By Jesinta Burton
Three climate protesters who targeted the home of Woodside boss Meg O’Neill have been slapped with more than $6000 in fines after pleading guilty to attempted trespass and attempted unlawful damage over the incident, which was filmed by an ABC crew.
Jesse Noakes, 36, Gerard Mazza 33, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 20, arrived at O’Neill’s home in Perth’s western suburbs on the morning of August 1, 2023, intending to throw paint at the house and chain themselves to a gate to prevent O’Neill leaving.
Emil Davey, Matilda Lane-Rose and Jesse Noakes outside Perth Magistrates Court on Monday following their sentencing.Credit: Jesinta Burton.
But the protest against the energy giant’s megaproject on the Burrup Peninsula in the state’s north-west was foiled by 10 WA Police officers who were lying in wait, intervening after the group arrived and arresting them.
The entire incident was caught on camera by the crew of ABC’s flagship investigative program Four Corners, which accompanied the trio as part of a story on the growing environmental movement.
A fourth co-accused, Emil Davey, was arrested at his home a short time later.
Perth Magistrates Court previously heard the activists had been captured on CCTV scoping out the premises 72 hours before the planned protest, and had purchased four litres of yellow paint to pour into balloons, two buckets and three yellow spray cans.
And Davey had a run-in with undercover cops while driving by the home on the night before the protest, with the court previously told he was held up at gunpoint.
O’Neill later took out violence restraining orders against all four defendants, branding the incident “extreme”.
During a sentencing hearing on Monday, Lane-Rose and Davey each received a $2000 fine and a spent conviction for their involvement, with magistrate Steven Heath recognising the age of both offenders and the fact neither had a criminal record.
Noakes, who has several convictions relating to his involvement in prior protests, received a $2500 fine.
Mazza is due to be sentenced on February 24.
In handing down the sentence, Heath said that while the decision to take the protest to O’Neill’s home could be seen as a personal attack, the plot did not involve causing extensive damage to the premises or disruption to the wider public.
Heath also recognised the democratic right to protest as being a pillar of democracy.
Lawyers for all four defendants had previously told the court the offending was “at the lower end” and worthy only of a small fine, pointing out that the protest was interrupted and maintaining that their conduct was motivated by genuinely held concerns about climate change.
Outside court, Lane-Rose told the waiting media she accepted the punishment as being proportionate given the nature of the protest the trio intended to carry out.
But she questioned how she and fellow members of Disrupt Burrup Hub could have been dealt a fine comparable to that energy giant Santos received last month over an oil spill at its processing facility off the north-west coast, given not a drop of paint was spilled.
“Last month, oil and gas multinational Santos were fined $10,000 for spilling 25,000 litres of oil into the Indian Ocean off WA. That’s 40 cents per litre for an oil spilled,” she said.
“I am being fined 5000 times more than the second-largest oil and gas company in Australia.
“Our whole system is broken when we punish peaceful young protesters far more heavily than we punish the companies that are killing my future and f--ing our planet.”
A Woodside spokesperson told WAtoday the company condemned unlawful acts intended to threaten, harm, intimidate or disrupt its employees, their families, or any other member of the community and believed such actions should be met with “the full force of the law”.
Santos has been contacted for comment.
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