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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-03 Daily Xml
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Emissions Reduction

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:33): I stand to pay tribute to some school kids in Victoria who have realised that the time for sitting idly by when it comes to emissions outside schools has long passed. Those children are safeguarding their climate future. Those children have taken action to stop their parents idling in their cars outside the school gates.

Why is that important? Well, the transport sector is one of the most challenging aspects of Australia's economy to decarbonise. It contributes some 19 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions and it is, sadly, one of the fastest growing emissions-producing sectors. Indeed, while it is not entirely the cause of the growth of the emissions in the transport sector, motor vehicles have been demonstrated to be the single biggest contributor to human health impacts.

Emissions are dictated by engine size, speed and type, as well as by accessory loads. Australian passenger vehicles tend to be larger, with 75 per cent of them having an engine size greater than two litres. Of passenger vehicle sales in the 2024-25 financial year, 54.5 per cent were SUVs. They are often purchased as a family car due to perceptions about convenience and capacity, and so they are frequently the cars that are left idling outside the school gates by those caregivers as they wait for the children to finish school. They are there at the morning drop-off and they are there at the afternoon drop-off, and so it is hardly surprising that spikes in pollutants have been recorded outside school drop-off points at those particular times.

Indeed, a recent study, done by the University of Melbourne and Deakin University at three different schools in Melbourne's inner west, ran a hands-on awareness-raising session for students, who then went on to educate their parents about why it was important for them not to leave the engine idling during pickup and drop-off. Students wrote speeches, they made posters and they talked about these issues with their parents and their caregivers. In a really short space of time, they achieved reductions of 40 per cent in afternoon emissions and 18 per cent in morning emissions. That means small changes can have a big impact and also that small changes really can happen. It is so important that we focus on schools, and I really pay tribute to those children for taking control of their futures.

Those children are more impacted by those emissions as well. Quite literally, children breathe in and out more often than adults do, and with a greater surface area to volume ratio of their lungs than adults have, and so they are more directly impacted than the adults are by those emissions. They also tend to be shorter than adults, meaning their air intake is literally closer to the exhaust pipe than that of most adults.

So it is good for their health and, in a proportionate way, it has been impacting most negatively on their health. Indeed, detrimental health impacts are observable in children, even with low levels of emissions. I have to say, as an interesting side note, reducing diesel emissions has been shown by another study to have a positive impact on the quality of air inside the school buildings, as well as outside.

I do commend these students. We often say that children are the future, but children will inherit the future, and they are shaping a future that is far more climate-safe than the current future that we look to leave them. Indeed, they carry not just the physical health burden but also the mental health burden. Evidence shows us that, right across Australia, South Australians and Victorians share the highest mental health burden directly associated with higher temperatures. Young people feel incredibly betrayed and not reassured as they watch governments sell their future down the drain to appease multinational fossil fuel giants. Indeed, it is time we started taking action in the way that these children have.

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