Heather du Plessis-Allan: Those striking for the climate should be marked truant

My disagreement with David Seymour on truancy has been short-lived this week - because I could not agree more with him today. 

Those kids out bunking school today so they can strike for the climate should be marked down as truant: Explained but unjustified absence. 

I think I'm less tolerant of it today than I was when these shenanigans first started up because at least the ones who were striking back in 2019 when their messiah Greta Thunberg was leading them seemed to be genuinely motivated by the delusion that the opinion of children counted.  

Now though, the reality must have set in. They can’t apply enough political pressure to actually affect change. You can have as many children out striking on the streets as you like - if they can’t vote, it doesn’t matter.  

Plus, we have a truancy crisis. 

We've been talking about this for months now. Regular attendance at school has fallen from 70% in 2015 to 40% at last count in 2022. The truancy crisis is more of a pressing threat to their future than the climate crisis. They are frankly at greater risk of being unable to do maths than they are at risk of a wave eroding mummy and daddy’s beach house.  

What are their parents thinking allowing them to do this? What a shocking attitude towards their education at a time when everyone in this country knows they need every minute in the classroom they can get. 

Anyway, my favourite part of their strike is that they have now expanded their kaupapa. 

No longer is this just a strike about the climate - it is now also about toi tu te tiriti, it is about freeing Palestine, ending the fast-track approvals bill, keeping the ban on oil and gas, and lowering the voting age to 16. 

It's about everything, basically. Everything except the most important thing they could be doing as children... learning. 

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