CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Trucks blasting their horns as well as camper vans and SUVs festooned with anti-government banners converged on Australia's Parliament House on Monday in a protest calling for new elections.

Police estimated 350 vehicles — mostly trucks — in at least three slow-moving convoys motored through the center of the national capital and past Parliament and Prime Minister Julia Gillard's nearby official residence.

The cacophony of horns blared across the front lawns of Parliament, where hundreds of protesters carrying signs such as "CO2 is Good Stuff" and "Democracy is Dead" gathered to call for new elections and an end to the government's plan to tax major polluters for every ton of carbon gas they emit.

An organizer of the so-called Convoy of No-Confidence, Kate Stuart, said more trucks were en route to Canberra although she was unsure how many. Some had traveled in a convoy for 3,500 miles (5,700 kilometers) from Port Hedland in the northwest to protest against an eclectic range of government policies.

The protest was unlikely to lead to fresh elections or force Gillard to change her policies. But it reinforces the popular perception that public opinion has turned strongly against her in the year since she was re-elected with a minority government.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese dubbed the protest the "Convoy of No Consequence," telling Parliament it was not supported by mainstream organizations but by political radicals and conspiracists.

Cattle rancher Rashida Khan and her partner Len Baker joined the Port Hedland convoy in the northern city of Darwin, then drove their pickup truck 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) to spend two days in Canberra before driving home.

Khan, 23, said she is angry at the carbon tax as well as the government's recent decision to suspend live cattle exports to Indonesia due to concerns about slaughterhouse cruelty.

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