You don’t have to believe that Deanna Coco’s climate protest blocking traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a good idea, or helped her cause. But being sent to prison until July and denied bail while she lodges an appeal against the sentence was a bad day for democratic expression in Australia.
Coco, 32 years old and known as Violet, was part of a group of four protesters from the activist group Fireproof Australia who blocked a southbound lane on the bridge just before 8.30am on 13 April this year. While others held a banner and glued themselves to the road, Coco climbed on to the roof of a hired van and set off a flare. When police arrived, she resisted arrest.
According to the police evidence, the protest lasted 28 minutes. Coco pleaded guilty to seven offences related to obstructing traffic, resisting arrest and setting off a distress signal that under law was categorised as an explosive.
On Friday, magistrate Allison Hawkins sentenced her to 15 months in jail, with a non-parole period of eight months. Coco’s lawyer indicated there would be an appeal, and made a routine application for bail. Coco’s mother offered $10,000 surety. Hawkins refused bail.
News Corp Australia reported that Hawkins described the protest as a “childish stunt” and had let an “entire city suffer” through her “selfish emotional actions”. The court heard it was not Coco’s first offence – she was arrested the previous week for obstructing the City West Link – and that an ambulance attempting to respond to an emergency was unable to navigate through the increased heavy traffic, though police did not allege this had any specific consequences.
Coco’s lawyer, Mark Davis, pointed out that only one of five lanes of southbound traffic was blocked, and made the case that refusing bail for a non-violent offender who had abided by their previous bail conditions was extraordinary and at odds with usual practice. A new bail application will be heard next week ahead of an appeal hearing in March.
Wherever you stand on this, the penalty and bail refusal significantly elevates the bar for what protesters – and particularly climate protesters – can expect to face in NSW. Coco is the first person to be sentenced to jail time under laws introduced by the Perrottet government in April that carry fines of up to $22,000 and jail terms of up to two years for protests on roads, rail lines, tunnels, bridges and industrial estates. They were passed with the support of the Labor opposition.
In a statement to Guardian Australia on Friday, the NSW attorney general, Mark Speakman, engaged in doublespeak. He said the government supported the right of all individuals to participate in lawful protest and dissent, but that right must be weighed against “the right of ordinary members of the public to move about safely and freely in their day-to-day lives”.
Questions raised in the wake of Coco’s sentence – for example, whether shifting the definition of lawful dissent is consistent with Australia’s reputation as a liberal democracy or why a non-violent protester in this country should be able to face a harsher penalty than, say, a child sex offender – were not addressed.
What is clear is that laws across the country have shifted significantly to limit protest and existing legislation is used to restrain or intimidate those who speak up.
Victoria and Tasmania introduced toughened anti-protest laws this year targeted at campaigners blockading logging in native forests. In Western Australia, police on Friday raided the home of Raelene Cooper, an Indigenous woman campaigning to protect ancient rock art, while she was appearing as an expert witness in a trial of three climate change protesters.
The view of Coco’s case from those who spend their lives examining human rights abuses across the globe is clear enough. Clément Voule, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of association and peaceful assembly, took to Twitter to express alarm at both the prison term and bail refusal, arguing that “peaceful protesters should never be criminalised or imprisoned”.
Sophie McNeill, a former ABC foreign correspondent now with Human Rights Watch, said it was evidence climate protesters faced vindictive legal action restricting their right to peaceful assembly and expression. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties described the penalty as outrageous and made what should be a straightforward point – that living in a democracy means allowing people freedom to protest in a way that may inconvenience the public.
This debate is a separate question to whether Coco’s protest was well targeted. There is an active discussion over whether blocking traffic will help focus the public mind on the scale of the problem, or just annoy people already well aware of the issue. What is not in dispute is that the concerns of the protesters are real and increasingly motivated by a sense of desperation.
They are a response to a status quo bias that fails to address the scale of the worsening climate crisis. It is a bias that leads to newspapers still publishing front page stories that warn of fossil fuels being left underground without mentioning the ramifications of digging them up. It is a bias that results in a federal government that acknowledges the need to act rapidly while making a political calculation that it would be too risky to take a position on new coal and gas extraction.
Logic tells us the gap between the status quo bias and the evidence is quite likely to lead to more people joining protest action. If politicians think pushing draconian penalties will stop the issue from escalating – and not increase sympathy for the plight of those facing prosecution – good luck with that.
