Petter Dutton calls for protesters to pay for cost of policing rallies
Peter Dutton calls for protesters to be charged for policing their rallies as the PM flags a crack down.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has called for protesters to be charged for the cost of policing their rallies.
Speaking after Melbourne CBD was disrupted by climate activists for three days in a row, Mr Dutton said that, while the federal government was looking at new laws to crack down on activist protesters, state governments should charge them for the cost of police resources deployed to the disruptions.
“We don’t have 150 police just sitting around in Melbourne or Brisbane or Sydney waiting to respond to these people who spontaneously pull these stunts together. These police are being diverted away from other activities. There should be a price to pay for that.”
Mr Dutton told Nine’s Today Show on Friday that many climate protesters “don’t believe in democracy”.
“It is not about the ability to protest. These people are completely against our way of life. So I think the Prime Minister is dead right in saying that these people can protest peacefully as many people do. But the disruption that they seek to cause, the disharmony that they seek to sew within our society is unacceptable,” Mr Dutton said.
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Mr Dutton spoke as Scott Morrison flagged new laws to crack down on activist protesters who target mining businesses, declaring “absolutist environmentalism is testing the limits of the right to protest”.
The Prime Minister will use a speech to the Queensland Resources Council in Brisbane on Friday to attack the “new breed of radical activism” which he will say is putting mining and other key industries at risk.
“The right to protest does not mean there is an unlimited licence to disrupt people’s lives and disrespect your fellow Australians,” Mr Morrison will say.
“There is also a related and co-ordinated campaign to disrupt the commercial operations of resource companies, by trespassing on their property, by vandalising property or by delaying construction of essential infrastructure. There is no place for economic sabotage dressed up as activism.
“But there is a third, even more worrying development. An escalating trend towards a new form of secondary boycotts. This is a trend with potentially serious consequences for our economy. Environmental groups are targeting businesses and firms who provide goods or services to firms they don’t like, especially in the resources sector.”
The Prime Minister’s tough language will come as “Extinction Rebellion” protesters have disrupted city commuters, while climate protesters this week blockaded a mining conference in Melbourne.
Mr Morrison will say his government would not allow the issue to go unchecked, warning the boycotts could extend to the agriculture sector and airlines.
“Together with the Attorney-General, we are working to identify mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten the livelihoods of fellow Australians, especially in rural and regional areas, and especially here in Queensland. We will take our time to get it right, but be assured we are on the job,” he will say.
Mr Morrison will say the mining, agriculture and gas production sectors produce more than 70 per cent of Australia’s export income, and will lash Labor for “abandoning” the industries.
“Sectors that invariably rely on the industry and enterprise of blue collar workers. Sectors that have been abandoned by the political party that was founded in regional Australia to represent blue collar workers,” he will say.
“Labor’s deputy leader Richard Marles recently conceded that traditional Labor voters felt the party looked down on blue-collar workers, especially in the coal-mining regions of northern and central Queensland.
“I wonder where they got that impression. After all, it was Mr Marles himself who said the collapse of the coal industry would be a good thing.”
Protesters said they wouldn’t be deterred from blockading the event next year if the government tried to crack down on them.
Protest spokeswoman Emma Black said they “won’t be deterred” and, if anything, activists were emboldened by Mr Morrison’s comments.
.Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles said the protesters were “absolutely indulgent” and flagged the potential for bipartisan support of a legal crackdown.
“These are people who are not actually about a cause. They’re about engaging in a personal experience at the expense of Australians, in this case Victorians trying to get on with their lives,” Mr Marles told Today.
“We will have a look at whatever the government is putting forward. But I think the starting point is to see whether or not this government can actually act on the laws that it already has in place.”
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