About 50 protesters threw Parliament House into disarray on Wednesday, forcing question time to shut down for more than 20 minutes as security guards struggled to remove them.
The protest against the government’s treatment of asylum seekers began in the public gallery in the House of Representatives, with activists standing up and chanting: “Where is your moral compass? ... We will not stop until you close all the detention centres!”
The Speaker of the house, Tony Smith, was forced to postpone question time until the protesters were removed. Some of the protesters had superglued their hands to railings while others had unfurled banners.
The group, from the Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance, were the same group who disrupted a speech by Malcolm Turnbull in August.
After the protest, a member of the organisation, Samantha Castro, told journalists their motivation was the treatment of asylum seekers.
“If the government had listened to the Australian public and our request to bring [asylum seekers] here and let them stay, we wouldn’t have to take such actions,” she said.
“We’d wish that they would listen to the parliamentary inquiries, that they would listen to the Senate, that they would listen to the submissions that had been taken to the Senate, but they’re not listening.
“After years and years of inquiries and petitions, nobody’s listening so we have to take this type of direct action.”
The Turnbull government is now calling for a review of the security arrangements to Parliament House.
Christopher Pyne said he also wants a “thorough investigation” to determine if the protesters were signed in by members of parliament. The protesters said they entered as members of the public, which doesn’t require a sign-in from someone who works in the building.
“This is the most serious intrusion into the Parliament since the riots organised by the ACTU in 1996,” Pyne said after question time resumed.
“Mr Speaker, as the Speaker and as the person responsible for the House and the chamber, I would request that you conduct a thorough investigation because obviously if people are signed in from the public to the building and, in many cases to the chamber, they are signed in by a member of Parliament.
“There may well be a trial of where the miscreants who disrupted the Parliament came from, and I think it would be important to determine that.”
The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, and the immigration spokesman, Nick McKim, left the building to meet with protesters in the public carpark after the protest was over. “Well done, well done. Good on you,” Di Natale said to one protester.
“The Greens wanted to come down and express our solidarity, to say that we stand with you, and we think there are many millions of decent Australians who share your concerns.”
When asked if the Greens had helped to organise the protest, Di Natale said they hadn’t. “No we didn’t play any part in organising it,” he said.
“But we’re so proud to stand with these brave people who have given a voice to those thousands of innocent people who have come to this country doing nothing other than looking for help and refuge, at a time when we have a government who has been prepared to inflict torture and harm on innocent children and their families.”
Di Natale’s office later told Guardian Australia no one from the Greens had signed any of the protesters into the building beforehand. Protesters said they had all entered the building as members of the public.
The 50 protesters had come to Canberra in the days before, travelling from various cities including Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle.
The activist group has been running a campaign to boycott and blockade Wilson Security, the Australian corporation that holds security contracts for the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. They want to stop corporations profiteering from the detention of refugees. They also want to close the detention centres.
In 1996, the ACTU organised a barbecue on the lawns of Parliament House which resulted in a riot and the invasion of the Parliament. “Those people who were in the Parliament would remember it very well. A drunken riot,” Pyne said on Wednesday.
.jpg?w=600)
