Vikki Campion: Why are our taxes funding industrial sabotage?

Selfie-streaming law-breakers are being turned into charity cases who receive taxpayer funds and tax-deductible donations to pay for their legal bills, writes Vikki Campion.

Illegal campers protesting against the coal industry corner a young female mine worker in Queensland scrub. They film her attempts to escape them, screaming “dumb sl.t” at her.

When she finally flees, with the help of a security guard, the campers speed after her in a four-wheel drive.

A sympathy parade that turns selfie-streaming law-breakers into charity cases who receive taxpayer funds and tax-deductible donations to pay for their legal bills has led to an unprecedented rise in attacks on workers.

Eric Serge Herbert (right) at a “swarm” in Brisbane on Thursday shortly before being jailed.

This is behaviour that your taxes enable, with a subsidy that gives radical activists the ability to attract donations — providing a green light for activist groups to cheer on potentially fatal protests, and giving the well-wishers who donate to these groups a bump in their tax return.

Labor Senators sided with the Greens on Thursday night to allow these groups to continue receiving taxpayer subsidies, by blocking reforms that would strip radical groups of their charity status.

Public statements by environmental organisations seemingly excusing some of the more extreme behaviours might bolster rogue activists who believe they can harass workers for the global good, no matter the consequences.

Violence against women, such as a young worker alone on a dusty private mine road in the remote bush, is unacceptable.

Blockade Australia claims the Environmental Defenders Office, which receives funding from NSW taxpayers, would support the legal recourse for the 28 people arrested in Newcastle over 10 days of protests at the world’s biggest coal port.

It’s an organisation that Labor promised to give $14 million to at the last federal election.

Last week, Blockade Australia told its followers in an encrypted Telegram message: “We have support from the Environmental Defenders Office. Big Props to the EDO!!”

It’s a sympathy not extended to other protesters. Get arrested at a Covid protest and you’re on your own. Play Russian roulette with workers’ lives, and not only is applause bestowed upon you for your heroism, but the taxpayer picks up your legal bill.

Opinion writer Vikki Campion.

Charities are banned from engaging in illegal activity, however nothing stops them from supporting it, especially now that Labor and the Greens in the Senate scotched the laws that would have refused charities with tax-deductible gift register status from using social media accounts to promote or advocate illegal activities.

The proposed changes would not have stopped lawful advocacy, but it would have captured the offences of trespass, vandalism, theft, assault and intimidation, and allowed the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission to investigate.

Charities should not use their funds, social media accounts or staff to support or promote activists to commit offences, but just this week Lock the Gate, The Australiasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, and Friends of the Earth Australia publicly supported Blockade Australia, because a court ruled that an activist had to face the consequences of his actions.

Eric Serge Herbert was charged with causing obstruction to a railway locomotive or rolling stock, attempting to hinder the working of mining equipment, and attempting to assist the obstruction of rail locomotive or rolling stock — all so he could use a freight train for a 43-minute expletive-riddled, bizarre Facebook live-stream.

He was sentenced to at least six months jail, but given bail.

His family say the professional protester “quit university to do this full-time”, working with groups such as Blockade and Extinction Rebellion.

Whilst on the train, Herbert described it as “fulfilling his purpose in life” amid a bizarre rant where he burst into song at points, and said: “People get f. ked up and die and sh.t, and the institution called Australia is feeding you a furnace and if you don’t want to cook alive you have to get the f. k out.”

He acknowledges in his video that if the train moved he would die a “brutal death” and boasts of being arrested 27 times.

Friends of the Earth Australia tweeted that his sentence was “a disturbing development” for “non-violent direct action”. Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility climate and environment director Dan Gocher tweeted: “So it’s 12 months jail for stopping a coal train temporarily, but you can blow up an Indigenous cultural site no worries.”

Lock the Gate NSW coordinator Georgina Wood tweeted: “solidarity with Sergeio (sic) and @BlockadeAus. A 22-year-old is sent to prison for peaceful protest, but BHP, Glencore, Whitehaven and the rest face no consequences for burning down the world for profit.”

Even comments from formerly respected international environmentalists are worrying. Environmentalist David Suzuki told an Extinction Rebellion protest in Victoria this week: “There are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don’t pay attention to what’s going on.”

You can now blow up work sites, potentially traumatise train drivers, randomly press manual overrides on automated equipment that could send tonnes of coal on a hapless worker below, harass isolated female coal workers, and some eco-terrorists will have the audacity to call it “non-violent”.

If the woman trying to escape verbal assault in rural Queensland on Thursday had been fleeing her partner, chased down in a speeding truck, in isolated country that makes Wolf Creek seem friendly, there would be no excuses for him.

His behaviour would not be excused, let alone exonerated.

But do it in the name of the planet? There could be a tax deduction in it for you.

Got a news tip? Email [e-mail]