SO much for open court. The charming old Mudgee courthouse, much smaller than ours, has a big wooden wall in front of the public gallery. So you can hear what’s going on, but you can’t see.
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So we spent the day listening carefully, through the panelled wooden barrier, to the prosecution and defence of Bathurst woman Stephanie Luke.
She was there on Friday, February 9 with her co-accused, Bev Smiles and Bruce Hughes from the village of Wollar. Wollar, now just a shadow of its former self due to pressure from the nearby Wilpinjong coal mine, is set to be finished off by a new expansion.
Wilpingjong is owned by the Peabody company, based in Missouri in the United States. It is the largest privately owned coal company in the world. It has campaigned vigorously through the years against environmental regulations; its directors have been major climate change deniers.
Stephanie Luke, a member of Bathurst Community Climate Action Network, is a writer and crochet artist extraordinaire. Her decision to join Bev and Bruce and on the road outside the gates of the Wilpingjong coal mine last April was a spontaneous one.
About 30 protesters unfurled a banner saying “enough is enough”. The policeman, heard clearly on the video tendered in court, can be heard telling the protesters that they were at risk of being arrested under new laws “that have been brought in to stop you doing things like this”, or words to that effect.
The “Wollar Three” were charged, under the criminal code, with “interfering” with the mine and “rendering a road useless”. The maximum penalty is seven years in jail. The prosecution told the magistrate that by holding up the big trucks getting in or out, they had lost the company millions of dollars.
The new laws are so far untested. The results for Steph, Bev and Bruce will be their first airing. As the policeman suggested, the laws were rushed through parliament specifically to stop those protesting against coal and other mining.
The defence argued that in a democratic society, the right to protest should be preserved.
The Wollar Three’s barrister, Barrister Philip Bolton, refuted the idea that they had rendered any road useless by merely sitting on it, or that they could be capable of “interfering” with the mine – suggestive of acts of vandalism of machinery - when they were sitting outside the main gate on a public road.
So how did it turn out? The case has been adjourned until June 5. Which just happens to be World Environment Day.
