It’s along way from a humble costume shop in Melbourne to the highest office in the land.
But on Wednesday an excited Climate Elephant packed his trunk, got a special dry clean and left for Canberra to meet Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The cheeky Climate Elephant rose to fame during the recent 2010 Federal Election when he chased both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader across the country.
From Town hall meetings, to campaign launches, to press conferences – the Climate Elephant was always in the room. He made friends everywhere he went and very quickly, if you opened a newspaper or the evening news, you couldn’t help but notice him. The Climate Elephant kept the issue of climate change on the agenda when no-one wanted to talk about it.
On election eve the Prime Minister promised to meet the Climate Elephant for a “chat and a cuddle”. Two months later, and after a quick twitter campaign with hundreds of AYCC members tweeting for the PM to set a date, she did – the 25th of November.
While the Climate Elephant was ironing his AYCC T-shirt, the AYCC team practiced their policy positions. We were determined to impress on the PM the rapid growth and rising political clout of the youth movement on climate change. As well as discussing two of the AYCC’s priorities on climate change – a carbon price and sustainability education.
The Elephant walked into the Ministerial Entrance of Parliament House at 11.15am last Thursday and as staffers, lobbyists and politicians stopped to stare – he was escorted through to the office of the Prime Minister.
Finally the Elephant was in the most important room in the country.
The national media were there to capture the moment – the Climate Elephant received two lovely, long cuddles from the Prime Minister before we were ushered into her sitting room.
Amanda McKenzie, Fabia Pryor and Kirsty Albion from the AYCC in their meeting with Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
We started by introducing her to the AYCC, our incredible exponential growth to 56,000 members, our thousands of dedicated and savvy volunteers across the country and the powerful campaigns we run. We presented to the Prime Minister with the hundreds of comments and questions we received from our supporters around Australia.
We impressed upon the Prime Minister the value and importance of sustainability education – which she was receptive too. We brought to her attention to the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) an excellent Federal and State government program which helps schools to become more sustainable while giving students hands on experience of sustainability in action. This program has limited reach due to a lack of funding and unclear Federal Ministerial responsibility.
The Prime Minister said that she was aware of the value of the program as she’d seen it in action and said she would consider our proposals. We also vigorously discussed the incorporation of sustainability in the National Curriculum.
Finally we moved onto the issue of carbon pricing. We stressed the importance for young Australians of the scheme being ambitious and scalable over time. And that the mechanism is only useful if it does the work of rapidly reducing Australia’s pollution and helps us to transition to a clean energy economy. We also discussed with her staff the importance of communication, in particular prosecuting the case for action and a carbon price, as well as creating a compelling vision for the future.
The Climate Elephant celebrates outside Parliament House.
Overall, we feel happy with the meeting and the Prime Ministers responses to our proposals. This is only the first step and we will continue the dialogue with the Prime Minister and other Parliamentarians to achieve outcomes on climate change for young Australians.
And of course the Climate Elephant now holds the world record for being the elephant to receive the most hugs from the Prime Minister of Australia.
It’s been a HUGE week at the AYCC, we have a team traveling to Mexico for the UN Climate Talks, we are attending the Multi-Party Climate Committee and the Victorian election campaign has just wrapped up. So you’ll be hearing a lot more from us before the year is out.
–Amanda McKenzie AYCC
