In Canberra today over 3,000 people went out of their way, coming in on 30 buses from more than 1000 km away, to let Julia Gillard know that Australians do not want her Carbon Tax. The news made every major broadcast for several minutes. Protesters were referred to as “climate skeptics” (mostly).
Other rallies around Australia got hundreds of people even though they were organized in a hurry, with no advertising, and with no pre-formed coalition of networked groups. There was a very good crowd at the Perth rally on a hot day during business hours, and one heckler (John Brookes). The mood was striking.
This is random shoe-string grassroots action at the last minute and look what it can achieve. It’s just beginning.
The photo gallery at the Australian makes it clear how decidedly normal most people were and what their main messages are.
This is mainstream Australia rising up, yet already the Big-Green-PR machine is at work, doing all it can to deny the undeniable. As I drove home in Perth after our rally, ABC news-radio didn’t mention that 3,000 people had gathered, nor that protests had happened all over the country, they may have said that earlier, but all I heard was how Tony Abbot was under a “cloud” for having spoken at a rally with “extremists” — The Telegraph headlined it too. Labor MP Nick Champion, Labor Party backbencher, gets press time for for his free shot at calling them “extremists“. It’s just another form of name-calling, and if the media had any standards they would not propagate the namecalling without demanding he substantiate it. (Do write and tell me if any journalist asked Champion to explain why it’s extreme to ask for major policies to be put to an election first, or why we ought to expect some achievable outcome when we pay billions — other than earning brownie-points for the UN). Does the word “extreme” mean anything?
Bill Bard says…
Aussi anti carbon tax rallies. ‘good on em’
Thousands of protestors are challenging Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s, “undemocratic” climate policies demanding either an immediate election or that her government drops all such proposals. They say imposing the taxes would be a betrayal of democratic principles because Gillard was elected with no mandate to raise any such taxes.
Speaking at the event will be leading MPs and scientists opposed to climate taxes. In response one Government Minister (Albanese) labeled the rally participants as ‘ratbags.’
A press release by organizer, Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition (March 23, 2011) announces that 22 diverse associations representing tens of thousands of Aussies will put the Gillard government’s environmental tax policies to the test. The Carbon Sense Coalition claims “thousands of Australians all over the country have signed a letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard opposing the carbon tax.”
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