Bills

Climate Change and Greenhouse Emissions Reduction (Intergenerational Equity) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:58): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Climate Change and Greenhouse Emissions Reduction Act 2007 and to make related amendments to the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:59): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill includes a trigger which, when reached, mandates the completion of a child rights impact assessment, requiring the health and wellbeing of young people in this state to be taken into account. Those young people in this state, of course, are confronted by a global issue, that of climate change. They know that they are being betrayed. They do not feel reassured as they watch governments sell their future down the drain to appease multinational fossil fuel giants. It is time not only that they take a stand but that we support them when they do.

If South Australia is indeed serious about hosting COP31, we should aspire to demonstrate through our actions our worthiness to host it, by legislating to ensure that we take climate action at every possible step. Talk on climate action is cheap. Actions will speak louder than those words, but those words, if in legislation, will create the change we need. If we are to be on the right side of history, able to look our children or grandchildren in the eyes and tell them we did everything we could, this is one good step along the road to putting ourselves in that position.

This is a simple bill, but with it we can reduce the number of young people who feel the same way as the child quoted in an international study who said: 'I don't want to die, but I don't want to live in a world that doesn't care about children and animals.' The Hon. Connie Bonaros has just been talking about women and gender equity, and we know that we have a proud history here in South Australia of leading the way. I was caused to reflect that one of the well-known suffrage movement women who created change in this state, Mary Lee, often commented that it is our duty to leave this world better than we found it.

Of course, at the moment we are not leaving a world better than we found it for future generations, and there is so much more that we could be doing. That is why I rise today to introduce the Climate Change and Greenhouse Emissions Reduction (Intergenerational Equity) Amendment Bill. It is my hope that with this bill South Australia can accomplish what our federal parliament has recently failed to achieve in the context of climate change and intergenerational justice.

Why shouldn't we? South Australians can be rightly proud of our history of innovation across both legislation and renewable energy as a response to climate change. Many of these innovations have addressed justice across communities as well as across generations, and this bill aims to achieve both of those things, specifically with regard to climate change and young people, both current and future.

In 2023, Senator David Pocock took a climate change amendment bill to the federal parliament. Despite considerable support right across the nation from the community, the final recommendation of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee standing committee was disappointing. It recommended that it not be passed, not because it would not have a wonderful impact but because the abstract nature of some aspects of the bill, such as the need to consider 'emotional, spiritual and cultural health', was not possible, according to that committee.

Additionally, that committee also cited the existence of a National Children's Commissioner, who advocates for children and young people, saying essentially that this in and of itself was enough to ensure that the needs of current and future generations are taken into account with regard to climate futures. The evidence shows us that this is simply not the case. Those are straw man arguments. They are distractions when we need to actually full on face the fact that we are heading for destruction.

Given the decisions made by successive governments on projects with significant scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, the advocacy of the National Children's Commissioner, whilst strong and clearly well intended, seemingly continues to go unheeded. There is no force to them. Children and young people are rightly frustrated by those decisions. Children and young people should not need to have another person advocating for them every time a major project is proposed. This bill will ensure that every time a major project is proposed there will be a structure where the parliament ensures that the climate impact is considered. The system should be set up well enough that their needs are automatically considered, and this bill will effect that change.

On a positive note, that federal committee did acknowledge the negative health impacts of climate change on current and future generations, as well as the broad support that the bill has received right across the Australian community. The Australian Public Law society noted that the proposed Pocock bill was able to overcome the limitations of the judicial system in addressing climate change-related harm, as well as noting the importance of the bill in the absence of a human rights charter embedded within our national constitution.

Earlier this year, another MP, the Independent member for Mackellar, Sophie Scamps MP, took a similar bill to the federal parliament. Her bill sought to mandate consideration of the long-term impacts of decision-making and outlined, and I quote, a 'future generations principle' by which decision-making was to be made such that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In her speech to the federal parliament she noted that our current political system prioritises what she termed 'immediate political objectives'. Indeed, far too often in politics, that is what prevails. That bill was on the table when parliament was prorogued before the recent federal election and to date has not yet been further progressed.

Tellingly, in the Sharma v Minister for the Environment case in 2021, the judge found that the federal minister did indeed have a duty of care to young Australians and that she should be reasonably able to anticipate that the carbon dioxide emissions caused by the extension to the Whitehaven Coal Vickery coalmine would contribute to the harms caused by climate change.

We know—we well know—that Australia is a signatory to the CRC, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which the best interests of the child are a primary consideration, and the rights of the child to, amongst other things, life, survival and development; the highest attainable standard of health; and an adequate standard of living are recognised. In fact, jurisdictions around the world have used legislation to embed the need to consider the children of both the current and future generations in their decision-making. South Australia can do this.

We just need to look to places such as Wales. Wales has a Future Generations Commissioner. Portugal recognises the right to a healthy environment in its constitution. Hungary has a Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations. The Norwegian constitution recognises the right to an environment conducive to health and the need to ensure that the right to access natural resources plays out in such a way that the right of future generations to do so is also safeguarded. In Brazil, in the case which recognised the 2024 rights of the Amazon rainforest, the rights of future generations were mentioned multiple times in that judgement.

My hope, and I believe the hope of young people right across our state, is that this bill can help us make the significant shift that we need to take politics from the short term to the long term and to ensure that our thinking is always about young people and about those who are not even here yet. We can do this by putting young people—current and future generations of children—at the forefront of our decision-making and embedding them in our parliamentary processes. Making decisions with an eye to future generations will benefit all South Australians, regardless of our age.

A recent University of Adelaide study concluded that South Australia and Victoria had the highest share of the mental health burden linked to high temperatures, while another international study of some 10,000 young people, including 1,000 from Australia, found that respondents from all those countries surveyed were worried about climate change. We know that anxiety and fear around climate change is not just real but palpable with young people.

Some 59 per cent were very or extremely worried, and 84 per cent were at least moderately worried. That is 84 per cent who are at least a little bit worried—and why shouldn't they be? More than 50 per cent reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty. They did not simply report feeling one or more of those emotions, though. Every single one of the more than 50 per cent reported feeling all of them—that is, sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty. More than 45 per cent of respondents said their feelings about climate change impacted negatively on their daily lives and on their functioning.

Many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change. If you do not believe that is enough reason for us to act, some 75 per cent of those 10,000 young people who were surveyed said that they think the future is frightening and 83 per cent said that they think people have failed to take care of the planet. And you know what? They are right on both counts.

Perhaps most importantly for us here in this council today who are faced with the responsibilities of decision-making that impacts not just the here and now but current and future generations of children, the perception of respondents was that governments are responding poorly to climate change. Those young people typically felt more betrayed than reassured by our responses to the climate emergency. We have declared a climate emergency here in South Australia. What are we really doing about it?

Climate anxiety and distress, of course, correlated with perceived inadequate government response and associated feelings of betrayal. If we want a healthy democracy, we need a healthy planet and we need to actually start putting children and young people, the current generations and those to come, at the forefront of our processes.

Climate anxiety, of course, is recognised by experts as rational, but long-term exposure to climate anxiety, combined with governmental failures to adequately act, creates a significant psychological stressor, and this can lead to mental illness. Furthermore, government failure to act is perceived by young people as betrayal and abandonment, and we know that for a healthy democracy that is a terrible warning sign.

An important part, of course, of international environmental law is the precautionary principle, which aims to ensure that the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to delay action where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm to the environment. The sixth IPCC report, published in 2023, states unequivocally that:

There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.

And that was in 2023. When we consider that a child born in 2020 in Australia will experience four times as many heat waves, three times as many droughts and 1½ times as many bushfires as those who had what can be considered now to be the good fortune to be born in the 1960s, we should have no choice but to act and put that precautionary principle into place immediately through this bill.

It is not just about significant mental and physical health impacts that will come with worsening and inadequately addressed climate change, though, it is also, of course, about the economic consequences of climate change. We could do well to remember that those economic consequences are more than simply numbers on a spreadsheet. Economic consequences are lost livelihoods. They are reduced quality of life. As we face the algal bloom, which has been caused by a marine heatwave, which is part of climate change, we can see this playing out in front of our very eyes. There are missed opportunities for sustainable growth. These are all things for current generations, but they will hit those future generations even harder.

Finally, the ICJ has recently released its opinion in the case taken before it, which was led by Vanuatu. ICJ President, Yuji Iwasawa, said the climate must be protected for present and future generations and the adverse effect of a warming planet:

…may significantly impair the enjoyment of certain human rights, including the right to life.

The principles of environmentally sustainable development (ESD), which depend on using, conserving and enhancing the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained and that the total quality of life now and in the future is not degraded and is readily available for us all to enjoy, already feature in over 60 pieces of legislation in our nation.

I do look forward to debating this bill before we rise in this particular session of parliament, and I hope that this parliament, which aspires to host a COP, will choose to recognise the needs and the rights of current and future generations of young people.

The bill is simple. It uses the parliamentary processes and the Public Works Committee to ensure that, when we make major decisions—and those major decisions in the bill are codified—we consider those future generations and the impact that it will have on them. I think it will go not a small way to ensuring that not only do we actually actively act to address global warming and climate change but that we reassure all South Australians that we were genuine in our commitment when we declared that climate emergency, that we will take action and that we will take action as early as possible.

I want to thank Cielo Essling, who was an intern in my office, a young person who has a mind to the future and who actually did quite a body of work that led to the creation of this bill. With that, I commend the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.