These protesters are just spoilt brats wasting our time
Anti-Adani protesters are deluded. Someone tell them the war is over — the mine is approved. Wake up, get a job and stop wasting the time of people who actually contribute to our society, writes Peter Gleeson.
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His name was Hiroo Onoda. He was a Japanese Army intelligence officer in World War II who spent 29 years hiding out in the Philippines, refusing to surrender.
Onoda finally “surrendered’’ only when the Emperor ordered his former commander to travel from Japan to the Philippines to relieve him of his duty.
For anti-Adani rebels, the Onoda reference is timely.
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Extinction Rebellion — the poor misguided souls championing the Adani protests — continue to wage a jihad on Brisbane commuters, disrupting the CBD in their quest to stop the mine.
This week, they posted on Facebook that their actions needed to be “like those enacted in times of war’’. They are conducting workshops on how to exact maximum disruption on law-abiding citizens.
But like Onoda, the anti-Adani movement are refusing to accept that the war is over. Just as atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki sealed the fate of the Japanese, Queensland’s Palaszczuk Government has ended the conflict over the future of the Adani coal mine. After the federal election drubbing for the Labor Party, the Palaszczuk Government quickly sorted out the environmental obstacles it had put in Adani’s way before the May 18 poll.
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Miraculously, the plan to preserve the black-throated finch was approved.
So too was the drama centred around groundwater management.
Despite Deputy Premier Jackie Trad’s assertions that coal mining was on the way out and workers should start to re-skill, her government embraced the Adani project, with the white-hot blowtorch of electoral disaster a prescient reminder of people power.
Which brings us back to protesters, those who once again disrupted traffic, marching through the streets of Brisbane during Thursday morning peak-hour traffic.
The protests are now becoming common.
Friday’s planned disruption will be the fourth in three weeks, and police seem powerless, or unwilling, to stop them. Eco-warrior chiefs have even taken the extraordinary step of publishing the mobile phone numbers of company senior executives who are working with Adani.
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They are urging followers to ring or text the CEOs to let them know of their disapproval of their actions. What arrogance. What a hide.
Let’s be clear about these protesters. They are a disgrace. Their selfish, conceited, misguided actions are a poor reflection on not only themselves, but their families.
Their mums and dads should be ashamed. My criticism is not about their right to protest. I couldn’t care less how they spent their valuable time on this planet.
My beef is with their tactics. Stay in your own lane. Let others in this city go about their business without having to cop disruptive crap from spoiled little brats, who won’t or can’t accept the umpire’s decision.
Go get a job. Play a sport. Do something with your life. Contribute. And for goodness’ sake, can the judiciary please get fair dinkum with these twerps and start throwing them into jail, rather than giving them slaps on the wrist?
Why isn’t the judiciary recording convictions? It would stop these loonies from travelling overseas giving Australians a bad name. It might make them think twice about playing politics with people’s lives.
I hope a magistrate or judge got caught in a traffic jam yesterday and missed the start of court. Maybe only then will they start imposing sentences that reflect community expectations on these losers.
Hiroo Onoda spent 29 years in denial, wasting a good chunk of his life because he was brainwashed into believing that the Japanese would rule the world.
To those inconvenienced by these protests, feel free to let the marchers know the Adani war is over. It’s time for them to come down from the jungle and put the white flag up.
Peter Gleeson is a columnist with The Sunday Mail and The Courier-Mail and a Sky News presenter.
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