Climate protesters thumbing noses at taxpayers: Peter Dutton

Peter Dutton lashes activists who brought chaos to cities across the nation as fringe-dwellers.

Peter Dutton lashed climate change activists. Picture: Gary Ramage

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has lashed climate change protesters who brought chaos to cities across the nation this week as anarchists and fringe-dwellers “thumbing their noses” at the taxpayer.

In an interview with 2GB on Thursday, Mr Dutton said the protesters had become a “major issue” and called on Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to tighten laws by introducing minimum mandatory sentencing for protesters.

Extinction Rebellion activist Eric Herbert (centre) in a protest outside 1 Williams Street, Brisbane. Picture: AAP.

Mr Dutton said the protesters “didn’t believe in democracy” and would continue to disrupt the community if kept being “given a slap on the wrist or words of encouragement from the magistrate.”

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The Home Affairs minister said Queensland police had more important issues to worry about such as domestic violence and encouraged officers to recoup the financial cost they had incurred by trying to keep the protests at bay.

“The police need to take civil action against these individuals, they need to recover the full cost of the police response to these individuals, and they need to enforce this by the courts,” Mr Dutton said.

He said the protesters did not believe in democracy and doubled-down on his calls to scrap their welfare payments.

Eric Herbert from Extinction Rebellion is escorted by police.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash opened the door to cancelling government payments after an activist described herself as a “full-time protester”. Senator Cash told 2GB “taxpayers should not be expected to subsidise the protests of others.”

“Protesting is not, and never will be, an exemption from a welfare recipients obligation to look for a job,” Senator Cash said. “If they’re on welfare and they’re choosing to protest, as opposed to attending a job interview, the answer is yes the system can identify them.”

Asked about Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally’s calls for the Morrison government to address the increasing number of asylum seekers arriving by plane, he slammed Labors concerns as “nonsense and a juvenile argument.”

Mr Dutton said every time he had sought to tighten immigration laws, Labor had opposed the move.

“If they think there is an area where we could toughen up the laws I would be happy to hear about it,” he said.

Liberal senator Eric Abetz also weighed in on the protest action telling Sky News Extinction Rebellion should be renamed “Extreme Rebel” as they had behaved in a way that was detrimental to their cause.

“The behavior is in a manner that I think that turns off the vast bulk of Australians, what they are doing is an injustice to their own cause,” Senator Abetz said. “Demonstrate by all means, but do so without inconveniencing your fellow citizens.”

When asked whether there were similarities between the climate protest and that of Israel Folau, as both instances had seen the defence of a cause “disrupt” work places, Senator Abetz defended the rugby star.

“I believe that people ought to have the capacity to have freedom of expression, such as Izzy Folau should have,” he said. “Similarly, those that want to believe in Extinction Rebellion, they similarly can put forward their point of view, but you don’t do that by disallowing people from going about their normal commute”.