take action to limit the effects of our changing climate, and adults and kids all around Australia know it. Recently I met with a group of students from Ballarat's St Patrick's College to accept a petition signed by hundreds of students calling on their leaders to do much better. These boys know that we need to act on climate change and that we need to do it now. The effects of climate change and our collective failure to act will be felt throughout their lives, if not necessarily ours. They will live in a world that is hotter, more extreme and more fire-prone than the world we in this place grew up in. But they also will not get the opportunity to benefit from the large amount of economic benefit that can come from acting on climate change, including on acting on renewables. They are left frustrated as we, their political leaders, are continually unable to actually deal with this issue.

Rather than sitting down and accepting that, these boys have decided that that was not good enough and felt that they wanted to have their voices heard. I want to commend the boys of St Pat's for taking a stand. I am proud to join with them and all the students from my electorate who joined in the climate strike earlier this year in calling on the government and, in fact, this parliament and our parliamentary leaders to finally act on climate change and work together for a better world.