They carried with them placards for the march with succinct messages – “We are striking for our future”, “We won’t take no for an answer”, “It’s our future”. They joined thousands of fellow students in a “freeze” at Southern Cross and a march on Parliament.

The Melbourne rally was part of the School Strike 4 Climate Action movement, one of 30 strikes held across the country, from Adelaide to Brisbane, Darwin to Perth and Sydney.

They walked out of classrooms to protest at climate change inaction and the fact that, as minors, their voice routinely goes unheard on issues that matter to them.

The marches come a day after Indian mining giant Adani announced that it would self-fund a smaller version of its contentious Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, with the project costing an estimated $2 billion.

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As The Age summed up: “The project is seen as a circuit breaker that will encourage other projects seeking to mine the Galilee Basin's huge coal reserves, and will thrust debate over the future of Australia's coal industry to the forefront of the federal election campaign.”

The students – from Bendigo, Castlemaine, Kyneton and beyond – at the march have already targetted protests at Adani. As have celebrities at the Aria’s this week. Placards, face paint, chants, media messages. Stop Adani was the message. 

The coal versus renewables debate has never been so prominent or vital. Balancing the needs of energy and jobs against the expert opinion that continuing to burn fossil fuels is a slippery slope to terminal warming needs input from many sources.

This includes the young. They will be our future politicians, inheriting whatever course is charted now. Surely it’s only right that they have a say in what that course  is.

If Scott Morrison - and now Resources Minister Matt Canavan - think the students should stay in class and out of activism, they are woefully out of touch with public sentiment.  As one sign spotted at the march put it: “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at Ikea”. It's time they got with the agenda. 

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