S10, Ep3: In Australia, a State-by-State Approach to Criminalizing Protest

[00:00:00] Amy Westervelt: Welcome back to Drilled, I'm Amy Westervelt. Today, we continue our series on the criminalization of environmental protest, the real free speech threat. In this episode, we head to Australia with reporter Lyndall Rollins, who's been reporting on how anti protest laws swept Australia. Australia is a unique context for a few different reasons.

It's a major fossil fuel economy, particularly with coal and now with gas. It's also a place where the media is heavily influenced by industry money, thanks in large part to the fact that Rupert Murdoch owns a large percentage of it. And it's a place where people voted last year, overwhelmingly, for a government that would do something about climate.

It's really interesting to examine the criminalization trend in that context. And Lyndall's done some excellent reporting on that front over the last year. Here she is with that story.

[00:01:03] Lyndal Rowlands: That's the sound of an activist at the Art Gallery of Western Australia spray painting an artwork with the logo of fossil fuel giant Woodside. The painting was protected by clear plastic, unlike the Indigenous rock art threatened by Woodside's activities.

[00:01:17] Desmond Blurton: This painting is barely 100 years old. We have five 50, 000 year old artwork that Woodside is destroying.

[00:01:29] Lyndal Rowlands: That's Ballardong Noongar man, Desmond Blurton.

[00:01:32] Desmond Blurton: This is Bibbulmen Noongar. I pay my respects to my elders and my ancestors. As I stand here today, artwork that is sacred to our people is being destroyed.

[00:01:49] Lyndal Rowlands: He's explaining how Woodside's plans to expand its Burrup gas project at Murujuga could see ancient paintings that have survived tens of thousands of years, disappear.

[00:01:59] Desmond Blurton: Woodside Petroleum is the largest fossil fuel project in Australia. They are destroying ancient Murujuga rock art. We must protect our cultural heritage and artwork now.

[00:02:25] Lyndal Rowlands: By expanding the Burrup gas project with two new gas fields at Browse and Scarborough, Woodside is planning to emit an estimated 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Analysis from climate advocacy group Clean State says this would make the Burrup Hub Australia's most polluting fossil fuel project ever.

After recent merger with mining giant BHP, Woodside is now the biggest fossil fuel company in Australia.

[00:02:52] Meg O'Neill: Now this merger has expanded our portfolio and extended our global reach, including a significant office in Houston, but Woodside remains a proudly Australian company.

[00:03:04] Lyndal Rowlands: That's Meg O'Neill. She's the CEO of Woodside and she was addressing the National Press Club of Australia earlier this year. Yes, she has an American accent.

[00:03:15] National Press Club: Our guest today is Meg O'Neill. Before she joined Woodside, Meg's career took her around the globe as head of ExxonMobil in Africa.

[00:03:24] Lyndal Rowlands: O'Neill previously worked for ExxonMobil in Norway and Canada before becoming its Vice President of African Development. She used her speech to outline how Woodside plans to continue expanding fossil fuel projects in Australia.

[00:03:37] Meg O'Neill: We want to develop new projects in Australia across both hydrocarbons and new energy opportunities, but that will only be possible if the policy settings provide the certainty to underpin those long term investments.

[00:03:52] Lyndal Rowlands: Although O'Neill used her speech to argue the Australian government should allow Woodside to build new projects with billions of tons of carbon emissions, it was O'Neill's comments on environmental activists that attracted national headlines.

[00:04:04] Meg O'Neill: A vocal minority wants to shut down the industry, and the jobs and livelihoods that go with it. They have deep pockets and are using both protest action and the courts to create uncertainty and destabilize regulatory processes to frustrate both existing and new projects.

[00:04:23] Lyndal Rowlands: O'Neill didn't provide any information to back up her claims that environmental activists in Australia have deep pockets, that they represent the views of a minority, or that their activism is somehow extremist.

[00:04:35] Meg O'Neill: We certainly respect every Australian's right to express their opinion, and we absolutely share the commitment to decarbonisation, but extremism is not the answer.

[00:04:46] Lyndal Rowlands: Yet, despite the apparently fairly significant implications of calling people extremists, at the National Press Club also didn't probe what had prompted O'Neill to reach this conclusion.

Floods and fires are getting worse in Australia, so it might sound strange that in the few short years since millions of people were breathing in bushfire smoke, one by one, states around the country have been banning climate change protests. My name is Lyndal Rowlands, and as you'll hear in this special series of Drilled, shifting the blame to environmental activists is another tactic the fossil fuel industry uses to delay climate action.

And in Australia, it's been working. But while it's important to report on why environmental activists in Australia have increasingly been experiencing fines, prison sentences, surveillance and negative media coverage, it's also important to note that this all helps to create a distraction from climate change itself and what we need to do about it.

So before we dig into that story, I want to take you to a meeting organised by activists trying to save an all growth forest in my home state of Victoria. We'll head there after this quick break.

[00:05:58] Tuffy Morowitz: Given this refuge's high elevation status, It may be one of the, the final place where species are able to survive in a warming climate. So it's very, very important.

[00:06:22] Lyndal Rowlands: I'm at a meeting organised by activists who've spent the last few decades trying to save old growth forests in Australia. They're particularly focused on the Erinundra forest in south eastern Australia.

[00:06:32] Tuffy Morowitz: Can the people who were part of that Defend Erinundra blockade… Um, stand up, if you're in the room. I know there's a few of you in here.

[00:06:47] Lyndal Rowlands: Decades after their protests helped to save parts of this forest, it's now facing new threats.

[00:06:53] Tuffy Morowitz: Can anyone who has done surveying for threatened species in logging coops please stand up as well? And stay standing.

[00:07:01] Lyndal Rowlands: Tuffy Morowitz is welcoming people to the meeting and explaining why we're here.

[00:07:07] Tuffy Morowitz: With the new anti protest laws coming through in May, these people may potentially face a year imprisonment or 21, 000 in fines. You can stand down now. Sit down.

[00:07:23] Lyndal Rowlands: Three years ago, fires tore through parts of the forest that had previously been saved from logging.

[00:07:29] Tuffy Morowitz: The forest faces impossible challenges, um, with logging and climate change. As we saw with the blockade up at the Erinandja Plateau. Protest remains a critical tool to prevent immediate and irreversible harm.

[00:07:47] Marjorie Thorpe: Well first of all I'd like to acknowledge the sovereign people of this country, the Boon Wurrung and all of the Kulin Nation, of which the Djab Wurrung is part of that Kulin Nation. So I'm a senior Djab Wurrung woman and also an elder of the Gunnai Nation.

[00:08:12] Lyndal Rowlands: That's Marjorie Thorpe. Her traditional Gunnai-Kurnai lands include forests full of old growth trees and animals and birds that aren't found anywhere else on earth.

[00:08:22] Marjorie Thorpe: I'm sure the citizen scientists that I've been working with and learning from who are monitoring the forest for the bats.

[00:08:33] Lyndal Rowlands: Thorpe has been working with volunteer citizen scientists to monitor animals in the forest. Activities that now could face fines of $21,000 and up to a year in jail under new Victorian laws, specifically banning them from entering parts of the forest.

[00:08:49] Marjorie Thorpe: There's no sound in those forests. There's no, no insects. There's no small animals rustling around.

[00:08:56] Lyndal Rowlands: Although she now lives by the forest, Thorpe is no stranger to fossil fuels. Yallourn, the town where she was born, no longer exists. It was dug up for coal not long after it was built.

[00:09:07] Marjorie Thorpe: I was born in the mining town of Yallourn and we see our father come home every day from work. He died at 69 as a, as a result of ill health and wood in that industry.

[00:09:25] Lyndal Rowlands: Meg O'Neill, the CEO of Woodside, who makes more than $4 million a year, running a multi billion dollar company, claims that environmental activists in Australia have deep pockets. But here Thorpe is talking to volunteers about raffling off a chicken or two at the pub to help get the word out.

[00:09:43] Marjorie Thorpe: So somehow, you know. Go back to chook raffles or whatever you have to do to raise money. But never let money stand in your way of doing something.

[00:09:57] Lyndal Rowlands: Sending volunteers who work with ecologists to count native animals to prison may seem like a strange priority, but the new state law is only one part of a wider response to environmental activism in Australia that started escalating while the country was still on fire.

Heavy fines for activists who enter forests in Victoria aren't the only steep new penalties introduced by state governments in Australia in recent years.

[00:10:22] News Archival: Let's go to Brisbane and protesters there could soon be thrown into jail.

Protesters in Tasmania now face a year in jail. In New South Wales, it's two years.

Massive new penalties for blocking roads during a demonstration.

[00:10:36] Lyndal Rowlands: In 2019, protests against a coal mine in the Australian state of Queensland were making international headlines.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was planning to build a coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin, and a train line to the city of Mackay where the coal would be shipped out past the Great Barrier Reef.

Protests against the mine even spread to India, where activists were accused of being under foreign influence for speaking up against an Indian company. At the same time, Adani, a multinational Indian company, was not shy about lobbying governments in Australia to cut off Stop Adani activists funding.

Activists with the Stop Adani movement tried to stop the train line from being built by chaining themselves to the tracks. In response, the Queensland Resources Council, a local industry trade group, backed new legislation called the Dangerous Attachment Devices Law. The law claimed that the various types of chains, glue, and locks activists had been using to attach themselves to mining equipment, roads, and bridges were dangerous to both first responders and the activists themselves.

It gave police not only the right to impose heavy fines and sentences on protesters arrested with these devices, but also to stop and search anyone suspected of having an attachment device on them without a warrant. The new powers alarmed UN human rights experts, who put out a statement describing them as inherently disproportionate.

But the Queensland Resources Council argued the law didn't go far enough, and Scott Morrison, who was the prime minister of Australia at the time, was happy to lend his voice to their campaign.

[00:12:18] Scott Morrison: A new breed of radical activism is on the march. Apocalyptic in tone. Brooks no compromise. All or nothing. Alternative views not permitted.

[00:12:35] Vanessa Bowden: We know that the Queensland Resources Council, for instance, were, you know, very involved and supportive of the legislation in Queensland. We know that at the time, Morrison got up and spoke to that organisation and that's where you can see these linkages happening.

[00:12:55] Lyndal Rowlands: This is Vanessa Bowden, a sociologist at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

[00:13:00] Vanessa Bowden: You see industry talk about how important it is to the economy, um, and then representatives of government sort of get up and say that back to industry.

[00:13:12] Lyndal Rowlands: But politicians, companies and industry bodies aren't the only ones recycling talking points about climate activism from country to country. In Australia, as in many of the countries we're visiting in this special Drilled series, right wing think tanks also do a lot of that work.

That's particularly true of the members of a global network of libertarian think tanks called the Atlas Network. You'll hear a lot more about them next week. But for now, it's important to understand that the Atlas Network grew out of a think tank called the Institute for Economic Affairs. Started in the 1970s in the UK by a guy called Antony Fisher. Fisher and the IEA are credited with spreading the conservative ideology known as Thatcherism in the UK.

And on the back of that success, Fisher went around the world's studying copycat think tanks. Australia was one of his first stops.

[00:14:09] Jeremy Walker: It was, um, Fisher that really did the work of, um, galvanizing, you know, um, capitalists to the cause of the need to have a new institute in Australia, like the IEA.

[00:14:24] Lyndal Rowlands: That's Jeremy Walker, a researcher and lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney, and one of the world's leading experts on the Atlas Network.

[00:14:32] Jeremy Walker: It was called the Center for Independent Studies. And the founding grants for that came from the Murdoch Press, from Shell, BHP, Rio Tinto, Exxon later on.

[00:14:45] Lyndal Rowlands: After the Center for Independent Studies, half a dozen more conservative think tanks joined the Atlas Network in Australia. These think tanks also provide a ready supply of commentators for Rupert Murdoch's Sky News Australia, where they regularly join the hosts in vilifying climate protesters.

Here's Bella D'Abrera. She's a researcher from one of these think tanks, the Institute for Public Affairs, or IPA, on Sky News Australia, talking about an educational climate book she says was designed to terrify children.

[00:15:15] Bella D'Abrera: Everything from the, you know, from the minute that they get up in the morning to the minute they go to bed is all about worrying about the fact that we're going to have an apocalypse.

[00:15:24] Lyndal Rowlands: In another appearance on Sky News, she mockingly called Greta Thunberg a saint, before going on to describe climate activism as child abuse.

[00:15:32] Bella D'Abrera: It's very surprising that St. Greta is appearing on the front of the legal studies textbook. I mean, climate change is one of the main religious tenets taught in schools these days.

And we've talked about on your show before, you know, the climate change marches, the sort of the terror that they're, that they're filling children with, which is. Um, which is akin to sort of child abuse really, isn't it?

[00:15:55] Lyndal Rowlands: Right-wing think tanks and public relation firms have been accusing environmental activists of extremism since at least the 1980s.

The characterization has become so common that it's even being questioned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

[00:16:10] Antonio Guterres: Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.

[00:16:28] Lyndal Rowlands: Guterres says building new fossil fuel infrastructure in 2023 is moral and economic madness. Meanwhile, as we heard at the beginning of this episode, Woodside's Burrup Hub Gas Project will not only emit billions of cubic tons of carbon dioxide, it will also potentially endanger irreplaceable Indigenous rock art.

The gallery protest made international headlines. But activists have been protesting against the Burrup Hub for years, and during that time they've also been followed around by Western Australia's counter terrorism police. Counter terrorism police regularly raid the homes and offices of Disrupt Burrup Hub activists, as well as journalists who cover the protests.

During the raids, the counter terror police spend hours combing through computers, phones and other personal belongings. All this surveillance explains why the Disrupt Burrup Hub activists who went to the beachside home of Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill in August this year say that counter terrorism police were already inside before the activists arrived.

[00:17:33] Matilda Lane Rose: I never set foot on the property of Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill, but was ambushed by more than a dozen counter terror police lying in wait for me.

[00:17:42] Lyndal Rowlands: That was Matilda Lane Rose. She's 19 years old and one of four Disrupt Burrup Hub activists arrested outside O'Neill's home.

[00:17:51] Matilda Lane Rose: No one was ever in any danger because of this protest and there was no possibility of anyone entering the house of the Woodside CEO except for the dozen counter terror police already inside the property. WA police and the WA government are doing anything they can do to stop this campaign communicating because we're getting the message out about the Burrup Hub. We're doing a bloody good job of it. Thank you.

[00:18:17] Lyndal Rowlands: Four activists were charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offense. Remember how earlier we heard O'Neill describing environmental activism as extremism at the National Press Club of Australia. After the protest outside her home, this same wording was repeated by Rupert Murdoch's Sky News and the Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook.

[00:18:41] Sky News archival: Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill's family were terrified when climate extremists targeted her home during an aggressive protest on Tuesday morning. Meg O'Neill said in a statement that this was not a harmless protest. Such acts by extremists should be condemned by anyone who respects the law.

[00:19:01] Lyndal Rowlands: Yet despite O'Neill's description of the activists as extremist being repeated widely, accounts of what happened at O'Neill's home that morning differ.

The activists have not been charged with trespass, only with the intent to commit an offence. And they say that counter terrorism police were already inside when they arrived outside O'Neill's home. O'Neill isn't just the CEO of Woodside, she's also the chair of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, or APPEA for short, an industry body whose members include some of the biggest fossil fuel companies based in Australia, like Santos and Woodside, as well as some of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world, like BP, Shell, and O'Neill's former employer, ExxonMobil. A few weeks after O'Neill's Press Club address, APPEA opened its annual conference in Adelaide, South Australia, on Monday the 15th of May. The conference's two principal partners were Woodside and ExxonMobil.

On the fourth and final day of the conference, Thursday the 18th of May, South Australia's government suddenly rushed to introduce a new law.

[00:20:06] News Archival: Protesters in South Australia could face three months in jail and a $50,000 fine under laws which have passed the state's lower house.

[00:20:15] Lyndal Rowlands: Like Queensland three years earlier, South Australia's Labor Government introduced the new legislation so quickly that legal experts say they had almost no opportunity to examine the potential human rights implications.

In this episode, we've been looking at the criminalization of environmental protest and how it's been spreading around Australia. But that's not the only thing that's been spreading.

As climate change worsens, more and more climate change activists in Australia are speaking from personal experience.

[00:20:46] david shoebridge: And there was, um, ash falling from the sky, burnt leaves falling from the sky all over Greater Sydney.

[00:20:52] Lyndal Rowlands: Thick smoke made outdoor protests more difficult in December 2019, but that didn't deter student activists from gathering outside then Prime Minister Scott Morrison's official residence in Sydney. David Shoebridge, who is now a federal senator for the Greens, went to the protest with his youngest daughter and was one of the people arrested on the day.

[00:21:12] david shoebridge: After about two hours of a standoff, they just lined up the riot squad, um, and just marched them in, you know. I remember them performing together, they reminded me a bunch of sort of puffed up turkeys that went and then went in and surrounded all these poor kids and started arresting them and moving them on.

[00:21:32] Lyndal Rowlands: Shoebridge was previously a representative in the New South Wales Parliament when new laws restricting protests were rushed through in 2022. At the time, large parts of the state were underwater. A group known as the Knitting Nanas have launched a constitutional challenge to the laws in NSW courts.

After Scott Morrison's Federal Liberal National Coalition lost the 2022 election, Australia now has a Federal Labor Government which has also introduced a modest target of reducing emissions by 43% by 2030. In Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, it's been Labor state governments that have criminalised environmental protests.

In New South Wales, Labor supported the new laws rushed through by the then Liberal government on the same night that many people's homes were under water.

[00:22:24] david shoebridge: There's not a lot of self awareness in the state parliament about, about the kind of irony of, um, putting in laws to arrest people for these minor, you know, relatively minor inconveniences when the impacts of the climate crisis we're facing are causing not inconvenience, but loss of life, substantial loss of life, huge loss of property. I think the most recent floods created the single largest insurance payout ever in Australia's history. Billions and billions and billions of dollars.

[00:22:57] Lyndal Rowlands: Scientists now say that the floods that New South Wales experienced for two years after the catastrophic bushfires may have been made worse when the enormous amounts of smoke generated by those fires induced a three year La Niña. The La Nina finally lifted in March this year, and many Australians are now bracing for hotter, drier conditions as summer approaches.

[00:23:22] Violet Coco: Oh, hi little, um, sorry to disappoint, but I won't be getting to this National Sustainability event because of my bail conditions. They're actually zooming me in, so the screen. Um, but I hope that it works out well anyway.

[00:23:40] Lyndal Rowlands: I'm trying to find a time to talk to environmental activist Violet Coco. It's December 2022 and Violet is out on bail pending an appeal of a 15 month prison sentence for a climate change protest that stopped cars on the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.

[00:23:54] Violet Coco: And so we're about to hit an El Nino again. We're about to go back into the fire season. We've just been in the wet and now we're going to have fires all over the country.

[00:24:02] Lyndal Rowlands: In 2022, Coco joined a group of activists, including a firefighter, in shutting down a lane of traffic on the bridge.

[00:24:09] Violet Coco: Our firefighters still don't have the tools that they need to protect us. And that's what I was on the bridge for. I was on the bridge for our firefighters saying we need to be ordering this equipment now because the fire season is coming.

[00:24:22] Lyndal Rowlands: She tells me she became more involved in climate activism after previous bushfires.

[00:24:29] Violet Coco: The country was on fire and my sister was pregnant at the time and she couldn't leave the house because the smoke was toxic to her and her and the baby.

[00:24:42] Lyndal Rowlands: In March this year, a judge overturned Violet's 15 month jail sentence. But in her home state of New South Wales, a new law that imposes up to two years prison for stopping traffic remains in place. In the years since the fires, there have been less major street protests against climate change in Australia, but activists have been organising in new ways.

People speaking out about climate change include the former captain of Australia's rugby team, who was elected as a senator after being arrested in a climate protest. In recent years, psychologists, firefighters, veterinarians, doctors and even marketing professionals have been actively organizing around their profession's response to climate change as well.

They include bushfire survivors who successfully sued the New South Wales Environment Protection Agency. And people living in suburbs that flooded along the Brisbane River who have adopted a community organizing approach that saw an unprecedented three Greens MPs elected to federal parliament.

[00:25:42] Violet Coco: I think it's important to recognize that we operate off social science as, as. Uh, as protesters and what we're doing is activating what we call the appropriate response to the threat. And, and that's about shifting what we call the Overton window. Um, and the Overton window is about the appropriate response. So what we want to do is keep shifting. Being as, as brave and courageous as we can to shift over into this appropriate response because the threat is massive and we need to have a response that is just as proportionate.

[00:26:17] Lyndal Rowlands: Despite the fact that the police crackdown on protests seems to be intensifying, activists like Coco and Thorpe are more confident than ever that their activism is necessary and important.

[00:26:29] Marjorie Thorpe: The concern that I have as an elder. It's not about my future, it's about our future generations, and I think that's what we need to, to really put front and centre here.

Because everything is interconnected, and that's what our stories tell us. We don't need, just need to approach. We have to fight for this. This is the spot for our very future. And if and if we can stand up and do that well, that's what we have to do. And if they want to lock us up, we'll lock us up, but we have to continue to resist that.

Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was reported and written by me, Lyndal Rowlands. Our senior editor for this season is Aileen Brown. Sarah Ventry and Martin Zaltz Austwick are senior producers. Sound design and scoring also by Martin Zaltz Austwick, who composed much of the music in this episode.

Mixing and additional production by Peter Duff. Fact checking by Wudan Yan. Legal review by James Wheaton. Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Our theme song is Bird in the Hand by Four Known. The show was created by Amy Westervelt, who contributed additional reporting to this episode. You can see more stories from this series as well as background reporting on drilled. media. You can also sign up for our newsletter there. If you'd like to support the show, you can give us a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Share links to our stories or upgrade to a paid newsletter or podcast subscription for access to ad free, early release episodes and bonus content.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.