Climate Strike

CLIMATE STRIKE

The MUA’s Thomas Mayor takes the stand as striking students and supporters rally outside the PM’s Sydney residence

Maritime workers rallied with striking students outside the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence at Kirribilli House on March 25. Other unions under the banner Workers for Climate Action also joined the rally of an estimated 2000 in Sydney, one of 36 School Strike 4 Climate rallies held around the nation.

Slogans and banners got political – and personal: “It’s burning, it’s pouring and Scomo is snoring”; “Change the politics, not the climate”; “Stop Scomo’s Climate Vandalism”; “Break the Liberals, not the Planet”; and “Don’t be a fossil fool”.

Thirteen-year-old Ella O’Dwyer -Oshlack told how her school in Lismore was closed by floods, how she had lost her home. Two years earlier the Black Summer mega fires came close. She blamed government inaction for climate change.

MUA Indigenous Officer Thomas Mayor spoke of the impending loss of his Torres Strait island home.

“I’ll never forget when, several years ago, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott didn’t know the mic was still on,” he told the rally. “Those bastards were laughing that the seas were rising and we’re starting to lose our homes. We’re picking up the bones of our ancestors from the beaches. Shame on these people.”

Mayor said he had been a unionist for more than 20 years. “Every step of the way, Liberal governments have tried to take away our rights, because we’ve got power in numbers.”

He said the Coalition had failed First Nations people by failing to take the question of a constitutionally empowered First Nations Voice to the Australian people in a referendum. “They’ve had the opportunity to do something with the Uluru Statement from the Heart for five years and they’ve done nothing.”

The global day of action came as floods, bushfires and storm surges become more extreme, affecting the lives of millions of Australians and people across the globe. •