Tarkine protesters celebrate legal win after having criminal charges dismissed

Protesters who set up a blockade in the Tarkine last year against a proposed tailings dam are celebrating a win after having charges against them dismissed. FULL STORY >>

CHARGES have been dropped against 38 protesters who last year set up a blockade against Chinese-owned mining group MMG’s plans to build a tailings storage dam in the Tarkine.

On Friday, a large group of activists that took part in the Bob Brown Foundation’s actions during 2021 – including locking themselves to machines being used in the clearing and establishing a tree-sit – appeared in the Hobart Magistrates Court, with Tasmania Police abandoning charges against them.

Magistrate Chris Webster dismissed a charge of using or being on a closed forest road against the 38 people after hearing prosecutors would be “tendering no evidence” due to issues of “deficiencies in the sign”.

Foundation campaign manager Jenny Weber said the group was “overjoyed” at the win, which she said came because Forestry Tasmania failed to erect a “closed road” sign.

“Forestry Tasmania is assisting a mining company, a private mining company, by saying that people cannot be on a public access road when they can,” foundation campaign manager Jenny Weber said.

Susie Aulich, who had her charge dismissed on Friday, said she and her husband “locked on to the gate” at the mining site last year. Picture: Chris Kidd

“These are our public forests, these are our public roads.”

She said Forestry Tasmania “should be in the dock and paying the costs for these 38 protesters who weren’t breaking the law”.

Ms Weber said the public road still had MMG’s boom gates and 24-hour security.

She also said the foundation started blockading the road again as of January, noting endangered masked owls and forests at the site needed “permanent secure protection”.

Susie Aulich, a tourism operator who had her singular charge dismissed on Friday, said she was in the Tarkine a year ago to protest the “toxic waste dump”.

“We literally locked on – so my husband and I locked on to the gate. I’d never done anything like that before but I just felt to watch these young people put themselves on the line, I needed to do the same,” she said outside court.

“I urge (Premier) Mr Gutwein to stop this nonsense.”

Anthony Houston, of Houston’s Farms in Cambridge, also protested at the Tarkine last year, sitting in the middle of the road to stop trucks. Picture: Chris Kidd

Anthony Houston, of Houston Farms in Cambridge, also had his charge dismissed on Friday.

Mr Houston, who also protested the damming of the Franklin in 1978, criticised MMG for taking the “cheapest option to get rid of poisonous toxic waste”.

“We won’t let them. I went up there and I sat in the middle of the road and stopped the trucks and got arrested,” he said.

“The only way we’re going to stop that destruction is stand in front of the machines.”

A number of the protesters still face charges of trespass or hindering or obstructing mining operations under a lease, and on Friday were bailed to return to court in May.

Some 71 people were arrested and charged in total since the Tarkine protest action began last year.

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