3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

30th January 1999

Good morning, this is the Radio Active Show brought to you by the Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service. I'm Linda Marks and with me in the studio is Eric Miller. (Good Morning) The Radio Active Show is a weekly program bringing you news and information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today's show we go to the Magistrates Court in Darwin to hear how protesters who were arrested at Jabiluka are fairing. We speak with three of them, Peter, Krista and Butternut. Over the last couple of weeks the Darwin Courts have been inundated with the court cases arising from the Jabiluka blockade. Peter Tasca was arrested last August for trespass on the Jabiluka lease, Eric Miller spoke to him this week.

Peter: I was arrested for the alleged trespass on a mining lease, on two counts, 7 and 8, of the Northern Territory Trespass Act.

Eric: So they summonsed you and you got all the papers to appear in court.

Peter: Yes, I was kept in the lock up and when I let out the next day I was given all my papers, after I had a bail undertaking to appear in court in January 1999. That consisted of a precis and a charge sheet telling me what my charges were. And that I has a bail undertaking to appear in court that date.

Eric: What kind of fine were you facing under this charge of trespass?

Peter: Each trespass charge has a maximum fine of $2,000. And so there are two charges so a maximum of $4,000.

Eric: And you are looking at the expense of going to Darwin and going to court up there?

Peter: Yes, I was sussing getting a plane up there, they had specials on at about $530 which is pretty good.

Eric: So what did you do?

Peter: It came down to me being on my own. I had to make a decision. I couldn't contact anybody who was helping me through case for a couple of days. So I decided to send a fax off to the prosecution under some information I got from the EDO in Darwin, the Environment Defenders Office. It stated something about section 63 in the Northern Territory Mining Act that disputes whether the mining lease road is actually part of the mining lease. If it was there before the ERA lease, which indeed it is, and most likely there before the Pan Continental lease was granted as well, it makes that a public road. Section 63 clearly states that a mining lease shall not be granted over a public road. So I sent that up. Also stated in the fax that I was within 50 metres of Oenpelli road. That has been working through Jabiru Court. A couple of other people have used the same defence and managed to get their charges dropped before going to court. So I thought, couldn't hurt. Chuck that in as well. At the bottom I said, please reply today due to travel arrangements needing to be made to Darwin. I also stated that I would be claiming court costs too once I get up there and my charges are dropped. And I said, hope to hear from you today.

Eric: What happened?

Peter: I did hear from back from them, but not until the next day. I talked to Alan Woodcock who is one of the prosecutors up there and he said he'll have an answer for me the following day which is Friday before the Monday I had to appear in court. He didn't reply to me. According to the receptionist he was too busy with my friends in court. So, I rang up the prosecution and got onto the Sergeant Prosecutor, Peter Hales, and I restated my facts and said I could read it out to him. He firmly reminded me that I have an undertaking to appear in court in such and such a date and I also have to appear in court for my hearing. I said, Yes that's why I rang you up, I'm trying to confirm that. I also want to give you this information. He said that if I find out anything different I'll you back. Half an hour later her called me back. I said, this is my lucky day, two calls in one day. He said, I think it is your lucky day actually. He then began to state that he had spoken to my arresting officer and he said that he could not state that I was not within 50 metres of Oenpelli Road therefore he would not pursuing my bail undertaking and would be dropping the charge.

Eric: So you were on the road to Oenpelli and you proved that wasn't actually the mining lease.

Peter: I was on the mining access road that comes off Oenpelli Road.

Eric: You got off scott free?

Peter: Yes. I was very happy. I was a little bit reserved. The reason I did what I did was not to get off on a technicality, but to show committed I was to defending this land and helping the Mirrar People with this important cause.

Music: Stand on the lease at Jabiluka until they give that land right back, Stand on the lease at Jabiluka until they give that land back to Mirrar Clan, Stand on the lease at Jabiluka until they give that land right back.

Linda Marks: That was Peter Tasca who was arrested and charged at Jabiluka last year and the singing was from the CD 'Uranium, Don't Dig It, Stop Jabiluka Mine' and the track was 'Stand on the lease at Jabiluka'. And if you get hold of that CD around town, money raised from it will help the Jabiluka campaign.

Krista went to Darwin to give some support to her friends who were facing court appearances after being arrested up there. Eric asked Krista, where did the arrestees come from?'

Krista: Melbourne, a lot from Wollongong, Wollongong seems to be the place, Wollongong, Sydney and Brisbane, heaps from Brisbane.

Eric: So was it like a gathering of the Blockage again?

Krista: Yes, it was great. It was really good to catch up with people. There were 40 – 50 of us up there and everyone sat in everyone else's court and supported them and we did an action out of the front of Mines and Energy on Smith Street the main street of Darwin on the Monday morning. We did another action out the front of the courthouse, which was good. It was good meeting everyone again and getting into the issues again. They have an office up there and we watched the film 'Era of Destruction' the film about the blockade. It was like reliving everything.

Eric: That must have been good. But it must have been expensive getting up there and people were getting hefty fines?

Krista: This was so amazing because it was so relative to what magistrate you got. Some people ended up with $100 fines and a conviction. Others ended up with $400 fines and $400 court costs and it really didn't seem to depend on any specific reason. It was very arbitrary. It seemed to depend on how the magistrate viewed the protesters. It varied from magistrate to magistrate. There was one magistrate who made a speech saying we were one of the most caring bunch of people he had met in his life. There was a female magistrate, she was quite understanding and who just did her job in the confines of our law. But there were some awful magistrates and very, very arrogant, intolerant and prejudiced, and magistrates who were really horrible to people.

Eric: Now, some of these charges have gaol sentences but nobody got sent to gaol.

Krista: Nobody got sent to gaol. One guy who had spent 6 months preparing his case and pleaded not guilty, at the end, when he was fined $450 dollars or something, stood up and said I have no intention of paying that because I'm making a statement, I don't believe I'm guilty. And the magistrate said, in that case I'm only going to give you a week to pay it and if you don't you will go to gaol. No one went to gaol while I was there but it is a possibility for a few people who don't want to pay their fines or aren't going to.

Eric: And most of these charges were trespass?

Krista: Yes, the prosecution seemed pretty… They dropped anything that you wanted them to except for trespass. We were turning up and saying, getting the precis which was an account of what we did and saying, no, I don't agree with this or this and they were just crossing it out. They didn't care about any if the other charges. They only tried to push damage to mines twice and they failed because it was ridiculous and the magistrate found people not guilty. They just wanted people for trespass.

Eric: So they are following the trespass to the end and all the other charges they are dropping.

Krista: Yes. They don't know what they are doing. They are really disorganised. They are willing to drop everything except for the trespass charges. Some weird stuff happened, like, some guy rang up to plead guilty and they said, your charges have been dropped for no apparent reason. That happened to two different people. Just because of their lack of organisation. They lost some people's files so they just get their charges dropped.

Eric: I suppose the magistrates have been pretty overworked with the number of people up there?

Krista: Yes. The magistrates are funny the way they are getting very annoyed with the prosecution for being all over the place and not having their files with them all of the time. People were being called to their cases and the prosecution would fumble around and say I haven't got their file. They were a mess and the magistrates were getting very annoyed with the police about their lack of organisation.

Eric: Did you see the court process as part of the protest?

Krista: I didn't, I don't personally, but some people felt that how they wanted to express how they felt and that was great. There were some fantastic cases and people were standing up and expressing their views in the court. It was great for awareness too and they felt satisfied that they'd done that.

Linda Marks: And that was Krista who went to Darwin to support her friends who were arrested at Jabiluka in their court cases.

The music was 'Jabiluka' by Bridge the Gap'

Butternut was arrested twice when he was at the Jabiluka protest. He is the person Krista was telling us about who had taken months to prepare his case. He was in court for two days in relation to one of his cases. Eric spoke him from the JAILS office in the Northern Territory. And JAILS stands for the Jabiluka Arrestee Information and Legal Support.

Butternut: Last week was the big week. That was when most of the 118 had their court cases. Basically we ran the court for a week. There were protesters everywhere. Police and protesters and prosecutors running around like mad. We had pretty much every court being used. There were joint hearings going on or individual hearings. In the end most were found guilty but we put really good cases together of necessity. We put our point across and in the end all the clerks and magistrates were really impressed with our performance over the week.

Eric: I suppose that it put the court under quite a bit of pressure.

Butternut: Yes. It did. One group hearing that we had go ahead with a volunteer lawyer that we had actually got adjourned, pushed back for months because the prosecution couldn't keep all the witnesses in town for long enough. So the one major case we were trying to run was the one that didn't get run.

Eric: So this is part of the 118 were doing a joint case together?

Butternut: Yes. Six of them were and they will be represented by John Thomson who is a lawyer from Brisbane who up here.

Eric: There were a lot of quite heavy charges against some of these demonstrators, were the heavier ones dropped? What happened with them?

Butternut: Well, my case was started on Monday. I was one of the heavy ones. I had damage to mines amongst my charges and pretty much the first witness that the prosecution called, made that whole charge drop. He was the head of operations for Jabiluka mine. He admitted in the court that it wasn't a working mine and the magistrate had made her mind up at that stage that damage to mines couldn't stick because it wasn't a working mine.

Eric: People who locked on had that charge as well?

Butternut: There were quite a few of us who locked on and in the end the only charge they continued with everybody was trespass in a closed premises and that's the only one that stuck and it stuck in all cases.

Eric: It seemed that the demonstrators were more organised than the prosecution.

Butternut: Very much so. The prosecution's argument was that they were expecting a huge long hearing, 118 people to have a joint hearing and the magistrates weren't really sympathetic to that sort of argument because it was the prosecutions fault that all the problems were happening because they hadn't organised things properly. They said the prosecution was in a state of unpreparedness.

Eric: Some of the magistrates gave quite glowing accounts of some the demonstrators.

Butternut: I think the demonstrators impressed all of the magistrates. But they were in a position were they had to uphold the law. I'm sure that if they could have found an avenue to let people off they would have. They were in a position where they could have set some really impressive precedents that would have set the mark for other protests around Australia but they had to stick within the law. They didn't have an option except to convict us, to find us guilty.

Eric: With your case what did you go up and say?

Butternut: My case went for two days. I cross examined most of the witnesses. Then I got on the stand myself and linked in everything I wanted to say on uranium, the nuclear industry, landrights, the environment and I put it into the picture of the whole world that we are destroying the world and this is just a small element of that. It was my job and a human being to protect the world. And that's what I was doing. The magistrate, I found, was impressed by everybody, not just myself. She adjourned to give the sentence, for 3 days so she could think about it and then came back. I did my summing up. The prosecution did their summing up. She did find me guilty and she did convict me but because she was in the position that she had to because she had convicted everybody else previously.

Eric: What was your fine?

Butternut: I was given $450 but no costs. Most people were given costs as well. But because I was found not guilty on damage to mines and only guilty on trespass they couldn't really charge me costs as I was innocent on one of the charges.

Eric: And how long have you got to pay for that?

Butternut: I asked for no time to pay. I was considering going to gaol or doing community service. She gave me 7 days and said, I want you to seriously to consider what you are doing because it is not a nice place. That time comes up tomorrow and still haven't decided what I'm going to do.

Eric: Did you see the courts as carrying on the protests?

Butternut: Very much so. Within the legal framework. I was told one of the judges was on Radio National early last week and he said he was incredibly impressed by the protesters. And that's the whole idea. The clerks and the article clerks were all really enjoying it and a lot of the police officers were enjoying it. Except the ones who were being cross examined by us. Then on last Friday I had a second case come up that involved the Lizard Lock On Action that was in September. That case went really well. That was concluded this Monday. We were found not guilty and that was really good.

Eric: The Lizard Action was quite an innovative action. What happened with the Lizard Action?

Butternut: It took quite a lot of planning. We had a Holden Kingswood that we painted up to look like a frilled neck lizard with a lot of 22 gallon drums on the side and a tripod sticking up from it. In the wee hours of the morning we all arrived in front of the lease and cemented this Holden Kingswood Lizard into the ground in front of the access road and then all locked on, 12 of us.

Eric: How long did it take for the police to get you off?

Butternut: All day. Everyone was sitting around. That was until the afternoon, possibly towards 2o'clock that the TRG arrived and started to take us off. We were there all day. They didn't do any work that day. They turned around and went home. And we were found innocent of it.

Eric: So that was really good protest.

Butternut: It was a great protest considering there were no consequences for anybody. The first two were Polly and myself defending that action last week, last Friday and the others haven't had their case yet. I think it is in March. If anyone is listening out there who was involved in that action I'd encourage them to come up here because you'll get off.

Linda Marks: That was Buttercup from the JAILS office in the Northern Territory. People who have court cases coming up should get in contact with JAILS through your local Jabiluka Action Group office and the number for the Melbourne office is 9417 6660. And the Jabiluka Defence Fund is still continuing because cases are happening right up until March and there are people who will need a little bit of cash. If you are interested in donating some money to the Jabiluka Defence Fund you could send the money to the ACF, I think, or you could ring the JAG office to find out how you can do that.

Eric spoke to Buttercup again yesterday. He told Eric that he is not going to pay his fine.

As Eric was speaking to Buttercup yesterday he was getting ready to go to Arhnam Land for 3 days because he had been invited to speak with traditional owners whose land is the subject of a new uranium exploration lease at Maningida in Arhnem Land. They want to work out how to stop it.

Now Eric, you have a bit of news from the papers.

Eric Miller: It's from this week in the Age. We reported last week how Germany wants to phase out its nuclear power. The German Government wants to phase out the nuclear industry and the reprocessing plants in France and England were saying that they were going to sue the German Government if they were going to stop those contracts of reprocessing. And now the utilities in Germany have put pressure on the German Government as well and this week the Chancellor of Germany has put on hold that phase out. The first stage of stopping the contracts for reprocessing the spent fuel in France and England was going to go through this week and he had to stop that because he was under such pressure. But there is still a lot of anti nuclear sentiment in Germany and around in Europe and I'm sure we are going to hear a lot more from that.

Also this week in the Herald/Sun we were alerted to a near nuclear meltdown in India. In 1993 there was a fire in a nuclear power plant in India and the fire caused one of the pumps to fail. They had to pour boron into the nuclear core to stop the reaction from overheating and melting down that reactor. So that was a near miss. Now the safety officer, the ex safety officer in India is saying, we are just waiting for another Chernobyl to happen in India.

Linda Marks: We have all been waiting for another Chernobyl in India because the nuclear industry there is so dodgy.

Eric Miller: That's all we have time for in the Radio Active Show this week, Linda, so it's good bye from Eric.

Linda Marks: And it's good bye from Linda.

Transcript produced by Linda Marks - with much thanks!!!
Page last updated February 13, 1999.
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