In the late 70s and early 80s, race hustlers in the United States discovered a new – and lucrative – tactic: lawfare.
It was so simple: just level an accusation of racism at a corporate target and watch them rush to settle. After all, with ambulance-chasing lawyers willing to work pro bono in anticipation of a cut of the settlement, and a system geared in favour of the litigant (because it’s “fair”), the process became the punishment. Cases could be dragged out for years, at enormous cost to the defendant both in terms of money and reputational damage (who cared if the accusation was even remotely true? An eager media would play it for all it was worth).
In the end, it was just far easier to settle quickly out of court. Thomas Sowell dubs it “how to legally rob a bank”.
Green activists today are using lawfare not so much as a cash-grab but as a means of grinding developments to a halt for decades.
Conservation and green groups have used 11 new legal claims in the past four years to tie up seven projects in regional areas, including the $16.5bn Adani coalmine in Queensland, a new $140m port on Melville Island in the Northern Territory, Victorian government forestry and the $30m Tassal salmon farm in Tasmania.
The 11 new cases of environmental groups using secondary legislation since 2016 have resulted in seven major projects being delayed in court for a total of 2600 days, as business investment in Australia drops to its lowest level since the 1990s.
According to analysis from the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, legal activism using the federal environmental protection act has put $65bn of investment at risk, with delays totalling more than 28 years in court.
It’s truly galling that a tiny clique of nosey-nannas, ageing Boomers and dreadlocked unemployables are holding the entire nation to ransom. Especially when they are abetted by politicians whom almost no-one outside of Australia’s wealthiest suburbs vote for.
In 2017, a Bob Brown Foundation challenge against a salmon farm in Tasmania, to protect the southern right whale, was dismissed after 237 days in court but an appeal meant another 349 days in court.
According to IPA research fellow Kurt Wallace: “A small group of green activists are using a special legal privilege to delay and disrupt $65bn of investment, which is disproportionately damaging regional Australia.”
Regional Australia – as seen at the last election – desperately wants these projects to revive hard-hit economies. Aboriginal communities want jobs, too. But wealthy green activists from the inner cities have decided that they know better.
And, as the record shows, they’re achieving nothing for the environment.
He said the disruptive litigation from environmental groups using a section of the act allowing conservationists to take companies to court was not leading to substantial changes in environmental controls on the projects. “Disruptive lawfare has not led to environmental improvements,’’ Mr Wallace said.
“Of the cases under section 487, 94 per cent have failed to bring about a substantial change to the original project which had been approved by the commonwealth Environment Minister.
“Section 487 has allowed the courts to be used as a strategic tool for environmental activism.
“Green groups, such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and Wilderness Society, are using legal challenges to delay and disrupt major projects with the goal of restricting investment in the resources sector by raising costs and uncertainty.
This is nothing to do with protecting the environment and everything to do with the Marxist goal of overthrowing capitalist society.
“Every day that major projects are held up is another day that a desperate Australian family doesn’t have a job,’’ Senator [Matt] Canavan said.
As is always the way with Marxism, bourgeois ideologues are punishing the working-classes in pursuit of an imaginary socialist utopia.
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