Duncan Voyage has 6 years experience working and volunteering in Western Sydney, building community and advocating for our environment and children. From running campaigns that platform environmental sustainability and reconciliation with First Nations, to coordinating local clothing swaps, Duncan has worked consistently to champion ideals that will improve the health of the planet and society.

Duncan loves being in nature, exploring bushland and hiking with his children. He’s lucky to be living on Dharug Land surrounded by bird songs and creeklines giving life and colour to the area.

“Having lived across this continent, it is clear communities are becoming scarce, struggling to find a foothold in the lives of families. We need to bring back this connection, trust and reliance on community as it is the foundation of a more sustainable future for our planet. Every kid should feel safe and supported in their community, and they are trusting all of us to ensure there is a world left to thrive in.”

Sarah O’Carrigan is a community organiser, community researcher and women’s health trainer, Co-leader of Blue Mountains Parents for Climate, and co-founder of Bub Hub Blue Mountains Inc., a community-led organisation creating and advocating for flexible, affordable and family-centred childcare. Bub Hub was established by local mums in response to severe childcare shortages in the Blue Mountains and has developed grassroots models including co-working with on-site childcare.

With more than 20 years’ experience working alongside women, families and communities, Sarah brings a strong grounding in relational organising, community development and a feminist ethics of care. Her practice is informed by a commitment to First Nations solidarity, anti-racist organising and building movements that centre lived experience, inclusion and community leadership. She has helped create community-led spaces that support parents, children and care workers, demonstrating what becomes possible when solutions are built locally through trust, relationships and collective action.

Sarah’s climate work begins with the everyday realities of family life — extreme heat, rising living costs, energy security and creating healthy, resilient communities for children. Through Blue Mountains Parents for Climate, she helps create practical forms of collective action, including community clothes, toy and book swaps that bring families together around reuse, sharing and mutual support. These initiatives reflect her belief that climate action can grow from the relationships, needs and capacities that already exist within communities.

Sarah is passionate about building a climate movement in which parents and children are not understood only as people affected by climate change, but recognised as important sources of knowledge, leadership and collective power.

“I believe climate action starts with community. When we create spaces where parents feel connected, supported and empowered to act together, we can turn the everyday challenges families face into opportunities for collective change. Our children deserve a future where they can thrive—and parents have an important role to play in building it.”

Retailer and energy generator Origin Energy - which accounts for around a quarter of retail electricity and gas companies announced a full-year net profit of $1.159 billion. This is the fourth year in a row the company has reported a profit of over $1 billion.

However, this mammoth profit has once again come at the expense of their customers, who are being squeezed by even increasing energy bills, which have pushed more households into energy debt over the past 12 months.

Figures from the Australian Energy Regulator, which reports on retailer performance in NSW, SA, QLD, ACT & TAS. show that more than 121,000 Origin Energy customers had outstanding electricity bills at the end of March 2026. The number of electricity customers on a formal hardship debt repayment plan also increased more than 40% compared to the previous year - from 31,960 to 45,576. While the average debt they owed increased by $828 (63%) from $1302 in Q3 FY2025 to $2130 in Q3 FY2026.

AGL Energy records big profit, while energy bills skyrocket and more than a hundred thousand customers struggle with bill debt.

Retailer and energy generator AGL Energy - which accounts for around 34% of Australia's retail energy market announced a profit of $756 million today, up from $644 million from FY25.

While this is great news for executives and shareholders, it's bad news for customers - because those profits are a direct result of skyrocketing energy bills which have pushed even more households into energy debt over the past 12 months.

Figures from the Australian Energy Regulator show that more than 110,000 AGL customers had outstanding electricity bills at the end of March 2026. The number of AGL customers on a formal hardship debt repayment plan also increased by a third compared to the previous year - from 21,456 to 28,168. While the average debt they held increased by $680 (39%) from $1749 in Q3 FY2025 to $2429 in Q3 FY2026.

Parents for Climate welcomes the Federal Government’s decision to close the Climate Active program and end the risky practice of certifying businesses’ voluntary climate claims as “carbon neutral”. The national parent advocacy organisation has campaigned for over three years through a landmark court case, community advocacy, and an investigation into greenwashing by energy companies.

New research from ARACY and UNICEF Australia shows climate change is already disrupting early childhood education across Australia, and confirms solar and battery power for early learning centres is one of the clearest fixes on the table.

A major new report released today, 800,000 Days of Learning at Stake: Building climate-resilient early childhood education across Australia, reveals that one in six early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in Australia (more than 2,000 preschools, kindergartens and long daycare centres) closed at some point in 2025 due to bushfires, cyclones and floods. Together, these closures cost Australian children under five almost 800,000 days of early learning.

Every parent wants the same thing. A future where our kids have clean air, affordable power, water from the tap, and a thriving community to grow up in.

Right now, that future is being quietly traded away. 

Giant AI data centres are being built across Australia with almost no rules, draining our water, pushing up our power bills, and heating the suburbs where our kids live and learn. By 2035, they could drink up to a quarter of Sydney's water.

We're not against technology. But we won't let our kids pay for it. Tell the Prime Minister and every premier: families first, before the profits of AI companies.

It's a simple question of who comes first. We say: our kids.

What we're calling for

We're calling on the Prime Minister and all state and territory leaders to put families before profit by:

• Hitting pause. A moratorium on new data centre approvals until proper safeguards are law.

• Setting hard limits. Mandatory best-practice water and energy efficiency standards, publicly reported, for every facility.

• Bringing their own clean power. Requiring data centres to fund and source enough new renewable energy and storage to cover all of their own demand. No new gas. No offsets. No passing the cost to us.

• Protecting our streets and schools. Siting rules that keep facilities away from homes, schools and early learning centres, and that shield families from the extra heat, higher bills and water stress they create.

• A fair return. Making sure the benefits of the AI boom are shared with all Australians, not just the companies pulling the strings.

We've collecting signatures to deliver to state and federal leaders. Every name shows decision-makers that parents are watching. Add yours now.

Last week, CSIRO announced it will cut 92 positions from its environment unit, including roughly five of the twelve scientists who maintain ACCESS, Australia's own climate model. We want to be clear about what this means, and why it matters.

ACCESS (the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator) is the only global climate model developed in the southern hemisphere. It is the tool that tells us, with Australian landscapes and conditions in mind, what our climate future actually looks like: how much hotter our summers will get, how sea levels will rise along our coasts, how rainfall patterns will shift across our farms and cities.

Without it, we are left borrowing models built for European and northern hemisphere conditions. That is not good enough for a country that faces some of the most severe climate impacts on earth.

On Sunday 7 June, our Parents for Climate local team will be at Zestiny Farm on the NSW Central Coast for something genuinely historic: a Guinness World Record attempt for the world’s largest BBQ cooking lesson. And we’d love you to join us.

The Big BBQ is bringing together 350+ people at this working farm, just over an hour from Sydney, to cook together, break a world record, and celebrate what’s possible when community, food, and clean energy come together. It’s the kind of day we exist for.

Wednesday, April 1, at Parliament House, more than 25 parents and 16 children from across Australia met with over 25 MPs and Senators to call for cost-saving energy resilience through solar and batteries on every school and childcare centre.

The Solar Our Learning event brought together families, education and energy experts to present a practical, ready-to-go solution that cuts energy costs, reduces pollution, and strengthens energy security for communities.

Senior representatives including Assistant Minister Josh Wilson, Jerome Laxale and Zali Steggall addressed the room, reflecting strong political interest. The message resonated across the day: this is a “no brainer”, but the next step is turning that support into funded policy.

With rising energy costs and increasing extreme weather, parents are making it clear that schools must be equipped to stay safe, cool, and operational, now and into the future.

Parents for Climate says the NSW Government’s updated coal position is a welcome sign that coal expansion cannot continue unchecked, but warns the changes are still too weak to meet the scale of the challenge facing families, workers and regional communities.

Parents for Climate said the government’s no-greenfield position is a step forward, but misses the mark because all major coal mining projects proposed in NSW are extensions and expansions not new mines on greenfield sites. The new policy still allows for extensions and expansions that will unleash billions of tonnes of climate pollution.

While formalising restrictions is a step forward, the Government is still failing to provide the science-based, long-term certainty New South Wales needs: an end to coal mine extensions and expansions, and a funded plan to prepare communities properly for the global decline in coal demand.

The response comes after the NSW Net Zero Commission found the state is not on track to meet its 2030 and 2035 emissions targets and that continued extensions or expansions of coal mining are not consistent with the Climate Change Act or the Paris temperature goals. The Commission also found NSW needs to prepare for declining thermal coal demand and support a just and orderly transition for affected communities and regional economies.

Enough is enough: we’re calling out polluters for greenwashing

As parents committed to a safe climate for our children, we strive to make responsible choices. However, companies like EnergyAustralia have made this challenging by falsely marketing polluting products as ‘carbon neutral’.

In a landmark development, our legal action led to a settlement where EnergyAustralia publicly admitted that carbon offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels. They have ceased offering their 'Go Neutral' product to new customers and removed related marketing from their website.

This is a significant victory against greenwashing, demonstrating the power of parent-led action.

 This win has put the industry on notice—but we need your help to keep up the pressure. Join us as we fight for honest climate claims, consumer protection, and a future free from fossil fuel spin.

👉 Donate now or get involved to power our next wave of action.

DONATE TO STOP GREENWASHING SHARE THIS TO BUILD MORE SUPPORT

Who's still greenwashing? We checked all 34.

After the EnergyAustralia settlement, we reviewed how Australia's 34 biggest energy retailers market their products: every "carbon neutral" claim, every "offset" promise, on every website.

More than one in three were at risk of misleading their customers.

• 6 "Worst Offenders" marketed fossil fuel products as fully "carbon neutral" — most of them citing the federal Climate Active scheme.

• 7 "Cunning Compensators" leaned on "offsets" to sell fossil fuels, sometimes with a partial disclaimer.

• 3 "Newly Fixed" dropped or acknowledged the limits of their offset claims. Credit where it's due.

We published the lot, named the companies, and put the rest of the industry on notice.

85% of the parents we surveyed said the government needs stricter rules on sustainability claims. In July 2026, the government agreed to scrap the certification scheme that so many of these retailers were hiding behind.

But 13 companies were still at it. And the scheme's closure doesn't automatically fix their marketing.

Read Climate Nonsense and see how your energy provider stacks up →

An alliance of energy justice advocates is calling for urgent government intervention to wipe-out the energy debts of struggling households, as new data shows almost 1 in 20 energy consumers cannot cover the full cost of their regular energy bill, as energy companies’ profits continue to soar and the government considers another round of energy bill rebates. Meanwhile, new polling shows the Australian public is fed up with the profiteering of big energy companies and want the Australian government to intervene to lower bills. 

New data from the Australian Energy Regulator, released as part of its annual market report, shows that 

• 336,615 households were in energy debt last year - a slight increase of 1.4% on the previous year

• Almost 1 in 20 of all energy customers are in some form of energy debt. 

• 121,759 households were part of official hardship programs, 39% of them have been in a program for more than 12 months. Of the 150,000 people who exited a hardship program last year 68% were discontinued because they were unable to meet their agreed payment plan and schedule - only 32% had paid off their debt. 

• The average value of a household’s energy debt increased by $219 last year - to $1,367

• While the Federal Government’s rebates provided some relief to hardship customers and those with very small debts at the beginning of the year, these were much less impactful in the second half of the year when debts were higher. 

Advocates say new AER data confirms what households already know: Australia’s energy price crisis continues to rage on, with more and more people struggling to pay their bills pushed into debt while big energy companies rake in billions of dollars in profit. The update comes as the federal government deliberates whether to renew the Energy Bill Relief Fund rebates for a third consecutive year. The Stop the Bill Shock coalition warns that rebates are not a substitute for fixing the system itself, and that energy debt is a political and corporate choice that governments can act on right now.

The report coincides with new national polling that shows about half of Australians blame profit-seeking energy companies for rising energy bills and want the government to take more action to stop bills from rising even further. The national poll, conducted in October, found:

• 46 percent of Australians say profit-seeking by energy companies is the leading reason energy prices keep rising.

• 83 percent of Australians want the federal government to take stronger action to bring bills down and rein in unfair pricing.