Coroner & Legal
Gunns 20 trial next week
Should a corporate bully be allowed to silence criticism using the courts? Next week’s Gunns 20 trial should be watched closely by anyone who cares about free speech, writes Liesel Rickarby
Extract:
Another example of the chilling effects of the Gunns 20 case could be evidenced in the pages of the University of Tasmania’s student magazine, Togatus. While the folks who advise us on what red to drink with our tagine may not be renowned for their political activism, student-run publications have a reputation for just that.
When Wilderness Society volunteer Paul Oosting submitted an article likening Gunn’s description of the pulp mill as “world’s best practice” to Orwell’s ‘newspeak’, Togatus refused to publish it for fear of retaliatory litigation.
Oosting eventually published his pulp mill article on the Tasmanian Times website. He also got the job of pulp mill campaigner for the Wilderness Society and can be heard frequently on Tasmanian radio vehemently criticising the mill and its owners. Even so, Greg Ogle describes the Togatus episode as bringing home to him the adverse effect the case has had on free speech.
The Gunns 20 case is the most high profile of a new breed of lawsuits, which direct industrial and commercial law at environmental and community protest, using charges of ‘conspiracy to injure’, ‘hindering trade’ and ‘unlawfully interfering with trade and business’. While some of the alleged actions in the case involved a direct stopping of business, most of their case against the Wilderness Society and Greens politicians were about broader political processes like the lobbying of business and government or making statements to the media.
Ogle argues that law reform, along the lines of anti-SLAPP legislation in the US, is needed to protect the public’s right to participate in political debate and protest: “Legislation must be framed around a positive right to public participation, not around a question of whether a case is an abuse of process, although outlawing such abuses may be part of the legislation. The right to public participation must be paramount.”
The Gunns 20 case signals the urgent need for Australian legislators to introduce measures to protect community activism from the wrath of corporations scorned.