Since launching a brand new mission to be a courageous catalyst propelling Australia towards bold, effective action to tackle the climate crisis, the Climate Council has focused on driving forward action on Climate Change by communicating facts and science of impacts and solutions to Climate Change. In the past year, our team has led a series of major strategic interventions. Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), in particular, had a prolific impact on the national conversation during the Black Summer bushfire crisis. Through a sophisticated media strategy, we were able to harness the authority and credibility of former emergency and fire chiefs to communicate the key message that bushfires are being influenced by climate change. This was picked up and shown by commercial broadcast news, every major newspaper in fire-affected states and territories, and across a wide range of radio shows. According to research conducted in the aftermath of the bushfires, 49% of Black Summer articles discussed climate change, compared with only 5% of reporting of the Black Saturday fires in 2009 (Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, 2020). This clearly highlights the shift in the national conversation to recognise the influence of climate change on extreme weather, making these discussions mainstream, thanks to the tireless work of ELCA and others. Significantly, journalists are now clearly and easily making these links by themselves, without background briefings or prompting, demonstrating that these ideas have been well socialised and accepted. Consequently, this has significantly broadened the base of people who are keeping our leaders to account in asking the hard questions when it comes to the impacts of climate change and the actions they are taking to mitigate this. By producing reports and factsheets, and offering briefings to allies in the climate space, we help upskill their knowledge and ensure they have the facts on hand when they speak to their communities and meet with political representatives. Our media advisors are on call every day, training new voices to confidently tell their story, pitching climate stories to media outlets from The Australian to The Project, and pulling together media conferences to get as much widespread attention on an issue as possible. In the past year alone we have trained a range of diverse Australians to speak about climate change in the media. Two standouts include training fossil fuel industry workers to speak about the opportunities for renewables and equipping farmers in regional NSW to talk about the devastating changes they have seen as a result of prolonged drought. Our Climate Councillors and senior researchers continue to be in high demand to provide expert evidence to parliamentary inquiries. These are an important way to influence and strengthen policy decisions, making sure that the best science available is included. See our annual report - info on submissions and reports.