Our appeal, closed for the 29th year and has again provided much needed Christmas cheer with 342,997 gifts distributed to people in need across the country.

Victoria accounted for 105,200 of the overall gift tally. With Kmart Southland collecting the most gifts in VIC.  

We know how much it means to those who hit hard times, to know that people out there care and are willing to support in any way that they can during Christmas.

On top of the gifts given, shoppers also showed their generosity online and at Kmart registers donating more than $135,000 in cash contributions, which will continue until the end of January.

We also loved seeing the amazing support from the community, young and old, on social media and can’t thank everyone enough for sharing their posts and encourage others to also give.

On behalf of the entire Kmart team and our friends at The Salvation Army and Mission Australia, I would like to thank each and every person and business who donated to the Appeal and particularly the incredibly generosity of Victorians.

Globally, year 2016 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record (EU & WMO data) and alarmingly, the last 16 years are all within the top 17 hottest years ever recorded.

On average, global surface temperatures are now 1.3 higher than before the Industrial revolution.  

During 2015, almost 200 nations agreed at the summit in Paris to pursue efforts to hold temperature rise to 1.5  as part of a sweeping shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy.

A 1.5  increase is considered to be the point of runaway greenhouse warming; a ‘tipping point’; an irreversible situation of increasing global temperatures and yet we now find we are precariously only 0.2  away from the critical 1.5.

Rising heat of course stokes bushfires, causes more heat waves, droughts, sea-level rise, floods and powerful downpours that threaten lives and disrupt water and food supplies.

In Australia, such events are becoming more frequent and more extreme.

During 2016 the Arctic region had a sharp rise in temperature along with parts of Africa, Asia, Russia, Alaska and northern Canada. Reduced Arctic sea ice drives us towards the tipping point as does the melting of permafrost in Russia and Canada which releases vast quantities of methane.

Methane is a very potent green-house gas and when in the atmosphere accelerates global warming.

Down in Antarctica a vast iceberg of area greater than 5000 square kilometres is soon to break off the Larson C Ice shelf and the 120km long Totten glacier in east Antarctica is melting from below due to inflows of warmer ocean water.

Professor Will Steffen of the Climate Council emphasises the considerable momentum of our climate system and the need for us to urgently get emissions down.

Like Will Steffen,  ACF economist Mr Matthew Rose confirms  “Australia is not on track at all to meet the 2030 Paris targets” contrary to that claimed by our Federal ministers.

Alarmingly, the political process has always been lagging the science and such political inaction has hastened the arrival of a tipping point of dramatic climate instability.

One can already hear the cries of “Why didn’t we act sooner; why did we not heed the early warnings of eminent Scientists”?

The loudest unforgiving cries will of course come from future generations as reality hits home.