Loud Australians make a truckin’ big noise

Pauline Hanson climbs down from the tractor she drove to the front door of Parliament House on Monday. Picture: Kym Smith

Not with a whimper but with a bang, the Loud Australians ­arrived and they weren’t afraid to work blue.

“I don’t need sex, the government f..ks me every day,” screamed the sticker on one of the hundreds of trucks doing laps around Parliament House.

Of course, not to be confused with Malcolm Turnbull’s we-­cannot-be-quiet-on-climate-change-Australians that the former prime minister called for during his $75-a-head cocktail party at an exclusive Sydney Harbour yacht club last week.

The more than 3000 who came in this Canberra Convoy had two wishes — can the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and secure a scalp (preferably Water Minister David Littleproud or Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s with a pun).

“Federal government Little to be Proud of,” read one sign. “Hey hey, ho ho, Littleproud has got to go,” said a second. “Lazy Sussan” was a stretch, but not worse than the effigy of the ministers with a hammer and sickle being carried around in a metal bin.

Strapped to hay bales, this message was from one messiah to another: “Hey ScoMo, it’s God here, fix the water.”

Unlike Morrison they weren’t prepared to wait quietly for a miracle. Equipped with tents and BBQs, they plan to camp out overnight to make sure they are heard. “MDBP a no-brainer. It’s not bloody working, wake-up!”

Rock music blared across the lawns and a hearse arrived with a “bury the basin plan” coffin, to hammer home the Hades message. Failing that, how about Pauline Hanson driving a tractor?

In the afternoon, they took things up a notch. In numbers ne’er before seen in the Senate public galleries, resplendent in Driza-Bone, the Loud Australians went to listen to Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie in question time. “As an Agriculture Minister who fails to help her agriculture, whether on her own account or due to her party, is by any definition, a failure. Will you resign?” One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts asked, to boisterous cheers and applause. “Order! Order in the galleries,” Senate president Scott Ryan shouted.

“F..king useless,” a protester interjected in a moment of quiet.

“Please remove that gentleman, attendants,” Ryan decreed, not willing to tolerate Loud Australian interjections.

Finally, McKenzie took to her feet to disappoint.

“No, Senator Roberts, I won’t be resigning,” she ventured before the heckling drowned her out.

“Corrupt!” one man said. “You’re pretty brave from down there,” another shouted.

The president attempted to control the crowd, with the tolerance of a schoolteacher just days away from Christmas break.

“Are you going to have the courage to own up, or are you going to hide behind …? All right, can we please remove the gentleman? This is not appropriate. He’s utterly inappropriate. It is completely disrespectful to your fellow citizens to behave that way.”

The mob then blocked the front door of parliament as Hanson appeared driving a tractor.

“Sussan Ley is MIA,” they chanted. No one had the heart to tell them they were incorrectly pronouncing the minister’s surname — as lay instead of lee — to make the rhyme work.