While Opposition Leader Tony Abbot addressed the crowd, former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and rocker Angry Anderson also attended the event.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard unsurprisingly avoided the protest, along with former Opposition Leader and ex-Goldman Sachs banker Malcolm Turnbull, who supports carbon emissions trading.

The New South Wales Coalition has turned the federal government’s carbon pricing plans into a state issue, which is expected to result in more fallout, according to Mine Life senior resources analyst Gavin Wendt.

“The political damage to the carbon tax ‘brand’, if you like, is going to be enormous, because now the carbon tax can be associated with a Labor election-thumping,” Wendt told ILN last week.

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce also made mileage over Gillard’s broken election promise to not introduce a carbon tax.

“We will win because you can’t cool the planet from a room in Canberra,” he said in a statement yesterday.

“We will win because if taxes cooled the planet, the place would already be an icebox.”

However, a recent Newspoll from research conducted over the weekend put the federal Labor party back ahead of the Coalition at 51% compared to 49% on a two-party preferred basis.