In our final episode of Season 1, host Rae Johnston speaks with climate advocates Daisy and Peta. Daisy Jeffrey is a climate campaigner working on the duty of care climate bill that is being put before federal parliament, aiming to protect the people and places we love. UNICEF Australia Youth Ambassador Peta is a climate champion who attended the 2023 COP28 climate summit in Dubai. Together, they discuss why it is important for young people's voices to be heard on climate and how young people can join the fight against climate change.
Host: Rae Johnston, Ambassador for UNICEF Australia, TV presenter and podcaster
Guests: Climate campaigner Daisy Jeffrey and UNICEF Australia Young Ambassador Peta
Producers: Liz Tse, Freya Conomos and Lara Robertson
Resources:
Episode Transcript
00:00 Rae Johnston
UNICEF Australia acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work and pay our respects to the ancestors who cared for this country, and the elders who continue to today.
00:21 Rae Johnston
Young people have a lot to say. And it's time we listen. Welcome to NextGen. A UNICEF Australia podcast that gives young people a platform to speak up on issues they care about. Every episode, I pass the mic to experts and young people, as we discuss everything from climate change to mental health and inequality. I'm Rae Johnston, Ambassador for UNICEF Australia, STEM journalist, TV presenter, podcaster and climate champion. Over four episodes, I will be speaking with experts and young voices about climate change. What is it? How is it affecting young people and what UNICEF Australia is doing about it? From West Sydney to West Pakistan, climate change is not a tomorrow problem, it's the greatest threat facing children right now.
01:21 Rae Johnston
In our fourth episode, I'm chatting to Daisy Jeffrey climate campaigner. Thank you for joining us.
01:27 Daisy Jeffrey
Lovely to be here.
01:28 Rae Johnston
And UNICEF Young Ambassador, Peta. Hi, Peta.
01:31: Peta
Hi.
01:32 Rae Johnston
So Peta, I'll start with you. Tell me a bit about yourself and why you became a UNICEF Young Ambassador.
01:39 Peta
Yeah, so I've always been passionate about empowering young people, especially diverse people living in Australia. I think being a young Ethiopian woman, being in a country that's so different from where I was born in Ethiopia, it's so important to have diverse voices representing our youth in all different aspects, especially throughout organisations like UNICEF, that do put young people and children at the front.
02:01 Peta
And so then through the interview process of going to be a Young Ambassador, I was able to draw on my passion for climate change and become the Young Ambassador for New South Wales for climate change and disasters.
02:16 Rae Johnston
What led you to supporting this?
02:19 Peta
It was very random. I never really thought too much about the effects of climate change on me when I was growing up, just because living in suburban Sydney, it's not something that's super thought of until really in high school, there was a lot of emphasis on it with the school strikes for climate change. Realising that the reason why our summers were getting hotter was more than just a random effect on the world, it could be avoided, which was something that a lot of young people I saw that became quite important to them.
02:51 Peta
And so then I became more interested in more of the human rights avenue and then learning more about climate change and learning how that intersects. So it's not just a climate issue, it is a human rights issue. And it's something that will affect everyone, regardless of where they are, regardless of if they have a positive or negative impact on the environment.
03:12 Rae Johnston
Sounds like you saw there was a problem and you've worked out as many ways as possible to get involved with helping to fight climate change. Daisy, tell me a bit about the work that you're doing at the moment and what led you there?
03:25 Daisy Jeffrey
Well, at the moment, I'm working on a campaign to legislate a duty of care for the Federal Parliament. And I suppose there's a story that comes with that bill, and then there's also my own story. I've grown up being pretty passionate about the environment from a very young age. But it sort of came from a weird area. In terms of joining the climate movement, I joined the school strike movement when I was 16. And it was because I could see this real disconnect between the climate movement and people working in the fossil fuel industry. And my granddad was a coal mining engineer, and the industry tightened in the 80s, and he ended up without a job. And he was a single parent, taking care of two kids, basically on the poverty line.
04:16 Daisy Jeffrey
And he would tell me stories as he got older, and it was often the same story over and over, but about his time working in the mines, and it was such a core part of his identity. And so, when we talk about transitioning to renewables, it was really important to me that that disconnect between the climate movement and the fossil fuel industry - like the people working in those communities - that it be bridged. And so that was why I joined and sort of through a series of events have ended up here in Parliament working on the duty of care bill with a bunch of amazing young people.
04:55 Rae Johnston
Tell me a bit about the duty of care bill, what does that mean?
04:58 Daisy Jeffrey
So the duty care bill started out as a court case, a couple of years ago now. And basically, the allegation was that the government had a duty of care to consider the wellbeing of current and future generations when considering putting forward a new fossil fuel project. And that case was made against the Morrison Government and Sussan Ley, who was the Environment Minister at the time. The government lost and then came back and won on appeal.
05:34 Daisy Jeffrey
And what the Chief Justice said was that the courts agreed that there is a duty of care in principle, but that it's not something that they can impose on government, that it's something that needs to be legislated through the federal parliament. And the lead litigant for that case was the wonderful Anjali Sharma, who I work with, she moved down to Canberra to attend university and got in touch with her local senator, Senator David Pocock, to work on a bill to get the duty of care legislated through federal parliament. And so that's what we're trying to do now.
06:11 Rae Johnston
That's some pretty important work you're doing there. That's great.
06:16 Daisy Jeffrey
It's so exciting. And you know, when you give young people the tools and the opportunity to make a difference, and to make their voice heard, they will grasp that with both hands. And also all of the amazing young women that I get to work with. It's just a really exciting place to be.
06:35 Rae Johnston
Peta, why is it important for you personally, to speak up about climate change?
06:41 Peta
I think that young people are so underrepresented within the climate change space. And it's been proven through so many studies and our own work that young people are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change and the disasters that we face in Australia. And so I think that we know the best how to help fix these issues. And so we need to be drawing on young people and providing them a platform and a voice to be able to push their own experiences as well as their ideas on how to fix these issues.
07:13 Rae Johnston
Absolutely, now, UNICEF offers programs for children and young adults who need to adapt to a changing climate. They advocate for child-centred climate adaptation, resilience building and child sensitive climate policies while mapping out children's climate risk, and supporting young climate champions. Daisy, how have you seen that it's important for young people to speak up about the environment about climate change?
07:43 Daisy Jeffrey
Well, I think the thing is, when you're not in the room to make those decisions, those decisions a) get made without you, and b) they get made without you in mind, like I've been to a Conference of the Parties, so I went to the 25th COP in Madrid. And again, it was, you know, Greta Thunberg was basically Beyoncé that year, she couldn't go anywhere without being mobbed by journalists and photographers. And so it was just completely like, how should you manage that? I have no idea. And it was just so interesting, because there was the image of the school strikers, but diplomats within the conference, especially politicians, were really not keen to actually have any young voices in the room.
08:26 Daisy Jeffrey
And so it's been really interesting to see the evolution of the climate movement. The protesting is going on strong, and it's great to see School Strike [4 Climate] starting to rebuild. I mean, the first protest in I think, more than a year or two years to get mainstream media coverage in Australia happened on Friday, 17 November. And so seeing the duty of care case go through the courts is, again, an example of young people finding an avenue to be heard through and now it's also happening through trying to legislate policy. And that's something school strikers were not willing to do before, we weren't backing specific policy by politicians. It's been a real case of young people having to squeeze through the door and find different ways of being heard.
09:21 Rae Johnston
Absolutely, so how exactly have you included children and young people through the process of that duty of care bill? Where do you find people? How do you engage them? How do they find you?
09:33 Daisy Jeffrey
We're all on Instagram. I mean, everyone’s on TikTok these days as well, but Instagram is still very much the central communication place for young people for reaching out and meeting new people. And so when it came to the duty of care bill, that was school strikers put their hand up to be litigants in that case. And then obviously, the case happened, and so we had this bill, and it went to a Senate committee, which means that people can make submissions. And then there's a hearing on the bill on the evidence presented by all these organisations and people to do with the bill. And then there's a report that comes out. And that'll happen probably in March, and then the bill will be up for debate in the Senate.
10:22 Daisy Jeffrey
And so what we wanted to do was, because you've got the Senate and you've got the Lower House, this bill has been tabled in the Senate first, and it takes some time for things to filter through from the Senate to the Lower House. And so what we wanted to do was raise the profile of the bill, we had an idea for an advocacy day on November 14, and we thought we really would like to raise the profile of the bill within parliament, we want politicians to know about it, we want young people to be visible and get to say their piece. And so what we did was we got in touch with the climate movement, you know, across the board. And we also got in touch with the school strikers. And we basically put this big call out for young people, you know, if you're interested in talking about the bill and getting involved, please come and get involved. And basically, and we did that through our own personal social media channels, and we got just a huge response back.
11:22 Daisy Jeffrey
So I'm really hoping that, you know, the duty of care bill also will continue to be an avenue for more young people to get involved with the climate movement, but also to not be afraid of their own voice, of using it and of learning more and just getting involved with the campaign. So I'm, I'm really, really pleased with how it's going. And I'm so proud that we can be another opportunity for young people to get their voice heard. The duty of care bill has a petition that we would really love everyone to sign. So it's on the website, a duty of care, if you just look up a duty of care on Google, it should come up adutyofcare.davidpocock.com.au. And that petition will be there. And we've just gone over the 10,000 mark for signatures. So we'd really love everyone to add their name on.
12:16 Rae Johnston
Speaking of avenues to have your voice heard, Peta, what advice would you give to other young people who want to jump on board as well? Where should they go? What should they do?
12:26 Peta
I would say it really is all about social media, it can be used as such a great tool, I found out about the Young Ambassador program through Instagram one day, just scrolling. And I've seen so many more initiatives, I learned about the duty of care bill on social media. And that's the sort of thing that organisations need to utilise as a strength. There's so many amazing programs and people that you can connect with across social media, especially Instagram, and it's so important to keep updated with what's happening in the world. And that can really open up new organisations, new programs, new legislation that you can support.
13:06 Rae Johnston
So Daisy, I'll ask you the same as well. You know, you work with a lot of young people, you started in this space as a younger person yourself. So what would you suggest to people who do want to get involved in fighting climate change and having their voice heard? Where should they go?
13:25 Daisy Jeffrey
I think Peta’s right in that social media is just such an important avenue for connecting with others. And if you know someone, if you follow someone online, who's involved with climate, send them a message, we really need all the people we can get. You can always chuck me a message, I think my email address is in my bio on Instagram, if you're wanting to get involved with the duty of care bill. The school strikers are, if you’re school age, really fantastic to get involved with. And then there's the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. There's a great range of opportunities, if you just take the time to find them. These changes don't happen without you. Please don't underestimate the value that your contribution can have to making the change. Just get involved.
14:24 Rae Johnston
One of the themes that seems to be coming up throughout this whole podcast series is the feeling of loneliness when we are confronted with the enormity of the climate crisis. And I think what you've both described here is the opposite of that. It's people coming together and being able to support each other. And you're building that community around you of other people that care about the same thing that you do. That must feel really empowering, Peta.
14:53 Peta
It really is. I think that there's such a strong community in not only the climate space, and the youth space but just within the support that you can get from organisations, because at the end of the day, we are individuals, we need to have partnerships with these groups. And so it's really about finding people that will listen to you. And then using their resources and being able to provide your own voice to them. That can really help a lot.
15:18 Rae Johnston
Clever, I like it. Well, thank you so much for joining us, both of you, and having this chat with me. It's been fantastic.
15:26 Peta
Thank you.
15:27 Daisy Jeffrey
It's really lovely to meet both of you.
15:29 Peta
Yeah, you too.
15:30 Rae Johnston
This is giving me a lot of hope for the future chatting with you both, it's been really nice. Thank you so much for listening to this, our final episode of this climate focus series. Please leave us a review and a rating so that other people can find this very important resource. You can subscribe it so that you can keep in touch with us for if we release any further episodes in the future. And of course, if there's any information that you want to know about anything we've discussed, you can find it in the show notes. I'm Rae Johnston. Thank you so much for listening.