Speaker 1: Tell me about last year's blockade. What was it like
Speaker 1: out on the water.
Speaker 2: We actually had a storm roll in, a little squall
Speaker 2: just before four pm, and the rain was lashing down
Speaker 2: and there were some lightning strikes and we were thinking, geez,
Speaker 2: we're not going to be able to get on the water.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, the clouds parted at
Speaker 2: about three point thirty and we could see dolphins coming
Speaker 2: in through the harbor and then it was go time.
Speaker 3: A massive protest is underway at Newcastle Port by a
Speaker 3: climate defense group in what could be the largest civil
Speaker 3: disobedience action in Australia's history.
Speaker 2: We paddled out into the middle of the channel. We
Speaker 2: were waiting for that four pm deadline to see what
Speaker 2: would happen, to see what the cops would do, because
Speaker 2: of course that was the end of our quarter.
Speaker 1: Proof period and you were one of the arrests that day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Can I ask your personal decision to stay out past
Speaker 1: four pm? What drove you to do that?
Speaker 2: I think I wanted to be part of history.
Speaker 4: From sports media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM
Speaker 4: a year on for one of the biggest environmental protests
Speaker 4: in Australian history. The activists behind it a group called
Speaker 4: Rising Tide, preparing to blockade's Newcastle Coalport once again, but
Speaker 4: they've hit a stumbling block that saw the protest as
Speaker 4: challenged in the Supreme Court before the blockade had ever begun.
Speaker 4: In New South Wales, protesters are criminalized more than anywhere
Speaker 4: else in the country, and Premier Chris Means is calling
Speaker 4: for even stronger police powers to shut protests down, raising
Speaker 4: questions about over each when it comes to quelling people's
Speaker 4: right to assembly. Today producer Shane Anderson on the growing
Speaker 4: creep of protests crackdowns nationwide, leaving activists fighting for the
Speaker 4: right to demonstrate. It's Friday, November twenty two. Shane, You've
Speaker 4: been looking into the case of climate activists Rising Tide
Speaker 4: and their upcoming blockade of Newcastle Coalport. Can you tell
Speaker 4: me about this group?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can tell you that they formed in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five in Newcastle, which is two hours north
Speaker 1: of Sydney, and that they're one of several blockade groups
Speaker 1: in Australia. But even though they're all galvanized around climate action,
Speaker 1: they each have different philosophies towards civil disobedience. So Rising
Speaker 1: Tide have a really clear charter. They want the government
Speaker 1: to phase out coal exports, They want to end approvals
Speaker 1: of all new oil and gas projects, and they want
Speaker 1: to fund the energy transition with attacks on mining profits
Speaker 1: and so to do this they make a of only
Speaker 1: targeting fossil fuel infrastructure and that's what they did last year.
Speaker 1: Last year they blockaded the port of Newcastle for thirty
Speaker 1: hours and there were one hundred and nine arrests all up,
Speaker 1: including Australia's oldest man arrested for climate activism, the Reverend
Speaker 1: Alan Stewart, who was ninety seven years old at the time.
Speaker 5: There were so many in this country, particularly in the
Speaker 5: coal industry, who were not concerned with what is going
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 1: Another person who was arrested was Zach Schofield.
Speaker 2: So Hi, my name's Zach. I'm a Newcastle local law
Speaker 2: student and I've been an organizer with Rising Tide for
Speaker 2: the last two years.
Speaker 1: Zach told me that he basically grew up in the
Speaker 1: shadow of this coalport, which is the biggest of its
Speaker 1: kind in the world.
Speaker 2: Can hear the foghorns overnight and you can go to
Speaker 2: the beach and see the ships lined up just offshore.
Speaker 2: I would count them with my mum. I suppose it
Speaker 2: took a while to realize that, you know what's being
Speaker 2: exported there, that's death.
Speaker 1: And Zach told me that when it came to doing
Speaker 1: a blockade again this year, you know, he pointed out
Speaker 1: that we had the hottest year globally on record. He
Speaker 1: pointed out all of the new minor approvals and expansions,
Speaker 1: so there really wasn't any question of not doing it
Speaker 1: again this year. But this time they wanted to make
Speaker 1: it bigger, get more people out on the water, you know,
Speaker 1: in these little kayaks paddling up against these huge coll
Speaker 1: ships to try and get the message out that they
Speaker 1: don't think the government is moving fast enough to stop
Speaker 1: climate change. And it's this plan that has already seen
Speaker 1: them I have to defend themselves in the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: before the protest has even begun.
Speaker 4: So how did that happen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it started when they submitted their form one.
Speaker 1: It's a notice of intention that you send to the
Speaker 1: Police Commissioner that you want to hold a protest, and
Speaker 1: it's just you know, two pieces of paper, five little
Speaker 1: sections that you fill out. And yet it's this little
Speaker 1: piece of paperwork that's at the center of all this.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Brandy Coglin. She's a single mom in
Speaker 1: Newcastle and she's also a lawyer. It was actually her
Speaker 1: name on the Form one that they submitted. So let's
Speaker 1: be clear.
Speaker 3: The Form one is not a request for permission to
Speaker 3: hold a public assembly. You don't need permission to protest
Speaker 3: in Australia. All a Form one does is provide an
Speaker 3: opportunity for police and protesters to work together to ensure
Speaker 3: our shared goal of everybody's safety at the public assembly
Speaker 3: and essentially suspend certain police powers so that the people
Speaker 3: gathering can have some peace of mind that they won't
Speaker 3: be issued with move on orders or charged with certain
Speaker 3: abstraction offenses.
Speaker 1: Once you've submitted a Form one to the Police Commissioner,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things that can happen next. The
Speaker 1: first is that the police can authorize the form outright.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a bit of back and forth about you know,
Speaker 1: conditions or locations, but the protest goes ahead, and that's
Speaker 1: what happened last year. The people that were arrested were
Speaker 1: the ones who stayed out on the water intentionally passed
Speaker 1: that dead line. With the other option, which is where
Speaker 1: it starts to get interesting for Rising Tide is when
Speaker 1: the police don't want to authorize a protest. The police
Speaker 1: can't reject a form one outright, but instead what they
Speaker 1: can do is apply to the Supreme Court and let
Speaker 1: a judge decide if the protest should be authorized or prohibited.
Speaker 1: So Rising Tide were notified on Tuesday, the twenty ninth
Speaker 1: of October. That's when they were told the police were
Speaker 1: making this application to the Supreme Court, and then the
Speaker 1: first hearing was slated for the Friday of the same week.
Speaker 4: Right, so take us inside the courtroom. How did it
Speaker 4: play out?
Speaker 1: Inside the courtroom? The police were effectively arguing why the
Speaker 1: protest shouldn't go ahead on the basis of things like
Speaker 1: safety on the water and economic disruption to the port,
Speaker 1: to which Rising Tide had to defend.
Speaker 2: It's quite a bit of work to appear in the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. We have to get affidavits from, you know,
Speaker 2: witnesses who are going to be presenting evidence on our
Speaker 2: safety plans and strategic plans.
Speaker 1: I talked to Zak who at times he was standing
Speaker 1: outside the doors kind of straining to listen in to
Speaker 1: hear how it was going.
Speaker 2: You know, we got some amazing evidence from folks about
Speaker 2: the amount of economic disruption this would actually cause, you know,
Speaker 2: who would be suffering any losses, if anyone.
Speaker 1: And then Brandy Coglin, whose name is on the Form one,
Speaker 1: she was even cross examined.
Speaker 3: I'm no stranger to court proceedings, but even for me
Speaker 3: it was incredibly stressful, incredibly time consuming. I was either
Speaker 3: in court or at my computer working on the case
Speaker 3: for twenty hours a day over the course of ten days.
Speaker 1: And then it was on the final day, which was
Speaker 1: November seven, that Justice Fagan delivered his verdict on the protest,
Speaker 1: which was the court ruled in favor of the police.
Speaker 2: So I was in the courtroom when the judgment was
Speaker 2: handed down and Justice Fagan came in and said that
Speaker 2: he was giving the police the sought order to not
Speaker 2: have Form one go ahead, and he walked out, what.
Speaker 4: Does that actually mean?
Speaker 1: It means the protest is officially prohibited, and it also
Speaker 1: means there's no option to appeal. Rising tide say they'll
Speaker 1: still go ahead with the protest, which they'll do alongside
Speaker 1: a police force that now has a full suite of
Speaker 1: powers and what's more, challenges like this to becoming more
Speaker 1: and more common, and they're set against a backdrop of
Speaker 1: a nationwide crackdown on the right to protest.
Speaker 4: After the break, why it's more challenging to hold a
Speaker 4: protest than ever before? Shane, It sounds like the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court challenged to stop this protest by Rising Tide, all
Speaker 4: hinged on this form one, which I've never heard of.
Speaker 4: What makes this piece of paperwork so important?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was the form one that really
Speaker 1: got me interested in this store because just a few
Speaker 1: weeks before Rising Tide we're in the Supreme Court. There
Speaker 1: was another group in the exact same situation, the Palestine
Speaker 1: Action Group, who were challenged over their Form one for
Speaker 1: rallies planned around October seven. They ended up reaching an
Speaker 1: agreement with the police outside of court, but it still
Speaker 1: got me thinking how this could happen twice in one month.
Speaker 1: And it turns out the Form one actually has quite
Speaker 1: a long history. It was originally brought about after the
Speaker 1: Mardi Gras protest in nineteen seventy eight. This was the
Speaker 1: first ever Mardi Gras march, and it ended in police
Speaker 1: brutality and mass arrests, for which the New South Wales
Speaker 1: Police apologized for in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: Whilst demonstrators went through a repertoire of slogans, the court
Speaker 5: began reminding me. Fifty three people arrested on Saturday night,
Speaker 5: but before midday another seven people were in jail.
Speaker 1: And it was in the wake of these protests that
Speaker 1: the Form one was born because the government wanted to
Speaker 1: use it to improve the relationship between police some protesters,
Speaker 1: bringing them together so they could set boundaries and therefore
Speaker 1: reduce violence and reduce arrests. I even had to look
Speaker 1: back at what was said in Parliament in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine when it was introduced, and the New South Wales
Speaker 1: Attorney General even called it the greatest recognition of the
Speaker 1: right to assemble.
Speaker 4: But it sounds like that's changed now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, speaking to advocates, there is a sense
Speaker 1: that its usage has been changing quite a bit. I'm
Speaker 1: told there were pretty much no police challenges until around
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. That's when lawyers started hearing about
Speaker 1: it more often, and it really kicked up a gear
Speaker 1: again in twenty twenty two when the new South Wales
Speaker 1: State government under Premier Perite brought in anti protest laws
Speaker 1: that at the time were the most punitive laws in Australia.
Speaker 1: People have the right to free speech.
Speaker 2: We promote that.
Speaker 1: He brought in tough fines and even potential jail time
Speaker 1: for protesters who obstructed things likes and railways.
Speaker 4: We've passed the laws.
Speaker 3: We'll throw the book at these people because their behavior
Speaker 3: is completely unacceptable.
Speaker 1: And since then that advocates say, Form one has been
Speaker 1: less about bringing everyone to the table and as function
Speaker 1: more as a kind of protest permit. Because now if
Speaker 1: a Form one isn't authorized by the police, there's a
Speaker 1: threat of jail time as soon as your protest starts,
Speaker 1: I should say as well. I did ask the New
Speaker 1: South Wales Police about the changing use of the Form
Speaker 1: one and they told me that, you know, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of cases they do authorize a form usually with
Speaker 1: some negotiation involved. Statistics show, however, that since two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, there have been eighteen police challenges in the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court over a Form one. So in thirteen of
Speaker 1: those cases, or seventy five percent of cases, the police won.
Speaker 4: So what does all this say about how protests are
Speaker 4: changing in Australia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I Form one at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, one small part of a much
Speaker 1: bigger picture. We know that, you know, in the past
Speaker 1: two decades there's been forty nine anti protest laws enacted
Speaker 1: in Australia. Human rights law centers say many of them
Speaker 1: are confusing and vague. We know that in the entire
Speaker 1: decade up until twenty twenty one, only one person was
Speaker 1: in prison for protesting, and since then we've had nine.
Speaker 1: Many more have been arrested and subjected to really tough
Speaker 1: bail conditions before they've been found guilty of anything. And
Speaker 1: we know that the new South Wales Premier Chris Mins
Speaker 1: has been you know, doubling down on anti protest laws
Speaker 1: and is calling for the police to be given even
Speaker 1: more authority to prohibit protests that he says are costing
Speaker 1: taxpayers money.
Speaker 4: Certainly, I know where I'm from, Shane. In Victoria, the
Speaker 4: police Une is pushing for a similar system to the
Speaker 4: Form one system that you have there. So it definitely
Speaker 4: feels like there's a shift from a police perspective to
Speaker 4: get the balance right between peaceful assembly versus the cost
Speaker 4: of disruption. But there's also a concern that this is
Speaker 4: going too far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, And I think what you're getting out there
Speaker 1: as well is that there does need to be this
Speaker 1: balance struck. But should it rest with the police or
Speaker 1: with the government of the day to decide where that
Speaker 1: line is drawn? Especially you know, in the case of
Speaker 1: Rising Tide, these are protests that have critical messages against
Speaker 1: the government's own decisions.
Speaker 4: So Rising Tide has said that the blockade will still
Speaker 4: go ahead. What is the group risking in doing that?
Speaker 4: How could it unfold?
Speaker 1: The protest is still very much going ahead. In fact,
Speaker 1: yesterday afternoon we saw hundreds of kayaks paddle out into
Speaker 1: the harbor, and without the protection of the Form one authorization,
Speaker 1: it does mean we're likely to see arrests and charges.
Speaker 1: There was one small victory for the protesters though, so
Speaker 1: Transport New South Wales had earlier tried to make the
Speaker 1: entire coalport a maritime exclusion zone, which meant that anyone
Speaker 1: who even dip their tories into the water could be
Speaker 1: hit with an eleven hundred dollars fine. Rising Tide went
Speaker 1: back to the Supreme Court challenged that and won. But
Speaker 1: before the protest had started, I did ask Zach if
Speaker 1: he thought there was ever a point where the pressure
Speaker 1: would become too much if he'd ever thought about just
Speaker 1: canceling the protest, and he seemed determined from the get
Speaker 1: go that would not happen.
Speaker 2: Oh God, no, no, no, we're certainly not canceling it. A
Speaker 2: lot of folks are feeling more determined than ever to
Speaker 2: come because they see this as basically a political attack.
Speaker 2: But the message that it sends is that the government
Speaker 2: doesn't want us to be on the water. They don't
Speaker 2: want us to be protesting. At the end of the day,
Speaker 2: you know, we're targeting the fossil fuel industry. We don't
Speaker 2: need to make anyone else's lives harder than they need
Speaker 2: to be, but we need to assert our rights.
Speaker 4: Shane, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 4: Also in the US today, the chair of the Indianadana Group, Gautamdani,
Speaker 4: has been indicted by US prosecutors over what they describe
Speaker 4: as a massive bribery scheme. A Dana is accused of
Speaker 4: agreeing to pay two hundred and fifty million dollars to
Speaker 4: Indian government officials in exchange to solar energy supply contracts,
Speaker 4: with an estimated yield of two billion dollars in profits.
Speaker 4: The Idana Group was then accused of going on to
Speaker 4: fund the solo projects with billions from US investors. And
Speaker 4: there are more First Nations children in the child protection
Speaker 4: system than ever before. According to data from the Annual
Speaker 4: Family Matters Report, there are currently almost twenty three thousand
Speaker 4: Aboriginal children in the system, making Aboriginal kids ten point
Speaker 4: eight times more likely to be removed from their family
Speaker 4: than any other child. Despite this, only six percent of
Speaker 4: child protection prevention money goes to Aboriginal run organizations, with
Speaker 4: more funding for programs that remove children from families rather
Speaker 4: than in prevention or support. Seven Am is a daily
Speaker 4: shown from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made
Speaker 4: by Adigus Basto, Shane Anderson, Christine Gate, Daniel James, Eric Jensen,
Speaker 4: Ruby Jones, Sarah mcveee, Travis Evans and Zofecho. That's all
Speaker 4: for now, see you next week.