On March 15, 2022, I led eight children into the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney, marking the end of an 18-month court battle.

A year earlier, Justice Mordecai Bromberg had ruled that the federal environment minister had duty of care to protect current and future young Australians aged under 18 from the impacts of climate change. He noted in his judgment that the trauma and health impacts facing children will “largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest intergenerational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next”.

Anjali Sharma with Senator David Pocock.

Within months, the then environment minister – now the deputy leader of the opposition – Sussan Ley appealed the ruling and pushed ahead approving new mining projects.

It wasn’t lost on any of us that this was a landmark case. The Federal Court had an opportunity, then and there, to set a groundbreaking precedent for the protection of the rights of children in the face of climate change. Instead, on March 15, 2022, Bromberg’s decision was overturned on appeal, by the full bench of the court.

We walked out that day, hand in hand, tears rolling down our faces.

In their judgment, the appeal judges hadn’t simply overturned the duty of care on the basis that it didn’t exist, but on the basis that if it did exist, it should be legislated by parliament. This was a clear mandate to continue our fight.

Last month, I walked into the federal parliament with my friends, almost a year since our campaigning led to the tabling of........

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