Following a heated debate in the Coalition party room every school will be provided with a Charlie Chaplin to overcome children’s climate anxiety. The decision was made after Liberal MP Andrew Wallace initially suggested that the religious chaplains be put in every school to ease children’s concerns about climate change.
“While neither Charlie Chaplin nor school chaplains are trained in climate science or in child psychology we decided to go with Chaplin because some Churches have actually come out in favour of real climate action,” said one Liberal backbencher who attended the debate.
“Charlie Chaplin is the perfect solution, he can distract the kids a bit of a laugh and given he was mainly active in the 1930’s his views should line up with our climate policy.”
Those familiar with the debate said that another backbencher suggested that money could instead be directed to actually solving the climate problem, which might also alleviate children’s anxiety, but this was shouted down.
“The jury is out about whether actually solving the problem would help solve the problem,” said Minister Taylor. “But it doesn’t matter anyway because we’d never get that past the Nationals.”
A spokesperson for the Chaplin family said that they thought that the party should have gone with Andrew Wallace’s initial suggestion of funding real chaplains to solve climate anxiety. “That was a much funnier idea. Charlie would have loved the absurd satire of the suggestion.”
Some on the right of the party room were initially sceptical of the Charlie Chaplin plan but warmed to the idea when they saw his moustache.
One member of the party room did point out that Charlie Chaplin was dead, but it was decided by the majority that the science wasn’t settled on that question yet.
