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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-05-18 Daily Xml
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Switched On Schools Summit

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Climate Change. Will the minister inform the chamber about how young people are learning about the state government's action on global warming and becoming the next generation of inspirational leaders?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:42): At last a sensible question. I am very grateful to the honourable member for the most important question and I am very grateful for the fact that just asking the question made the Leader of the Opposition sigh. He is one of those great climate change deniers that they have in the Liberal Party. He does not believe the science, he is one of the sceptics who thinks climate change is a furphy. He is one of Tony Abbott's young acolytes and he cannot believe that Tony Abbott got deposed by the current Prime Minister. I have not yet seen him out on the hustings supporting the current Prime Minister but I'm sure he will be. Of course, he takes regular text messages from Peta Credlin and gets his instructions from that climate change sphere.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Let's get on with the answer.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Can we please get on with the answer?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: They do not like it when their factional spots are exposed in this place, do they? I had the pleasure to join the Lord Mayor Martin Haese in opening the Switched On Schools Summit at Adelaide Town Hall this morning. It is a great initiative jointly hosted by the Adelaide City Council and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) to empower high school students and teachers on environmental sustainability.

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition was founded, as I understand, in 2007—Australia's largest youth-led organisation with over 120,000 members and 750 volunteers nationally, I am advised. Since then, its projects and campaigns have educated, engaged and inspired over 130 high school students and young people around the country to take action on climate change.

It was a great day to see over 100 highly motivated South Australian students from Years 9 to 11 and their teachers willing to learn more about fighting global warming and sustainability. This is the second time this summit has been held in Adelaide. Last year, I think it was a one-day summit; this time it was a two-day summit, largely because of the overwhelming interest in the subject matter. It works particularly well because it uses peer-to-peer facilitated learning to engage and energise students.

The AYCC volunteers who facilitate the workshops are university students, and they help students develop the skills needed to create change such as managing groups and communicating about climate change and working towards renewable energy campaigns. It is great to see many of the participants return the following year as volunteer facilitators themselves or mentors for other schools. The program is unique, because it connects the participants to a youth leadership network and supports them to make meaningful change in their schools and their communities.

Throughout the summit students will hear from speakers on the front line of climate change, as well as from a range of young people who are actively making change in their local communities. They have the opportunity to attend workshops about climate solutions and planning sessions, and opportunities to meet like-minded students.

It was also a great opportunity for the Lord Mayor and me to outline some of the important initiatives being undertaken at a state and local level in South Australia to tackle global warming, including: our target of achieving zero net emissions by 2050; our work with the Adelaide City Council to make Adelaide the world's first carbon neutral city; our national leadership in renewable energy, with 41 per cent of our energy generated from renewables; our aim to reach 50 per cent renewables by 2025; and our outward looking approach to action on global warming, including being a founding member of The Climate Group States and Regions Alliance, of which the South Australian Premier is a co-chair, with the Premier of Quebec and the President of the Basque Country in Spain.

I wanted to ensure that these school students understood that the state government shares their commitment in fighting global warming, and ensuring that we have a sustainable future. It is indeed great to see so many young people who are incredibly passionate about their community and about the environment, and who want to have an impact.

I thank the Adelaide City Council for generously co-hosting the event for the second year. I sincerely commend the AYCC for its ongoing efforts to build a generation-wide movement to fight global warming by educating and inspiring and empowering young Australians around this issue. In particular I would like to thank the school students for taking part in this summit, and also their teachers and schools for supporting them to do so.

We need this younger generation of people to ensure that governments at all levels take global warming seriously and hold us all accountable. In particular, I hope that their voices are heard loud and clear during this current election campaign by the current commonwealth government and opposition; to finally show some leadership on this vital issue, and if the current federal government want to do this on the cheap they can just pick up the Labor opposition's policy, which will go a long way to meeting our climate change goals agreed on in Paris just recently.

These young people understand that we must all play a part in ensuring that we have a sustainable future and that acting to fight global warming is not just desirable but is absolutely vital to our future. We should all listen very carefully to what these young people have to say, and I suggest to the Hon. Mr Ridgway and the Liberal Opposition that they do exactly that.

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