Things have come to a pretty penny when you’re giving away money and you still get run out of town.
Yesterday, Australian PM Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan put on the worst received show since Carrie: The Musical shut down after just five performances. In Ballarat to headline the so-called ‘National Bush Summit’ and announce an extra $1bn in low-interest loans for farmers, the pair were savagely heckled before their motorcade was chased out of town by a convoy of tractors and fire trucks.
No news yet on whether Jacinta Allan will roll out Tractor Amnesty Bins to go with her machete bins.
Still Albo did manage to drop one knee-slapper:
“I won’t bullshit people,” Mr Albanese said, prompting laughter and more yelling from the crowd.
That’s almost as funny as his, ‘I’m a man of my word’ one-liner.
The rowdy reception also highlighted the yawning disconnect between inner-city green-voting suburbs that just love Albanese’s ‘Net Zero’ rollout and rural communities who have to actually live with it.
Hundreds of farmers and volunteer firefighters united in protest outside the conference on Friday morning vowing to “show the city decision-makers the strength of the bush and demand a fair go for our communities”.
A convey of about 80 trucks, tractors and utes circled the Ballarat Civic Hall where the Victorian Premier, Prime Minister and state and federal opposition leaders were due to speak.
Sadly, no-one thought to blast ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ through some loudspeakers.
The protesters rallied against the Victorian government’s controversial new Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund tax and several other government policies – including the rollout of renewables and building of transmission lines on farms – that affected regional and rural communities.
Inside the Herald Sun event, Ms Allan was forced to pause her speech multiple times due to interruptions and loud boos from some members of the crowd.
“No one wants you here,” one protester yelled.
Allan needs to talk to a proper stand-up comedian on how to handle hecklers. Instead of a reliable put-down, like, ‘Have you been drinking? Then drive home’.
“I know there are differences of views, one of the things that makes me proud in regional Victoria is that I turn up and we turn up, listen and respect each other,” Ms Allan told the crowd.
This prompted further heckling from some attendees, while others clapped in response.
The two big issues are the Victorian government’s new ‘emergency services tax’, which is just another land tax in disguise and quite the insult to rural firefighters after Allan and former premier Daniel Andrews gutted the all-volunteer Country Fire Association as a kickback to the city-based professional firefighter’s union. The second is the ‘Net Zero’ rollout, which is not just blighting rural landscapes with ugly, destructive windfarms and solar farms, but actively punishing farmers if they don’t bend over to greedy ‘renewables’ cowboys.
Ross Johns, president of the Wimmera Mallee environmental and agricultural protection association, said the government’s plan to put transmission lines and renewable energy on “good food producing land” was “strategically nuts” […]
Laws that will fine farmers who block transmission line builders from accessing their properties passed the upper house of the Victorian parliament on Thursday evening.
‘Net Zero’: yet another socialist idea so good, they have to force people to give into it.
