Australian PM Likens Heckling Incident to 'Invasion' After Young Activist Calls Him 'A Disgrace'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for a federal election on 21 May when the Australians will vote for members of the 151-seat lower house. The election is taking place as Australia enters its post-COVID recovery phase, with the vote being seen as a referendum on the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that the heckling incident involving him and a young opposition supporter at a private function near Sydney on Tuesday was like an "invasion".

“It was the equivalent of a pitch invasion by a Labor apparatchik,” Morrison told reporters in Geelong, while campaigning for the forthcoming federal election.

The 53-year-old Morrison squarely blamed the opposition leader Anthony Albanese for Tuesday’s incident.

"Anthony Albanese has set the tone for the past three years where he basically says it's ok to sledge and attack," remarked Morrison.

"He may think that’s a substitute for having an economic plan but it’s not,” he added.

"But when he sets that tone, he can’t be surprised when people come and behave in that sort of way,” the Prime Minister continued.

Morrison's criticism came a day after 20-year-old Adisen Wright approached the prime minister for a picture at a private event in Penrith on the outskirts of Sydney.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison heckled by a young activist at a private event on Sydney outskirts yesterday.

"You're a disgrace," 20-year-old Adisen Wright tells PM, after Morrison refuses to take a question on bushfire response.#AustraliaVotes pic.twitter.com/yUr7NIBGdr

— Dhairya Maheshwari (@dhairyam14) April 13, 2022

Wright’s Facebook* profile depicts him as a supporter of the Labor Party which is led by Albanese.

Morrison initially agreed but apparently got riled after learning that Wright was recording the conversation on camera.

“What’s going on there? No, why is it recording,” Morrison can be seen interrupting Wright, who said that he wanted to ask a question.

“Sorry, this is a private event,” Morrison goes on to tell the young activist.

The Australian Prime Minister also told him that it was an “invite-only media event”, before a woman interrupted the conversation.

Morrison then walks away from Wright and the young man was escorted out by Morrison’s security detail. However, that didn’t stop the activist from yelling out his question: "ScoMo, across the river here, across the Nepean River, people lost their houses, and they were burnt," he screamed out.

"You're a disgrace, you are a disgrace,” he finally shouted at Morrison, before being ushered out of the event.

While being escorted out of the venue by a police officer, Wright justified his attack on Morrison.

“I wanted to ask him what he is going to do about the bushfire response. I am from the Blue Mountains. I am pretty passionate about what's going on,” the activist told a policeman in the video.

The 2019-20 bushfire season, often described as ‘Black Summer’, wreaked havoc across the eastern coast of Australia, particularly in the state of New South Wales where the heckling incident took place.

More than $100Bln of property was razed to the ground, including around 3,500 homes. More than 30 people died across the country because of the fires, which have been primarily blamed on lightning strikes.

The Morrison government has been criticised for its response to the countrywide bushfires, for neither predicting them nor deploying adequate resources to douse the fires afterwards.

A holiday trip by Morrison to Hawaii in 2019 around the time the bushfires began also attracted scathing criticism in Australian media.

*Facebook is banned in Russia over extremist activity.