Climate activists crash $3000-a-head Liberal fundraiser

Anti-nuclear climate activists have crashed another Liberal Party event, infiltrating a $3000-a-head fundraiser.

Liberal leader Peter Dutton in Albion, Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen.

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Anti-nuclear climate activists have crashed another Liberal Party event, infiltrating a $3000-a-head fundraiser following Peter Dutton’s budget reply on Thursday night.

The disruption was the third in just over a week, with activists from a group known as Rising Tide interrupting a press conference by opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor and a speech by the Coalition leader at the Lowy Institute eight days ago.

However, the latest staged protest raises questions over the funds raised and spent by the group, given a ticket to the fundraiser at the upstairs conference room of Realm Hotel cost thousands of dollars.

Several MPs and stakeholders who attended the event confirmed that an activist – which The Australian can confirm was former consultant John Wurcker – had been seated among guests before standing and attaching himself to a TV screen projecting Mr Dutton’s speech, interjecting to yell about the “lies” being spread over nuclear energy.

The interruption was filmed by a second activist and posted on the group’s social media pages.

“The Coalition’s nuclear scheme is in stark contrast to traditional conservative values of free markets,” Mr Wurcker, who has worked for firms such as PriceWaterhouse and GHD, said. “Even Liberal Party members are campaigning against their own party, because they see how ridiculous it is to be spending $600bn on a government-owned energy scheme that will actually put energy prices up.

“This makes absolutely no ­financial sense and it won’t do anything to fix the cost of living crisis or the climate crisis.”

The statement by Mr Wurcker was shared with The Australian by Solutions for Climate Australia, run by Barry Trail, and which describes itself as an ­initiative of the Climate Action Network.

According to analysis of Meta ads, Solutions for Climate Australia spent more than $50,000 on ads associated with the election or politics in the past week, including a post that declares “power from Australian sun and wind can’t be taken from us and isn’t impacted by overseas ­conflicts”.

“We need to invest in national energy freedom with more power from Australian sun and wind,” the post said.

Solutions for Climate Australia has spent more than $1.1m since 2020 boosting similar posts, as well as critiques of the ­Coalition.

When asked which entities or donors bankrolled Rising Tide, the group’s secretary, Shaun Murray, would not say.

And, despite having secured a seat for one of the protesters at the Liberal event on Thursday, Mr Murray also said Rising Tide would never donate money to the Coalition.

As part of its post on social media with the vision of the protest, Rising Tide called Mr Dutton a “racist, transphobic, nuclear-loving climate denier”.

“The Liberal Party acolytes may have jeered these courageous activists out of their schmooze fest, but we know who is on the right side of history,” the caption read.

Rising Tide has come under fierce scrutiny in recent months after its members entered the Port of Newcastle on kayaks and rafts last year to blockade the coal port.