Not so much a convoy as parade of gripes

Trucks, camper vans and SUVs drive on a street in Canberra. Photo / AP

The voice of conservative anger was muted in Canberra yesterday as the vast numbers of anti-Government protesters expected for the "convoy of discontent" failed to materialise.

Amid claims that police had prevented protesters from joining the demonstration outside Parliament House, several hundred people in a sea of Australian flags and Akubra hats chanted and demanded Prime Minister Julia Gillard call a new election.

About 150 trucks drove around Parliament House, horns blaring but prevented from stopping by police who had previously warned that for safety reasons, none would be allowed to park or circle the road immediately around the building.

"This is a dark day for Australia," Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones told the crowd. "Someone has instructed the Federal Police to deny [the truckies] access.

"The denial of these people is the death of democracy."

Jones also claimed police had stopped trucks crossing into Canberra from New South Wales, and that others had been prevented from joining the demonstration on foot or by car.

Police denied the allegations and said they had escorted convoys through the city.

But if numbers were well down on the crowds of up to 9000 expected, enthusiasm was not.

Hyped by country music and speakers who railed against Gillard's proposed carbon tax and a broad range of other policies, protesters booed the Greens, the three independents whose support put Gillard in power, and even state broadcaster, the ABC.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appeared to cheers, claiming Gillard was out of touch with the people of Australia, and promised to repeal the carbon tax when he won power.

"We don't need a carbon tax - we do need a new election," he said.

In Parliament, Abbott called for a referendum on the tax.

Some protesters had driven thousands of kilometres, bringing signs warning that the tax was anti-family, Australian democracy was dead and God would judge Gillard. Others said simply: "I love CO2".

Queensland cattleman Alan Rea said Australia couldn't allow Gillard to keep screwing up the country, and his own observations of decreasing tides over his salt flats told him the science of climate change was wrong.

New South Wales farmer Ian Brearley couldn't see how the breath he had expelled for 62 years was suddenly pollution, feared the influence of the Greens and distrusted the sexuality of Greens Leader Bob Brown.

Victorian mountain cattleman Mark Coleman and his mates were there to show their anger at Federal Government intervention blocking the return of cattle to the high country.

The list of grievances continued: the mining tax, asylum seekers, the Government's expensive dithering on live animal exports, the power of the Greens, restrictions on irrigation in the Murray Darling basin, forestry policies in Tasmania, economic management, the use of Labor MP Craig Thomson's former union credit card to hire prostitutes ...

"All the Government is interested in is listening to the Greens and closing things down," Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce told the demonstration. "Don't lose confidence in yourselves, because Australia is you."

The protest will continue today.