Protesters scale flagpoles of Parliament House
GREENPEACE activists who scaled flagpoles outside Parliament House this morning have come down to be slapped with a 12-month ban.
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GREENPEACE activists scaled the flagpoles outside Parliament House this morning to mount a banner urging Prime Minister Scott Morrison to “get your hands off it”.
The banner depicted the new Prime Minister holding a lump of coal in Parliament House during Question Time last year.
Several Australian Federal Police officers converged on the site shortly after two activists climbed the flag poles at about 7.30am this morning.
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The pair sat in harnesses up the poles for the next three hours as fellow Greenpeace protesters circled Parliament House in trucks bearing their anti-coal message and farmers ravaged by drought held a simultaneous protest calling on MPs to do more to tackle climate change.
The two protests come as Parliament resumes today for the first time since last month’s leadership coup to oust Malcolm Turnbull.
The duo in harnesses came down peacefully of their own volition before 10.45am.
A Greenpeace spokesman confirmed to News Corp Australia the duo were taken by AFP officers into Parliament House but have now been released.
They received a 12-month ban from Parliament House for this morning’s protest.
Earlier, Greenpeace spokeswoman Dominique Rowe told News Corp the two protesters were aware they faced possible trespass charges for scaling the flag poles and said they were “happy to take the risk”.
She said there were bigger distractions in Parliament at the moment than her colleagues.
“We need a sensible climate policy and we haven’t been able to get that through because the people in that building have been squabbling over things that really don’t matter to Australia or the Australian people,” she said.
She said police liaison officers had politely asked the protesters to come down.
Our activists are at parliament house sending a message to Scott Morrison on his first day since becoming PM: Get your hand off coal, Prime Minister! Stand with them >> https://t.co/wHQzXsOpPN #resist #coalcoup #auspol pic.twitter.com/nNBdRdm9Yb
— Greenpeace Aus Pac (@GreenpeaceAP) September 9, 2018
A second protest by farmers out the front of Parliament House ended at 10am.
The farmers flocked to Canberra to protest the lack of action on climate change.
A convoy of utes and trucks circled Parliament with protest signs that screamed ‘Break the drought on climate action’, ‘No new coal mines’, ‘Farmers on the front lines’ and ‘Policy change - not leaders’.
The group was honking their horns loudly to attract attention as the media flocked to the site.
Thousands of Greenpeace supporters raised $45,000 in four days to help the protesters bring three trucks with anti-coal banners to Canberra, where they were driving loops around Parliament House this morning.
‘Coal is killing our democracy - resist’ the banners on the trucks read.
“Two weeks ago we saw a coal coup that successfully installed a new Prime Minister,” Ms Rowe said in a statement to reporters.
“This is a PM who waved around a piece of coal gifted to him by the Minerals Council, who boasts a former deputy CEO of the Mineral Council as his chief of staff, who made a former mineral industry lawyer his environment minister and whose energy minister is an anti-wind farm activist.”
“Today he returns to Parliament with literally no climate policy, which is a slap in the face to the 96 per cent of Australians who want renewable energy solutions, not coal pollution.
“This irreverent message from the more than one million Greenpeace supporters is here to remind the government who they’re really accountable to - their voters.”
Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for federal parliamentarians to examine the influence of coal lobby in politics.
“Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has stated it is impossible for the current government to take meaningful action on emissions due to the influence of lobby groups on parts of the federal coalition,” Ms Rowe said.
“These powerful groups have now managed to topple three sitting prime ministers and stopped the Minerals Resource Rent Tax which would have seen a fair share of revenue flow to all Australians instead of lining the pockets of a few billionaires.
“The coal industry and their lobbyists have taken over Parliament House and the people of Australia will not stand for it.”
Last year, several activists escaped jail time or serious penalties for scaling Parliament House itself in a protest over refugees’ treatment in offshore detention.
Originally published as Protesters scale flagpoles of Parliament House
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