Greg Rolles missed most of Blockade Australia’s protest actions across Sydney this week. He was in the cells at Surry Hills police station.
Rolles was arrested and charged on Tuesday morning for his alleged role in blocking roads with fellow climate activists, and was released on strict bail conditions late on Wednesday.
The conditions included that he leave Sydney within 72 hours, not use encrypted messaging applications, and have no contact with about 38 people who are also allegedly involved with Blockade Australia, some of whom are his closest friends.
At the time he speaks to Guardian Australia, on Thursday morning, he is awaiting the results of a rapid Covid test. While he is on the phone, he learns it is positive, making the task of leaving Sydney, as he has been ordered to do, somewhat of a logistical challenge.
“I hate doing any of this: getting on roads, getting arrested,” he says. “But what I hate more is that the kids in my life might not have anything to eat in 30 years’ time.
“The truth is we’re in a climate crisis, and if we don’t blockade the system that’s causing that crisis, there’s no future for any of us.”
Sydney had been in the crosshairs of Blockade Australia for months, with the activist group saying that stopping the economic heart of Australia was the only way for people to take climate change seriously.
The week of disruption started with activists marching through Hyde Park, and one of them, Mali Cooper from Lismore, allegedly blocking the Sydney Harbour tunnel with a car before attaching herself to the steering wheel with a bike lock.
Much of the action was haphazard. On Wednesday morning, a group again marched through Hyde Park, before heading north along College Street, then east down William Street, before turning south down Yurong Street, turning around and going back the way they’d come. All the while, dozens of police watched.
In an 18-minute video posted on social media by one of the activists at the Wednesday march, a man wearing a skull mask, blowing a whistle and banging a drum fashioned from a large plastic container and a piece of rope, leads the group while dozens of police on foot, horseback, motorbike and in a large van follow along.
According to New South Wales police statements, there were 23 arrests made between Monday and Wednesday involving people allegedly involved in the protests. Those arrested came from Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland, NSW and the Australian Capital Territory, and were aged from their 20s to their 70s.
A NSW police spokesperson said the force was not keeping data on the number of shifts or staff it had allocated to policing this week’s protests.
If found guilty the majority of those arrested face up to two years in prison and fines of $22,000 under tough new anti-protest laws introduced early this year by the NSW government.
Hayden Woods pauses when asked by Guardian Australia if those harsh penalties had made him rethink his involvement in Blockade Australia, before responding: “It’s punitive and it’s difficult, but when we compare that to what’s coming, when we compare it to the reality of what ecological collapse is, there’s no comparison.”
Rolles and Woods were both in Colo in late June when a fellow activist spotted covert police operatives watching them from bushland at a remote property.
Woods says it has been confronting seeing how police have attempted to quash their activism, saying it is beyond the scope of what he had expected.
On Thursday Blockade Australia announced it was calling off its Sydney protests – for now. AAP reported that organising activists said on their Telegram channel: “We have made the hard choice to end the mobilisation and wait until next time when we are bigger and stronger. We call on people to continue to take disruptive climate action in any way they can.”
They thanked those who took part in this week’s disruptions. “We have endured extreme state repression. It has challenged our plans and further exposed what Australia will do to protect its own interest. We are tired but not broken, and moved by all the solidarity and support.”
Mark Davis, a lawyer representing more than a dozen of the group’s activists, says while the courts will ultimately be responsible for deciding whether any of the protesters are jailed, police have made clear they consider the offending to be serious by routinely keeping activists in cells longer than necessary.
Davis says none of the people arrested on Tuesday have been granted police bail, despite grounds to do so in the majority of cases, and the conditions eventually agreed to were, in his view, incredibly punitive. Most of those he was representing had no criminal records.
Cooper, who as part of her bail conditions was required to return to Lismore and was due to report to police there by 8pm on Wednesday, was arrested again in Sydney about 1pm that day as police “anticipated” she would breach bail by failing to be able to report in time, Davis says.
“If people deserve to be punished, it’s courts that punish them,” Davis says. “It’s not police taking it into their own hands.”
The NSW government appears supportive of the force’s efforts. The premier, Dominic Perrottet, described the activists on Tuesday as “bloody idiots”.
“You want to push your cause – all you’re doing is making people move away from your cause as quickly as possible,” he said.
The deputy premier, Paul Toole, said on Monday that the protesters should “go and get a real job”.
Woods is unmoved. In fact, he hopes this week’s activism will seed similar movements in other cities.
“The reality is that the majority of people on this continent recognise the need for climate action, but the discourse within that is filled with denial,” he said.
“It’s a new type of climate denial: denying the reality of the situation that we need to take action now.”
