The ABC has denied one of its camera crews was working with a group of “extremist” climate protesters who were charged after storming the Perth home of Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill on Tuesday.
WA Police charged four people from the activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub over the incident at Ms O’Neill’s City Beach home just before 7am on Tuesday, with the energy giant pointing to the presence of the ABC’s cameras to describe it as an “organised and deliberate act designed to intimidate Ms O’Neill and her family”.
“This is an unacceptable escalation in activity designed to threaten and intimidate by an extremist group which has no interest in engaging in respectful and constructive debate about Woodside’s role in the transition towards a lower-carbon world,” a Woodside spokeswoman said in a statement.
“Illegal activity like this only serves to distract from the real work being undertaken to achieve decarbonisation.”
Ms O’Neill thanked the WA Police for their swift response.
“This was not a ‘harmless protest’,” she said.
“It was designed to threaten me, my partner and our daughter in our home. Such acts by extremists should be condemned by anyone who respects the law and believes people should be safe to go about their business at home and at work.”
WA Police said the State Security Investigation Unit — which normally handles counter-terrorism matters — had charged four people over the incident.
A 21-year-old man, a 31-year-old man, a 34-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman have each been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
The 31-year-old and 34-year-old are due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday, the 21-year-old on August 14 and the 19-year-old on August 15.
The Australian reports that the camera crew waiting outside Ms O’Neill’s home was not one of the national broadcaster’s normal news crews, and there was speculation it was a team shooting footage for investigative program Four Corners.
An ABC spokeswoman said, “An ABC TV crew was there to film the protest as part of an upcoming report. The ABC has nothing to do with the protest beyond the reporting it is doing.”
Disrupt Burrup Hub, which is opposed to a massive gas project in WA’s Pilbara region, has repeatedly targeted Woodside with protests in recent months.
State parliament as well as the oil and gas giant’s Perth CBD head office have been hit with anti-Woodside graffiti, and in January an activist spray-painted the Woodside logo over Frederick McCubbin’s 1889 painting Down on His Luck at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
The Burrup Hub project on the Burrup Peninsula, north of Karratha, is a $50 billion LNG project being developed by Woodside.
Protesters have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of the project, and threats to the Murujuga rock art near the site, which contains some of the oldest petroglyphs in the world.
Lawyer Zarah Burgess, who represents Disrupt Burrup Hub, earlier told The Sydney Morning Herald police had been “lying in wait” at Ms O’Neill’s house, which suggested they had “stepped up their monitoring of the group’s activity”.
“The public need to know that police were lying in wait at Ms O’Neill’s house, and may well have been doing so since at least 11pm the previous night,” Ms Burgess said in a statement on Wednesday.
“I doubt very much that Ms O’Neill was taken by surprise, given at least a dozen officers were camped out at her property, ready to pounce on three peaceful climate campaigners and an ABC film crew.”
She added, “As a former DPP prosecutor, I find it incredible that the CEO of Woodside is afforded a level of police protection that victims of family violence are not. I wonder if the community is happy that their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent protecting the head of a multi-billion dollar fossil fuel company from a harmless protest, rather than on vulnerable people who actually need it?”
Ms Burgess said the two men facing court on Wednesday, Jesse Noakes and Gerard Mazza, had been refused bail by police.
“Our view of the police case is that it is a weak one — simply because there is no evidence of a conspiracy to commit an indictable (serious) offence,” she said.
“At most, there might be a case for trespass.”
Ms Burgess claimed the current charges “are a flimsy excuse to achieve their shutdown of peaceful protest activity”.
“Police also used the incident as an excuse to raid the homes of other peaceful climate campaigners who weren’t even at the scene that morning, or anywhere near it,” she said.
frank.chung@news.com.au