Opinion: If Jonathan Sri is angry about protesting, how about he stops?
Maverick Greens councillor Jonathan Sri says he’s got better things to do than organise early morning pro-refugee protests. Here’s a thought, writes Kylie Lang.
Opinion
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Hey Jonathan Sri, if you’re so angry about organising protests to highlight the plight of asylum seekers, here’s an idea: Don’t.
Get back to your real job, remember the one that involves you representing the interests of ratepayers in your Gabba ward?
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Roads, rates and rubbish might not float your refugee-carrying boat, but it’s what you are being paid to do.
That 45.6 per cent of residents voted for you outright in the last elections, and you only retained your seat on the strength of a swing, would indicate that more than half of the people you technically stand for reckon you’re not much chop.
We’re talking ratepayers in West End, South Brisbane, Highgate Hill, East Brisbane, Woolloongabba, Dutton Park and, last but not least, Kangaroo Point, where businesses are being damaged because you and your activists care more about 120 foreigners in a hotel than the majority interests you should be serving.
Leading a protest in Brisbane’s CBD this morning, Cr Sri said he was angry that he had to organise protests, and that people who were mad at protesters should direct their anger towards the Federal Government.
“I don’t think that I should have to get up this early to come outside Parliament House to protest, I’ve got council soon; I have things to do this morning,” he said.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, particularly after being slammed by bleeding hearts who claimed to have read my last column on this subject but clearly didn’t – or couldn’t – I am not against the plight of the asylum seekers.
Spending more than seven years in a hotel without the prospect of release does not seem at all fair.
But my beef with people like Sri and militants who brazenly threaten to shut down bridges, streets and anything else they please to create “maximum disruption” and endorse “mass civil disobedience” is that they’re way out of line.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
This morning, 100 protesters staged a sit-in outside Queensland’s Parliament House and then marched through the city to try to make a point, chanting “no hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” while also blocking traffic.
It followed uglier scenes on the weekend when police – who were told to get royally f---ed by these reprobates – charged six people, including two who glued themselves to Walmsley St in Kangaroo Point. What a waste of good acetone.
The charges included disobeying a direction, public nuisance and disrupting traffic.
Had heavy rain not fallen, there could have been way more of these selfish sods instead of the few hundred who had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon.
The State Government successfully sought a Supreme Court injunction last Thursday to prevent the planned march, but the protesters went ahead regardless, because their ‘rights’ apparently supersede the law.
And never mind the small matter of a pandemic and COVID-safe rules to keep Queenslanders safe and protect our hard-won public health.
If Cr Sri thinks for a second that his lame suggestion that people who are annoyed by the protests take it up with the Federal Government, he’s more deluded than I thought.
The protests are doing nothing for the cause they are allegedly meant to serve and instead just creating chaos and division.
When Cr Sri says, “I don’t think I should have to get up this early to come outside Parliament House to protest, I’ve got council soon, I have things to do this morning”, that could well be the only smart thing he’s said all year.