In the 2022 election, just a handful of votes would determine who got to make climate policy for the next three years - and influence climate outcomes for decades to come.
If we wanted the big, bold change that we knew we needed for climate justice, we knew we needed a Federal government that can implement huge, justice centred solutions.
This election, we had four key asks:
- ONE: Net zero emissions by 2035, with a 75% reduction in emissions by 2030
- TWO: No public money to coal, oil and gas (including phase-out of existing subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels by 2024)
- THREE: All of our public schools, hospitals, government offices, public and social housing, halls and libraries 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025
- FOUR: Supporting fossil fuel communities into climate positive jobs with fair pay, training opportunities and long-term security
We kicked off the election period with Cover The Night, painting murals and covering our cities in posters pushing for a government that puts care, climate and community first.
Over 100 volunteers joined a 12 week election program, coming together each week to get training, resources, and take action together.
“I loved helping run the deep canvasing session, I had a really valuable conversation with one of the participants on how to do deep canvassing whilst being autistic and accounting for different methods in communication to non-autistic folks when figuring out how to have the discussion. It was really powerful and helped them unblock what had been a roadblock for them and turn it into an advantage.”
Young people across the country helped achieve record-breaking youth enrolment, had thousands of conversations about voting for climate justice and helped make climate a top issue for voters across generations.
AYCC volunteers had over 3000 conversations about climate with voters in the weeks leading up to election day. We reached over 700,000 people online and over 45 million in the news about enrolling and voting for real climate action.
On election day, AYCC volunteers were out at almost 50 polling booths across the country, talking to voters about climate justice and handing out a whopping 6,500 climate scorecards.
Read about our scorecard here.
The outcome:
We saw huge swings towards parties and independents running on a strong climate platform, our communities sent a clear message that Scott Morrison’s choices to put climate action on the shelf until 2050 while bankrolling the big polluters was just not good enough.
The results we saw are a testament to the work of countless people over many years. From our relentless volunteers having conversations in their communities, to First Nations leaders, unionists, student strikers, frontline communities, faith groups, and hundreds of other community organisations: together we made this the climate election.