Activists who tried to graffiti Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill's house, in protest of the Burrup Hub development, have avoided jail but were fined a total of $6,500.
Activists who tried to graffiti Woodside Energy boss Meg O'Neill's house, in protest of the Burrup Hub development, have avoided jail but were fined a total of $6,500.
WA Chief Magistrate Steven Heath fined Jesse Noakes $2,500 and Emil Davey and Matilda Lane-Rose $2,000 each, as the trio appeared for their sentencing at Perth Magistrates' Court today.
Last month, Mr Noakes, Mr Davey and Ms Lane-Rose each pleaded guilty to one charge of trespass without lawful excuse and one charge of attempted unlawful damage.
Mr Noakes, Mr Davey, Ms Lane-Rose and fellow Disrupt Burrup Hub activist Gerard Mazza, the fourth co-accused, were taken into custody after police attended Ms O'Neill's City Beach home around 7am on August 1, 2023.
The court was told the activists brought paint, planning to graffiti and splash it around the house.
Disrupt Burrup Hub is a community group protesting against Woodside’s development of the Scarborough gas field off the Pilbara coast and the oil and gas giant's expansion of its Pluto LNG plant on the Burrup Peninsula.
In court, Magistrate Heath said they had the freedom to communicate and right to protest, but targeting Ms O'Neill was different.
"The right to protest peacefully is a pillar of our society however there are examples of protest, while peaceful, involving breaches of the law," he said.
"I consider the decision to target the CEO of Woodside does make the protest less proportionate, and reduces the amount of leniency [compared to] if it was at a corporate business."
Speaking at a Business News event a few days after the incident in August 2023, Ms O'Neill said what happened at her home left her shaken, fearful and distressed.
Ms O'Neill also described the protest as a "an unacceptable escalation in activity by an extremist group".
Magistrate Heath told the court he took the activists' youth into consideration, ordering $2,000 fines each with Mr Davey being 21 years old and Ms Lane-Rose only 19 years old at the time of the offence.
Each also received a spent conviction.
However, Magistrate Heath fined Mr Noakes $2,500, taking into account his prior conviction and his age, 36.
Outside court, Ms Lane-Rose acknowledged the fines, but referenced the $10,000 penalty Santos incurred after pleading guilty over the petroleum spill at its Varanus Island gas plant off the Pilbara coast.
"What I'd like to draw everyone's attention to is not the fine, which I don't think was quite as justified, but in the fact that last month, Santos, WA’s biggest oil and gas company was fined $10,000 for spilling 25,000 litres of oil off the coast of WA in the Indian Ocean," she said.
"When you do some quick maths, that's $2,000 per litre of paint for the people involved in this protest but for Santos, who killed three dolphins by nature of this oil spill, that's 44 cents per litre of oil.
“I want to stress the sentence that's handed down to us today was proportionate. I accept it.
“But what I'm crying foul about is just how are we letting these oil and gas companies get away with wrecking our planet and getting charged a pittance compared to us?"
Mr Mazza has pleaded guilty, with his sentencing scheduled for later this month.
