Federal Court duty of care decision is unacceptable
Extinction Rebellion Australia, 15 Mar 2022
XR Australia is outraged at the Federal Court dismissal of Environment Minister’s climate duty of care.
The landmark climate change case was brought by eight children and temporarily established the new common-law duty of care. That judgement was overturned on appeal today as Federal Court ruled that the Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley DOES NOT have a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis when assessing fossil fuel projects.
Extinction Rebellion Australia will be conducting rolling actions nationally and locally, leading up to the Federal election and beyond. We will be keeping the pressure on MPs and candidates in the upcoming 2022 election, urging them to increase their ambitions on emissions reduction. We will continue to hold the fossil fuel industry to account. We will be out in the streets day after day, doing whatever we can to rouse the nation to the urgency of the climate crisis. We need our governments to show a duty of care for our children and generations to come, not for the profits of their political donors.
XRACT activists previously targeted Parliament House in protest at the government’s rejection of its ‘Duty of Care’ to protect Australia’s children from the climate crisis (see image above). In August last year, two weeks of #DutyofCare’ protests and blockades at Federal Parliament and around the country culminated in Extinction Rebellion rebels famously setting fire to a pram in front of Parliament House in August last year and painting ‘duty of care’ on the building.
Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Miriam Robinson says: "This is nothing short of murderous neglect of our children. The IPCC has just released yet another terrifying report, saying in short ‘delay is death’. If the Environment Minister has no duty of care for future generations, and is not caring for our Environment, what is she there for? To approve new coal mines? This is unacceptable.
“We are staring down the barrel of the extinction of life as we know it on Earth. This is what scientists have been trying to get through to people for years. But this is not a just theory, we are watching it happen in real time. Even the court today agreed that the science is not in dispute.
“But our government has shown today they do not care about the future of our children with this appeal in the Federal Court. We all know why they behave this way. It’s because they rely on fossil fuel campaign donations so they can continue to block change while expanding fossil fuel exports. It’s not just the LNP either. ALP state governments continue to push fossil fuel projects like Viva Gas in Victoria, Scarborough Gas in WA, and the Adani project in Queensland. We need real change. There is no more time for this. We need a bipartisan agreement on urgent climate action and we need it yesterday."
Spokesperson Brad Homewood says: “The shocking floods in eastern Australia are just the latest in a long line of warnings that we are in a crisis already. Our political system is hopelessly captured by fossil fuel interests, and we have had enough! Time has run out. How long until governments will simply not be able to keep repairing roads, rail and bridges when these events get more frequent and more extreme, as the scientists assure us they will? This is why we engage in direct action, because conventional methods are failing as this Federal Court decision shows today.
“The government’s funding of billions for fossil fuels is not a climate plan. We need to Tell the Truth and declare a climate emergency. We need to Act Now and stop funding fossil fuels. We need Citizens Assemblies in place to oversee the government on climate policy issues, regardless of who wins the 2022 election.”
Gorgeous guerrilla projection outside the colony’s HQ and prime minister’s Lodge by XR ACT Earth Projectors