Susie O’Brien: Self-obsessed protesters do nothing to promote their cause

It’s a shame police didn’t leave protesters at the gallery attached to the Picasso canvas without food or toilet breaks to teach them a lesson.

It’s a pity the protesters who glued their hands to a Picasso painting in Melbourne on the weekend were arrested.

Police should have left them attached to the canvas at the NGV for a day or two without food or toilet breaks to teach them a lesson instead.

The couple applied glue to their hands and stuck them onto an acrylic covering over Picasso’s Massacre in Korea, before being removed by security more than an hour later.

These self-proclaimed “rebels” have already been released without charge and say they’d do it again.

One of the potty protesters, a retired teacher and grandfather of five, has already hailed the action a success on the basis of the media coverage alone.

I’m not going to name him, or the group he belongs to, because I don’t want to give them more clippings to add their file.

These self-obsessed protesters appear only concerned with raising their profile and their group’s public image, and do absolutely nothing concrete or useful to help the cause.

The group these ageing anarchists belong to wants governments to declare a climate emergency and rapidly cut emissions to zero by 2025, but all they’ve been doing is disrupting the lives of innocent people around the world.

What difference is two people gluing themselves to a priceless artwork going to make to the climate?

All it’s going to do is annoy people and make them less likely, not more likely, to support the cause.

The protesters gluing themselves to the Picasso painting in the National Gallery of Victoria.

The stunt is also likely to affect the willingness of international galleries to loan important works to Australian galleries. It was also very inconvenient for the people forced to wait an extra hour or more to get into the exhibition while the situation was handled.

In any case, Picassos are a sore point in Melbourne, given the famous daylight robbery of The Weeping Woman in 1986. Thieves who have never been caught walked in, unscrewed the painting from the wall and walked out again. They, too, were self-proclaimed terrorists – Cultural Terrorists – who were protesting against arts funding in Victoria at the time.

Far from a victimless crime, the theft caused immense harm to a lot of people.

One of the Picasso protesters said on the weekend that to be successful in his line of work, “you have to disrupt people”.

I can’t imagine one person who viewed the pointless act at the NGV on the weekend would walk away feeling determined to switch to solar heating or buy an electric car off the back of these senior strikers.

In fact, they’d look at these grey-headed groupies with their matching T-shirts and student-grade banners, and feel repulsed, not receptive.

There’s no doubt climate is finally on the agenda, with the new federal government taking targets and emissions reductions seriously.

So, the last thing we need are these middle-aged over-educated urban pests gluing themselves to things, blocking roads and spraying paint on buildings.

No longer “uncooperative crusties” – as former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called them – these are well-educated former teachers and grandparents having the time of their lives at everyone else’s expense.

The same group has been wreaking havoc in Sydney by blocking the Harbor Bridge.

In October last year they glued their feet to the road in the Adelaide CBD, ahead of the UN Climate Summit.

They could be seen giggling as police – who no doubt had better things to do – tried to remove them. Irate peak hour drivers were delayed for more than an hour.

In Aberdeen in Scotland last week members of the same mob stripped off their clothes to promote the benefits of a green economy, noting that posing in the buff is a sacrifice they’re willing to make. Looking at them is a sacrifice I’m not willing to make.

Mucking around with working people’s ability to get to work on time, or see a painting or two on the weekend, or move around their city, is selfish and shortsighted.

It’s also dangerous, with fringe elements of these groups acting like doomsday cults, and even setting themselves on fire in order to draw attention to their roster of ratbag causes.

Similar actions from one group included fiddling with the brakes of an oil tanker.

Yeah good one, that’s definitely going to get the average Brit on side! What’s next? Pouring oil on London Bridge at peak hour? Removing bolts from The Eye?

The Australian-based group says it’s planning two weeks of action in the lead-up to the Victorian state election as part of the call to end native logging and stop coal, gas and oil projects.

No doubt their protests will have nothing at all to do with any of these worthy causes but a lot to do with pissing people off.