Thirteen-year-old Lismore school student Ella O’Dwyer-Oshlack criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his poor response to the catastrophic floods in New South Wales Northern Rivers region at the March 25 Climate Strike in Sydney.
“We have a government that continues to promote the mining and burning of fossil fuels despite what the science and the victims of these events say,” she told the crowd gathered outside Kirribilli House, the PM’s official residence.
“I’m a victim of the government’s continued failure to act on climate change and I'm not happy about it. I'm actually terrified for our future and the future of all of us while we have leaders that don’t even lead us in the right direction. In fact we are going in the exact wrong direction.
“So this is what I’ve got to say to you Prime Minister Morrison: While you continue to fund the mining and burning of fossil fuels, you are destroying homes and lives.
“Have you ever had to flee your house in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, scared out of your mind because you don’t know what is going to happen? Or if you will survive, or if your house will still be OK or if your friends are OK?
“This is not something I would wish on anyone and you didn’t even have the guts to come and talk to us when you visited Lismore.
“You went and mopped a basketball court that already looked clean. You should have come to my house to mop the floors. We really needed it and an extra hand would have been nice.”