Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (20:35): I listened closely to the Governor-General's speech. I had laid a wager with myself as to whether climate change would get a mention in the speech. Somewhat to my surprise, it did. It was only a short mention, and it repeated some of the deliberate errors that the government and government representatives use when talking about climate change, but it is worth acknowledging that it got a very small mention. Then I got to thinking about how that very small mention of climate change in the Governor-General's speech actually related to the reality of the situation that we're grappling with. In May this year the Secretary-General of the United Nations described climate change as an existential threat to humanity. I'll say it again: an existential threat. In other words, our survival as a species is at risk. The survival of everyone currently living on this earth, the survival of future generations who are yet to be born is at risk, according to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. But what happened then, after the Secretary-General of the UN described climate change as an existential threat to humanity? Well, in a living, breathing demonstration of cognitive dissonance, life just went on in this place. There was a flurry of media stories for a couple of days, and then journalists' attention, with a couple of honourable exceptions, went elsewhere, and the caravan moved on. With the honourable exception of the Australian Greens, there are no senators or members of parliament in this place continually prosecuting the arguments for strong action on climate change. We're facing an existential threat, and yet the debate rolls on to the favourite and pet topics of other members, the things which journalists think are important but which actually pale into absolute and utter insignificance beside the issue of climate change. We have a situation where on ABC News, after the news and before the sport, you get a couple of minutes on the economy. Well, the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. If you don't have a functioning ecology, if you don't have a functioning climate, you don't have an economy. Why is it that media outlets are not reporting on this with the seriousness that it deserves and demands? Why is it that we get an update on share prices, not an update on parts per million of CO2 equivalent gases? How can it be that our major media outlets and our major political parties have so badly lost their way that they are not concentrating the overwhelming majority of their efforts to fight this existential threat to humanity? How can it be that, with our survival as a very species on the line, we are not getting wall-to-wall media coverage and we're not getting wall-to-wall debates on the issue of the breakdown of our climate? When you look at that, when you look at the reality of the situation versus the way it's reported and the way it's treated in this parliament and in parliaments around the world, you can convince yourself that it might be because of political donations—because big fossil fuel companies pour so many millions of dollars into the coffers of the Liberal-National party and the ALP in this place. But that doesn't explain why our media is so asleep at the wheel. It doesn't explain why journalists run off on flights of fancy, concentrating on the soft-porn politics that make up so much of the media coverage in this place, when in fact there is a looming crisis and a threat to the very existence of humanity. If we were fighting a war with another country now, we would have a war cabinet made up of people from across the political spectrum, and that war would be the subject of endless and consistent debates in this place. But when we're faced with something far more serious than a war with another country, when we're facing what the Secretary-General of the United Nations has described as 'an existential threat' to humanity, apart from the Australian Greens, it's the sound of crickets in here; and, apart from a few honourable exceptions in terms of journalists and in terms of media outlets, it's the sound of crickets in the mainstream media. It's not good enough, and I say to the major parties and the rest of the crossbench, and I say to the majority of journalists and media outlets who operate in this building or anywhere else in this country: you are failing people. You are letting people down, because you're not reporting the biggest story in humanity's history—the way we are fouling our own nest and the way that we are placing billions of lives at risk and, ultimately, the way we are threatening our own future as a species, our very existence as a species. The one thing that gives me hope in all of this abrogation of responsibility, amidst all the venality, all the self-interest and the narrow self-absorption that rules the roost in this place, is the kids who are going to come out on Friday for their School Strike 4 Climate and say: 'Enough is enough. We're not going to be silent. We're not going to go quietly into the night. We're going to hear what the science is telling us. We're going to reflect on the view of the Secretary-General of the United Nations that we are facing "an existential threat" to humanity by breaking our climate down around us.' Those brave, courageous children are going to step out there on Friday and say, 'We will not be silent.' Well, power to their collective arms. They put to shame the majority of people who purport to represent Australians in this place. They are showing more courage, more awareness and a far greater understanding of the calamity that is looming and, in fact, of the breakdown of our climate that is happening right now, right around us, as I speak in this chamber tonight. I say to all senators, to whatever capacity you have, when we next get a Governor-General's speech can we please have a speech that reflects the science? Can we please have a speech that reflects reality? Can we please have a speech that reflects the truth that the Secretary-General of the United Nations was telling when he said in May this year that climate change is an existential threat to humanity.