QUEENSLAND’s new parliamentary year is set to begin where it finished, with farmers and fishers protesting against the Palaszczuk government.
Green Shirts Movement national coordinator Martin Bella said frustrated and angry farmers and fishers will converge on Parliament House from 1.30pm to 5pm tomorrow (Tuesday), coinciding with the first sitting day of the Queensland Parliament in 2019.
“The Green Shirts Movement is a group of farmers, fishermen and business owners not only representing themselves but all who are being crippled by the mismanagement, and poor policy from a government who appear to hold no value in the future viability of those who produce and harvest the food and fibre for the state,” Mr Bella said.
“It’s a government beholden to extreme greens who persist in peddling misinformation, their immoderate ideology and politically driven agenda.”
Mr Bella said with many in the north brought to their knees by unprecedented flooding it was up to the Green Shirts Movement to ask the questions on their behalf.
“As early as Tuesday last week, industry had hay available and had provided specific points where it was needed, yet defense force planes remained grounded,” he said.
“Serious questions need to be answered as to why the plane never left the tarmac. Surviving cattle were dying at an hourly rate, and yet again we had bureaucratic red tape delaying help, causing producers even more heartache and cattle their lives.”
Mr Bella said there were questions over the performance of Queensland’s Agricultural Minister Mark Furner, whom he said appeared to have been missing in action.
“Surely the single most devastating event to befall the cattle industry and those within it, not just in our state but the nation is worthy of some support and solidarity from the minister who is meant to represent them,” Mr Bella said.
“Now more than ever we need leaders who are willing to do what is right no matter the cost rather than pursue their own political agendas.”
Tomorrow’s rally outside Parliament House will include a street march.
Mr Bella said it was understood that extreme vegan activists, who may have been involved in disrupting the Queensland Children’s Hospital Christmas Party and storming the dolphin shows at Sea World late in 2018, planned on staging a counter protest.