This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

Independent MP Zali Steggall is launching a national advertising campaign drawing on the summer bushfire crisis to rally public support for her private member’s bill on climate change, due to be introduced to parliament later this month.

The campaign will kick off on Monday and include digital billboards, and bus shelter and telephone booth advertisements across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

The ads will feature images of the destruction wreaked by the summer bushfire season, with one pointing to the experience of “one hell of a summer” and another featuring a koala in burnt bushland. The ads call for the public to support Steggall’s climate act, making the appeal that “what happens next is up to you”.

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The campaign is being funded by community climate change groups, donors of the Climate Act Now campaign and pro-bono assistance, with more than 120 “Climate Act Now” advertisements set to appear across the country this month.

Steggall is hoping to garner bipartisan support for a national climate change framework bill aimed at transitioning Australia to a decarbonised economy that is based on the UK’s Climate Change Act, passed in 2008.

The bill would put in place national plans for climate change adaption and enshrine a net-zero emissions target by 2050 to be reviewed every five years by a newly established independent climate change commission.

Steggall has been arguing that the framework legislation would take the politics out of the climate change policy debate, while putting in place an effective process for national targets, actions and reporting.

She has been lobbying both Labor and government MPs to allow a conscience vote on the legislation, and has already locked in the support of the crossbench in the lower house.

On Monday, four digital billboards will be in place in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, followed by a rotating poster advertisement campaign across the Sydney CBD and North Sydney, and in Melbourne.

Steggall said the campaign was designed to keep the legislation in the public eye, and said there was strong support coming from North Sydney and Wentworth, where moderate Liberal MPs are under pressure to do more on climate change.

“After such a horrific summer, this advertising campaign is there to remind Australians that the country needs a sensible approach to climate change,” Steggall said.

“We have received enormous support from our neighbouring electorates of Wentworth and North Sydney who want their local federal members to vote for the bill.”

So far more than 73,000 Australians have supported the climate change bill through the “Climate Act Now” website.

While the bill will be introduced when parliament next sits on 23 March, there is a risk that it will be left to languish on the notice paper without government support.

If the government refuses to allow debate on the bill in the House of Representatives after it is introduced, Centre Alliance, which is co-sponsoring the legislation, could introduce it into the Senate later in the year.

This would force Labor to declare its hand on the bill, which has so far failed to land a position, saying it will never come to a vote in the lower house.

“For Zali Steggall’s bill to be considered, Scott Morrison would need to allow a full debate in the parliament,” the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, said last month.

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As part of the campaign, B-Corp – a group that certifies businesses for making positive decisions on the community and the environment – will support the bill , backed by 16 of B-corp’s 300 registered companies.

Community groups in Wentworth and North Sydney have also funded particular advertising within their electorate.