Peta Credlin: Time we stopped giving handouts to these climate layabouts

The government is right to threaten law-breaking climate protesters with losing the dole. Maybe then Generation Snowflake will finally learn that bad behaviour can have serious results, writes Peta Credlin.

Good on Morrison government ministers Peter Dutton and Michaelia Cash for threatening climate protesters with losing the dole.

After all, it’s pretty hard to be looking for work while you’re supergluing yourself to a street or chaining yourself to a fence.

Most people are sick of paying for these pests three times: first, when their journeys are made longer and their days harder thanks to traffic disruption; second, through their taxes funding these layabouts; and third, through the costs of policing these now-routine “extinction rebellion” protests.

Serial pest Eric Herbert was part of a group of Extinction Rebellion cyclists that slowed down business in Brisbane last month. Picture: AAP Image/Attila Csaszar

It’s pretty hard to take seriously these activists’ emissions-obsessed demands that coal-fired power stations close and that no one eat meat when they’re utterly reliant on smartphones that need electricity and obviously have no idea where leather comes from.

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Of course, we only have one planet but it’s impossible for Australia to make a difference on our own when we’re just 1.3 per cent of global emissions and China and India, the first and fourth biggest emitters respectively, are hungry for our coal to give their people the cheap and reliable electricity that Australians used to be able to take for granted.

A climate change protester is removed by Police during a demonstration on Princess Bridge, Melbourne. Picture: AAP Image/James Ross

But I suppose a generation that’s never had to fight a war, never known a recession or any serious want, that’s mostly been able to put off going to work until well into their 20s, and that can often take semipermanent parental support for granted, needs something to give life a purpose.

It’s just a shame their virtue-signalling comes at such a cost to every Australian copping their self-righteousness.

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If the government can curtail the cash going to these law-breakers, Generation Snowflake might finally start to learn that bad behaviour can have serious consequences.

And if they turn more and more voters off climate activism, for our economic future that can only be a good thing.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights from 6pm.