Rob Keller, a 73-year-old retired teacher and small business operator, will arrive at Brisbane magistrates court on Monday facing the prospect of three years in prison.
But that is not what worries him most.
“The worst-case scenario isn’t jail,” he says. “The worst-case scenario is climate breakdown.”
Keller is one of 14 climate activists who have been grappling with the prospect of imprisonment as they head to court charged with disrupting Queensland’s parliament in a brief but raucous protest last November.
The group unfurled banners with anti-fossil fuel banners from the public gallery and interrupted question time by chanting for about three minutes.
Among their number are retired professors, medical specialists, working teachers and small business owners. Though hardly hardened criminals, jail for them is not an abstract concept.
For more than 10 months, each has had to grapple with the consequences of being on bail – some were threatened with losing their jobs, others could not reinsure their homes.
David Rasborsek, 59, and his 88-year-old mother, Judith, are among those charged with disturbing the legislature – a charge not laid since the reign of the notoriously repressive premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Rasborsek spent a week in the watch house in June for blocking traffic in a separate climate protest and says the prospect of imprisonment is not something he takes lightly.
“Prison is a dangerous place, watch houses are dangerous places,” he says. “People die in there quite regularly. I definitely do not want to go back there.”
His mother, the oldest of the 14 accused, is prepared to take whatever comes.
“Of course I don’t want to go to jail,” she says. “But if they do sentence me to jail, so be it. What else can you do?”
Each of the 14 knows other climate protesters who have been put behind bars for their activism and all talk of an increasingly repressive climate for activists around the country.
Rasborsek says a friend of his in Sydney was imprisoned for several months for his role in a Blockade Australia protest – and beaten while in jail.
Of their fellow activists with experience behind bars, none is more prominent than Violet Coco. Coco, who will attend the Brisbane magistrates court on Monday in a show of solidarity, was sentenced to 15 months in jail for blocking one lane of traffic in Sydney last April. Her sentence was quashed on appeal.
“It was very traumatic for her,” Lee Coaldrake – one of the Queensland 14 – says.
A retired anaesthetist, Coaldrake is the wife of the former Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor, Peter, who last year led a review into the integrity of the public service and the Queensland government.
Of course, she says, an amount of time in jail is a life-altering experience – “but you have to be resolute about that”.
Because prison is “absolutely nothing” compared with the looming global catastrophe of climate breakdown.
“Me going to jail is of no consequence,” Coaldrake says. “If that makes a difference, then I would happily go to jail.”
Keller says that regardless of the verdict, each of the 14 are likely to remain not only unremorseful, but unrepentant.
“I see the government as criminals here, not me,” he says. “And if I got jailed, I still wouldn’t see me as the criminal. They are the criminals.”
The 14 will be represented by the Environmental Defenders Office and will plead not guilty.
As well as disturbing the legislature, several of the accused face charges associated with using recording devices and carrying props for the protest into parliament.
