A 30-hour protest at the world's largest coal port is underway, with protestors using kayaks and floats to block the shipping channel into the Port of Newcastle. The Minerals Council of New South Wales says they don't oppose people rallying, but want to ensure it remains safe and legal, and have stressed the importance of coal mining to this area and the entire state.
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00:00 Hundreds of people have assembled their kayaks and their floats and headed out onto the water
00:07 behind me.
00:08 I'm currently at the entrance of the shipping channel which leads into the port of Newcastle.
00:14 On any other day, this area looks very different.
00:18 You often see boats and vessels passing through here and notably the massive bulk carrier
00:23 ships that are carting coal in and out of here.
00:26 But today, instead, there are hundreds of individual colourful kayaks which in their
00:31 masses are blocking this channel.
00:34 The people here today are protesting the exportation of coal from this port.
00:39 The port of Newcastle plays a crucial role when it comes to energy creation.
00:44 It connects to the coal mines of the Hunter Valley, a very historic coal mining area up
00:50 there and then the coal gets carted to here and sent out overseas.
00:54 So this area is very, very important.
00:58 More than 150 million tonnes of coal gets exported from here each year.
01:04 And so protesters hope that by getting out on the water and blocking the channel, they'll
01:07 have their voices and their concerns heard.
01:10 Any tension between fossil fuel workers and climate concerned Australians, you know, at
01:14 the end of the hottest year in 100,000 years is the product of the fossil fuel industry.
01:19 They pay millions and millions of dollars in advertising to prop up their message.
01:24 They fund sports teams and whatnot.
01:26 All great stuff, but stuff that should be done by the government for these communities.
01:32 We reckon that the fossil fuel industry should pay its fair share to make sure that we can
01:36 transition in an approaching climate chaos in Australia and across the world.
01:44 One of the main messages they are trying to get across today is to end the exportation
01:49 of coal from the port of Newcastle by 2030.
01:52 They hope that they can make some noise and that governments hear them.
01:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]