The alarm bells begin to ring when people say they do not support ‘illegal’ protest.
Consider the situation when the people against whom protest is directed are the lawmakers themselves, as is very often the case. The response of those lawmakers to the power of people to protest (one of the essential pillars of democracy’s balance of powers) is to pass laws making previously ‘legal’ protests ‘illegal’. History is replete with examples of governments legislating power away from the people.
Are those who say that once all ‘legal’ avenues of protest have been closed off, then the people must lapse into anomie and apathy and curl up in front of the fireplace with the dog?
When confronted with unjust laws a populace will find itself in the position invoked by what might be termed the ‘Nuremberg Principle’. The principle unequivocally enunciated during the Nuremberg trials of nazi war criminals is this: It is neither the citizen’s right nor privilege to disobey unjust laws. It is the citizen’s DUTY to do so. Failure to disobey unjust laws renders the citizen complicit in that injustice. This is a principle much older than the Nuremberg trials of course.
Let’s bring it home to Tasmania. With protest set to escalate in the Tamar Valley how far will the state government go to safeguard its state sponsored and state promoted pulp mill and protect the business interests of the pulp mill proponent by rendering a whole range of protest activities illegal?
Consider these possibilities as means of preventing protest:
1. Sheet the cost of policing home to the protesters. Already flagged under the previous Commissioner of Police McCready and more likely under new Commissioner Johnston, who is viewed as Lennon’s creature. This potential move will, I think, create dissent amongst Tasmania’s police to whom Commissioner Johnston is stupendously unpopular and his non-advertised appointment a scandal.
2. Impose massive fines for site-specific trespass. Impose a range of mandatory sentences for trespass and related illegal activities, thus removing discretionary powers from magistrates and judges.
3. Craft new laws defining pulp-mill protest as obstruction of business and impose a range of fines on protesters and cost recovery to affected business(es).
4. Do a Bjelke-Petersen and pass laws against assembly.
5. Invoke the terrorism laws to deal with certain sorts of protest. The terrorism laws have been waiting in the wings for domestic application ever since our premier threw his support behind them fast and early and not because Al Quaeda is a credible threat to Tasmania. I have no doubt this has been discussed in at least one ministerial office.
6. What suggestions can you come up with? Anything malicious and dim-witted will appeal to this government.
Readers of this who support only ‘legal’ protest should seriously examine what they mean by that. They may already be, or may soon find themselves, on the side of injustice.
Bob McMahon
