State government targets anti-coal protestors

Victorian Government attacks right to peaceful protest.

After the highly successful peaceful community protest at the Hazelwood coal fired power station last month, Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources, Peter Batchelor, has signalled that he intends to come down hard on the communities right to protest at power infrastructure such as Hazelwood.

Friends of the Earth Climate Campaigner Louise Morris said “Last month we saw over 500 community members take action, calling for a transition to renewable energy. This included 22 people who managed to climb the many fences around the Hazelwood plant to put a Community Decommission Order on the station, knowing they would face arrest through such a peaceful undertaking. The police numbers and resources employed was far beyond what was required. Protest organisers had liaised closely with Victoria Police about expected numbers at the protest, but clearly the state government and owners of the power plant decided to use a massive force of police and private security.

"We are now seeing the Victorian ALP Government continue it’s heavy handed approach to dealing with the many people in our community who care enough to take public action about climate change. Threatening peaceful community campaigners who may use protest tactics that put them at the chance of a planned, considered, and careful arrest is over the top, and completely inappropriate in a democracy” said Ms Morris.

“Premier Brumby and Minister Batchelor have been lobbied for years on climate change, with petitions, letters, personal visits and rallies, and yet we have only seen them continue to support the coal industry, while large scale solar power enterprises like the Solar Systems plant in Abbortsford go under. It is for these reasons people are increasingly prepared to take actions of the type we saw at the Hazelwood community protest on September 13, 2009. Threatening draconian financial penalties or jail terms is not the way to engage with a community campaign on climate change.”

“Clearly we will be talking with legal professionals to see what this could mean for our ability to hold peaceful community protests at the many polluting coal fired power stations in our state,” concluded Louise Morris.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/a-show-of-power-20091024-he1f.html

SOME things, it seems, never change. In 1989, The Age published a profile on Peter Batchelor. And this is how Shaun Carney described the 38-year-old political operative's ''straightforward objective in life'': it was, he wrote, ''to maintain the hegemony and keep the other side traumatised''.

Back then, Batchelor was the Victorian ALP's state secretary, the Cain government the hegemony, the Liberal Party the traumatised ''other side''. Fast forward two decades and Batchelor's critics would argue this objective now underpins his approach as energy minister. Now the hegemony is the state's reliance on brown coal, and the ''other side'' are Victorians concerned about climate change.

And this ''other side'' has certainly been feeling a little traumatised lately. First came news that Batchelor had enthusiastically brought to cabinet a proposal to export millions of tonnes of the state's dirty brown coal to India. Then it was revealed Premier John Brumby had become ''the leading advocate'' in Canberra to secure more compensation for the old brown coal-fired stations in the emissions trading scheme. Kevin Rudd's current proposal sees them pocket about $3 billion of the public's money, even though economist Ross Garnaut said they should not get a cent.

But now there's also something else, something symbolic of where Batchelor's loyalties really lie between the hegemony and the other side. Almost two weeks ago, the energy minister unveiled laws designed to protect the brown coal-fired power stations from climate change protests.

The Electricity Industry Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill creates two new offences. If a person is found on a power station's land or premises without authority they can go to jail for a year. Second, if a person damages, interferes with ''or attaches a thing'' to the power station's equipment, they risk two years' jail. For this offence, the person must be found ''reckless'' as to whether their act will result in disrupting electricity supply.

The new law comes after one of the state's biggest power station protests. In September, 500 people peacefully converged on the gates of Victoria's oldest and dirtiest electricity producer, Hazelwood. About 20 people were arrested for climbing the fence.

Hazelwood and the Latrobe Valley's other three brown coal-fired power stations produce about 60 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year and provide more than 90 per cent of the state's electricity.

All over the world these types of protests are becoming more frequent, as people seek to remove the ''social licence'' for coal-fired power stations. And in some cases, the law is with the activists.

In a landmark case last year, six British Greenpeace campaigners were cleared by a jury of £30,000 of damage at a coal-fired power station when they successfully put forward a ''lawful excuse'' that they were trying to prevent property damage caused by climate change.

Batchelor says the laws are not just a reaction to the Hazelwood protest, or a speedy yes-sir acquiescence to the industry's demands. It has been, he says, on the national agenda of energy ministers since last December. He also stresses the laws are not designed to stop people protesting - they just need to do so peacefully and be outside the gates.

''We were very careful in crafting this legislation to make sure we didn't interfere with people's rights to protest or make a political statement on any matter,'' he told The Sunday Age.

He cites two main reasons for the laws. The Government, he says, has an obligation to keep safe the workers and emergency personnel who may have to deal with protesters. And also, of course, the protesters themselves. ''We need to say to those people this is very, very dangerous, don't do it, please.''

Liberty Victoria says there are already adequate laws dealing with trespass and criminal damage, but Batchelor says these measures are ''too vague, too broad, not appropriate and didn't send that [safety] message''.

Batchelor also says the laws are necessary to stop electricity disruptions. He told Parliament that public transport, schools and hospitals could lose power due to these ''unlawful actions of intruders''. There could be economic losses in the millions of dollars, he said, not just in Victoria ''but potentially along the entire eastern seaboard''.

But Batchelor's reasoning does not stack up. First, people already know that electricity generators are dangerous places and most protesters do not want to engage in industrial sabotage or imperil themselves. Second, even the generators admit that it is extremely difficult for protesters to shut down a power station. The system works on a national grid designed with standby gas power and a disruption could only occur on a peak summer day with a co-ordinated and sustained shutting down of all the coal conveyor belts that feed the power station.

''[A shut-down] would be a rare event and would need several things to go wrong all simultaneously on that day,'' said one industry insider. ''The main problem is the [financial] loss to the generator.'' In other words: if the station's capacity is temporarily curbed, the company cannot sell the full amount of power it intended to the market.

The laws also seem to be unnecessarily draconian, and so broad they could even shut down union activity. In 2007, NSW amended its laws to punish people who climb on to, or enter, electricity works. But the change applied only to actual equipment and structures, and carried a three-month jail sentence.

People in Victoria are probably protesting more about brown coal because they feel powerless to stop governments doing secret deals with industry.

No one asked Victorians if they wanted a new brown coal power plant (the Government-backed HRL proposal), or whether they back the export of brown coal to India, or whether they wanted to lose $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies to Alcoa, or whether billions of dollars of public money should go to international companies who, for years, have polluted with no cost and known, for at least a decade, that a carbon price was coming.

And what is the real threat to the state's brown coal power stations, besides peak summer overload and a price on carbon? Well, last week, at the Bushfire Royal Commission, we got an idea.

Nick Demetrios, security and emergency manager at the Loy Yang brown-coal power stations, told the commission about the risk during Black Saturday's Gippsland fires. If the fire got into the coal mine, he said, it ''burns down'' to the coal seams, and can ''run for 10, 20, 30 years … A mine fire can be very ugly and basically the state is dependent on those coal supplies.''

So, fire would be a catastrophic event for a brown coal mine and its power station. Scientists say bushfires will increase in number and ferocity because of climate change. And what contributes to climate change? Brown coal-fired power stations. What a conundrum for the hegemony.
Melissa Fyfe is the state politics reporter for The Sunday Age. You can follow her on twitter.com/melfyfe.