We asked six people how vital a politician's climate policy was to winning their vote. Here's what they said:
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Emily Chate:
"It's really important [to my vote]. Being someone a bit younger, I think about my future and climate change is one of the things that I'm worried about - particularly having children and wondering what their future will be like. So my vote will be definitely hinging on that.
"The recent rain events are pretty telling. All around the university has been flooding and the water quality has been poor so I think the effects of climate change are so clear."
David Archer:
"I'd say it's fairly important in comparison to other things, it's definitely one of the top five in my priorities and it might swing my vote.
"We can even take away all aspects of helping the environment and simply focus on the economic factors, it makes a no-brainer decision to switch to renewable resources.
"Every aspect of environmental decisions that they could make would be a boost to the economy so really anything is better than what's happening at the moment which is nothing.
"As for the steel works, I think it's been an important part of history and I think everyone respects that, but with the way the times changed, we could definitely have a fresher look and more environmentally-friendly aspect to it."
Tasia Tomeski:
"I guess it should be important, we all have a right and say so I just want something good for our community. The steel works is very important. We need our steel business. My husband works for Bluescope and our whole family has been a part of it for many years. We can't just get rid of it."
Cole Park:
"I would say it's almost at the top as far as my priorities go. I would say it's been a pretty disappointing response in the past few years so we're playing a catch up game and it's going to be a big decider on who I end up giving my vote to."
"We can see the weather has been absolutely insane lately. Even in the Illawarra it's having such a massive impact on really basic stuff but it's also acting on a bigger scale outside of our own immediate perception."
"I would love to see infinitely more implementation of renewables into the community. Whether that's through council implementation of renewables to power their work spaces and the vehicles ... I'd love to see people adopting electrical vehicles a lot more."
"Just standing on the beach and looking out at the horizon there's this massive smoke stack. It's not the most reassuring image."
Lauren Stringer:
"It will be very important because clearly there is something going on in the world that's not being addressed and for my kids future, we need to do something about it.
"We go from fires to floods within six months so it's causing havoc.
"Getting on board with emissions reduction and putting some sustainable actions in place for the children's future.
"I think we need to work in conjunction with the steel works at this point in time because it employs a lot of people, so to say to shut it down would be detrimental to the livelihoods of a lot of people."
Damien Pulido:
"Pretty important. It's obviously necessary for the future and I don't think enough has been done.
"You don't see the effects of climate change in the Illawarra day-to-day that much.
"I think a lot has been done locally like a lot of businesses are getting better at adopting climate policy themselves so that's exciting to see and I think politicians should promote that more."
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