Hundreds of students, teachers and union members gathered outside Kirribilli House today as part of climate strikes protesting the global response to the climate emergency.
Crowds chanted ‘The youth are rising! No more compromising!’ at the protest. Photo: Swagatalakshmi Roychowdury.
Cardboard placards flew above hundreds of heads with slogans ranging from “we are missing our lessons to teach you one” to “this is not how I wanted to get wet”, in reference to the floods.
“Now more than ever, we need to engage with our community, our families, our schools because climate is going to be an integral issue in our upcoming elections,” said 17-year-old Natasha Abhayawickrama from North Sydney.
The crowd outside the official residence of Prime Minister Scott Morrison comprised of school students, teachers, and members of the teaching union, who cried chants of “The youth are rising! No more compromising!” throughout the protest.
Tough times for children without government action
“It’s important for people, especially young people, to start finding their voice in public spaces on climate issues. With federal elections coming up in the next two months, it is important to raise importance on the issue of climate change, especially considering the floods that occurred recently,” she said.
“We teach children the basics of climate strike in school, but we don’t teach them how to do anything about it,” Dr Verlie said. “They have got pretty tough times ahead unless the government implements dramatic changes to our emissions trajectory.”
“It can be hard to make a precise connection between one climate strike and a policy change. The federal government have not really changed their policies, but they have changed how they speak about climate change,” she said, adding that more needs to be done.
“Trying to get our emissions trajectory in line with the Paris agreement would be a great first step towards climate action. That would be to keep our emissions in line with our fair share of what would contribute to climate change to below 1.5 degrees of global warming,” Dr Verlie said when asked about a change she would like to see in the Australian government’s climate policy.
“I’m terrified for our future”, says 13-year-old at Kirribilli House
“Have you ever had to flee from the middle of your house in the middle of the night during a storm, scared out of your minds when you don’t know what’s going to happen or if you’ll even survive?” asked 13-year-old Elle Oshlack to the crowd.
Oshlack lost her home in the floods and had to travel over 700 kilometres with her brother and her mother to speak at the Climate Strike.
“I am a climate refugee. As you know, Lismore recently had a mega-flood and my house, which I was born in, and my school in my town have been severely damaged. This is a climate disaster,” she said.
“We managed to evacuate at around 2am. Lucky for us, we had a house on the hill to go to. Others weren’t so lucky. Many had to get up on their roofs in the rain, waiting to be rescued. People tragically died, including someone I know,” she said.
“Even though my house is ruined, and I lost most of my things, I feel lucky since me, my family, and my [cockatoo] are alive. My chickens sadly drowned.”
About one thousand people gathered at Kirribilli House today. Photo: Swagatalakshmi Roychowdury.
“I am now staying in the Gold Coast with my family and go to school there since my school got destroyed. Until my house gets fixed, which won’t be for a few more months, I can’t go. I can’t even live with my mum and my brother anymore. This is devastating for me,” Oshlack said, who added that she misses her friends.
“This mega flood is an extreme weather event and is the largest one ever in Lismore. It is a climate disaster. We went through the 2017 floods and the terrible bushfires in 2019 and 2020,” she said, adding that it left a massive impact on the broader community.
“Extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequent which is extremely scary. But what’s scarier is that fossil fuels are contributing to climate change which makes these weather events worse. What’s scarier still is that we have a government that continues to promote mining of fossil fuels,” she said as the crowd chanted ‘shame’.
“I am terrified for our future. We have leaders who don’t even lead us in the right direction,” she said. “In fact, we are going in the exact wrong direction.”
Ella Cashmin, a student from University of Sydney, joined the protest, despite having an exam the same day.
“Climate change needs to be addressed. I can do all the exams in the world and that is not going to make a difference whereas climate strikes like these can,” she said, highlighting the failure in education systems to bring about active change. “It’s more important than missing a bit of school.”
The strike at Kirribilli House was just one of the climate strikes in Australia, with other locations including Dubbo, Gosford, Byron Bay, Newcastle, and Wollongong in New South Wales.
