Getting Arrested at the Nation’s Largest Civil Disobedience Action for Climate

Getting arrested used to be something that the general public considered a mark of disgrace. But that’s changed now that the people understand that government ministers aren’t making decisions that consider the viability of a future for generations to come or more broadly, for life on Earth.

For the three thousand people who converged upon Newcastle’s Horseshoe Beach on 25 November for The People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port, which involved a 30-hour-long shutdown on ships entering or leaving Newcastle Coal Port, getting arrested for climate is an honour.

This was clearly the collective outlook of the 118 civilians who put their liberty on the line to raise the alarm about the escalating climate crisis, via the obstruction of the port for hours following the sanctioned nonviolent direct action, which ate further and unexpectedly into the industry’s profits.

The nation watched as former PM Scott Morrison wantonly shattered expectations that the country would take action to abate future extreme weather events that result in enduring mass deaths and has since seen its last hope of a new Labor government acting on this issue completely dashed.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers was on the ground in Newcastle not only to establish the objectives of local climate defenders – who clearly aren’t prepared to negotiate on the future of their children and that of the Earth – but we were also there to share in the experience of being arrested for the cause.

Labor has sold us out

“This is a two-day blockade of the world’s largest coal port. Rising Tide has organised this event with thousands of people in attendance over the two days,” the organisation’s spokesperson Zach Schofield explained, adding that NSW police had approved a 30-hour-long blockade.

“We are out on the streets and in the water to say, ‘If the Albanese government won’t take on the fossil fuel industry, we will”,” he continued.

“It is hard to say where the state of climate science is at, and even some scientists are finding their predictions are actually more conservative than is turning out.”

As for the increasingly obvious reasons why such action is necessitated, Schofield added that “we are at the tail end of the hottest year in 100,000 years” and the UN recently outlined that we’re facing “a hellish three degrees of warming this century: double the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement.”

Labor took office in 2022 on the pretence of being “a climate-friendly party”, yet all PM Anthony Albanese has done since is set a 43 percent emissions reduction target that no one is adhering to, he then rejigged the ineffectual Safeguard Mechanism and carried on approving new coal and gas.

“Things are getting worse faster. And as a young person, 24, I want to live in a world where I have given my utmost to make sure that my generation and any that come after have a fair go,” the climate defender told SCL, “because that is not the world that we’ve inherited.”

The movement is only set to grow

The globe is in a long stretch of polycrisis: perhaps, the greatest ever seen.

For the people of NSW, this has meant years of state-sponsored drought, the unprecedented fires of 2019/20, the COVID pandemic then cut deep next, followed by the rain bombs and flooding of town and country populations and onto our current implicit support for colonial genocide in Gaza. “

“We are building social movement power that is going to sweep aside the fossil fuel industry, that is going to liberate our government from the tenacles of the fossil fuel mafia, and we are going to claim back our right to a safe and liveable future,” Rising Tides’ Shaun Murray told the crowd.

The activist further explained to the 3,000 strong turnout, as the blockade was being launched at 10 am last Saturday morning, that “three-quarters of our domestic emissions is going out through” the channel in Newcastle or to put it another way “about 1 percent of global emissions”.

Murray then introduced the godfather of the local environmental movement, Bob Brown, to the stage. And the founder of the Australian Greens made clear in concluding that those taking a stand on that day could go to the grave assured that they put themselves on the line for the species.

“I want to begin with an apology,” said the former Australian Greens senator. “A bit over 20 years ago in the Senate, I said that if we kept going as we were by the end of this century, sea levels would rise a metre.”

“The Senate broke into uproar. They were laughing. They were shouting at me. And across came a Liberal senator who said to me, “Bob, you just said that the seas are going to rise a metre. You meant a centimetre, didn’t you?” the visionary leader recalled.

Of course, the rising tide of the Australian Greens in all parliaments across the country is testament to the grassroots acknowledgment that humanity and the globe is facing extinction, and there was a clear representation of this burgeoning political force present at the globally reported protest action.

Federal Greens leader Adam Bandt, Senator David Shoebridge and NSW MLCs Sue Higginson, Cate Faehrmann, Abigail Boyd and Dr Amanda Cohn were amongst the broader representation of the reformist party at the nation’s largest ever civil disobedience action on the day.

“I said, ‘No, I meant a metre.’” Brown continued his anecdote. “Well, he was wrong. They were wrong, and I was wrong.”

“Now the United Nations tells us because we haven’t addressed the burning of fossil fuels that the temperatures will be up by three degrees by the end of this century and with that sea levels at three metres, and they’ll keep rising.”

Kicking against the pricks

Amongst the crowd of 3,000-odd climate defenders from across the continent, there was an implicit understanding that the movement has grown to a critical mass, where the largest civil disobedience action ever is not the pinnacle but just the beginning of a societywide pushback.

Getting arrested is no longer perceived solely as an antisocial act. Rather it’s now understood to be the only way forward for decent community-minded citizens to prevent the selling out of all future generations on the part of unscrupulous profiteering politicians parading as democratic leaders.

With strong First Nations representation in the movement, those spruiking arrest and putting liberty on the line – as there was no assurance that a resulting charge wouldn’t carry prison time – were well aware that NSW authorities mete out different policing approaches based on skin colour.

The ever-increasing number of Aboriginal deaths in custody are clear and disgraceful example of this.

As musicians were taking to the event stage on Saturday night, there was uncontroversial talk amongst the top-heavy Anglo multicultural crowd that the ravages of the climate catastrophe are due to the racist disparities being generated by the system of colonial capitalism.

So, it was with this that 120-odd civilians took to the water late on Sunday to successfully delay at least two ships exiting Newcastle Coal Port, in order to be arrested en masse conveying the message that threatening financial penalties or loss of liberty was no longer a deterrent.

And the Australian political class and its fossil fuel masters have been put on notice that the public is well aware that they are knowingly killing their own children.

So, it is now up to the people to save not only their own kids, but those of the ruling class.

The revolution will be live

After about an hour and a half of delaying the inevitable as we floated about on kayaks on the waterway post-the 4 pm deadline, NSW police officers careening around in their purpose-built Zodiac Hurricane marine vessels began picking us off one-by-one for arrest.

The experience on 26 November was that the Newcastle police aren’t as gung-ho as their militarised Sydney counterparts, who unleashed excessive force upon the Unions for Palestine protest action at Port Botany just five days earlier.

Newcastle officers didn’t beat upon the unarmed crowd as occurred at Sydney’s Port Botany on the evening of the 21st.

From arrest on the water, local law enforcement then shipped protesters into a mobile processing centre it had set up, and what stood out the most on arriving at the site for processing, was the overwhelmingly positive support all arrestees and onlooking supporters showed one another.

The cheers and chanting drowned out the voices of police, as the writer of this article learnt that all who had been arrested were “climate champions”, and this reception portrayed a well-oiled movement coming of age in terms of the threat it is now posing the authorities.

The writer’s Court Attendance Notice (CAN) outlines the charge that first-time participants were slapped with, which was one count of unreasonable interference with the Port of Newcastle, contrary to section 14 of the Marine Safety Act 1998 (NSW), which carries a fine of $5,500.

And arrestees were relieved to find that the draconian NSW antiprotest regime, which carries maximum penalties of 2 years imprisonment and a fine of $22,000 for demonstrations that obstruct public infrastructure, couldn’t be applied to the on-water Rising Tide civil disobedience action.

The 118 arrestees from all walks of life who came from across the continent now have to converge once again upon Newcastle in January to appear in court, with representation being provided by the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO).

Indeed, those gathered at the largest act of civil disobedience ever seen in the colony are privy to the fact that the sands are shifting on the legitimacy of the system the powers that be are running, which, again, has resulted in the act of arrest becoming a rite of passage for those saving the Earth.

Main image: Aerial view of the Rising Tide presence in Newcastle over the weekend. Photo supplied by Rising Tide