The Australian Quarterly invited David Ritter, CEO, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, to discuss the growing use lawfare by vested corporate passions for their July 2025 edition. The article is republished right here with permission.
Thus many revolutions, the makeover of Australia’s worst domestic environment polluter to a case study of enthusiastic exhausts reduction started with posters that buffooned the status for all to see.
Appearing initial online in May 2021 and after that, more traditionally, pasted up in famous real life areas around Sydney and Melbourne, the placards were clear in their ridiculing intent. Featuring dreadful images of the grievous influences of climate adjustment, the logo of power company AGL was gone along with by the tagline “Australia’s Greatest Climate Obligation”. Greenpeace’s trademark logo design on the bottom of the posters left no doubt regarding who was responsible for the manufacturing and circulation.
Neither existed any kind of uncertainty that a brand-new internet site ( australiasgreatestliability.com , which birthed AGL’s logo and signature colours in addition to a record outlining AGL’s polluting activities, was apology.
However the plainness of the intent didn’t stop AGL from intimidating to sue Greenpeace for infringing its copyright legal rights. Our position was that Greenpeace was acting in a right-minded means, and well within our lawful civil liberties, so we declined AGL’s need to remove the company’s branding from our campaign products.
Shortly afterwards, AGL– a multibillion-dollar firm– started legal process versus Greenpeace in the Federal Court of Australia. Our view was that AGL’s activities comprised a SLAPP– a Strategic Legal Actions Versus Public Involvement– that was planned to shut down Greenpeace’s campaign, sending a wider message to neighborhoods and protestors that autonomous dissent would certainly not be tolerated.
It was clear that the result of the litigation would go far beyond the AGL campaign. As a variety of various other leading environmental charities stated in an open letter to AGL at the time the instance was ‘a straight affront to complimentary speech and the ability of organisations to hold corporations to account on climate change’. AGL continued to be unmoved, and matters were tested in the courts.
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The term ‘SLAPP’ was initially introduced by American academics George William Pring and Penelope Canan in the 1990 s. Pring and Canan specified SLAPPs as claims that met the primary requirements of involving interactions made to affect decision makers, and three second requirements:
- resulted in a civil grievance or counterclaim
- was filed against non-government individuals or organisations
- worried a substantive concern of some public passion or social importance
Pring and Canan went on to map the 3 phases of a SLAPP: people connecting their worry regarding an issue to a decision-maker, the proponents of claimed problem submitting a suit versus challengers of their strategies, targeting their political task, and the personality of the situation itself.
Usually, a SLAPP match will involve hostile and abusive conduct by the prosecuting party. This form of task could include bringing numerous synchronised or sequential process, consisting of in various jurisdictions, along with attracting processes out as lengthy as possible via the pre-trial procedure, consisting of taking part in various rounds of changes to pleadings, disproportionate exploration demands, considerable adjournments and various other hold-ups and engaging in unjustified arguments over minor interlocutory issues. The celebration being sued is additionally a free gift– is the recipient of the suit a specifically susceptible or forthright individual, or is it an organisation that is being targeted for some tactical factor?
From circulating flyers to carrying out serene demonstration, authoring reports or engaging in apology, the most standard acts of democratic expression and public participation can attract a SLAPP from beneficial interests. There might be an arguable cause of activity at risk in SLAPP suits, however the specifying objective of a SLAPP is not to right an incorrect, but rather, to silence and daunt: draining away the time, money, sources and will of the target concerned, up until the area, organisation or person concerned really feels that that they have no option however to stop resisting. SLAPP matches are, essentially, a type of juridical intimidation.
The motivation behind a SLAPP might be anti-democratic (just, to utilize the courts to reduce dissent), or to safeguard business design of a vested interest by resisting the type of marketing examination that brings some element of corporate operations right into concern. Several organizations would concern the quest of SLAPP matches as underhanded, unadvised or simply also high-risk, but for others, the lure to use lawsuits to silence legit objection or serene protest has actually shown tempting.
Greenpeace’s international network has has seen lawsuits from Esso in France (over making use of their logo on a parody site– the French court upheld Greenpeace’s right to the freedom of speech); from Canadian logging company Resolute Forest Products in 2016 (Resolute’s insurance claims were rejected not when, however two times), and a multimillion-dollar scare tactics lawsuit brought by Shell versus Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International over a calm protest, which was eventually settled out of court with no payment being made to the company.
Most recently, Power Transfer– a US-based fossil fuel business that is accountable for the Dakota Access Pipeline– brought an ungrounded legal action versus Greenpeace entities in the United States and Greenpeace International related to the Indigenous-led 2016 objections at Standing Rock. When the company’s very first attempt at a lawsuit under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was instantly rejected by a federal court, Power Transfer tried once more in a North Dakota state court.
Performed in a court in the famously pro-fossil gas state, the case entailed Power Transfer– a business with a market capitalisation of US$ 61 billion — taking legal action against Greenpeace for virtually US$ 300 million in problems. It appeared from the outset that this situation was never about any real problems, yet instead an ungrounded attempt to damage Greenpeace in the US with an impossibly big insurance claim– and alert off any type of other civil society organisations looking for to challenge the interests of polluting corporations.
In March, a nine-person court found Greenpeace entities accountable for more than US$ 660 million– a decision that has actually been extensively slammed by legal onlookers, cost-free speech advocates and civil society leaders as an unfair assault by Big Oil on lawful resistance. Among the independent trial screens that observed the situation, prominent US attorney Marty Garbus, a man who has actually exercised legislation for six decades and stood for globally famous customers consisting of Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, and Vaclav Havel, stated that:
In my 6 years of legal method, I have never witnessed a test as unfair as the one versus Greenpeace that simply ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is just one of one of the most important situations in American history. The legislation that can come down in this situation can influence any kind of demo, spiritual or political. It’s much bigger than the environmental activity. Yet the court in North Dakota abdicated its sacred task to carry out a reasonable and public test and instead allow Energy Transfer run roughshod over the rule of regulation.
Greenpeace certainly differs with the decision and declines to be silenced. Greenpeace US entities will appeal the case, and the matter continues to be recurring. Internationally, the Greenpeace network is rallying to respond to this strike.
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Firms with company designs built on destroying our planet commercial have considered likewise ugly methods below in Australia. According to the Civil Rights Regulation Centre (HRLC), the ‘legal bullying of normal Australians along with neighborhood teams by large companies with ‘attack-dog’ law firms, is on the rise’. As far back as 2004, Australia’s then-largest wood-chipping export company Gunns filed a claim against 20 ecological protestors, including Bob Brown, looking for $ 6 3 million in damages over recurring campaign activities against its logging procedures. As the HRLC clarifies in its ‘Quit the SLAPP’ report , the claim was initiated simply two days prior to Gunns referred its debatable pulp mill to the Federal Government for assessment, leading several to view the legal action as a tactical effort to silence objection. The outrage at the heavy-handedness of the legal action triggered a campaign targeting Gunns’ sponsors, shareholders and consumers, and eventually damaged the business’s reputation and market price. After a complicated and unpleasant– for Gunns– procedure, Gunns eventually dropped the case entirely in 2010 and paid thousands of thousands of bucks to the accuseds prior to being positioned into liquidation in March 2013
More lately, after winning a lawful instance in which the Environmental Protectors Workplace had actually represented 3 Tiwi Island typical owners– Simon Munkara, Carol Puruntatameri and Maria Tipuamantumirri– who had actually declared that the Barossa Gas Export Pipe would impact spiritual sites and disturb social songlines, petrochemical business Santos was not just successful in protecting a $ 9 million dollar prices order versus the lawyers for the plaintiffs, however then related to the court for subpoenas looking for a wide variety of files from four other ecological charities that had not been event to the litigation. As observer Geoffrey Watson SC kept in mind, the capacity for expenses orders being pursued against helpful 3rd parties can have ‘one of the most awful chilling result’ on public rate of interest plaintiffs that would not have the ability to proceed without such support.
SLAPPs are an affront to the fundamental function of the justice system, and to the perfect of equal rights before the law. The lawful system should be a car for liability, not an instrument that can be weaponised by the effective to avert scrutiny or systematically bully critics into silence. As the environment and biodiversity crises speed up, and this essential decade for action to stop irreparable damage to the systems that are the really structure of life on earth ticks on, it is particularly villainous and repellent if contaminating companies have the ability to utilize the legal system to preserve the malign power of their beneficial interests.
In late 2024, a union of 85 organisations called on the Albanese federal government to shield community voices by introducing nationwide anti-SLAPP laws. As the HRLC has actually detailed:
To truly work, a durable, country wide constant strategy to anti-SLAPP legislation is crucial. Without such defenses, SLAPPs will certainly remain to be made use of to silence campaigning for and activism, erode accountability, and undermine democracy.
Efficient government anti-SLAPP legislations would certainly need to safeguard Australians’ legal rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, the right to public participation, and the legal rights of civils rights defenders. Ranging from a broad and durable interpretation of “public interest” tasks that are shielded from SLAPPs to changing the concern of proof to plaintiffs, expedited hearings to stay clear of unneeded prices for offenders and ensuring defendants have the right to a prompt allure if the motion to reject is refuted– to name a few. Anti-SLAPP lawful frameworks currently exist in numerous jurisdictions around the globe, consisting of in Europe and The United States And Canada, but in Australia, have thus far only been presented in the ACT.
The May government political election was a crucial denial of the bullying Trumpist method to national politics. On 10 June, in his first National Press Club speech considering that the election, the Prime Minister said that Australians had ‘elected versus importing problems and beliefs that have no basis in our nationwide culture or personality’ and had actually ‘rejected policies duplicated from overseas that would only leave us a smaller, narrower, less generous and much more divided nation’. The introduction of national anti-SLAPP legislation would be a way of adding to the preservation and nurturing of the highly pluralistic and rambunctious autonomous custom that has added to a lot that is ideal regarding Australia and intrinsic to the brightest elements of our national character, along with protecting us versus the importation of US-style weaponisation of our legal system.
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Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s rejection to bow down to AGL’s lawful demands had a delighted closing. Not just did the Federal Court extremely locate in Greenpeace’s favour– in proceedings that produced hundreds of top-tier news articles that highlighted AGL as Australia’s worst domestic environment polluter– however in our sight, essential concepts were maintained. As our internal basic advise Katrina Bullock stated to the media, the lawful triumph was ‘excellent news for charities, advocacy organisations, satirists and any person else who looks for to rely on the ‘fair dealing’ freedom of speech secure in the Copyright Act to criticise, testimonial, satirise or parody powerful firms’.
The project itself additionally ended with an extremely satisfying outcome, when after sustained and multi-pronged pressure, AGL suddenly changed organization method. After a modification in company management, in September 2022, AGL announced that it was advancing the last of its coal-burning power stations to 2035 and a commitment to replace coal with $ 12 billion well worth of new renewable energy. A few months later on, new independent supervisors on AGL’s board suggested passion in more increasing AGL’s coal closure timelines. The business has recently started the setup of its first grid-scale battery at the site of the previous coal-burning Liddell Power plant.
It remains in the clear interests of Australia’s democracy, society and setting for the federal government to pass nationwide anti-SLAPP legislation. Yet while the lacunae remain to stay open, services must likewise believe very meticulously before dropping the path of the SLAPP. As the AGL instance shows, the rate of interests of the firm and its investors were ultimately not well offered by trying to suppress the legit protest activity that was subjecting the business to examination, but rather by welcoming the vital for an extensive shift in technique.
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