Welcome back to Drill. 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,
parterially 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.
That's the sound of an activist at the Art Gallery of Western Australia spray painting and artwork with the logo of fossil fuel giant woodside. The painting was protected by clear plastic, unlike the Indigenous rocket threatened by Woodsides activities barely.
One hundred years old.
We have five fifty thousand year old art loot that Woodside is destroyed.
That's Speladong nungar Man Desmond Blatin. This is big.
I play my respects for my honors and my ancestors. As I stand here today, I am artwork that a sacred to our people is being destroyed.
He's explaining how Woodside's plans to expand its sparrop gas project at Murdruga could see ancient paintings that have survived tens of thousands of years disappear.
Onside Patrol is the largest fossil fuel project in Australia. They are destroying ancient burg of the RockA. We demand.
No industry on the bar.
We must protect our cultural heritage an artwork.
Now, by expanding the Borough Gas project with junior gas fields at Brows and Scarborough, Woodside is planning to emit an estimated six billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Analysis from climate advocacy group Clean State says this would make the Borough Hub Australia's most polluting fossil fuel project ever. After a recent merger with mining giant PHP, Woodside is now the biggest fossil fuel company in Australia.
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.
That's Meg O'Neil. 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.
Our guest today is Mego O'Neil.
Before she joined Woodside, make's career took her around the globe as head of EXAM Mobile in Africa, and.
Neil previously worked for ex and Mobile 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.
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.
Although O'Neil used her speech to argue the Australian government should allow Woodside to build new projects with billions of tons of carbon emissions. Is in'neil's comments on environmental activists that attracted national headlines.
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.
O'Neil 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.
We certainly respect every Australian's right to express their opinion, and we absolutely share the commitment to decarbonization, but extremism is not the answer.
Yet, despite the apparently fairly significant implications of calling people extremist, journalists at the National Press Club also didn't probe what had prompted O'Neil 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 bushwire smoke. One by one, the states
around the country have been banning climate change protests. My name is Lindall Rowlins, 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 and 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 organized by activists trying to save an old
growth forest in my home state of Victoria. We'll head there after this quick break.
Given these refuges higher elevation status, it may be one of the final places where species are able to survive in a warming climate, so it's very, very important.
I'm at a meeting organized 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 southeastern Australia.
Can the people who were part of that event Aeronunja blockade stand.
Up if you're in the room, I know there's a few of you in here.
Decades after their protests helped to save parts of this forests, it's now facing new threats.
Can anyone who has done sturve am who threatens species in logging coops please stand up as well and.
Stay standing Toughy Morovitz is welcoming people to the meeting and explaining why we're here.
You can be.
Antique protest laws coming through in May. These people may potentially face a year imprisonment or twenty one thousand dollars quarants.
You can stand down.
Now, sit down down.
Three years ago, fires tour through parts of the forest that had previously been saved from logging.
The forest faces impossible challenges with logging and climate change, as we saw with the blockade up with the Aeronandra plateau. Protest remains a critical tool to prevent immediate and irreversible harm.
One there's one to knowledge the son people of this country. Good words we should general.
So on a.
Jager Corman a.
Nation that's Madri Thorpe. Her traditional gun at Kerne lands include forests full of old greath trees and animals and birds that aren't found anywhere else on Earth.
Sci working with and learning from who are wandering the forest for.
Thorpe has been working with volunteer citizen scientists to monitor animals in the forests, activities that now could face fines of twenty one thousand dollars and up to a year in jail under new Victorian laws specifically banning them from entering parts of the forest.
There's no saying in those forests, there's no insects, there's no small animals around.
Although she now lives by the forest, Thorpe is no stranger to fossil fuels. Your lawn, the town where she was born no longer exists. It was dug up for coal not long after it was built.
I was born in the light town of your and come home every day from work you shauls to sweep out the hole from the houses in the roofs. He died of sixty nine as a result of your health issue.
Meg O'Neill, the CEO of Woodside, who makes more than four million dollars 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 ruffling off a chicken or two at the pub to help get the word out.
So somehow, you know, go back to trip graffles or whatever you have to do to raise money, but never let money stand in your way of doing something.
Sending volunteers who work with the colleges to get 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.
And let's got as 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.
In twenty nineteen, protests against a coal mine in the Australian state of Queensland were making international headlines. Indian billionaire Gortam Adani was planning to build a coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin and a train line to the city of Makaia, where the coal would be shipped out past the Great Barrier reef protests against the mine and even spread to India, where activists were accused of being under
foreign influence for speaking up against an Indian company. At the same time, A Dani, a multinational Indian company, was not shy about lobby and governments in Australia to cut off Stop a Dani activist funding activists with the Stop a Dani 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. DELA 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 war. The new powers alarmed you and human rights experts who put out a statement describing them as inherently disproportionate, But the Queensland Resources Council argued the laud 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 that campaign.
A new breed of radical activism is on the march apocalyptic in Tone Brooks. No compromise, all or nothing, alternative views not permitted.
We know that the Queensland Resources Council, for instance, were very involved and supportive of their legislation in Queensland. We know that at the time Morrison got up and spoke to that organization and that's where you can see these linkages happening.
This has Vanessa Boden, a sociologist at the University of Newcastle.
As you see industry talk about how important it is to the economy and then representatives of government sort of get up and say that back to industry.
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 Atlass Network grew out of a think tank called the Institute for Economic Affairs, started in the nineteen seventies in the UK by a guy called Anthony Fisher.
Fisher and the IEA accredited with spreading the conservative ideology known as Thatcherism in the UK, and on the back of that success, Fisher went around the world studying copycat think tanks. Australia was one of his first stops.
It was Fisher that really did the work of galvanizing, you know a capitalists to the cause of the need to have a new institute in Australia like the Ia.
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 Outlass network.
It was called the Center of Independent Studies and the founding brands for that came from the Murdoch Press, from Shell EhP Rio tinto ex On.
Later on, after the Center for Independent Studies, half a dozen more conservative think tanks joined the Atlass network in Australia. These think tanks also provide a ready supply of commentators for Rupert Murdoch's Sky News Australia, where they regularly joined
the hosts in villifying climate protesters. Here's Bella Debrera, 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.
Everything from there, 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.
In another appearance on Sky News, she mockingly called Greta Tomberg a saint, before going on to describe climate activism as child abuse.
Very surprising that Saint Greta is appearing on the front of the Legal Studies textbook I mean, climate change is one of the main religious tenants 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 which is akin to sort of child abuse, really, isn't it.
Writing think tanks and public relation firms have been accusing environmental activists of extremism since at least the nineteen eighties. The characterization has become so common that it's even been questioned by UN Sexuary General 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 fools. Investing in new fossil full lips of structure is moral and economic madness.
Cauterist says, building new fossil fuel infrastructure in twenty twenty three is moral and economic madness. Meanwhile, as we heard at the beginning of this episode, Woodside's Boroughpub glass project will not only omit billions of cubic tons of carbon dioxide,
it will also potentially engage irreplaceable indigenous rock art. The gallery protests made international headlines, but activists have been protesting against the Boroughpub for years, and during that time they've also been followed around by Western Australia's counter terrorism Police. Counter Terrorism police regularly read the homes and officers of disrupt Borough Hub activists, as well as journalists who covered 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 Borough Phub activists who went to the beachside home of Woodside CEO Meg O'Neil in August this year say that counter terrorism police were already inside before the activists arrived.
I never set foot on the property of Woodside CEO mago Neil, but was ambushed by Wilman a dozen counter terror police lying away from me.
That was Matilda Lane Rose. She's nineteen years old and one of four disrupt Boroughhub activists arrested outside O'Neill's home.
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 does encounters terror police already inside the property. WA Police and the WA government are doing anything they can to stop this campaign communicating because we're getting the message out about the Barrett Hub I was doing a money good job of it, thank you.
Four activists were charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable efense. 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 Murdocks, Sky News and the premiere of Western Australia Roger Cook.
Woodside CEO. Mego O'Neil's family were terrified when climate extremists targeted her home during an aggressive protest on Tuesday morning. Mego O'Neil said in a statement that this was not a harmless protest. Such acts by extremists should be condemned by anyone who respects the law.
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 offense, 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 APR 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, ex and Mobile. A few weeks after O'Neill's press club address, APR opened its annual conference in Adelaide, South Australia, on Monday, the fifteenth of May. The conferences two principal partners were Woodside and ex and Mobile. On the fourth and final day of the conference, Thursday, the a eighteenth of May, South Australia's government suddenly rushed to introduce a new law.
Protesters in South Australia could face three months in jail and a fifty thousand dollars fine under laws which have passed the state's lower house.
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, and.
There was ash falling from the sky and leaves falling from the sky all over Greater Sydney.
Sick smoke made outdoor protests more difficult in December twenty nineteen, but that didn't acter student activists from gathering out. I'd then Prime Minister Scott Morrison's official residence in Sydney. David Shubridge, who was 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.
After about two hours of a standoff, they just lined up the riot squad and just marched them in. You know, I remember them performing together. Reminded me a bunch of sort of puffed up turkeys. They went and then went in and surrounded all these four kids and started arresting them and moving them on.
Shuebridge was previously a representative in the New South Wales Parliament when new laws restricting protests were rushed through in twenty twenty two. At the time, large parts of the state were underwater. A group known as the Knitting Manners have launched a constitutional challenge the laws in New South
Wales courts. After Scott Morrison's federal Liberal National Coalition lost the twenty twenty two election, Australia now has a federal Labor government, which has also introduced a modest target of reducing emissions by forty three percent by twenty thirty. In Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, it's been labor state governments
that have criminalized 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.
There's not a lot of self awareness in the state parliament about the kind of irony of 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, the loss of life, substantial loss of life, huge loss of property. I think the most recent floods created that the single largest insurance payout ever in Australia's history, billions and billions and billions of dollars.
Scientists now say that the floods the news Whales's experience for two years after the catastrophic twenty nineteen and twenty twenty bush fires may have been made worse when the enormous amounts of smoke generated by those fires induced a three year Lannina. The La Nina finally lifted in March this year, and many Australians are now bracing for hotter, drier conditions as summer approaches.
Oh High Little, 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 I'll be a big face on the screen. But I hope that it works out well anyway.
I'm trying to find a time to talk to environmental activists. Violet Coco Is December twenty twenty two, and Violet is out on bail pending an appeal of a fifteen month prison sentence for a climate change protest that stopped car on the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge.
And so we're about to hit and El Nino again. We're about to go back into the fire season. We've just been in the web and now we're going to have fires oil over the country.
In twenty twenty two, Coco joined a group of activists, including a firefighter, and shutting down a lane of traffic on the bridge.
Now, 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.
She tells me she became more involved in climate activism after previous bushfires.
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 the baby.
In March this year, a judge overturned Violet's fifteen 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 in Australia, but activists have been organizing 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 mpees elected to federal Parliament.
I think it's important to recognize that we operate off social science as protesters, and what we're doing is activating what we call the appropriate response to the threat, and that's about shifting what we call the Overton window and
the over wind though, is about the appropriate response. So what we want to do is keep shifting being 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.
Despite the fact that the police crack down on protests seems to be intensifying, activists like Cocoa and Thorpe are more confident than ever that their activism is necessary and important.
The concern that I have as an older because it's not about my future, it's about future generations, and I think that's what we need to really put out the center here because anything is interconnected, and that's what our stories tell us.
We don't just need to practice. We have to fight for this future.
And if you stand up to do that, well, that's what we have to do to us up, lock us up, so we have to continue.
Juist Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was reported and written by me Lindall Rowlins. Our senior editor for this season is Aileen Brown. Sarah Ventry and Martin Saltz Austwick are senior producers. Sound design and scoring also by Martin Saltz Ustwick, who composed much of the music in this episode, mixing an additional production by Peter Duff. Fact checking by wudan Jan, Legal review by James Wheaton. Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Our theme song is
but 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 dot Media. You can also sign up for our newsletter there 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 add free early release episodes and bonus content. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.