Mandatory prison sentences have been removed from Tasmania’s controversial anti-protest legislation, but protesters will now face maximum four-year jail terms and higher financial penalties.
The bill was amended late on Thursday following an upper house review, scrapping mandatory minimum three-month jail terms for protesters who repeatedly “prevent, hinder or obstruct the carrying out of a business activity”.
The compulsory jail terms, which would have been the state’s first, were slammed by the Tasmanian Law Society, the Human Rights Law Centre and the United Nations, which warned they would have a “chilling effect” on free expression.
But the 15-member Legislative Council, which is dominated by right-leaning independents, opted to increase the maximum jail term for repeated disruptive protests from two years to four.
“It sends a very clear message that the Tasmanian parliament believes it’s a serious issue if people are repeat offenders and disrupt workplaces where people are lawfully wanting to undertake their work functions,” independent upper house MP Tania Rattray said.
Financial penalties under the bill have also been doubled to a maximum $100,000 for organisations and up to $25,000 for individuals, up from $5,000 in the original bill.
The bill is targeted at industries that the Hodgman government says are “vulnerable to protest action”, including mining, forestry, agriculture and the construction industry.
The state resources minister, Paul Harriss, had signalled he would be willing to exempt protests outside “shops, markets and warehouses” from the new punishments.
But MPs opted to keep them within the scope of the bill to protect the “Harvey Normans and Bunnings of the world”, Rattray said.
Harvey Norman has been the subject of a protest campaign by activist groups GetUp! and Markets for Change, who say the company stocks products, such as flooring, made from “unsustainably logged native forests”.
Professor Adrienne Stone of the University of Melbourne was among constitutional experts who warned the original bill was vulnerable to a high court challenge. She said on Friday the removal of mandatory sentences made the legislation “somewhat less vulnerable”.
The bill will now return to the lower house, where the Liberal government has the numbers. Harriss said the progress of the legislation was “a historic moment in the history of worker rights”.
He said the removal of mandatory jail terms was “disappointing” but that stronger penalties sent “a clear message to the radical protesters”.
“No longer will Tasmania tolerate the extremists; you may have your say but you may not stop workers from earning a living,” he said.
The Greens justice spokesman, Nick McKim, said the original bill had been “a mess”, and the new amendments had turned it into “a complete shambles”.
“I really doubt whether the police will ever be silly enough to charge anyone under this legislation because I think it’s simply unworkable,” he said.
