A former leader of Australia’s Green party and veteran environmentalist is before the courts fighting a trespass charge related to an incident in 2022, where he and two others were arrested at an anti-logging protest in Tasmania.
Robert (Bob) Brown, who served as senator and the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens until 2012, was arrested along with Kristy Lee Alger and Karen Lynne Weldrick for allegedly trespassing in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers Forrest Reserve on Nov. 8, 2022.
The trio have all pleaded not guilty to the single charge of trespass, appearing in front of Magistrate Jackie Hartnett in Hobart Magistrates Court.
The defendants said they were in the Snow Hill area to try and protect—from logging—the nesting habitat of an endangered swift parrot, which is native to south-eastern Australia.
The court heard that safety concerns resulted in a tree, in which a swift parrot was nesting, being cut down by forestry officials, something Dr. Brown viewed as an “act of official vandalism and spite.”
Sustainable Timber Tasmania forest officer Dion McKenzie said the tree, which had been occupied by an activist, was cut down as it was “ overmature” meaning it was overgrown, making it suspect to branch fall, and that it was was no longer of commercial value.
Dr. Brown’s lawyers are arguing for the trespass charge to be dismissed, with the genesis of their defence focused on one part of a law used by Forestry Tasmania in their arrest, that they contend was invalid.
Their joint hearing was adjourned on Dec. 5.
In 2016, Dr. Brown was charged with failing to comply with a direction to leave the Lapoinya logging site in northwest Tasmania.
At the time he said, “I didn’t go with the intention of being arrested, but when I saw the destruction, I had to take a stand.”
Previously, Dr. Brown spent 19 days in prison for his involvement in disrupting the planned Gordon-below-Franklin Dam project in 1982.
He actively campaigned in 1972 to save Lake Pedder in Tasmania, which was eventually drowned to allow for the construction of dams for the Gordon hydroelectric power scheme.
In 2005, the former MP brought a legal case against Forestry Tasmania in the Federal Court to protect Wielangta Forest by incorporating the area into a broader reserve that offered “full protection” to the home of several endangered species from clear-fell logging.
It was a landmark case in political communication law, essentially Australia’s freedom of speech, when applied to the Protestors Act.
His ecological activism was highlighted in a documentary called The Giants, released in 2023.
In speaking with media waiting outside the court, Dr. Brown said that he maintained the logging was illegal.
“Whatever the outcome on this legal question, I maintain that the logging where I was arrested, at Snow Hill, was illegal.”
“It was part of the destruction of habitat which is sending the swift parrot, as well as other Tasmanian native species, to extinction.”
The three accused will reappear in Hobart Magistrates Court on Dec. 6.
