Last Tuesday I stood on the grass outside the Parliament of Australia beside an elephant that was holding a press conference. I wonder how many times in history that sentence has been written?
When it was finished, and we were done jumping about for the cameras, and the media had trudged back up to the press gallery, something else quite extraordinary happened.
The Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, walked down to meet us. We introduced ourselves to him, he shook our hands, and we discussed a putting a price on carbon. If you have ever seen the AYCC’s National Director Amanda McKenzie in full flight then you will know what I mean when I say that that 20 minutes of robust discussion was some of the most exhilarating of the whole trip. I’m pretty sure I just grinned through the whole thing.
Last week I had the privilege of traveling to Canberra with 29 other young people from right across the country for AYCC’s Advocacy Day. Over the course of this trip we held over 50 meetings with MPs from the ALP, the Coalition, the Greens and the Independents. We talked about the future of our environment with Environment minister Tony Bourke as well as with his shadow Greg Hunt. We lunched on lasagna with Rob Oakeshott and we had an impromptu meeting with Kevin Rudd in his running pants on the steps of Parliament.
It is tempting to just sit back and keep name dropping. But this is the building where the important stuff happens, and out of respect for that fact I don’t feel as though I can just sit here and go on about these people as though they are celebrities. I won’t tell you about seeing Malcolm Turnbull in the cafe or my not-so-suave gaping at a passing Penny Wong.
Instead, I will tell you about what I believe to be the greatest triumph of our trip, and that is that the youth of Australia now have a new way of interacting with the change-makers of our country, and this is extremely exciting.
Before I visited Parliament House, everything about that world had a mythological quality to it and it was a world that I felt a great disconnect from, I never felt as though we could actually come into contact with this world.
The notion of walking right up to this disconnect and introducing yourself was terrifying and thrilling.
At the AYCC we’re always talking about Power Shifts, and those words have never seemed quite as relevant as they did in Canberra. I feel as though we bridged a great gap. Suddenly we weren’t talking about problems and beliefs and skeptics anymore, instead we were talking about solutions, and asking them to put more funding into sustainability education, and shift their focus to a stronger, fairer carbon price, and talk to their caucus about our ideas.
It is very easy to trick yourself into feeling completely dis-empowered. To fool yourself into thinking that you have no influence. To worry that the fate of our climate policy is squarely in the hands of 5 independents. To feel like no one is listening.
But then you go and sit down with these people, the people who are going to change the world with us, and suddenly you have crashed right through the single greatest barrier separating Ordinary People from our Elected Representatives – you have made contact.
We came to Parliament with a clear message for our politicians. We figuratively broke down their doors, introduced ourselves and delivered it. And they listened. And if you don’t believe me, have a look at what happened when we left:
This is an excerpt from the Parliamentary Hansard.
Ms PARKE (Fremantle) (1.59 pm)—I would like to talk today about the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Australia’s largest youth-run organisation with 56,000 members. Three of those members came to see me this week, Basha Stasek, Roman Zethoven and Lawrence McIntosh. These young people are passionate about educating and mobilising young Australians to take action on climate change in their communities and schools and at the national level.
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition is also calling for this parliament to commit to protecting the future for young Australians in a number of ways through: legislating for a price on carbon emissions as soon as possible; increasing our investment in renewable energy; and improving sustainability in schools through incorporation of sustainability as a fundamental part of the new national curriculum and through expanding the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative to more schools around Australia.
– Kate Allan is a Melbourne University student and the AYCC’s blog co-coordinator
