Anti-job groups try to gatecrash PM event

11 FEBRUARY 2016: Some political groups and anti-development protesters have a misguided sense of their position in the community. My invitation for the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s afternoon tea in Mackay was specifically targeted to COMMUNITY groups. It is not an opportunity for political lobby groups such as the Mackay Conservation Group, Australian Marine Conservation Group, and Whitsunday Residents Against Dumping, to push their political message and anti-jobs agenda.I am bewildered how these groups thought they would get an invite when all they have done is mercilessly attack everything I have pushed for the benefit of the community and everything the government is doing for the community. They have done everything they possibly can to prevent jobs being created in the Carmichael mine, with the expansion of the port at Abbot Point, and the proposed Urannah Dam. These are not community groups, they are fronts for the Australian Greens and the last time I visited the Mackay Conservation Group, they even had an election poster on the wall for former Greens leader, Bob Brown. Groups that are so blatantly political and anti-Liberal National Party are not going to be invited to a positive community engagement event.There will no doubt be many people in the room on Monday who do not vote for the Liberal National Party but the groups they represent are not politically motivated and actually make our community a better place to live. The Mackay Conservation Group and their fellow travellers are enemies of jobs, enemies of progress, and avowed enemies of myself and the government as a result. It is just staggering that they would have the hide to ask for an invitation to an event when they spend all their efforts viciously attacking the hosts and the work they are doing for the benefit of the community.