Thursday, February 13, 2025

Rising tide blockade of coal port

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Chibo Mertineit, The Nimbin GoodTimes

The Transport for NSW department imposed a maritime exclusion zone on Friday, just four days before the ‘Climate Justice Protestival’ was meant to start next to Horseshoe Beach in Muloobinba/Newcastle.

After last year’s successful 30 hour blocking of the shipping lane for the huge coal ships in agreement with the police through long negotiations, this year Rising Tide, an environmental volunteer based action group organising the People’s Blockade, aimed to do it for 50 hours.

They are saying that our government is not doing enough to fight global warming, and as we learnt in March, our Great Barrier Reef has just gone through its fifth mass bleaching in eight years, where up to 72 per cent died, caused by the high water temperatures.

We have not achieved the aim of the Paris climate agreement to keep the temperature rise below one point five degrees, because most countries have not fulfilled their commitment towards this.

On Thursday afternoon, while I was driving to Newcastle, I got the message that Alexa Stuart, a young member of the organising team, was successful when she took the matter to the Supreme Court and won. The NSW government should not have used the Maritime Safety Act for this situation, and we were allowed to go into the water. That was just in time, because the blockade was meant to start on Friday morning.

The protestival was longer, bigger and better and there was a large contingent of Northern Rivers residents who joined, organised and facilitated. A few locals were the driving force behind the organising of our regional hub, water safety, affinity groups and the spokescouncil, an alternative model of direct democracy.

Many locals also played significant roles as volunteers in the blockade including water safety, first aid and cooking.

Locals support coal blockade – 170 arrested facing penalties up to $22,000 0r 2 years jail

Overall, there were 7000 people over eight days, 33 volunteer teams with over 1000 volunteers doing 4500 shifts, cooking 20,000 meals and having 130 spokespersons (delegate of your group) representing 2000 people and meeting twice a day for decision making. It was just huge, and there was such a positive and friendly atmosphere at this drug-free event.

There were workshops for Non Violent Direct Action to decolonisation etc and there was music in the air, with Peter Garrett, John Butler, Angi McMahon and Dobby; also Gurridyula, the man who keeps the indigenous fire burning for over 1000 days now on the Adani coal mine sites in Queensland.

It was great to see John Butler performing in a Wallum shirt after visiting their stall, and hearing the former frontman of Midnight Oil and environment minister Peter Garrett speaking of the overreach from authorities to stop the peaceful protest.

He continued: “Is the threat to the wellbeing and the peace of the Hunter region to be found in a group of citizens exercising peacefully their democratic rights, or is it to be found in continuing to export a material which is going to blow the world up in a furnace?”

It was also good to see Craig Foster, former socceroo and Lismore boy coming by, now a journalist and human rights advocate.

Newcastle is the world’s largest coal port, taking it mostly to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India; more than 150 million tonnes annually.

28 new coal and gas projects have been approved by the Albanese government, and our emissions are higher now than under Morrision.

I caught up with Kudra FallaRicketts from Lismore and she told me that she joined the RFS after the 2019 fires. She said: “My home was flooded in the 2022 floods, despite being on four metre stilts. I know that these extreme natural disasters are only to get worse as climate change impacts on all our communities.

“This is why I went to Rising Tide, to block the Newcastle coal port and fight against the fossil-fuelled climate change which has affected my whole community and will continue to do so.”

She thinks our government has a duty of care to tax the coal companies to fund a just transition, as well as stop approving new mines.

The coal mining industry in NSW is 90 per cent foreign owned and pays less then 11 per cent tax. State and Federal governments provided $14.5 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel producers and major consumers in 2013-14, which is equivalent of $27,581 for every minute of the day. Why?

The Australian Institute estimates that the Federal government has budgeted $54 billion for fossil fuel subsidies, five times more than the ten billion for the Housing Australia Future Fund.

On Thursday evening I saw an over-the-top police presence and it stayed like that until Sunday evening. Friday most of the kayaks stayed in their legal zone. Saturday there were three arrests for getting in the highly guarded shipping channel; Sunday 170 arrests. All were released after hours apart from Naomi and Andy. There were 14 under-18 and 17 over 65 included.

They achieved their aim before midday when an empty vessel had to turn back because of them. There are a lot of stories of police being quite aggressive, pushing people in the water and stealing the paddles from kayaks on the water and on the beach.

Then I heard the police saying to the media that they had to rescue people. As organiser Zach Schoefield said:

“The government can’t arrest their way out of this problem.”

Just before I went on Monday to the court for the bail hearing where I learned that I was not allowed to take notes, while people behind me were hammering on their laptops.

I caught up with Brunswick resident Lisa Sandstrom, 58 who said: “I do not want to be here. I certainly don’t want to be arrested. What is left to make our politician listen, apart from civil disobedience?”

She voted for Albanese and they have been a disgrace, approving more coal and gas mines.

“Daily we are watching extinctions of flora and fauna and climate-driven floods and fires. The governments worldwide are aware, yet not acting. They protect the greed of capitalism and greedy men over country and community. Fossil fuels and deforestation must stop now!”

The Nimbin GoodTimes December 2024

See all the photos in the issue.
This article appeared in  The Nimbin GoodTimes, December 2024.


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