Greg Barns is a great public controversialist. We need more like him. The pity is that Greg sees red when he hears green. The environment is his blind spot.
For him, the “f…” words are “forestry” and “Flanagan”. Barns, whose bile and bias were hardly disguised, used his Mercury column of last Monday to attack critics of Gunns actions as “sickeningly opportunist, unintelligible and irrational”.
Really?
In its 216 page writ filed in the Victorian Supreme Court, Gunns variously accuses twenty Tasmanian individuals and groups of conspiracy, corporate vilification,
interference with contracts and some instances of disruption of its logging and woodchip operations.
Greg Barns contends this is not an attack on free speech and the right to protest. He asks “where in its writ, does Gunns seek legal remedies to prevent non-violent protest or communications that are not what it regards as illegal and therefore requiring legal redress?”
But anyone who takes Greg’s advice and reads the writ will quickly discover that Gunns thinks quite a lot of non-violent forest protest and communications is “illegal” and requires “legal redress”. And much of the conduct for which Gunns is seeking damages is a long way from what most of us would describe as “illegal”.
For example, Gunns is seeking damages for “corporate vilification” from a doctor whose alleged sin is to have conspired to raise concerns about possible contamination and health risks from Legionella and fungal organisms in its woodchip piles at Burnie.
Gunns also claims more than $2m because of its allegation that some of the defendants campaigned to persuade Japanese purchasers not to buy woodchips sourced from Tasmania’s high conservation value native forests.
Ruin
Gunns even wants damages from environmentalists who asked the Banksia Environment Foundation to review its initial decision to name Gunns as one of seven finalists for its Business Environmental Responsibility and Leadership award.
Defending these legal proceedings has the potential to financially ruin the group since dubbed the “Gunns’ twenty”. Whether or not the legal action is successful, if Gunns steams ahead, it will ratchet up the price of, and the risks associated with, community activism.
That is why democracy will be wounded if Gunns doesn’t cool down considerably. If it proceeds, the wounds will be self-evident in our Tasmanian society. Free speech and the right to peaceful protest are central to any healthy democracy.
So let’s look at the right to protest. That requires us to return to what Greg Barns posed as his threshold question; “where does Gunns seek legal remedies to prevent non-violent protest or communications that are not what it regards as illegal and therefore requiring legal redress?”
The problem with posing the question this way is that it suggests every illegal action therefore requires legal redress. If that were so it would leave the right of protest in name only. It would be a flaccid and milk toast “right” emptied of all bite.
Consider what happened in 1995 when, after Labor Environment Minister John Faulkner excluded logging from significant areas of native forests. Then angry timber workers ringed Canberra’s Parliament House with parked log trucks and set up a picket line.
Both the picket and the truck blockade were illegal. An angry Prime Minister Paul Keating wanted the trucks towed away and anyone who resisted arrested.
Australia Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer did not agree.
Right to protest
The police upheld the right to protest. Commissioner Palmer believed that towing the trucks away with their air brakes on would have badly damaged them and would have led to conflict between the police and the protesters. He reasoned that arresting angry loggers would escalate the problem, not solve it. Greg Barns is wrong if he thinks every illegal act therefore requires legal redress.
No-one is suggesting that Gunns, or anyone else, should have to put up with violence – but peaceful protest often involves both civil disobedience and calls for consumer boycotts. Good people will differ as to where the balance between the right to peaceful protest and enforcement of the law should lie. It is not a new issue but the legal action taken by Gunns requires us all to think carefully about where these lines should be drawn.
For my part I will always err on the side of the right to free speech and protest. This is a universal right and is owed to us all. If environmentalists use it now, others will require it later.
For its part Gunns would be wise to think about its long term interests. Slapping writs on critics has never stopped protests against conduct that a majority, or even a sizable minority, of citizens regard as unjustifiable.
Should Australians protesting against whaling face legal action if they lobby internationally for companies and consumers not to purchase whale meat? Should we risk being sued if we ask consumers not to buy products made with child labour?
Even assuming the law is on Gunns’ side, and the issue is yet to be tested, that is why Gunns should think again before swinging the legal sledgehammer to crack the protest nut.
I hope Greg Barns will one day acknowledge that not only the right to take legal action, but also the wisdom to know when not to, together form the basis of a decent and robust democratic society.
This article was first published in The Mercury in December. It is republished with permission.
Also:
The Gunns writ is an attack on democracy … The Age
For the latest developments, The Mercury:
‘Gunns 20’ vow to fight action seeking $6.3 million
Benjaminjardine
June 4, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Sounds like somebodys got splinter mouth Vaughan.
Vaughan Fisher
June 1, 2007 at 1:13 pm
FRENCH POLISHER STRIKES
As a Tasmanian I feel compelled to make some kind of stand, about the dreadful mismanagement of the forestry resources of this beautiful state. As a self-employed French Polisher and Antiques Restorer, I have worked for 30 years predominantly with Colonial Cedar furniture and internal architecture, as well as with the minor endemic species timbers of Tasmania such as Huon Pine, Blackwood, Musk, Casuarina and others. My knowledge of these timbers and the forests they grow in is extensive. I learnt my highly specific skill at my grandfather, Vaughan Ratcliff’s side as a young man.
I decided to go on strike because of what is happening here. Taking to the streets of Launceston, I asked the public questions that concern me most about these issues:
– Is the Premier Paul Lennon prepared to guarantee that the precious minor species timber will not end up being fast freighted to Japan, via Malaysia, from the marvellous new veneer mill in the North-West?
– How many significant archaeological Aboriginal sites are being destroyed daily by the wood-chip regime?
– What percentage of native forest of Tasmania actually belongs to the citizens of Tasmania?
– What percentage of profits from Gunns Pty Ltd actually lands in Tasmania?
I am not alone in my concerns. Many people I speak to feel disempowered like myself; that in matters such as forestry and water management, we have no control. I am tired of sitting back and accepting what we are being dished up by the Patriarchy. It seems that there is an enormous division in the society of Tasmania, and I believe that the answer to the problems caused by this lies in a more open and accountable discussion from all sides.
Don’t let the same thing happen to Tasmania’s forests as happened to the Toonis Australis in NSW.
Vaughan Fisher
Greg Barns
January 21, 2005 at 6:39 am
To add to Neil’s comments I will also be appearing on the Law Report next Tuesday.
Neil
January 21, 2005 at 3:57 am
The Gunns Ltd lawsuit is about to get Australia-wide exposure on ABC Radio National this coming Tuesday.
The “Law Report” is an excellent program examining legal matters in layperson’s terms, and this episode will feature a story on the massive legal action recently launched against 20 environmentalists and environmental organisations.
It will include interviews with Senator Bob Brown and Mrs Lou Geraghty who, together with 18 other defendants, are being sued for around $6.3 million by Gunns Ltd, one of the biggest and richest woodchip corporations.
The program airs twice on Tuesday 25th January at 8.30 am and is repeated in the evening at 8.00 pm.
If you miss it, nevermind, because you can hear it on-line wherever you are around the world at any time after Tuesday by clicking on this website:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn
…and follow the links to the “Law Report”.
For more details on this frightening lawsuit, and what you can do to help the defendants, click on
http://www.bobbrown.org.au
or
http://www.wilderness.org.au/
lhayward
January 20, 2005 at 3:27 am
Duncan Kerr’s wet-noodle lashing of the Gunns 20 writ was more helpful to that company than Greg Barns’ customary spray of bile.
In all respect to Duncan’s legal/ethical expertise, a SLAPP suit is in no way comparable to the the sanctions available against the minor offences often involved with public protests. A SLAPP is by definition an exploitation of the greatest flaw in our justice system – the paramount role played by sheer financial clout.
Gunns’ lawyers probably know full well that their ham-fisted writ has much less than 23% success rate statistically enjoyed by SLAPP plaintiffs. But winning is not the object. Winners often have no more than 2/3 of their legal costs picked up by the losers ( as a deductible business expense). The remaining third they must foot can cost a battler his/her house on top of the years of anxiety.
SLAPPS are so manifestly a cynical abuse of the justice that a number of US states have outlawed them. Can anyone imagine either of Tasmania’s major parties following suit? Or even granting the truth an equal footing with corporate lies?
No way. Instead we have the leak of plans for two Gunns pulp mills, guaranteeing the accelerated ruin of most of our natural environment for the benefit of Gunns.
Elsewhere it has been learned that the Auditor-General will be reviewing the still seemingly fraudulent $200 million land swap between the Government and Forestry Tasmania. But he informed me he will issue a report only if he finds something amiss. If not, we must presume that all is in order.
In Tasmania, it seems, you can fool a majority of people all the time.
John Hayward
Brenda Rosser
January 16, 2005 at 4:38 am
The complexity and ubiquitous nature of our laws are such that EVERY individual is guilty of breaking them, even frequently.
Add to this the fact that we have a legal system that provides extraordinary privileged access to the rich and virtually no representation to ordinary citizens and where does that leave us?
In a situation where virtually any ordinary ‘Joe’ can be targetted for legal action at some time in their lives. The likelihood of this happening increases if you dare to protest.
Meanwhile the ‘regulatory authorities’ in Tasmania provide a cover for the premeditated and daily breaches of law in our forests.
But it’s NOT the law that the ‘forest’ corporations fear but rather the compelling changes needed in industry practice to protect human health and the environment. Profit before all else is the order of the day.
Dr Kevin Bonham
January 15, 2005 at 3:22 pm
It is somewhat irrelevant for Duncan Kerr to praise the forebearance of the Australian Federal Police in dealing with a timber protest as an argument for Gunns to display forebearance in dealing with green protestors.
Perhaps unlike the Australian Federal Police, green groups are themselves notorious for squeezing everything they can out of the political and legislative process if it will stall whatever those groups are opposed to.
The clogging of government processes with letters and complaints, often not merely petty but also invalid, is stock-standard conservationist behaviour.
At worst, the movement is getting back what it has persistently sown – had it stuck to battles that mattered instead of so frequently being vexatious, it would have more credibility in objecting to Gunns’ actions in the way that Kerr suggests.
It is also unsatisfactory to argue that the AFP’s decision not to stop a protest because of concerns about possible escalation is an upholding of “the right to protest”.
Obviously it was a pragmatic decision only. Whether it would have been more pragmatic for Gunns to abstein from confronting protestors in the courts in the way they have done remains to be seen.
That all parties in this debate support the right of free speech and protest to some extent has not been seriously challenged, despite hysterical attempts to label those opposing the protestors as enemies of free speech and protest in general.
Rather, the issue that should be explored, as Kerr suggests, is how far you are entitled to go in exercising the right to free speech and protest before you should, legally, forfeit it. There are always ways to protest effectively without going anywhere near breaking the law.
The opinions of the courts concerning what is legal and what is not will make far more illuminating reading than what Kerr refers to as the opinions of “most of us”. Also, a thorough examination of how SLAPPs work (and don’t work) in legislatures where they are common would show many of Kerr’s concerns to be groundless wheel-reinvention of a sort too common in Tasmanian political debate.