CLIMATE change protesters who “locked on” to the Hunter River rail bridge and blocked access to coal loaders at Kooragang Island as part of a global day of action earlier this year have been convicted and fined in Newcastle Local Court.
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Nearly 40 anti-coal protesters appeared in court on Monday where they pleaded guilty to the charge of going onto or remaining on running lines after a charge of interfering with equipment without permission under the Rail Line Safety National Law was withdrawn.
Environmental Defenders Office NSW solicitor, Kirra Levin, who represents all 66 protesters arrested during the biggest anti-coal protest in Newcastle’s history on May 8 this year, submitted to Magistrate Ian Cheetham that he could deal with her clients without conviction.
But Mr Cheetham disagreed, saying that each had made a choice to protest unlawfully, when the option to demonstrate legally was available. The protesters packed the courtroom on Monday afternoon, but due to time constraints only about 10 were sentenced.
Young and old, men and women - among them academics and university students, engineers and environmentalists, volunteers and documentary filmmakers - each were convicted and fined $300.
In a bid to avoid clogging the local court system with dozens of individual hearings, one activist, Anne Elizabeth Hodgson, was to be the test case for the others who had been charged with climbing onto the rail line.
But on the date of the hearing last week, and after negotiations between police prosecutor PJ O’Brien and Ms Levin, the charge was downgraded.
Ms Hodgson pleaded guilty and avoided a conviction. The remaining matters from Monday were adjourned to October 11 for sentence.
More than a dozen other protesters, who live in other parts of the state, had their matters adjourned to the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney and Lismore Local Court.
Three others, charged with malicious damage over the anti-coal blockade, will face a hearing in Newcastle Local Court on October 21.