We finally have some proof that some of the attendees at Melbourne’s recent anti-lockdown protests were fake tradies.
On Wednesday, a man featured on Nine News was wearing a AWP Plastering and Rendering high-vis polo shirt. However, the owner of AWP has now come out and said the man seen on the news had never worked for him and was not a tradie.
“To have my name associated with someone like that, I was devastated. It has absolutely nothing to with us. I’ve never met the guy wearing it,” Adam Warne told The Daily Mail.
“Neither me, nor my business, or any of my guys support these protests.
“From what we’ve found out, the connection is one of our subcontractors we had late last year, a guy from Pakenham who was no good, so we had to let him go.
“A couple of his mates have gone to his house yesterday and borrowed his shirts and gone to the protest. From what I’ve been told the guy wearing our shirt isn’t a tradie.”
In fact, Warne was actually in the waiting room to get his first jab when the ‘fake tradie’ appeared on the news in his company’s hi-vis. He also added that he and his workers were vaccinated and did not attend the protests.
Unfortunately, Warne’s business has been sent threats and messages on his voicemail with people saying they were going to hunt him down.
“We cannot stress enough that we do not support the current protesting, especially at the Shrine of Remembrance,’ Warne posted on the AWP Facebook page.
“We are a small family business in regional Victoria doing our best to comply with all of the government directions in regard to COVID-19 and the construction industry, including mandatory vaccination, so that we can continue to operate our plastering business that we love.”
It’s so awful that some protesters would potentially tarnish the reputation of a small business just to cause chaos.
