Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week I received an email from Sandy Khaloa, who is a student at Carrum Downs Secondary College in my electorate. She's in year 7. Sandy sent a very long email about climate change, and I can't read all of it out but part of what she said is that:

For years people have been saying, "if we want to save our planet, we must stop producing greenhouse gases," yet here we are today … emitting billions and billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases. How many scientists will it take to prove that our planet is warming …

It is not that someone must take a stand, everyone must work for change. What will happen when it is too late? People may turn a blind eye towards this saying we have plenty of time but if we do not start changing things now then our planet's future is in grave danger.

She went on to say that she will not stand here watching the world burn, and she's hoping that I will not either. She said:

It is real, it is happening now. We must save our planet. Our planet is a gift, we must take care of it. I may just be a 12-year-old, yet for me age does not matter.

You're not just a 12-year-old. You are the person that we, in this government, are fighting for, to bring in laws to reduce emissions and make Australia a renewable energy superpower, so that your future can have a climate almost as good as the one we grew up in, and we can save the planet for generations to come.

See this speech in context