Activists behind protest at Woodside CEO’s home guilty but unrepentant
Four anti-gas activists behind a controversial attempted protest at the home of Woodside Energy CEO have pleaded guilty to a string of offences after prosecutors agreed to drop the most serious charge.
Four anti-gas activists behind a controversial attempted protest at the home of Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill have pleaded guilty to a string of offences after prosecutors agreed to drop the most serious charge linked to the incident.
But another two activists, charged after they were identified in footage handed to police by the ABC, will go to trial later in the year to fight charges of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
Disrupt Burrup Hub activists Matilda Lane-Rose, Emil Davey, Gerard Mazza and Jesse Noakes on Tuesday all agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charges of attempted unlawful damage, attempted trespass and refusing to obey a data access order, some 15 months after the incident outside Ms O’Neill’s City Beach home. The guilty plea came after conspiracy charges against the quartet were dropped.
Ms Lane-Rose was unrepentant in the wake of her plea. She told reporters outside court that while she did not plan to target Ms O’Neill’s home again, she would not stop campaigning.
“I don’t regret my action and I don’t take it back. Maybe it’s up to someone else to do it next, maybe the next climate warrior should step up,” she said.
The activists’ decision to target Ms O’Neill’s home, which she shares with her wife and daughter, and the ABC’s decision to send a Four Corners film crew with them, drew widespread condemnation at the time.
The ABC ultimately handed over to police footage filmed in the lead-up to the incident, leading investigators to charge another three Disrupt Burrup Hub members with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. One of those three has since had that charge dropped, but the other two – Joana Partyka and Tahlia Stolarski – on Tuesday pleaded not guilty and will face a trial later in the year.
Ms Lane-Rose defended the activists’ decision to target Ms O’Neill’s home, arguing that oil and gas emissions were driving up the risk to homes around the world.
“If we’re talking about people’s homes, there’s going to be one billion people displaced by climate change by 2050, at which the (Woodside gas project) North West Shelf will still have another 20 years of operation,” she said.
“The fires in California, all those people who lost their homes in the Palisades … It’s the pollution her company is putting out that’s driving this crisis, so I think Meg O’Neill is just as guilty of targeting people’s homes as I am.”
Disrupt Burrup Hub has been behind a string of controversial actions across Western Australia aimed at increasing opposition to Woodside’s expansion and extension of its liquefied natural gas projects across the state.
Ms Partyka spray-painted a Woodside logo on the Frederick McCubbin colonial masterpiece, Down on His Luck, with the WA Museum late last year acquiring the defaced protective Perspex for its collection.
Others have set off stink bombs inside Woodside’s Perth headquarters, forcing the evacuation of the building, while some of the activists were charged after trying to smuggle smoke bombs into the company’s annual general meeting.
The four activists who pleaded guilty on Tuesday will be sentenced next month.
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