OPINION
The only reason leftist activists keep gluing themselves to roads and defacing great artworks and war memorials is because they almost never face consequences for their appalling, often criminal, behaviour. In contrast to the show trials of the J6 protesters, nearly all of the violent Antifa rioters who turned Washington into a war zone during the Trump inauguration were let off scot-free.
Activists who clog courts with vexatious lawfare are likewise never called to face consequences for their actions.
For one ‘environmental’ group, though, millions of dollars of consequences may be coming their way.
Santos is a step closer to finding out who bankrolled the Environmental Defenders Office’s failed campaign against its $5.3bn Barossa gas project, after the Federal Court ordered communications between the EDO and four activist groups be handed over.
Federal Court judge Natalie Charlesworth ruled in favour of the oil and gas giant and allowed subpoenas served on The Sunrise Project Australia, Jubilee Australia Research Project, Environmental Centre NT and Market Forces to be enforced.
It means the groups will be compelled to deliver Santos all documents that record “any payment or indemnity to the applicants or the (EDO)” so it can work out where to recover millions of dollars of extra costs following a failed campaign to halt work on a 262km pipeline in the Tiwi Islands.
Justice Charlesworth criticised the EDO in her January decision that meant work could continue on the pipeline, saying in some instances evidence it presented was confected.
She is likely referring to the spurious claims of “cultural harm” levelled on behalf of Tiwi Islands group. Not least, the self-evident bollocks that the pipeline would disturb “sacred sites” which have been drowned for tens of thousands of years, when rising seawater at the end of the last Ice Age flooded formerly dry land.
Lawyers for the activist groups called the request a “fishing expedition” and an abuse of process, but Justice Charlesworth rejected that.
“The (groups) may fairly be described as activist organisations, existing solely to achieve environmental outcomes, not to derive profits,” she said.
“It is at least arguable that a non-party’s support of litigation to pursue a political or ideological objective of the non-party’s own could … weigh in favour of a costs order” […]
She said communications between the EDO and the groups “may or may not” sufficiently demonstrate a relationship to ultimately support the costs order, but Santos was warranted in seeking the information.
Particularly galling for Australian taxpayers is that the EDO is a quango that regularly trousers taxpayers’ hard-earned in order to lobby against projects that would benefit all Australians.
Public statements made by Jubilee, Sunrise Project and the Environment Centre about their links with the “Stop Barossa Gas” campaign showed issuing subpoenas “in the present case is not mere speculation”, Justice Charlesworth said […]
And all four groups have been compelled to supply Santos with documents that set out payment or indemnity to Tiwi Islands traditional owner Simon Munkara or the EDO.
Justice Charlesworth said the EDO paid disbursements of almost $150,000 to third parties throughout the proceeding when ordinarily those costs would be covered by the applicants – Mr Munkara in this case.
And despite Mr Munkara informing the court that he could pay damages, they “nonetheless prosecuted their claim with the assistance of a large team of lawyers”.
The Australian
No doubt the activists are desperate to keep their webs of dark money under wraps and to avoid being held financially accountable for their bastardry.
But it’s long past time that more than a few professional pests felt the Dildo of Consequences going in dry.