Fossil Fuel’s war on protest
Madeleine King, Minister for Resources in the Albanese government recently announced that she will curtail the ability of Australians to challenge resource corporation projects in court (The West Australian 26/3/24). She has several possible motivations which just might include the prospect of a lucrative post-politics career. This attack on democratic rights is built on decades of disinformation shaping the global discussion.
King’s action comes from a long line of defenders of fossil fuel “freedoms” objecting to such court cases. George Brandis, for example, referred to people who took companies to court as “vigilante litigants” in 2015. The wording of his media release illustrated that “vigilante” is deployed to mean a danger to society one step short of terrorism: such organisations use “aggressive litigation tactics to disrupt and sabotage important projects.” There is little difference in the depiction of this decorous exercise of citizens’ democratic rights from the depiction of the peaceful but inconvenient protests of Extinction Rebellion.
Minister King, like Brandis, frames this as a matter of protecting Australian jobs, but in fact “mining is one of the smallest employers in Australia,” employing fewer than “the arts and recreation services industry.” And the Australian people earn more from HECS payments that hobble our future doctors and engineers than we do from the petroleum resource rent tax.
Climate protests, which protect not only future tourism jobs but also hope to limit the number and scale of disasters projected to cost Australia more than 1.2 trillion by 2060, are loathed by the resources sector. Characterising the protests as not just frustrating but akin to terrorism is a global project. The campaigns are designed to make anti-democratic steps such as Minister King’s intent to curtail democratic access to courts – or anti-protest legislation – seem a matter of protecting the citizenry rather than what they are: an attack on our democratic rights intended instead to protect the profits of reckless corporations.
The Atlas Network has forged the chief architecture of influence shaping public attitudes against climate action for the continued profit of fossil fuel corporations. It has long worked to make sure that anyone with objections to their work is seen as an antisocial threat rather than a defender of public treasures, whether that is a habitable climate, ancient artworks or clean water.
As well as being one of the leading Liberal Party alumni active in the Orban propaganda circle, Alexander Downer is Chairman of Trustees at one of the Atlas Network junktanks. The Policy Exchange which is based in London is, at least in part, funded by fossil fuel corporations. The Policy Exchange’s lobbying of the government appears to channel fossil fuel sector messaging unaltered. Investigations revealed that the Exchange promoted the sensational and misleading rhetoric that enabled the draconian anti-protest legislation and lengthy prison sentences given to climate protesters, who were largely defending themselves from excessive and violent policing. PM Rishi Sunak also admitted that Policy Exchange helped draft that legislation.
A former Policy Exchange senior fellow, Claire Coutinho, is now the UK’s minister for Net Zero.
Investigative journalists covering fossil fuel disinformation, Amy Westervelt and Geoff Dembicki, tracked a longterm global history of such vilification of environmental protesters.
The Australian Democracy Network’s inaugural Protest Rights Wrap illustrates the outcome of the Atlas, and direct fossil fuel lobby, pressure. In NSW the 2022 law that “skyrocketed” maximum penalties for “obstructing traffic from a $440 fine to 2 years imprisonment or a $22,000 fine.” The Supreme Court has questioned their constitutionality, but the laws are still being used and protesters trapped in restrictive bail conditions for a year. Police are deploying excessive violence against protesters.
In Queensland, counter-terrorism police raided the homes of six activists. They are at risk of one year’s imprisonment, not for spray painting an office, but for refusing to give police passcodes to access their phones.
In Victoria, a judge tripled protesters’ jail sentences, and police have asked for greater powers to move people on and to impose the necessity for police permission for protests.
Tasmania has indefinitely banned 19 people from entering native forests rather than the usual 14-day ban. One protester is jailed for 70 days before sentencing. The 2022 laws there mean “obstructing access to a workplace” could incur a 12-month prison sentence, and double that for protesting the destruction of old growth forests on site.
In South Australia, in 2023, the penalty for “obstructing a public place” was changed from $750 to $50,000 or 3-months imprisonment.
In the NT, bureaucratic measures around traffic control are being used to block protests.
Woodside in WA is using lawfare to attack protesters for “brand damage” as well as loss of earnings. It also requested a restraining order that included a ban on referring to Chief Executive Meg O’Neill by name by any electronic means.
Fossil fuel wants protest invisible and silent.
In Canada, an Atlas Network affiliate, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, has been at the forefront of protecting fossil fuels. It has recently published a report conflating climate protest with “eco-terrorism.” The typical attacks on First Peoples’ protection of Country comes with the primary threat being identified as “anarcho-indigenism.”
Another of the ways that the Atlas Network discredits court action that interferes with resource extractor freedoms is the trope of “activist judges.” The Executive Director of New Zealand’s leading Atlas Network junktank, the New Zealand Initiative (NZI), is an alumnus of one of Australia’s leading Atlas junktanks, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and was the Chief Economist at the Policy Exchange in London. Oliver Hartwich was recently published in The Australian complaining about the courts agreeing to hear a climate-based case’s appeal, describing the judges as trying to “usurp” decision making. The latest junktank to emerge in New Zealand has already used the slur of “activist judges” to discredit the decision to hear Mike Smith’s arguments.
Minister King described the challenging of gas projects as a “lawyers’ picnic” to invalidate the very urgent objections made by community groups as merely a make-work project by legal figures. Australians should be alert to such verbal tricks and refuse to succumb to this cheap appeal to their disdain for lawyers. The actual lawyers’ picnics are far more destructive and work against “civilisation” survival.
It is crucial for the electorate to resist arguments that build on our personal frustrations with traffic obstructions, or our distaste for theatrical displays of dissent. We have a handful of years to make drastic change to our energy production. Their inheritance cannot be that we abandoned our children to permacrisis without a fight.
Don’t let ruthless profiteers distract us while they strip us of democratic freedoms.
This essay was first published at Pearls and Irritations
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10 comments
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Steve Davis
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Michael Williss
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Harry Lime
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Clakka
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JulianP
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Andrew Smith
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corvusboreus
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Steve Davis
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paul walter
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corvusboreus
Return to home pageLucy notes that in NSW the maximum penalties for obstructing traffic has risen from a $440 fine to 2 years imprisonment or a $22,000 fine. That in Queensland, counter-terrorism police raided the homes of six activists. That in Victoria, a judge tripled protesters’ jail sentences. That Tasmania banned 19 people from entering native forests. That in South Australia the penalty for “obstructing a public place” was changed from $750 to $50,000. That in the NT, bureaucratic measures around traffic control are being used to block protests. That Woodside in WA is using lawfare to attack protesters for “brand damage” as well as loss of earnings.
What is the factor common to all these legal moves? It’s not as Lucy suggests, that the various business lobby groups want to make protest invisible and silent. That’s the superficial answer, even though this is clearly happening.
The underlying factor, the factor that will remain when fossil fuels are a distant memory, is that all of these efforts to quash dissent are attempts by those who control our economic system to preserve that system. To preserve the right to maximise profits for the wealthy by getting access to resources for a pittance.
So the problem is not the mining lobby or the fossil fuel lobby. The problem is a liberal economic system in which all that matters is numbers. Where numbers are king. Where numbers have a life of their own. Where numbers have an essence so profound and sacred that they are beyond the reach of earthly considerations such as climate change, species loss, or social disintegration.
We tolerate an economic system that even regards people as numbers, as resources, as mere units of production. Those who due to circumstances beyond their control are unable to be productive, are regarded by the system as expendable even when those circumstances are a consequence of the system.
Lucy is right on the money with her final sentence — Don’t let ruthless profiteers distract us while they strip us of democratic freedoms.
But that’s only a fraction of the problem.
When the battle over energy and conservation is finally won, when the fossil fuel corporations are a half-forgotten relic from the distant past, do we really think that we will be living in a pristine, low-cost-energy paradise?
The liberal economic system will still control our lives and that system will find other resources to plunder, other means to preserve the primacy of an evermore wealthy elite class, and other avenues to diminish the worth of people as individuals and as members of a healthy society.
These problems flow from the system. Reform or remove the system to remove the problems. That’s the real struggle in which we should be involved.
Lucy Hamilton is correct to say of Madeleine King “She has several possible motivations which just might include the prospect of a lucrative post-politics career.” The word “career” has a link to an interesting article which, unfortunately, in the context of a discussion on King, does not mention that she was an adviser to former ALP National secretary and Resources Minister Gary Gray. After leaving Parliament, Gray became a director of Woodside, one of the energy companies leading the attack on the right of Australian citizens to defend their environment and prevent more global warming.
King was an enthusiastic supporter of the now failed bid to build a nuclear waste dump at Kimba in SA. An article written at the time of that controversy (https://vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com/2022/06/new-resources-minister-backs-kimba-nuke.html ) concluded: “King’s employment as advisor to Gray has made her no stranger to the interplay between the corporate world and the benefits that accrue to Labor politicians who do their bidding.”
So, yes, i suspect Lucy’s prophecy will be fulfilled in time.
The driver and the various conductors may have changed at the last election,but the train,with we, the passengers is still barrelling towards the cliff.Climate change? pffft..think of the money the planet fuckers might miss out on.The current driver might stop temporarily to admire the view and tout his driving skills,but the cliff still beckons,and the drivers still come from the same pool
Agree entirely with Steve Davis.
That MPs immerse themselves in what is a trail of guile and filthy deeds and deceptions is disgraceful. But to participate in the a multiplicity of ways to deny rights of civil / court action is Govt dissemblance, bludgeoning and unwinding of equity and democracy is treasonous
@ Steve Davis (April 16, 2024 at 10:52 am).
Steve, thank you for your perceptive summary.
As you say, Lucy is spot-on about “ruthless profiteers”, and thus identifies the real problem and where lies the real struggle.
I note your reference to our present economic system in which “the numbers” are paramount and people mere units of production; agreed, but I think what’s worse is that many have become passive units of consumption – one of the “products” of this system, but unfortunately also a process by which many persons have come to define themselves – thus precluding any incentive to independent action.
That the current system is exploitative (and will remain so) is beyond doubt; that it is oppressive and in many ways unfair is becoming more apparent by the day, but so few people are prepared to call-out the system for what it is.
That any sane person justifiably concerned at the ongoing plunder around them and deciding to protest peacefully and/or non-violently can now be labelled an “Eco-terrorist” and face jail time is bad enough, but to protest “the system” and be accused of wanting socialism is a one-way ticket to obscurity – or worse.
“Capitalism is a remarkably adaptive creature and its protean elements of fascism always run the risk of mutating into an unorthodox paradigm. After many decades of rampant unfettered free market fundamentalism, it has degenerated into a pernicious prototype of gangster capitalism with a brutal gloves are off, winner takes all and no regrets philosophy.”
[ https://johnmenadue.com/glencore-and-the-patronising-disposition-of-unaccountable-power-pic/ ]
Interesting global strategy inc presentation and also how Morrison was demanding that we were all ‘quiet Australians’ and do not protest against fossil fuels, global warming etc., but when anti-Covid mandate ‘Freedom Rallies’ occurred (mostly Melbourne), silence or ‘freedom of speech’?
Replicating the global network of events (website based in Germany), locally promoted via a Koch linked AIP Brisbane (via climate science denier Jo Nova), but nothing similar versus right wing governments?
Also see ‘Farmer Protests’ in Europe where there has been evidence of astroturfing with both fossil fuels &/or Russian influence (common enemy is EU’s environmental, financial etc. regulation), and one guesses Canadian trucker convoys similar too, but via the US vs Trudeau government?
The Victorian state govt. copped it big time in Covid with rallies opposing, seemingly supported by NewsCorp vs. centrist government or the ALP; hidden agenda is to denigrate science, regulation, civil society, liberal democracy and creating divisions via such catalysts &/or ‘agents of chaos’ (Bannon).
DeSmog published an article ’22 explaining, especially the UK situation:
‘How the UK’s Climate Science Deniers Turned Their Attention to COVID-19. The coronavirus crisis quickly divided the population between those putting their trust in public health experts and others quick to question the science.’
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/10/how-uk-climate-science-deniers-turned-their-attention-coronavirus-covid-19
The Anglosphere right and fossil fuel ‘owners’ have given up playing fair and liberal democracy by following the US GOP which has not won a popular vote since Bush Senior, but deem Democrats, diversity, youth, empowered society and 21stC as the enemy; sentiments also shared with Putin’s Russia?
Thank you Lucy for making reference to the increasing legal difficulties facing those who actively confront environmental issues.
A view from the trenches;
I recently assisted some friends who are conducting Forestry blockades by providing a poncho pattern for a bird costume.
This was done to give the old koala suit a break from copping all the legal flak.
Similarly, many active environmentalists with prior transgressionary records (myself included) would face serious risk of incarceration if forced to front magistracy again.
This kinda rules out continued participation in direct action blockades, leaving surreptitious citizen science as our main practical means of helping the cause.
This is where the on-ground contributions of more ‘respectable’ citizenry can be so invaluable (bless the knitting nannas).
If any online activist here has relatively clean fingertips and genuinely wishes to help preserve what remains, you could consider contacting your nearest conservation network with an aim to going bush and taking one for the team.
All help appreciated, it can make a real difference.
https://theaimn.com/category/environment/page/3/?amp
Harry and Julian, thank you for your comments.
I referred in my comment above to the disintegration of society, which is really what is happening with the crackdown on dissent highlighted by Lucy. The crackdown on free speech and protest is not confined to Australia, with Canada and the EU becoming evermore harsh with penalties for dissent. The global economic system has gone into survival mode.
But the source of all this is the individualism that lies at the heart of liberalism.
Individualism encourages competition with others instead of the cooperation that has been the distinguishing feature of human evolution. Liberals are destroying the very feature that ensured our security and progress.
With competition, the result is winners and losers. One consequence of this, a most serious consequence, is covered at the ABC web-site today — the misogyny that is growing to such an extent that it is on full display in classrooms and cannot be controlled by teachers, with many teachers leaving as a result.
Liberalism, by disconnecting individuals from society, isolates them. Makes them vulnerable. And what do the vulnerable and fearful do? What do boys do, who now see themselves as competing with girls for careers? They lash out, as we see with the spread of misogyny in classrooms. This particular consequence of liberalism will result in an education system that becomes a shambles, at which point we can kiss goodbye to prosperity, and security, and stability.
So corporate greed is merely a symptom of a much larger problem. What we are witnessing is the disintegration of society caused by the sociopathy on which liberalism is based, with this disintegration being assisted by a corporate sector that is determined to keep the gravy train running for as long as possible.
If you think I’m overstating my case, check out the ABC article; it’s enough to make you weep. We are becoming animals.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-16/teenage-girls-create-misogyny-artwork-in-hosier-lane-melbourne/103698962
Obscured, but underneath all the rest is a very bright little comment from corvusboreus.
And dont beleive they wouldnt bs us-look at the rubbish weve been told over Gaza.
PW,
In terms of practical efficacy, my ‘ clever little comment’ amounts to a fistfull of fart flung into a headwind.
In my decade of visiting the AIMN, I have watched general levels of interest in domestic environmental issues fade from peripheral to nearly non-existent.
Entering the Anthropocene, embracing the extinctions.
Signed, an animal
(Chordate, mammal, hominid, Homo sapiens.