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Police have now arrived on the scene and have boarded the inflatables used by the activists.
Greenpeace painted slogans including "Rudd exporting CO2" and "Stop coal expansion" on the sides of several ships using inflatable boats boarded from a Greenpeace ship.
“I’m looking out at a sea of over 45 ships. They are sitting high in the water at the moment. These are huge containers ships, lining up to fill up with coal. We’ve now painted 20 of them – we have three painting teams out here. The letters on the side of the ships we’ve painted are about one to two metres high,” an activist said from the water at 8.45am today.
Greenpeace said the action highlighted the Rudd Government’s plans to rapidly expand Australia’s coal exports when the world is trying to cut global emissions.