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SCOTT:

From Schwartz Media I’m Scott Mitchell, filling in for Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Activists around Australia have proven willing to risk jail time and fines of tens of thousands of dollars under new anti-protest law as states and territories flock to introduce legislation that crack down on climate and environmental protests.

In Victoria, the state will end native logging by 2024 but right now it’s maintaining it’s commitment to harsh anti-protest laws that protect the industry.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Elle Marsh, on the harsh penalties for environmentalism and the people willing to face them.

It’s Thursday, June 15.

SCOTT:

Elle, a few weeks ago, you packed a sandwich and a daypack and drove out of the city deep into a state forest. Tell me a bit about that day and who it was you were meeting.

ELLE:

Yes. So a couple of weeks ago, I drove out to the Wombat State Forest, which is about an hour, an hour and a half out of Melbourne.

Archival tape – Elle Marsh:

“Lot of native grasses and heaps of bracken and ferns and eucalypts.”

ELLE:

You drive in and it's beautiful. You know, the sun started to come out when I was arriving. And then as I kept driving in, I arrived at a area in the forest that was completely desolate. And within that kind of empty space was a small fire and, you know, a couple of dozen people preparing to go out for a afternoon of environmental surveying.

Archival tape – Elle Marsh:

“It stopped raining. So it's okay? Yeah.”

Archival tape – Activist:

“Really lucky hey? With the weather.”

Archival tape – Elle Marsh:

“Really lucky. Also, like even just the drive…”

ELLE:

There was lots of polite introductions. Some people knew, some people, some people didn't. You know, there was some families, some expert ecologists giving people explanations about the certain plants that people wanted to look out for. There was also some Victorian Greens politicians there and some really seasoned activists and conservationists there.

Archival tape – Amy:

“Yeah, I've been involved as a forest activist in Victoria for about 20 years. I moved out here about a year and a half ago, and just after I landed here, someone just discovered a logging coup in the middle of the forest. There was no notice and no warning, no consultation from VicForests.”

ELLE:

And all of them were in the Wombat State forest to oppose the logging that was occurring there and also oppose the Victorian Government's new anti protest logging laws that were introduced and came into effect on that day. And so it was kind of jarring to realise that a lot of the people that were out there surveying the flora and fauna in this space, many of them were currently breaking the law and risking jail time and fines of up to $21,000.

SCOTT:

Right, so they’re actually taking a huge risk by doing this, Elle. And these sort of anti-protest anti-environmentalist laws, they're being passed right around Australia, aren't they? So Elle, can you tell me what the Victorian Government has introduced and how that fits into this kind of national context of these anti-protest laws?

ELLE:

Yeah, Across the country, state governments have been introducing legislation that's cracking down on climate and environmental protesters.

You know you can see that in Tasmania where last year the Government passed laws that aimed to stop mining or logging blockades.

Archival tape – Reporter 1:

“Tasmania first passed anti-protest laws in 2014, but they were later struck down by the High Court. This bill is the Liberal Government's fourth attempt. It follows similar laws being introduced in Victoria and New South Wales.”

ELLE:

Last month in South Australia, the Parliament rushed through this extraordinary legislation after climate protesters blocked traffic during the oil and gas conference there in the city, in Adelaide.

Archival tape – Reporter 2:

“Hundreds of demonstrators have tonight converged on the city. It's a protest about protest law.”

Archival tape – Reporter 4:

“MPs spent all night debating the laws which mean anyone charged with obstructing a public place may be fined up to $50,000 or face up to three months in jail.”

ELLE:

The New South Wales Government is currently in court over anti-protest laws it introduced last year.

Archival tape – Reporter 5:

“There's an angry new protest over protesting massive new penalties for blocking roads during a demonstration and not just causing political brawls. They've triggered a major lawsuit in the Supreme Court.”

ELLE:

And here in Victoria, fines for people protesting within timber harvesting safety zones have increased three fold. The Victorian Government says that the reason that they introduced these laws last year was for workers safety.

Archival tape – Jaclyn Symes:

“This government certainly respects people's right to protest. It was ensuring that people didn't die and get killed by really dangerous equipment. In fact, I'm on the record saying I would have been happy to build a platform for protesters in forests just outside the coupe. That would have been fine.”

ELLE:

And at the time, legal groups, union groups, environmental groups criticised the laws as pretty heavy handed.

So with these laws, authorised officers were given greater powers to search and seize items. They were also given the power to issue banning notices and arrest people. And these powers that were given to police, they were also given to game management officers. These officers often have a lot less training than police. So, you know, these laws essentially were giving officers the power to ban the public from even witnessing or bearing witness to what was going on in Victorian state forests.

SCOTT:

And Elle, many of the people you met up with are protesters or activists… How are they taking these new laws? Were they nervous? What was the mood like on the day?

ELLE:

I guess it was varied. It was definitely varied, actually. I mean, the day that I met up with them was the first day that these laws were introduced and so, many of them were making a statement that these laws aren't going to stop them from doing this kind of thing. They see the work of collecting information about endangered habitats as really important work and they wanted to be there to show their support but nobody wants a $21,000 fine.

Archival tape – Jane Morton:

“So, yeah, look, I couldn’t say I’m hoping to get arrested or fined, but I'm more than willing today. That's why I'm in front of the cameras.”

ELLE:

One woman that I met was Jane Morton, and she was standing right in front of a camera that was on the logging site as a choice.

Archival tape – Elle Marsh:

“What's your name and why are you here? And if you want to keep your name anonymous.”

Archival tape – Jane Morton:

“No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a real bring it on sort of person. So, yeah. My name's Jane Morton from Extinction Rebellion. Yeah. I'm 70 years old and I'm a clinical psychologist, and I went into semi-retirement to work on the climate emergency quite some years back.”

ELLE:

She's been doing it for a while and has, I guess, gotten a real thrill out of being able to find these species. You know, she was telling me about the first time that she spotted an endangered greater glider on a survey and how exciting that was to see this endangered animal. Someone like Jane said that she was willing to risk arrest in the state forest that day because, you know, she just thought these laws were wrong.

Archival tape – Jane Morton:

“It's only to be expected that the laws get more draconian.”

ELLE:

and that she wanted to challenge them straight away to sort of make that statement.

SCOTT:

Right. So people like Jane, who continue to show up despite the risks of these new laws, what are they sort of hoping to achieve by continuing to go on these surveys? Because, you know, pointing out and counting animals doesn't seem necessarily like a radical opposition to these new laws that we've been talking about. So what is it that they're trying to do here?

ELLE:

They're trying to stop native logging. And one of the ways that logging has been stopped in Victoria is finding evidence that these particular sites should not be logged under environmental law because endangered species live there and rely on this habitat to survive.

So three days after that day where I was in the forest with those protesters, there was some massive news.

Archival tape – Tim Pallas:

“Native timber harvesting in state forests will end next year. But work has already started on a proper managed transition.”

ELLE:

The Victorian Government, which had previously pledged to end logging by the end of the decade, announced new plans to cease native forest logging by the start of 2024.

SCOTT:

We’ll be back after this.

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SCOTT:

Elle, We're talking about how the Victorian Government, they've been introducing all of these anti-protest laws, but then at the same time it's announced that they would bring forward these plans to end native logging all the way to the beginning of 2024. So this is obviously a win for the protesters. But how much of a difference is this going to make?

ELLE:

It is a massive win for the protesters, but it's just not quite clear if all native logging is going to end. There's concern that native logging or commercial logging could continue under another framework, such as disaster logging or salvage logging. And this is a practice where it's framed as clean up, recovery, restoration. But these logs we know, are being used for commercial purposes. So, you know, the government, when they made this announcement to end logging in 2024, they said that the industry is no longer viable due to ongoing litigation and severe bushfires. And, in the past year, several court cases supported by evidence had found that VicForest was in breach of its environmental and legal obligations. The problem here is that there are different types of logging and it's still unclear whether the State Government's announcement also includes disaster logging at this stage.

SCOTT:

Right. So you’re saying that if this disaster logging continues, then from an environmental standpoint it might not be as big of a win as first thought?

ELLE:

I mean, it's still massive in terms of the hectares of old growth forests that are being saved. However, we know that there are still forms of native logging, such as disaster logging that are being used for commercial purposes. And you know, it's actually a worse form of logging in many ways.

Professor David Lindenmayer, who's a leading ecologist and biologist who specialises in forest ecology, and he argues that salvage logging is actually the most damaging form of logging. He says that it actually makes forests more prone to higher severity fire, that it's bad for the forest and employs very few people and significantly impairs the recovery process. You know, you're bringing big trucks into kind of very sensitive habitats and taking the oldest trees out of the forest is kind of the worst way to try and restore the habitat that many endangered species in Victorian forests need to survive.

SCOTT:

And so to come back to these anti-protest laws that we sort of started talking about, Elle, the Victorian Labour Government is saying it believes in climate change and environmentalism and making these changes to logging in the state. But at the same time, like so many other governments around the country, it's passing these anti-protest laws. So how does it maintain that contradiction?

ELLE:

Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. And I think it also does come down to timing. These laws were introduced last year when the Victorian Government maybe thought that they could salvage the timber industry and keep it alive until 2030, but it was haemorrhaging money and it was just no longer viable. A number of crossbench MPs and Greens MPs tried to push the Albanese government, that you know, this is the time for native logging to end nationwide, and there is also a push within some ranks of Labor to do this as well, but the Albanese government seems to be resisting that call. And yeah, it’s unclear. I'm not really sure how the Victorian Government can justify these laws that do impose severe penalties on members of the public, simply trying to collect evidence and bear witness to what's happening in state forests.

SCOTT:

And finally, Elle, take us back to that afternoon in the Wombat State Forest. You spoke to a number of people. They were all there despite the risks. Do you think they're going to show up again and again in situations where these kind of anti-protest laws, anti-environmentalist laws are going to apply?

ELLE:

Yeah look, so far it doesn’t seem to be deterring as many people as the state governments think. For some of these protesters it’s simply made them more determined to keep coming out and trying to bring attention to things like the climate crisis.

One of the women that I spoke to out in the forest, Jane Morton. Yes, she's been arrested six times. You know, she says she doesn't get arrested for absolutely anything. She clarifies that it has to be worthwhile. But the science is saying we've got very little time to avoid runaway warming. And so it's natural that people are upping their protest. And yet across the country, it's yeah, for many people, it's worth it.

SCOTT:

Elle Marsh, thank you so much for your time.

ELLE:

Thanks.

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SCOTT:

Also in the news today …

Former US president Donald Trump has appeared in court on criminal charges for the second time in two months.

Appearing before a judge in Florida, Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he broke the law by hiding top secret documents in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.

The charges, which include alleged violations of the Espionage Act, carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

And…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the US could end the war in Ukraine immediately, if it stopped providing the country with weapons.

Putin’s comments come as US president Biden met with NATO secretary Jens Stoltenberg in the oval office where Biden reaffirmed his support of the NATO alliance.

The US has also announced it will provide up to 480 million dollars in additional military aid for Ukraine.

I’m Scott Mitchell. This is 7am. I’ll see you tomorrow.