No jail time over Pine Gap protest
TWO Cairns people are among a group who have vowed not to pay $15,500 in fines for breaking into the Pine Gap military base in the Northern Territory.
Despite the six committing similar offences a total of 40 times previously, none will spend a day behind bars, after a judge said he feared turning them into martyrs.
The Northern Territory Supreme Court, which was sitting in Brisbane, heard that in the weeks leading up to September 29, 2016, Margaret Pestorius, 53, and Paul Christie, 44, from Cairns, and Jim Dowling, 62, Franz Dowling, 20, Andrew Paine, 31, Tim Webb, 23, from Brisbane, travelled to Alice Springs for a planned protest over the remote military base. On September 29, Pestorius, Paine, Webb and Jim and Franz Dowling scaled a barbed wire fence before climbing a nearby hill where they sung a lament.
Paine live streamed the protest on a mobile phone.
The group was quickly detected and Federal Police arrested them.
On October 3, Christie, who had been involved in earlier legal protests, scaled a fence alone and walked about 2km into the base.
He was found praying in a creek bed and arrested.
The court heard he knew the others had broken in and been arrested.
Justice John Reeves said as the group has done no damage and had not posed a threat to Pine Gap’s operation they were at the lowest level of offending.
Justice Reeves said Jim Dowling had 27 similar offences but decided not to jail him so he would not become a “martyr”.
Justice Reeves said the six were not being punished for their beliefs regarding Pine Gap, but for deliberately breaking the law and trespassing on the base.
Webb and Franz Dowling were fined $1250, Christie was fined $2000, Paine was fined $2500, Pestorius was fined $3500 and Jim Dowling was fined $5000.
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