AUSTRALIA: Law proposed to criminalise climate protest

In Tasmania, Australia, environmental activists faced a proposed harsh new law that would criminalise protests in locations deemed to be workplaces, and which could result in jail sentences. The proposed law seemed targeted at preventing people protesting against logging in Tasmania’s forests, where protests are increasingly being restricted. In February, four anti-logging activists from the Bob Brown Foundation were arrested for trying to prevent trees being felled. Activists were banned from protesting in forests on safety grounds, a restriction the Foundation took legal action to have overturned.