Peter Dutton heckled by protestors twice on first day of campaign trail

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been met by protesters on the first day of the campaign trail.

Transcript

00:00We've seen two coalition campaign events disrupted by climate activists from the group known

00:08as Rising Tide.

00:10In the first instance, Peter Dutton was touring around the 4X beer brewery in the marginal

00:16seat of Brisbane when one of these protesters managed to obtain a high-vis vest and sneak

00:23onto the factory floor where we saw them unfurling a blue flag which essentially said stop coal

00:31and gas and nuclear as well.

00:33Many of us journalists had assumed that this person was one of the press pack and they

00:38were quickly bundled out by security.

00:40In the second instance, we're again in a quite a controlled or contained environment in a

00:46Chinese restaurant in the Brisbane suburb of Sunnybank in the electorate of Moreton

00:51currently held by retiring Labor MP Graham Perrott.

00:55When again, a similar instance, we were in the dining room of this restaurant when another

01:01protester came forward unfurling a blue banner.

01:05This tactic is known as bird-dogging, it first became popular in the United States and groups

01:11such as Rising Tide have made it pretty clear that they'll be using these kinds of stunts

01:16to draw attention to environmental causes over the course of the federal election campaign.

01:23Mr Dutton today says that he wasn't perturbed by these incidents and he's happy to have

01:28a sensible conversation about the environment.

01:31I just think we have to have a mature conversation in our country about it but people who are

01:36extremists who want everything shut down tomorrow, that's not where the vast majority of Australians

01:42are and I just think there will be extremes in all of these debates.

01:46My job is to do the right thing by this country and we will make the decisions that will be

01:50of benefit to Australian consumers and Australian businesses.

01:55Energy is going to be such a crucial political flashpoint over the next five weeks in the

01:59course of the election campaign so we'll remember that at the end of last year the Coalition

02:05announced its nuclear policy whereby it will build seven publicly owned nuclear reactors

02:11with some of that nuclear power first available by the middle of next decade.

02:15Then there was a bit of a surprise or a wild card in the budget reply speech on Thursday

02:20where we learnt that Peter Dutton plans to change the way gas is used in this country

02:26and he wants Australian exporters to reserve more gas for the Australian market but there

02:32are still critical details missing about how exactly he would convince exporters to do

02:39this but we did see some groups such as steel manufacturer Blue Scope embracing this policy

02:46idea today. Ultimately we're going to continue to hear more about this energy policy. Peter

02:52Dutton did say today that energy prices would be lower under a Dutton government. He says

02:58that he does have the modelling to back that up but hasn't released it yet but we are hoping

03:03to see that over the coming weeks.