Climate activists arrested as disruptive protests continue across cities

• By Avi Yemini

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Six people have so far been arrested over a series of climate change protests that have disrupted three cities in the past week.

Angus Hearn, 22, is the latest climate activist to face court after suspending himself on a 9-metre pole over railway tracks in Branxton, west of Newcastle on Wednesday morning.

Hearn blocked the track for five hours, preventing access to the Newcastle coal port.

Two protesters who joined him on the rail line held a banner that said “Export economy = Climate f**kery”.

Hearn has been charged with obstructing a railway and entering enclosed non-agricultural lands where there is a serious safety risk.

He appeared in Cessnock Local Court and was granted conditional bail to appear again in July.

“The best way we can fight the system is by directly confronting its operations with direct actions like this,” Hearn told the court.

“Physical action that disrupts the destructive functioning of the colonial project known as Australia is real, political power.”

Meanwhile, an 18-year-old woman was arrested after scaling infrastructure at the Newcastle port and glued herself to a railing.

Grace Ilbery livestreamed her protest on Facebook.

“It’s going to be heaps of fun,” she told her followers.

Blockade Australia, whose activists have caused major disruption across three cities this week, said the Port of Newcastle protest was justified because the port was “one of the largest exporters of coal in the world”.

“This is an organised resistance to the Australian system‘s organised destruction,” the spokesperson said.

Other protestors were arrested at the Port of Brisbane where a man suspended himself from a bamboo tripod and at the Port of Melbourne where a man blocked the entrance, causing chaos.