'They leave the devastation behind them' Newcastle 7

In the humble local court of Newcastle, Australia on 31/1/2011 a major battle in the war on climate change began. A court is a theatrical space where we can overhear the clashing narratives around a central event.

The defendants were six of the seven men and women from Rising Tide who, dressed as workers, had entered a coal loading facility before dawn on 26/9/2010 and locked themselves on to the equipment 30 metres above ground.

The magistrate, Elaine Truscott, said that she accepted that they were “well intentioned”. However , as each of them bar one, had been to court before for similar activities, no more requests for leniency could be requested and they were fined $300 each and costs. A great pile of abseiling equipment was tendered as evidence of their crime but they did not speak in court.

This hearing had been sought by Port Waratah Coal Service under the Victim’s support and rehabilitation act. They wanted the $1,800 paid for a cherry picker to get the seven protestors down and $525,000.00 for loss of opportunity to load coal.

The coal loader’s narrative was the one heard by the court. As their lawyer said “It’s simple”, the Port Waratah Coal service is an aggrieved party like the victim of a break and enter, “it’s just that the quantum is different”.

And here is what that quantum difference adds up to.

Train loads of coal are brought into Port Waratah around the clock, 365 days a year. To assemble a cargo, the operations manager Shaun Sears, described the 20 trains, each loaded with 6,000 tonnes of coal that unload to create a stockpile. The pride in his work and his meticulous accounting inspired admiration as he explained the complex of conveyors leading up to the ships. You could imagine the pyramids of coal and the ships, some so deep that they can only leave with their loot at high tide. If it wasn’t coal; leaving in its wake destroyed farmlands and aquifers, lung cancers and asthmas from the particulate dust and exporting with it, the huge potential for climate changing pollution, then you’d be proud of his contribution to our prosperity.

Mr Averre, the defendants’ lawyer never hinted at the nasty side of the work. He was fascinated with the details of the victim’s loss. He accepted that 13 hours loading time had been lost and although one loaded vessel left the port at 8am, another was delayed for 8 hours even though Mr Sears admitted that it did leave with its anticipated tonnage.

Apart from protestors were there normally any other reasons for lost capacity and who bore the cost?

The answer was that apart from weather and maintenance, if performance was down for any reason then the coal service reduced the allocation of time and passed on the loss to the coal producer.

In this instance, they sent a note to coal exporters that a “force majeure” event had decreased their capacity by 2 shiploads of coal at $3.75 per tonne in September. He told us that they were the largest coal loaders in the world and that the short fall in lost capacity was never made up.

The counter narrative to this was only to be heard at a press conference where one of the seven , Carly Phillips, portrayed the mining industry as a bully, trying to stop the growing opposition to Australia’s addiction to coal. She said clearly that coal was our major contribution to global warming. She described the Australian government as having “caved in to the coal industry” and said “The hour is upon us to phase out fossil fuels and rapidly transition to renewable energy.”

Greens MP David Shoebridge backed her up saying “Corporations like X-Strata and Rio Tinto are not victims. They are directly profiting from damaging our environment.”

When I interviewed Carly for the Beyond Zero radio show on 3CR, she told me how her group had got motivated. They were sick of the government ignoring letters and lobbying. The urgency of preventing the worst climate change was uppermost in their minds. For some of them, the way Kevin Rudd was “booted out” over the mining tax, showed them just how powerful the mining companies were. They felt that living in the world’s biggest coal exporting port imposed on them an imperative to take direct action . They hoped to get the attention of the coal companies to stop their reckless expansion, which is having such a devastating impact on the Hunter Valley and beyond. People need to know that they make the profits, “but the devastation stays here”, she said.

Coal communities suffer measurable health and environmental impacts. Beautiful food bowls are being turned into grand canyons and this is projected to double in the next decade. We are all suffering from climate change caused by greenhouse gasses, especially caused by coal use and yet the coal companies are never on trial.

So 44 people aged between 15 and 88 had trained for and participated in this non violent protest to rouse the rest of us to action.

Back in court the other narrative took over. The general manager, Mr Davidson spoke about his great concern for safety. He had a duty of care at the site where “heavy machinery is operated remotely, automatically and is often fast moving”. He had initially indicated to the police that he would not pursue monetary compensation. It had troubled him that protests were getting bolder and riskier and one day he said, “I will have to pick up the dead body”.

The court was shown two full page ads authorised by Mr Davidson, that had appeared in the Newcastle Herald on 30th and 31st January. The ads were “An open letter to the people of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley” They asked for the support of the community to appreciate the difficult position they were in, accepting that “people have a right to protest” but hoping that “protestors will reconsider their tactics and make safety and commonsense a priority”

The general manager said that he hoped the fines imposed by the court would be a deterrent. He said that his board had agreed that if compensation was awarded they would give it to charity which amounted, as the magistrate said to, “We’ve lost half a million but we don’t want it back”

Mr Davidson said he was after a change in behaviour. He had invited Rising Tide to have a coffee with him, to discuss matters but to no avail.

When I spoke to Carly later she said they had received an invitation, but thought it was inappropriate to meet while a court case was in the offing. I asked what she would have talked about in such a friendly meeting and her answer was ‘safety”!

“If we had talked to them they would have wanted to talk about safety and we’d say that we put everyone’s safety as our top priority. The issue is not with them individually, it’s about the alarming expansion of their industry at our expense. We have trained extensively to do this action and the safety of everyone onsite is ensured. The police were in harnesses too.

The real issue to discuss with Mr Davidson would be the safety of the environment. Like a doctor who wants to stop a haemorrhage, Rising Tide want to stop us loading coal 365 days a year and 24 hours a day.

The World Coal Association itself , has a climate policy published in November 2010. They want to cut emissions in the next 50 years through energy efficiencies, carbon capture and storage and investment in renewables. They will “support governments to take constructive and sustainable action on reductions of anthropogenic G.H gas emissions” and they will work with “coal users, NGO’s and other organisations.” It sounds wonderful apart from the C.C&S, but is it not a delaying tactic for 50 more years of business as usual? It’s like a doctor saying “I’ll stop this haemorrhage next week and leaving us for dead.

In the time that they are buying with court cases to deter or intimidate protestors, the coal companies plan massive expansions. As Guy Pearse wrote in the Age 14/11/2010: The projected demand from China and India “will only be met if Australia doubles its production” This depends on our continued willingness to turn a blind eye to the CO2” we export, even though coal generates nearly half the world’s annual CO2 emissions.

Clive Hamilton in the SMH 3/2/2011 warned that the Newcastle case has “all the hallmarks of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP).

Already Victorians can go to jail for one year for standing in the grounds of a power plant and two years for painting a slogan on the smokestack. Our energy minister Martin Ferguson has urged state governments “to toughen up laws to impede protests against energy infrastructure”. Is this case in NSW , using Victims’ Compensation and rehabilitation legislation a response to government encouragement?

In response to Hamilton’s article, the executive chairman of a company that sells coal to China, Tony Letford SMH 4/2/11, wrote “Modern Society wants all the advantages of cheap energy, but it is not prepared to pay the price that alternative sources of energy involve. We can accept than burning fossil fuels is having an adverse impact in which all society is involved.”

In the court at Newcastle the narrative of the coal loader, that they are good men concerned with safety, respectful of the right to protest and doing a rigorous job for our prosperity clashes with the narrative of Rising Tide whose silence in court was deafening.

There is a third narrative possible outside that of David and Goliath. As Carly Phillips said “I’d like them to talk about making a transition away from coal. They could start with a moratorium on new coal plants and facilities. We understand that they can’t end it overnight but they need to start investing in renewable and start helping workers retrain into green jobs. We want them to admit the local impacts of mining and help to repay the damage.

Climate change could have passed the point of no return already.

They are trying to show the power of the state and the media to stifle protest but people are making the connection between our use and export of coal and climate change.”

As a Beyond Zero Emissions article in SMH 27/1/2011 says “Coalmining is shaping up as the asbestos liability of the 21st Century. BHP’s $11 million donation to the Qld flood appeal shows that it is feeling exposed after public calls for coalminers to pay for the flood damage.”

When will we hear the verdict of this Newcastle battle in the war on climate change ? Not until March 3rd. When will the coal industry start adapting to the the decarbonising Asian economies? I’d love to know. Perhaps that coffee invitation could become a working party.