“A culture of fear”: Bushfire survivor tells Senate inquiry how climate misinformation fuels trauma and silences voices
Published Nov 15, 2025
“I’m a Black Summer bushfire survivor, and my family home burned to the ground outside of Taree on the eighth of November 2019,” she told senators. “We lost our home with about 1.4 degrees of warming, and I’m very fearful of what the bushfire seasons will look like when my young child is my age.”
This fear — and a determination to protect others — is why Lee joined Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA) and began speaking publicly. But from the moment she did she became a target not of debate, but of sustained online abuse.
“It’s become an unbelievable part of life for me and people who speak up, and it feels pretty targeted and relentless.”
Lee described social media comment threads filled with taunts, fabricated claims, climate-denial conspiracies and strings of laughing emojis — “the laziest way to troll”, as BSCA put it in their submission — but devastating in effect when deployed on posts about someone’s loss.
“I tolerate this, but I don’t think I should have to… I don’t expect to be abused and met with untrue information, cruel comments, conspiracy theories and outright denial of the role that climate change played in the disaster that destroyed our home.”
“These attacks compound our trauma, silence people and create a culture of fear.”
“When I go on social media and I see hundreds of comments… calling me names and flat out denying climate change is happening, it’s obviously really hurtful.”
Image provided by Fiona Lee