Crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm has had a run-in with performers from a satirical group called the Flat Earth Institute outside a Melbourne hearing of a Senate inquiry into windfarms.
Leyonhjelm told the performers, who were dressed in medieval outfits as a way of highlighting what they say are parliamentarians’ backwards attitudes on renewables, to “fuck off”.
“I am much relieved that telling citizen theatre performers to fuck off is no longer on my bucket list,” Leyonhjelm told Guardian Australia.
The two street performers, La Trobe University academic Liz Conor and Phil Evans from Friends of the Earth, appear amused at the senator’s proclamation.
“We proudly endorseth senator Leyonhjelm’s inquisition into wind energy. It buildeth on our legacy of denying enlightenment and excelling at witch-hunts,” Professor Greenhausen, Conor’s Flat Earth Institute pseudonym, said in a written statement.
“We presumeth that ‘fuck off’ is the customary greeting in the 21st century.”
The statement then took aim at inquiry chair, independent senator John Madigan.
“As senator Madigan hath stated ‘Submarines are the spaceships of the oceans’. Ye satanic windmills are verily heathen science bequeathed by snollygosters that fail to honour the old ways and displeaseth the coal gods,” it said.
Conor, an academic at La Trobe University in Melbourne, later told Guardian Australia that the language from Leyonhjelm was “not what you would expect from the bearer of public office”, but noted that the Liberal Democrat has a history of colourful language.
“If Senator Leyonhjelm wants the wind inquiry to have any credibility, he’ll have to do more than clean up his language,” Friends of the Earth’s renewable energy spokesperson Leigh Ewbank said.
Conservationists have criticised the inquiry into wind turbines, which they say is a front for anti-renewables politicians to air their unfounded concerns on the energy source.
