I guess it’s a question of perspective. Some people, including various mining companies and most of our governments, do genuinely consider many environmental activists to be indistinguishable from terrorists. It results from a kind of corporate narcissism: the confusion of self-interest with the public interest.
If you’re in power, as both major parties and some corporate players are accustomed to being, then it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what is good for you is good for the country. Conversely, a threat to your interests is not only un-Australian — it’s dangerous.
It’s this instinct that drives governments to repeatedly try to slide through new laws designed to prevent or deter environmental and other advocates and activists from even speaking out on, let alone engage in non-violent protest against corporate ventures like logging or mining. It is behind the most recent push to make it easier to deregister charities if their members commit even petty offences in the course of protest action.
It is also the reason why NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro saw nothing inappropriate in the employment of the NSW Police’s fixated persons squad to raid the home of and arrest of a FriendlyJordies producer Kristo Langker over an incident of alleged harassment.
And why, earlier this month, six members of the climate change action group Extinction Rebellion were arrested in their homes by the WA Police’s State Security Investigation Group — that is, the counter-terrorism squad — for graffitiing a pedestrian footbridge near Woodside’s Perth headquarters with washable chalk.
They’ve all been charged with causing damage to property. Their bail conditions include not going within 200 metres of Woodside’s building and not associating with each other. Each has been asked to pay $2,000 to cover repairs.
Repairs? It used to be thought that chalk, being entirely non-permanent, didn’t qualify as graffiti at all and certainly not the subject of a criminal charge. Protesting with chalk is a particularly polite thing to do, given that it can be erased with a garden hose. They won’t even need to hire a high pressure gurney from Kennards.
However, those days are long gone, as two sisters in Sydney, aged two and four, discovered recently when their lockdown activity of drawing with chalk on the driveway of their apartment block led to formal complaints that they were “defacing or damaging” the common property in breach of the by-laws.
In WA, where not many things are considered amusing, graffiti is on the long list of anti-social activities requiring the full force of the law: specifically, the Graffiti Vandalism Act, which imposes a maximum penalty of $24,000 or two years’ imprisonment if you “destroy, damage or deface” property. That includes chalk, and “deface” is wide enough to capture even the most ephemeral disfigurement.
We might as well concede that the ship of free speech, so far as protest activity is concerned, sailed from Australia’s shores a long time ago. It just isn’t a thing that any Australian government is interested in protecting, nor are our courts prepared to stretch very far to help. Chalking up calls to action on the footpath has gone to the same graveyard of public expression as chaining yourself to a tree to save it, or sleeping out in Martin Place to protest inequality.
All criminalised, and upheld as validly so. In the public interest, of course.
However, it’s still a long stretch from accepting that protest action, even non-violent action that causes no actual damage to property, should be made illegal, to being happy for it to be treated as a form of domestic terrorism. Because, make no mistake, that’s where we’re heading.
One of the arrested protestors in Perth, Kelly Hawes, is a PhD student in marine science. She is sincerely concerned about Woodside’s plans to expand its operations in the offshore Scarborough gas field. The graffiti she helped draw was directed to that issue.
Hawes reported that the “cops essentially burst through my door at 7.00am and immediately seized my phone”. Another member said that the police raided his house at 5.00am and spent over two hours searching “everywhere from my underwear drawer, under my bed, my car, everywhere looking for evidence that I had taken part in said heinous crime. My phone was also seized despite me explaining this was essential to my work as a disability support worker.”
No doubt the police were seeking to perfect their case and preserve the evidence; there’s no reason to assume that they weren’t just doing their job with meticulous care. And it’s not for the officers to wonder why they, whose remit is to prevent terrorist acts, were raiding a bunch of environmental protestors over some chalk graffiti.
That question should be directed much higher up, into the reaches of government where personal and public interests have most become blurred.
It’s an increasingly familiar story.
I hope the ALP understands that when they win the election they will be expected to repeal every one of these repressive laws put in place by Schmorrison and that nice man Mr Porter. Not a single one should ever have a place in Australian democracy.
That’s optimistic…since 2012 the ALP has received over $5.5 million from Santos, Woodside and other energy and resources companies (http://democracyforsale.net/parties/labor/).
Hard for the ALP to challenge the fossil fuel industry when it relies on that sector’s donations.
At least some of this will be covered by state laws, which the federal government would be incapable of overturning.
As Michael indicated, in this case it was a (Labor) state anti-terrorist outfit doing the work on behalf of Woodside
Yes, it is the government that McGowan presides over. And it wasn’t the night cop patrol tasked with serving the day’s non violence orders either (understanding they prefer overnight as the easiest time to find people home for the job of serving) – it was the WA Office of State Security. I wonder if WA has a fixated persons unit too. Thanks to Michael’s piece, I safely gather that projecting information about what a corporation is doing onto their head office building would be bound to come under ‘defacing’. How the desecators love to claim they have been desecrated.
Sadly, this is taking place under a Labour Gvt with a massive majority. It is difficult to overstate the power of mining and resources industry in WA.
Not a chance.
Sorry, I wish that it were otherwise.
Look at them.
The WA Police Commissioner was questioned about this on Perth ABC radio this morning – up went the shutters, with a ‘the courts will decide’ dismissal of such insignificant questioning, and an insistence that ‘property was damaged’. It was laughable when he claimed there are no political influences on police operations in WA. Just another illustration of how the WA government, whichever party is in office, is basically a branch office for Big Mining. They always get what they want, always have done since the 1890s. The mountains of anti-terrorism laws are just a new tool for achieving their ends, and disguising them with innocuous names like Graffiti Vandalism Act 2016 are just a standard part of Big Mining’s MO.
Disturbing information. Long past the time to order that the forest of ‘protective’ legislature is pruned and our freedoms released. Which level of government is willing to lose some of its power?
Thank you for this article. It has long been a strategy of governments to bankrupt peaceful protesters once they get annoying. It’s very effective, is a threatening lesson to others, and is easier to keep low profile than dramatic arrests. Crikey has had some good coverage of a number of terrible cases of this. The more recent introduction of oppressive anti-terrorism laws was predicted to be used eventualy in exactly this sort of way, despite pathetic general media coverage supporting terrorism scares.
People need to think about how, to take just one example, they could easily be legaly required not to associate with their friends. Although, I guess right now we are learlning a bit of what that would be like!
Yep. Environmental destruction. Public office corruption. Deliberately imposed inequity as a tenet of neoliberalism. None of this is illegal, but protesting against is. FFS.