Submission to the Inquiry into the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) welcomed the opportunity to provide a submission to the inquiry into the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023 (the Bill). The APS offered our overall support to the Bill and summarised our more detailed positions on climate change as previously advised in our APS Position Statement: Psychology and Climate Change, APS Submission to the National Health and Climate Strategy Consultation and the APS Pre-Budget Submission 2023-2024.

In our response to the Bill inquiry, the APS was clear that the national and global community are at a critical juncture where immediate action has the potential to prevent catastrophic impacts which will be felt by current and future generations for potentially thousands of years into the future. We also noted that psychologists, including psychology practitioners, academics and researchers, are highly motivated to leverage their expertise in human behaviour and evidence-based psychological knowledge, skills and resources towards the mitigation of, and adaptation to, the effects of climate change.

While the APS offered our support for the proposed Bill, we encouraged the Committee to consider the following feedback about the Bill and related matters:

• While prioritising climate change legislation that specifically safeguards the interests of current and future children is crucial, it is equally important to enact comprehensive legislation that protects the health and wellbeing of all Australians and vulnerable groups from the impacts of climate change, including older people, people on lower incomes, people with existing mental ill health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and people in remote areas, all of whom are especially vulnerable to impacts of climate change on their physical and mental health and wellbeing.
• Commit to a subsequent review of the Bill should it be passed to gauge the effectiveness of the legislation in fulfilling its intended goals, particularly in preventing harm to the health and wellbeing of both current and future Australians.
• Adequate support for the health and wellbeing of current and future Australians in the context of climate change requires sustained Government funding for prevention and early intervention programs for building resilience, enhancing coping strategies and providing a sense of optimism for the future.

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