 I'm Amelia Simpson from the ANU College of Law and today I'm joined by Dr Bob Brown, former Green Senator and President and Founder of the Bob Brown Foundation. Dr Brown recently succeeded in the High Court in overturning Tasmanian anti-protest legislation. Dr Brown, can you tell us a little bit about that case? Yes, Amelia, thank you. It came from the ongoing destruction of Tasmania's fabulous wild forest and this little forest at La Poyna in northern Tasmania. I went up there in the wake of some locals being arrested for defending what was less than 200 hectares of forest, but full of rare and endangered species like Tasmanian devils and it's a nursery, the creek going through it for the giant, the world's biggest freshwater crayfish, Aboriginal name Teotia, which is endangered as well and was a beautiful place for the locals, the farmers, who thought no government, particularly not a conservative government, would destroy their little remnant piece of forest. Well, they were wrong and in January 2016 the bulldozers and chainsaws arrived and with a big protective squadron of police with them and the government, for its turn, instead of going up there and listening to what the farmers had to say about protecting their forest, brought in draconian new anti-protest laws, the anti-protest legislation which came into action or which needed to be challenged because it was going to threaten the people who got arrested trying to defend this forest and foremost amongst them young Jess Hoyt had grown up on a farm next to the forest and she'd ridden as a girl, she'd ridden her horse down the bridal trail through this forest, she walked into the forest and was arrested for just being there, she didn't stop any logging and she was so distressed about this and what was happening in that forest, listening to the chainsaws, she went in the next day and with some others just in amongst the ferns and the trees in the forest as she'd done all her life really and got arrested again and was now facing a $10,000 fine and four years in jail and a couple of days after that I'd gotten to know the Hoyt family and the other farmers up there, I went up as well and walked into the forest and was also arrested. My aim was to get pictures of the logging that was occurring to show the rest of the world why these people were being so badly treated by a government they had formally respected through these new protest laws, anti-protest laws and after being arrested got some calls from quite eminent barristers around the country saying you should really challenge those laws because they on the face of it breach the implied right we Australians have in the constitution to political expression in other words I'd been arrested wanting to go in there and show the world what was happening these laws said you can't do that you're threatened with a big penalty as a result so I sought advice and through Roland Brown our famed environmental law solicitor in Hobart and we engaged our wonderful legal team and went to the high court and Jessica Hoyt who'd been arrested first is young mother now a nurse joined the case and we took it to the high court and well the rest is history that's right it is history you were successful in your challenge to the Tasmanian legislation and its operation in forest context but does the victory that you had have any implications for the rest of Australia look I'm sure it does because my view is that the corporate resource exploiters around the world are knobbling they're getting they're using their huge lobbying power to get democratically elected governments and indeed undemocratic governments to pass laws to um stymie environmental protests stymie peaceful protest and they're doing that because they believe they cannot win the environmental argument with the populace so if you can't win the argument you have to take out the people who are making that argument i.e. environmentalists and so I think worst laws were coming down the line bigger penalties these have been cascading since indeed robin gray the then premier of Tasmania brought in a hundred dollar penalty for simply trespassing in forest way back in 1982 when people were protesting about the Franklin Dam now here we were facing four years in jail jessica was for having simply walked into her childhood forest to bear witness as it was being destroyed by a government that had never been up there the leaders of government had never been up there to see it where does that end and i think that the fact the high court has said steady on here there is a right for peaceful protest is very very it instead of this said chilling effect on environmentalists these draconian laws had the effect of frightening people into not going there a little of the reverses occurred through this high court decision it's got a chilling effect on democratically elected members of parliament who want to bring in even more draconian laws i think they'll be thinking oh this may not stand the test of our constitution as read by the high court now you've been arrested many times i understand and yet you also have police in your family yeah you want to tell us a little bit about what you've learned from your family about police and and the position that they're in yeah my grandfather in was a police superintendent in new south wales at tamworth and petition and then my father became a policeman and three of his brothers and two of my brothers and a sister and and so on lots of so i had that back and a great respect for the law my father was a country policeman and he had a great deal looking back on it a great deal of common sense but he said don't tug your forelock to big wigs and people who shout the loudest and and and want to put you back treat everybody equally and and don't go into reverse because somebody's you know trying to ride over the top of you and i've never forgotten that uh so while respecting the rule of law which is essential for an ordered society i've also got a pretty healthy disrespect where are lost laws come in that are used against the people and their rights and these anti protest laws specifically aimed at forest protesters in Tasmania fail the test of being fair and reasonable in a democratic society i've heard you speak and indeed in our earlier conversation this evening at a new college of law you you mentioned and were asked about the adani coal mine project proposal um what's your view of whether and how protesters and objectors to that project might best place their their influence and their efforts to try to defeat it well look i think we all need to everywhere i go people are saying what's going to happen how do we stop the adani mine and i say to everybody we're in representative government at queensland level uh it election there people have voted the way they will federal election coming up critical to this have you run your member of parliament and said i won't vote for you if you don't come out and say no i will cross the floor against the adani mine and made that public it's a pretty simple test that's a peaceful right we have the representatives in parliament are there for us we're not here for them i've been on both sides of this equation so it's very important that people feel empowered about this and contact members of parliament now if notwithstanding all that they go ahead with this outrageous massive conversion of what's now woodland country savannah country in central queensland into one of the biggest explosions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that you could conceive in a world where global warming is coming to uh create serious damage to society to our economy to the environment for centuries to come we who know about that have a choice we rather do nothing or we make a peaceful stand as the suffragettes did for emancipation as the slavery a slavery abolitionist did for people's rights way back as people who tried to get kids out of coal mines into schools and thank thank goodness they prevail but a lot of these folk ended up on the wrong side of the law or being jailed and they certainly got vilified in their own time it's now the case with the global environment and if we in this wealthiest country on the planet can't make a peaceful stand against the adani mine and i made it public i'll come up with a cavalcade of cars of like-minded people from hobart to do just that uh then we can't eye off future generations and say yes we made a stand for your right to inherit a secure and environmentally worthwhile planet just the same as the one we've got now thanks bob my my last question on a lighter note uh is uh what's what's your most memorable protest and and perhaps even if you're prepared to share your most memorable arrest look it really does have to be uh being there on the banks of the gordon river and being arrested to stop that dam there'd been a couple of hundred folk already arrested and uh the workers uh i'm sorry the the pro-dam people were yelling about where is he whereas bob brown why isn't he doing this and i was very well aware and they had we'd spent a couple of years preparing to peacefully protest because lake petter had been flooded and the people had decided there that they just couldn't go that far well we were prepared to do this and of course that galvanized australia and and uh led to a change of government and and the and the high court decision which um determined in favor of uh the world heritage nomination of the franklin and protecting it but being arrested there i felt very proud to be in a civilized democratic country where you could do that i was aware at the time that people were being taken off the street and dropped out of helicopters in argentina simply because they had a progressive view of politics people said to me oh this must be so terrible well you know let's get a sense of proportion here we're so lucky to be in australia and to have these rights to peaceful protest the high court has found on this occasion whatever limitations are on it that we have a right to uh political protest and uh you know i i um i'm so happy and i've never run into anybody who got arrested by the franklin river and sent off to jail or otherwise who doesn't now say that's one of the proudest moments of their lives it's such a good thing that that stand was made by those people back there 30 40 years ago dr brogbrown that's all we have time for thank you very much for your time thank you i'll meet you