Woman’s VERY sinister protest as Anthony Albanese is shouted down and drowned out at farming summit
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been heckled by protesters at a rural summit, with one woman leaping to her feet while holding a noose around her neck and the words ‘Vic Farmers’ on her t-shirt.
The Labor leader was addressing the Herald Sun’s Bush Summit at Ballarat in regional Victoria on Friday morning when the question-and-answer session turned ugly.
The PM took a question from the audience about whether the government would protect regional communities in the push for a net-zero future driven by renewable energy projects.
‘There are a couple of things that we have to recognise. One is that there hasn’t been a new coal-fired power station begun this century,’ Albanese told the audience.
‘That’s just the truth, and there hasn’t been any regulations stopping that. There is still nothing stopping that. Now if someone wants to build a coal-fired power station, they can go and do it.’
But the PM was briefly cut off by multiple angry crowd members who began to jeer.
‘It hasn’t happened because the market has determined that it doesn’t stack up,’ Albanese continued, triggering more heckles from the audience.
‘We do need energy, and the cheapest form of new energy is renewables,’ Albanese said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been heckled by protesters at a rural summit, with one woman holding a noose around her neck and the words ‘Vic Farming’ on her t-shirt
One man in the audience hollered: ‘We don’t want it!’, while a woman wearing a white t-shirt with the words ‘Vic Farmers’ on it jumped up, holding a noose around her neck.
Albanese continued: ‘The second point I’ll make is that climate change, the science told us that climate change was real.’
The summit moderator called for calm, telling the audience they would have to stop if they did not quieten down.
Albanese told the crowd that net zero was adopted by the Morrison government but he did admit that regional communities should have been better consulted about the government’s push for renewable energy projects.
‘People need to be treated with respect and that is what I am doing through my presence here, and I’ll continue to engage, but I won’t bulls*** people,’ Albanese added.
This triggered another flurry of heckles but Albanese ploughed on.
The moderator thanked him for ‘fronting up’ in ‘hostile territory’.
One man in the audience hollered: ‘We don’t want it!’, while a woman wearing a white t-shirt with the words ‘Vic Farmers’ on it jumped up, holding a noose around her neck (pictured)
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan received an even more brutal reception, with the crowd heckling so much she was forced to stop on multiple occasions.
‘No one wants you here,’ one attendee yelled.
The Prime Minister was also met with protesters outside the summit, with a large tractor carrying a sign that read ‘weak leader = weak country’ and ‘have your power bills gone down, no’.
The PM announced that farmers who have been hit by floods and drought will have access to an extra $11 billion in low-interest loans.
He said the new Regional Investment Corporation loan scheme was about helping farmers to manage cost pressures and ‘free up cash flow so they can continue producing the products we all rely on’.
