Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (20:29): Across WA and across the country young people are planning and organising. We are getting ready to leave our classrooms, our schools, our places of education on 20 September, to take the hands of our friends and our parents and our bosses and head to the streets to strike for climate action. I'll be there on 20 September alongside some of my oldest and dearest friends in the climate activism space and thousands more. I want to mention a couple of these wonderful individuals who are putting so much into making sure that the effort in Western Australia is bigger than ever before. There's Bella Burgemeister of Bunbury, a 13-year-old. I first met Bella a couple of years back when I was in Bunbury, and she came up to me and thanked me for the work that the Greens do in the parliament and told me a story about how at the age of 11 she had decided that what she wanted to do with her time was write and illustrate a book explaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to young kids just like her. She then took that project on the road, talking to over 3,000 young people across Australia about the need to adapt to and adopt the Sustainable Development Goals, and used the money raised from the book to fund homelessness lockers in her local city. I'll also be out there alongside Angela Lillyman, a good friend of mine for a long time in the Greens who has been one of our best campaigners and most passionate organisers. I'll be with Isaac Smalley, an absolutely incredible young singer/songwriter who has had the honour of singing alongside John Butler of all people. I'll be with Dylan Storer as well. If you haven't heard of him, look him up, folks! He's a 16-year-old bloke from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia who hosts his own radio show talking to young people about their issues. I've had the pleasure of speaking with him on many occasions, and he is one of the most articulate and genuine broadcasters in Australia. This effort will be coordinated in Western Australia by Siobhan, Matilda, Michaela, Samson and Aiden of the WA student strike crew, alongside so many others who are working so hard to make our presence in WA the biggest and best we have ever contributed to this movement. Of course, we are coming together, we are organising and we are putting this effort in because we know, as young people, that climate change is putting everything we care about at risk—our homes, our communities and our very futures. We have watched in recent weeks as our communities have burned, and we have managed to conjure up more than simple thoughts and prayers. We have conjured up the desire for action and the determination to hold our leaders to account and demand climate action. This place had the opportunity to show its support for the student strike a very few days ago. Instead of showing that solidarity, instead of showing that support, the major parties of this chamber—the Liberal Party and Labor Party—decided to back their donor mates. It is an absolute farce and disgrace that in 2019 in Australia more courage is shown by kids on the streets to confront some of the biggest and most powerful corporate interests in this country than can be found here in our very parliament. Shame on the lot of you! But regardless of the cowardice that has come to characterise the climate debate in this country, young people are clear: we are passionate and we are united in the knowledge that climate change affects us all, and we are committed to working together to stop it. As we are all affected, we know that we must all work together to be part of the solution, and No. 1 on our agenda is to hold you to account and to give you no peace or place until you act in our name. Do your damn job to safeguard our future. This Friday is a global day of action. Millions will gather around the world in one of the largest global strikes of this century. Here in Australia some estimates suggest that it will be larger than those seen around the Iraq War. The community is alive with a desire for action. We look to this place and we know exactly what is going on. We see the money changing hands. We see the media pieces paid for by corporations that keep you silent and we do not accept it any longer. We will gather together this coming Friday and send this place a clear message that we demand action from this place, that we will not be silent, that we will come together and show you the courage that you should be able to find within yourself in this place. I thank the chamber for its time.