Our Kids Are Not For Sale
Your kid's school. Their footy club. Their favourite museum. You trust these places are about your child, not about coal and gas companies.
But a new national investigation found Australia's six biggest coal and gas companies, Woodside, Shell, Chevron, Santos, BHP and Glencore are running 260+ programs across the places our children grow up: early learning centres, classrooms, teacher training, museums and science centres, sporting clubs, scholarships, youth wellbeing programs and career pathways. From their earliest years right through to adulthood. But there is no register, no watchdog and no independent oversight at all.
These are the companies driving the climate crisis, the one our kids will live with for the rest of their lives. They profit by digging up and selling the coal and gas making our children's world hotter and less safe. And now they're spending big to put a friendly face on it, right inside the institutions our kids trust most.
It's soft, warm marketing with a hard purpose: a generation that grows up feeling good about the very industries gambling with their future.
We don’t let tobacco companies advertise to our kids. We don't let them quietly buy their way into our children's classrooms and clubs, with no rules, and no one watching. So why are the companies fuelling the climate crisis free to market themselves to our children, inside the schools, clubs and museums we trust?
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The Petition
To the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled
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The petition of the undersigned shows that: A national investigation has identified more than 260 programs and sponsorships through which fossil fuel companies and industry-aligned bodies engage with Australian children and young people — across early childhood settings, schools, teacher professional development, museums, science centres, sporting clubs, scholarships, youth programs and career pathways. Reaching potentially millions of children from their earliest years through to adulthood. The core products of these companies are a major contributor to climate change, which poses serious and lasting risks to the health, wellbeing and future of Australian children. These arrangements give such companies access to children within trusted institutions during formative developmental years, when children are least able to recognise commercial or reputational interests. There are reasonable concerns that this engagement may shape children's understanding of climate change, may involve educational materials that are partial or incomplete, and may operate to build industry social licence rather than to serve children's best interests. Despite this, there is no national register of this activity, no dedicated oversight body, no requirement for public disclosure, and no independent assessment of whether these arrangements are transparent, accurate, age-appropriate or in children's best interests. Australian parents have a reasonable interest in understanding who is engaging with their children through trusted public institutions, with what messages, and under what safeguards. |
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Your petitioners ask that the Senate establish an inquiry to:
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