The federal budget has been touted as one for young Australians, with $1.2 billion going towards creating new apprenticeships and traineeships, while the new .
But for these teenage climate activists, there was one crucial measure for young people missing: funding for a green recovery out of the coronavirus economic crisis.
“It just feels like we are being ignored,” year 12 student Ella Avni told SBS News.
“Now that we’re trying to stand up and have a voice in what needs to happen so we can protect our futures, and the futures of our children, to hear that the government is not listening despite our demands is really disheartening.”
Handing down his second budget on Tuesday night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it would include $1.9 billion in new funding for low emissions technologies to address climate change, including $52.9 for the coalition’s gas expansion plan.
School students take part in a climate change strike in Brisbane last year. Source: AAP
Eyebrows were raised at more than $8 million set to go towards upgrading the aging coal-fired Vales Point power station in NSW, which is expected to close in 2029.
A further $1.8 billion has been set aside to fund upgrades in National Parks, help wildlife recover from last summer’s catastrophic bushfires, and restore mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses.
Also included in the budget was $7.6 million over three years to upgrade the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator, which produces advanced climate modelling.
But Ms Avni, who is an organiser for School Strike for Climate, says the measures simply don’t go far enough in the face of an impending climate crisis.
“The budget has not invested nowhere near enough public funds into renewables,” the 17-year-old said.
“If they want to address the issues facing young people, then the climate crisis is centre in what we are dealing with right now.”
Fellow organiser Jean Hinchliffe, 16, also said there “wasn’t funding where it needs to go” for renewables.
“As we’re battling this enormous climate crisis, which someday will be on a scale of the COVID-19 crisis we’re seeing today, we need to be looking into the future and being smart about decisions we’re making now.”
She described the positive economic measures for young people as a “band-aid solution” that ignored the “enormous crisis looming in the background”.
“The climate crisis, the impacts it will have will be enormously expensive. It will be hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Going into a recession now, it’s stupid not to consider,” she said.
Jean Hinchliffe (second from right) is during a march through Sydney in protest of Adani's Queensland coal mine. Source: AAP
“It’s ignoring this new sector where we could have thousands of jobs come out of it and enormous economic gain for the country.”
Tuesday's budget revealed Australia was , with a deficit of $213.7 billion and net debt reaching $703 billion this financial year.
Director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, Mark Howden, also sees the budget as a “missed opportunity” for a green economic recovery.
“There was an opportunity here to take Australia forward in terms of essentially a green recovery … and there was very little that picked up on that thread in the budget,” he told SBS News.
“A green recovery can provide jobs and activity and provide and hope for people right now, as well as dealing with future climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and positioning ourselves well for future industries that are clean, green, and high value.
“And there was essentially none of that in the budget.”
By comparison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has embarked on a green energy revolution to lift the country out of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Addressing a Conservative conference earlier this week, Mr Johnson said the government was “progressing quite literally with gale-force” speed towards a green economy.
“The green industrial revolution, that in the next year 10 years will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs, he said.
“Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle - the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.”
Labor’s treasury spokesperson Jim Chalmers and Greens leader Adam Bandt have also criticised the government for failing to invest in clean energy.
“[But] there are some positives in the budget,” Professor Howden said.
“Some of the things in terms of the marine reserve announcement and some of the things in terms of the ocean efforts, pollution and ghost netting, sound like they are actually very positive moves, and so I don’t want to frame it as being all bad.
“I just think it could have been a lot better.”
