Hundreds of students went on strike from school and flooded Sydney's Martin Place at noon today to protest government inaction on climate change.
The protests were organised by the national student-led collective School Strike 4 Climate Action, which has led strikes in state capitals and major cities across the country this week.
The movement originated in regional Victoria and began with a two-day strike in Bendigo earlier this month.
Student speakers, musicians and poets took to the stage today to express their dissatisfaction with the federal government. Many in the crowd were holding "Stop Adani" signs to protest the Adani Carmichael mine, which the mining giant guaranteed this week would soon go into development.
Some of the speakers focused on prime minister Scott Morrison's response to the strikes in parliament this week, in which Morrison said that he opposed the idea of children leaving school and does not support "our schools being turned into parliaments".
One of the speakers responded to Morrison's comments by saying "if you want children to stop acting like parliament, parliament should stop acting like children".
The organisation of the Sydney protest was originally undertaken by 14-year-old Jean Hinchcliffe from Fort Street High School, who told BuzzFeed News that every student she knows has expressed distress over climate change.
"Every young person is passionate about it," said Hinchcliffe. "We've spent our whole lives hearing about it, we've learnt about it at school, we've seen it on the news. We all know that it's true."
