Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been met by protesters on the first day of the campaign trail.
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00:00We've seen two coalition campaign events disrupted by climate activists from the group known
00:08as Rising Tide.
00:10In the first instance, Peter Dutton was touring around the 4X beer brewery in the marginal
00:16seat of Brisbane when one of these protesters managed to obtain a high-vis vest and sneak
00:23onto the factory floor where we saw them unfurling a blue flag which essentially said stop coal
00:31and gas and nuclear as well.
00:33Many of us journalists had assumed that this person was one of the press pack and they
00:38were quickly bundled out by security.
00:40In the second instance, we're again in a quite a controlled or contained environment in a
00:46Chinese restaurant in the Brisbane suburb of Sunnybank in the electorate of Moreton
00:51currently held by retiring Labor MP Graham Perrott.
00:55When again, a similar instance, we were in the dining room of this restaurant when another
01:01protester came forward unfurling a blue banner.
01:05This tactic is known as bird-dogging, it first became popular in the United States and groups
01:11such as Rising Tide have made it pretty clear that they'll be using these kinds of stunts
01:16to draw attention to environmental causes over the course of the federal election campaign.
01:23Mr Dutton today says that he wasn't perturbed by these incidents and he's happy to have
01:28a sensible conversation about the environment.
01:31I just think we have to have a mature conversation in our country about it but people who are
01:36extremists who want everything shut down tomorrow, that's not where the vast majority of Australians
01:42are and I just think there will be extremes in all of these debates.
01:46My job is to do the right thing by this country and we will make the decisions that will be
01:50of benefit to Australian consumers and Australian businesses.
01:55Energy is going to be such a crucial political flashpoint over the next five weeks in the
01:59course of the election campaign so we'll remember that at the end of last year the Coalition
02:05announced its nuclear policy whereby it will build seven publicly owned nuclear reactors
02:11with some of that nuclear power first available by the middle of next decade.
02:15Then there was a bit of a surprise or a wild card in the budget reply speech on Thursday
02:20where we learnt that Peter Dutton plans to change the way gas is used in this country
02:26and he wants Australian exporters to reserve more gas for the Australian market but there
02:32are still critical details missing about how exactly he would convince exporters to do
02:39this but we did see some groups such as steel manufacturer Blue Scope embracing this policy
02:46idea today. Ultimately we're going to continue to hear more about this energy policy. Peter
02:52Dutton did say today that energy prices would be lower under a Dutton government. He says
02:58that he does have the modelling to back that up but hasn't released it yet but we are hoping
03:03to see that over the coming weeks.