The budget is a missed opportunity to address the impacts of worsening climate change on health, and represents a failure in our Government’s duty of care to protect Australians, according to Dr Kate Wylie, GP and executive director of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

“All of us working for Australians’ health cannot let this stand,” Dr Wylie writes. “We have a responsibility to ensure that the climate health emergency is being properly treated, and that it is front and centre in voters’ minds at the next election.
Every day our doctors and nurses are treating people impacted by climate change; people with heat-related illness and mental health exacerbations, people impacted by fires, floods and sea-level rise, people facing food and water insecurity, all being made worse by our changing climate."

The full article was first published in Croakey Health Media on 16 May 2024