Suddenly we're hearing talk of civil disobedience. Until recently, the term has been associated almost exclusively with protest movements of the mid to late 20th century. It is easy to recall television coverage of protesters tied to trees, obstructing lawful logging operations in the forests of south-eastern Australia. But in recent days, ABC Radio National has reported on plans for acts of civil disobedience designed to do the exact opposite — destroy trees.
Rural landowners are said to be planning a day of civil disobedience on 1 July to clear native vegetation from their land, in defiance of laws enacted to counter ongoing damage to the global ecosystem. This follows revelations that a farmer flouted the law by bulldozing a large tract of land in the environmentally sensitive Gwydir wetlands in northern NSW.
I have no hesitation in agreeing with Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who pledged that those who are found to have broken the law will be dealt with through the courts.
"If people are breaking the law, just because they think there's some point of principle involved, there's no protection", he told ABC Radio.
However I must appear slightly hypocritical when Eureka Street has consistently supported symbolic acts of civil disobedience in other circumstances. Earlier this year, we interviewed Fr John Dear SJ, who carries on the Berrigan brothers' tradition of non-violent protest against war. Dear, who was visiting Australia from the US, has been arrested more than 75 times.
We also admire the four Christian activists in court this month after being arrested for trespassing at the Pine Gap intelligence base near Alice Springs. The group, which includes Iraq "human shield" Donna Mulhearn, conducted what they describe as a "Citizen's Inspection" of Pine Gap military base last year. Mulhearn asserts that the group is challenging the Government's attempts to silence public criticism of US military bases in Australia. On Tuesday, Justice Sally Thomas sided with the defendants when she denied a prosecution attempt to curtail their "political" activities by putting them under house arrest.
The answer to our quandary about apparently supporting the civil disobedience only when we disagree with the laws, has to lie in an assessment of whether the action is fundamentally destructive. We would contend that removing trees and other vegetation from the land is certainly destroying ecosystems and, in the long-term, the sustainability of human life on the planet.
On the other hand, the actions of the