Climate protests across the country continued on the second day following the announcement of the Federal Government’s emission reduction targets. Whilst there was no shortage of frustration and anger, the Climate Movement also displayed an impressive degree of creativity.

Actions took place at the electoral offices of MPs and Cabinet Ministers in NSW and Victoria, including Lindsay Tanner, Peter Garret, Tania Plibersek, Nicola Roxon, Martin Ferguson.

Rallies were held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, with hundreds taking part.

At Rudd’s Brisbane office, protesters raised a white flag, scorning the government’s surrender on climate change and ridiculing the government’s targets. In the electoral seat of Batman, twenty protesters sandbagged Martin Ferguson’s (locked and vacated) office in preparation of the coming climate emergency. Similar actions were held in Lindsay Tanner and Nicola Roxon’s offices.

In Adelaide, around 100 community members have pelted a man dressed as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with their shoes on the steps of Parliament House. Around 30 people, some dressed up as coral and sea creatures performed the last dance of the Great Barrier Reef at Garrett’s office, dancing around an oversized papier-Mache Peter Garrett head to Midnight Oil music.

Student, environment and community organisations blockaded government offices in Sydney, holding rallies outside the Federal Government Offices in Phillip St and at Labor MP Plibersek’s office in Surry Hills. Another 100 gathered outside Parliament House in the national capital Canberra. The several hundred protesters who gathered in Perth were handed carbon credits to symbolise the $4 billion dollars worth of free permits to the nation’s largest polluters and the transfer of wealth from Australian taxpayers to the same corporations who are known to be the worst climate criminals.

And in Tasmania, the stakes were raised as fifteen activists from the Still Wild, Still Threatened action group stormed the Gunns woodchip mill at Triabunna to express their anger over the Federal Government’s “pitiful” targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Seven chained themselves to equipment, halting production at the mill.

The Tasmanian action highlighted the role played by corporations, and their complicity with the government’s targets outlined in the white paper. In the press release, Huon Valley Environment Centre spokesperson Warrick Jordan drew the links between climate change and the decimation of Tasmanian forests by “climate criminal - Gunns”:

“The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper makes it plain that the Federal ALP is not committed to ’serious and credible’ emissions reductions. There is a failure by policy makers to grasp that we are facing a climate emergency – the policies proposed by the White Paper will result in the disappearance of Tasmania’s unique alpine ecosystems, the collapse of the Barrier Reef, and the salination of Kakadu. “

The Tasmanian action is the first protest against Rudd’s targets that has involved arrests, so far.

Today’s actions follow on from yesterday, when members of the climate movement have protested at Rudd’s annoucement of a 5% target, rallied outside Penny Wong’s office in Adelaide, and stepped-in to Kevin Rudd’s electoral office in Queensland.

These ongoing acts of dissent will culminate in February, when the climate action groups from across the continent converge at Australia’s Climate Action Summit in Canberra in February 2009.  Organisers have encouraged all of the people involved in the protest actions around the country to be part of a huge community action on the 1st day of the second year of the Rudd Government  - to put climate change at the very top of the Rudd Government’s agenda.

More information is available at www.climatesummit.org.au