Dear Ged Kearney,

Please make your proposed Safeguard Mechanism stronger so it requires Australia’s biggest polluters to make genuine emissions cuts this decade.

We are a group of parents and children in your electorate. We are motivated by a shared desire to see genuine action this decade to cut emissions and mitigate the catastrophic impacts of global warming. So we are writing to you to express our deep concern about the Labour party’s draft Safeguard Mechanism. It has significant loopholes that mean there is no incentive for large polluters to make genuine emissions cuts. Your current proposal makes it easier and cheaper for polluters to buy offsets rather than invest in technology and processes to cut emissions.

If the Safeguard Mechanism allows unlimited use of carbon credits including from new highly polluting coal and gas projects and does not require Australia’s biggest polluters to genuinely slash emissions from their pollution facilities this decade, Australia risks falling short of its 43% emissions reduction target.

It’s a simple equation. For a safe future, we need to reach 43% fast – and then raise our ambition to slash emissions even higher this decade. To do our part to keep global warming as close to 1.5 degrees as possible, we can’t afford to open any new coal and gas projects (and we need the Safeguard Mechanism to play a genuine role in curbing emissions).

Ged, please safeguard our children’s future. You can do this with a stronger Safeguard Mechanism that closes these four loopholes:

1. Stop polluters purchasing carbon credits unless they first invest in genuine emissions cuts at their facilities.

2. When polluters must purchase carbon credits, make them prioritise Safeguard Mechanism Credits – created when other facilities in the Safeguard Mechanism reduce their emissions below their baselines – before being allowed to use Australian Carbon Credit Units.

3. Make polluters phase out their reliance on Australian Carbon Credit Units.

4. Ban new coal and gas facilities bringing their enormous pollution into the Safeguard Mechanism and purchasing carbon credits to cover it.

Yours sincerely,

Parents and children of Newlands Primary School, Preston, and Reservoir West, Victoria