Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud once again to be taking part in the annual Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign, amplifying the voices of young women and gender-diverse people nationally in parliament about the issues that matter to them. Today I'll use my two-minute statement to share the words of 16-year-old Lola Hamilton from Queensland. Lola says:

Our world is dying. Within the next 10 years the world will pass a dangerous temperature threshold which we cannot come back from—unless drastic action happens. Beyond that threshold, natural disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt and heat, famines and infection diseases will claim millions of lives.

Australia ranks eighth highest in the world for its emissions per capita and first for coal power emissions per capita. As a relatively wealthy country who is proud of 'punching above its weight', why has more not been done about the climate crisis? There has been decades of climate policy inaction and modest targets thus there is a lot of low hanging fruit for Australia to rachet up its climate ambition. This includes renewable energy, energy efficiency and transport.

Lola continues:

A solution for this climate crisis would be investing more funding into climate change action from the government. It needs to be made more of a priority. The funding that has gone into climate change from the government in Australia has been labelled critically insufficient. If Australia truly wants to carry its weight as a developed country, we need to start investing more and setting more ambitious goals to create a better place for the future generations that want to thrive in this beautiful place.

Thank you, Lola, for your thoughtful contribution. I'm really proud to amplify and echo your call for stronger climate action and to remind the chamber that the voices of young people need to be heard in this place. It would be great if we could lower the voting age and get more young people elected.