Energy Efficiency

Peter Cundall may be short in stature, but as the former host Gardener of the ABC’s Gardening Australia, he can spot rot, diseased and non-productive branches on most organisms.

The 82-year-old gardening celebrity – arrested during a protest against Gunns’ pulp mill outside State Parliament last year – pleaded not guilty to the charge of refusing to obey a police order to move away from Parliament House and will fight the charge in a test case.

While this may appear a minor matter, it has the ability to become significant proof of corporate government in action; what we largely are unable to prove – of collusion between corporations and politicians and senior bureaucrats – may well come out in the trial, that corporations actually make policy that politicians rubber stamp to keep the necessary funding in place for re-election.

I have two concerns, the first being the competence of Cundall’s solicitor – Roland Brown, also defending at least another 10 persons – and the political persuasion of the Magistrate hearing the matter.

While outside the Court, Peter Cundall had another swipe at Gunns and the politicians who approved plans to build Australia’s biggest pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, he said ‘when you get a situation where a major proponent of a major pulp mill can actually donate to the main political parties and then cooperate in preparing that legislation for Parliament and passing that through, that is corrupt and I’m fighting against that’.

The big problem is that the law will do all it can to protect the law, so to mount a defence will require some mitigation and or prove that the Police direction was a misapplication of the system of law, to address the charge that Cundall and another 56 anti-pulp mill protesters were arrested out the front of Parliament House for in November 2009.

Of course the law’s position will be that the case relates to unlawfulness of people being at Parliament House to protest, that they were told to move on and did not do as directed.

But for the population, the real issue is what it is, government enacting policy at the direction of corporations that use the law to enforce what is not for the greater good, but based merely on making money. Tasmanian Forestry have long undersold the value of old growth to Gunns who make massive profits and the Golden Rule applies, ‘those that have the gold make the rules’, but will the people stand for it. Cracks are appearing everywhere in the façade of ‘respectability and impartiality’ of government bureaucrats and politicians.