While Australians are joining radical climate activism, the government is designing new laws to stop them

These laws, and their hurried legislation, have been criticised by civil society groups for attempting to undermine the ability for anyone to exercise their freedom to protest.

Australia is witnessing a new surge in civil disobedience as a form of climate activism. Earlier this month, protestors from a new activist group called Fireproof Australia obstructed traffic and shut down major roads in Sydney, including in Mansfield and on the Harbour Bridge, during peak hour. In March, members of another group, Blockade Australia targeted Port Botany, NSW’s largest coal container port, over five days. They shut off access points to the port, and one activist, 26-year-old Max Curmi, scaled a 60-metre crane to prevent a ship from being loaded.

Such disruptive actions are gaining popularity, as Australia faces a dangerous climate future. While the latest IPCC reports warn that the likelihood of temperatures crossing 1.5 degrees is almost certain, the Australian government seems incapable of formulating good climate policy. Voter Compass data shows that climate change is the number one issue for this year’s Federal election in May. Yet none of the major parties seem to have a vision for ousting the drivers of climate change from the economy- i.e. big fossil fuel companies and their lobbies. People, particularly young people feel, in the words of Greenpeace Australia’s David Rither in his book ‘the Coal Truth’, that our politicians are taking the piss out of us. This leads to a ‘legitimation crisis’, a breakdown in confidence of the formal institutions of governance, even though the legal authority to govern remains unchanged.

As a young person working in the environment space, with friends who are ecologists, policy analysts and activists, and who all care deeply about these issues, I can feel this legitimation crisis.

I completely empathise with the overwhelming sense of frustration, anger and anxiety that many people our age feel, that causes some to take up disruptive activities in order to be heard.

Groups such as Fireproof and Blockade Australia feed off the legitimation crisis. They operate on the model of non-violent civil disobedience, such as that espoused by Extinction Rebellion. They see climate inaction as an emergency, with civil disobedience as an action of last resort to get the government’s attention, as all other traditional means of protest, such as petitioning, lobbying and voting have failed. Blockade Australia blocks coal ports to remind us of the disruption caused by the actions of fossil fuel conglomerates on the climate. Fireproof Australia, which was created in response to the devastating 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, acts out of a desire for policies that improve Australia’s fire resistance for the future. Their methods are so simple that anyone can join them. And, as Fireproof Australia member Sam Noonan told Guardian Australia, people see their willingness to face the strong possibility of being arrested as a sign that they take the catastrophic risk of climate change seriously- unlike Australia’s politicians.

The NSW government has reacted to the activities of these groups in the typical, reactionary fashion we are seeing from governments all around the world- by passing new punishments into law for protestors that engage in activities that “shut down major economic activity”.

People can be fined up to AUD 22,000 and jailed for a maximum of two years for protesting illegally on public roads, railway lines, tunnels, bridges and industrial estates. Although these laws currently apply to ports in places such as Newcastle, Port Kembla and Port Botany, the government intends to extend them throughout the state. As NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said “people have a right to protest… but don’t do it at the expense of people trying to get to and from work, or earn a wage… so we throw the book at (them)”.

These laws, and their hurried legislation, have been criticised by civil society groups for attempting to undermine the ability for anyone to exercise their freedom to protest. They appear to have piggy-backed on the shoulders of anti-protest legislation in other states, such as in Tasmania in 2014 which tried to ban environmental justice protests that “obstructed business activity”, and Queensland in 2019 which banned the use of “dangerous locking devices” that protestors apparently used to lock themselves to buildings (despite investigations concluding they were not, in fact, in widespread use).

A report by the Human Rights Law Centre, Greenpeace Australia-Pacific and the Environmental Defender’s Office in 2021 expressed concern as to the introduction of such laws, the use of heavy-handed bail conditions normally reserved for organised crime and excessive penalties given to those who commit minor offences while protesting.

And in the case of these particular laws in NSW, their broad nature makes it difficult to know what will and won’t be criminalised under them. What happens when a “legal” public protest organised by young climate activists, like members of Fridays for Future, spills onto a public road or bridge? These laws could curtail the ability of young people, and marginalised communities from being seen or heard.

One could argue that protests that block traffic or cause public disruption are crossing some societal line. People don’t like to be inconvenienced, prevented from going about their daily lives- so for some, these laws could be welcomed. Social psychology research has shown that those who are disengaged or sceptical about a particular issue (in this case, the climate crisis) are less likely to listen to actions that make it difficult for them to live. So, civil disobedience can actually be counter-productive– creating a negative discourse around climate change and activism, confining people to existing echo-chambers and leading to hate and alienation. We also have to ask- to what extent do these protests really raise awareness of the underlying systems they seek to change? For example, Greenpeace’s actions in 1995 against the dumping of the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea lead to its eventual disposal on land and a further boycott of Shell oil rigs. However, they didn’t (and couldn’t) do anything to address the system of fossil fuel consumption and the extract-waste economy as a whole, which is arguably the greater threat to the planet.

The civil disobedience as conducted by Fireproof and Blockade Australia is way for people to express their feelings about the climate crisis. But there’s a fine line between expressing concern and acting to make oneself feel good, and potentially hampering a global movement necessary to make all our lives better.  Nevertheless, this does not justify laws that prevent the right to peaceful protest. At the heart of this issue is the question of what is legal and what is legitimate. And when an authority in power continues to remain indifferent to the causes people care about, people have legitimate reason to challenge that authority.

Activist groups do a lot more than waving banners or obstructing traffic. Climate activist groups such as Fridays for Future and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) help foster a sense of community, educate young people to become involved in current political discourse, and most importantly, treat them as legitimate actors responding to a crisis that affects their lives. Similarly, groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Fireproof and Blockade Australia are radical, but they provide people with a sense of agency and hope; that they are fighting for their beliefs and their actions could, in some minute way spark changes in the political narrative. This is not pure naivete either- radical action has often driven reform in history through the ‘radical flank effect’. Just look at the militant activities of the Black Panthers that supported Martin Luther King’s call for civil rights for African Americans, or the actions of the Ghadar Party and other revolutionaries in pre-Independent India, who paved the way for Gandhi’s peaceful civil disobedience movement.  

There are other ways to raise awareness of the climate crisis and those most responsible that could perhaps be less polarising and more conducive to long-term system change.

Australia is witnessing a growing trend of environmental activists and organisations raising climate issues in its courts.

Scientists are publishing research on environmental issues and offering policy pathways to governments. People are trying to work ‘within the machine’ as policy-makers with more progressive climate agendas. And artists are responding to the crisis in (my biased opinion) the best way of all- harnessing creativity, science and emotion to tell compelling stories about our current predicament, in a way that could unite us all. But not everyone is lucky enough to be a lawyer, scientist, or policy maker, or stupid enough to be an artist. Joining a protest or an activist group remains the single greatest levelling ground, in providing everyone with an outlet and a means to be heard. And until the Australian government actually implements good climate policies, there’s no law that can put a stop to that.