Around 2,000 people surrounded Parliament House in Canberra last weekend wearing red and carrying banners emblazoned with the slogan Climate Emergency.
It was the first day’s sitting of Parliament for 2009 and the protestors had travelled to Canberra to let the Australian government know how angy they are about Rudd’s lack of action on climate change.
The vast majority of the 1.500 people who attended a Climate Summit at the Australian National University over the weekend were ordinary voters, not members of political groups or funded non-government organisations.
The protest went largely unreported in the press, despite stark evidence of global warming in the worst heat-wave in history, major flooding across northern Australia and significant shifts in climate policy in the United States.