Warren Ebert channels Trump as he tries to unseat Albanese, Labor

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A new politically loaded T-shirt made its national debut at chief minister Lia Finocchiaro’s Year of Action speech in Darwin on Monday morning.

Property entrepreneur Warren Ebert, who owns multiple Darwin assets including Casuarina Square shopping centre, had a front-row seat at the chief minister’s speech, where he wore the T-shirt out of Queensland for the first time.

Emblazoned with ‘Energise Australia Vote for Peter Dutton’ at the front and ‘Make Albo Go Away’ on the back, Warren Ebert also has caps on order similar to Donald Trump’s famous MAGA headwear.

Mr Ebert is a friend and neighbour of the federal opposition leader’s, and a strong supporter of Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Price.

Warren Ebert’s MAGA T-shirt

He said the removal of the long serving Labor government in Queensland had been a relief for the state, and there had been a noticeable change in the NT since the Country Liberal Party’s landslide win over Labor in last August’s Territory election.

“Labor are destroying the place,” Mr Ebert said.

And from the front.

“Whether Labor like it or not, businesspeople just don’t have any confidence under them.

“We heard from a commercial property finance executive we deal with who went to Casuarina Square a few weeks after the NT election who couldn’t believe the change in attitude.

”All his bank’s clients were wanting to put on staff and grow their business, just due to the change in government.”

Citing another example, he claimed a manufacturing company in Townsville which was a Sentinel tenant had closed after 40 years of operation with 200 job losses due to Labor renewable energy policies.

“They had to close because of the cheap renewable energy,” he said.

“Because of this they couldn’t operate in the afternoons. The staff who lost their jobs had an average tenure of more than 20 years.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

Sentinel has a $2bn national commercial property portfolio with a massive investment in northern Australia.

As well as Casuarina Square it owns the CasCom centre, the Palmerston Herbarium, Wishart industrial precinct, Jacana House and is in the market to buy Darwin Port.

In a 2019 NT News interview, Mr Sentinel outlined one of the reasons he was buying up big in Darwin.

“We look at locations when the market’s not very good, and I think most people up here know the economy in the Northern Territory isn’t too good, so that’s when we come to buy,” he said.

“Darwin has been at the bottom probably longer than I expected, probably longer than most expected but I think it’s ready to go up.”

The company has security and layout upgrades planned for Casuarina Square this year totalling in excess of $20m.

Sentinel’s portfolio also includes property in Mackay, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Townsville, Cairns and Newcastle.

The Prime Minister’s office was contacted for comment.

Originally published as Warren Ebert channels Trump as he tries to unseat Albanese, Labor