I’m Maya, I live on Wurundjeri country and I organise with the Naarm AYCC group. This election, we need politicians to tackle climate change in line with the best science - so I’m voting for climate justice. 

I grew up in Sawtell, and in 2021, my class’s year 10 English exam was stopped when a supercell storm swept through destroying plants, killing birds and leaving two feet of hail like snow, suffocating the Toormina-Sawtell region. 

The 'supercell' hailstorm that struck Coffs Harbour in October 2021 damaged hundreds of homes and left dozens uninhabitable. The neighbouring coastal suburbs of Toormina and Sawtell were the hardest hit. The roof of the local shopping centre, where I worked, collapsed. Everyone I talked to — family, teachers, friends — said they had never seen anything like it.

The hail caused chaos on the roads. What was usually a 15-minute bus ride home took two hours. As we crawled along at a snail's pace, I remember the bus driver standing up and saying: "Well guys, this is it. This is climate change." The bus driver put into words what I had been feeling since my class bent our school's no-phone policy to film the supercell from our classroom. This natural disaster was just one in a series that has punctuated almost every year of my high school life.

In Year 8, I remember watching the rural fire service website with my friends during class, our eyes glued to the screen as the bushfires grew closer each day. The COVID-19 pandemic was followed by record-breaking floods. Before the hailstorm repairs had even finished, we watched as thousands of people were rescued from rooftops and homes just a couple of hours north. The floods, the fires and the hailstorm felt relentless. But so am I. I won't stop talking about that day in October because we can't let our future be an unstable climate with worsening weather disasters. And that’s why I’m voting for climate justice this year.

We need politicians to tackle climate change in line with the best science. This means:

1. Having comprehensive overarching climate policy

2. Having emissions reduction targets for net zero by 2035

3. Committing to the Paris Climate Agreement

It is so vital that politicians commit to having serious climate policy. Communities all across this continent are already experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis, from bushfires, to droughts, to floods - we just can’t afford anymore climate inaction. We all need to vote for the climate.