When I dropped my kids off at childcare just a few weeks ago, the air was so dangerous that the warning on my phone showed someone in a gas mask.

As I stood on the burned-out property of Nick Hopkins in Malua Bay last month, he summed it up perfectly, feeling two parts shattered and three parts angry.

Australians are angry and anxious because the government clearly doesn’t have the climate emergency under control and has no plan to get it under control. But people are also angry and anxious because the basics of life are no longer guaranteed.

Study hard and do Tafe or university and you get underemployed in an insecure job with low pay. You get a job and then find you can’t afford a house because the government has rigged the housing market against you.

We have a climate and environment emergency, an inequality crisis and a jobs crisis, and the government’s only answer is: “get used to it, because it is the new normal”.

Well, I refuse to adapt to kids wearing gas masks.

I refuse to accept a world where people put off having kids because they are feeling so insecure about their jobs and their future.

I refuse to accept people living below the poverty line in a country as wealthy as ours.

And I refuse to accept the dismal standard of this rotten government led by Scotty from marketing, a man whose love of coal has helped drive the climate crisis that has made these fires worse, and a Labor so-called opposition that celebrates coal in the middle of bushfires and votes with the Liberals to give tax cuts to millionaires.

We are a smart and wealthy country and if we have the guts to take on the big corporations and the weak politicians they have in their pocket, we can solve these crises. That is why we need a Green New Deal.

A Green New Deal is a government-led plan of investment and action to build a clean economy and a caring society.

The two elements of a Green New Deal – government taking the lead to create new jobs and industries, and universal services to ensure no one is left behind – are the values I have been fighting for my whole adult life.

I joined the Labor party at high school, but left in university because the ALP started making education so expensive and putting people in debt. As a lawyer, I fought big corporations on behalf of clothing outworkers and represented firefighters as well as coal workers dealing with privatisation.

And in my seat of Melbourne we have brought people together, from public housing tenants to young families with a mortgage. That’s what a Green New Deal will do too, because it solves the big challenges our country faces and provides a hopeful vision for the future that the whole country can support.

While this has been a summer of complete devastation for our country, I remain hopeful that a better, fairer, safer world is possible. By fighting for a Green New Deal, we can not only address the challenges we face today, we also have the best ever opportunity to build a more just future.

Throughout history, change has come when everyday people stand up and make their voices heard. The conservatives will do everything in their power to avoid tackling the climate emergency and the jobs and inequality crisis, so it’s up to us to shape the country we want to see. To build a future for our kids and grandkids and the generations to come after us.

Change is possible. In 2010, with the Greens in balance of power, we delivered climate legislation and the carbon price, bringing down pollution for the first time in Australian history. With a Green New Deal, we can deliver a manufacturing renaissance, turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower exporting our clean energy to the world. At the same time, as Ross Garnaut has proposed, we can process our resources and minerals in Australia and attract new business investment because of our abundance of solar energy.

And while the Greens were able to achieve dental into Medicare for 3.4 million children, with a Green New Deal we can ensure all dental is fully included under Medicare. We can make public schools genuinely free, rather than parents being lobbed with hundreds of dollars of additional fees every year.

This is the change I believe our country needs. This is the country I know is possible and this is the change I’ll be fighting for. I hope all Australians will join us in this fight.

• Adam Bandt is the leader of the Australian Greens