By Rob Inder-Smith - posted 18th September 2004

The Supreme Court appeal of four Darwin activists sentenced to jail for disturbing the
 Northern Territory Legislative Assembly has ground to a halt.
  
Before Justice David Angel were the four appellants, Stuart Highway, Gary Meyerhoff, 
Mick Lambe and Rob Inder-Smith, who took up the bulk of the three-day hearing with
submissions about why their Magistrates Court conviction last year of ''intentionally
disrupting the (LA) while it is in session” was at best unjust, and at worst, a mistrial.

  The appellants had more than 100 grounds of appeal, one of their strongest being
that they were entitled to do what they did to prevent the commission of a wrongful act
by the NT Government, which was in the process of legislating the controversial,
dangerous and universally discredited ''Drug House'' laws.

  The United States-conceived laws are part of the global war on drugs, and as such,
the activists cited the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention on
Civil and Political Rights, both of which were ignored by the magistrate hearing the
initial trial, Dick Wallace.

  Meyerhoff began his sweeping six-hour testimony on late Monday, August 30, by
stating that he would pull the prosecution case apart ''point by point''.

  Taking his Honour back to Cromwell, and the ''incursion into parliament'' by King
Charles and 300 of his soldiers during the English Civil War in 1642, Meyerhoff
cited historic precedents such as the Tumultuous Petitioning Act, the Seditious
Meetings Act of 1817, and, more recently, the Powers and Privileges Act.
 
 He spoke of motivation, referred his Honour to Castioni and Justice Denman, in
1891, and asked: ''What was the greater wrong – the breach of Section 61, under
which we were charged, or the commission of a series of wrongful acts and insults by
NT politicians?''

  Meyerhoff took Mr Angel to task on his repeated refusal to rule that provocation under
Section 34 (sub-section 3) of the NT Criminal Code was relevant to the appellants' case.

  Magistrate Wallace had also deemed provocation as no defence.

  ''We entered the (LA) to engage in discussion with parliament,'' Meyerhoff, 29, said.

  ''We had an implied right to free speech and debate.''
 
 The case of Dietrich v the Queen was used as the benchmark for the right to a fair
hearing for what Justice Angel conceded was a ''political offence''.

  ''Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong,'' wrote German philosopher
Nietzsche, and he, too, was invoked.

  Meyerhoff reminded us that it was not the first time he had disturbed the NT
Government while it was in conference.

  ''When the CLP were in power, I produced a placard saying 'NT Police State' in the
public gallery during the legislation of the Anti-Social Conduct and Public Order Act,'' he said.

  ''Lawyers roped me into it. But I wasn't charged then.''
 
  The court heard the chronology of events, including ongoing police harassment that
the activists, members of the Network Against Prohibition, and Lambe's PARIAH,
had been subjected to.

  More than 120 charges were laid against them over 18 months and as Meyerhoff
said, ''we beat 80 of those representing ourselves''.

  They argued that all this had contributed to their not receiving a fair trial.

  ''It was surreal,'' Meyerhoff said.

  ''Magistrate Daynor Trigg even accused me of offences I hadn't even committed –
this while I was talking to him by telephone from Berrimah Prison, where me and
Mr Highway were sent one weekend following a peaceful smoke-in that the police
disrupted with violent force.”

  Also discussed was the infamous remark by Attorney-General Peter Toyne, in
which he scathingly criticised Meyerhoff on ABC radio - while the case was in
train - yet was not charged with contempt.

  ''How could we get a fair trial with that type of bias?” Meyerhoff said.

  Meyerhoff said that the appellants had been unable to get legal aid because the NT
Legal Aid Commission had insisted that they plead guilty.
 
  This had raised the question: what happened to the presumption of innocence until
proven guilty?

  All appellants said that various witnesses had either exaggerated or lied.

  The notorious five-minute video of the event was replayed in attempt to prove once
more that  it had been selectively edited to hide off-screen assaults, and therefore
should not have been relevant to the prosecution case.

  Justice Angel, one of Australia's most progressive judges, allowed the appellants
mileage appropriate for the self-represented who, as his honour was reminded, were
''impecunious''.

  Highway told the court that Magistrate Wallace should have stood himself down
because he had colluded with prosecuting solicitor, Peter John Thomas, in a 1994
case which involved him.

  Highway claimed both had lied to absolve a police officer Highway alleged had
assaulted him.

  He tendered part of the transcript of the case to Justice Angel and while it does not
exactly prove complicity between the pair, certain comments by Mr Wallace raise
doubts about his capacity to have remained impartial nine years later.

  In his summary of the '94 case, he had described Thomas as a man of good
character and a ''member of the cycad society''.

  ''Thomas committed perjury then, and in our trial in 2003, I saw Mr Wallace as having a
conflict of interest,'' Highway told Justice Angel.

  ''As he was giving evidence (in '94) Thomas fidgeted and looked around the
courtroom nervously.

  "The police officer concerned, Simon Freson, denied assaulting me. Thomas's
lie about a remark I allegedly made to him off the record was pivotal to my case.

  "Wallace believed their story.

  ''I realised at the beginning of our trial last year that there was no way we would get
justice. I knew what we were up against.''

  Despite – or perhaps because of – his openly expressed concerns about the
honesty of the presiding magistrate and the lawyer now seated barely a metre to his
left, Highway was lauded by Mr Wallace in his summing up as the most credible of all
the witnesses.

  True to form, the man famous throughout the NT for his Anarchism stall at the
Nightcliff markets, and for being a champion of East Timor independence, carried
his easy going but compelling style into the Supreme Court.

  He laced his day-one testimony with phrases such as ''strange and mysterious'',
''foul  play'', and ''inconsistencies and contradictions'' to describe the video evidence
used to convict the group, and in his own inimitable way, told the court why the
activists walked into parliament – to prevent the passage of the ''pernicious''
drug-house legislation.

  ''If the parliamentary doors had been locked, we wouldn't be here today,'' he
calmly told the court, referring to the ease with which the group was able to enter the
LA chamber while parliament was in session, especially at the height of the anti-terrorist
hysteria washing around the world after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York
and Washington.

  As they had done before Mr Wallace, the activists stressed that NT politicians should
have known better, having endured the embarrassment of the Andrew Kilvert affair,
in which he admitted on the front page of the town's only daily newspaper, the Northern
Territory News, to having had sex with his girlfriend in the speaker's chair.

  To demonstrate that he had previously been inside the chamber, Highway tendered a
photo of himself holding the speaker's gavel as evidence to Mr Wallace.

  The photo was taken in 1994 during Highway's East Timor days when a group of
activists entered the chamber while it was unoccupied.

  ''They should be thanking us, not using us as scapegoats. We had a legitimate
grievance,'' he said, adding that widespread racism, disempowerment of people,
unemployment, and demonisation of illicit drugs were other reasons for the group's actions.

  Highway quoted Justice Jim Staples' famous 1980 remark about the absurdity of
classifying a plant as an illegal drug, and referred to the folly of prohibition in the US from
1920-33.

  ''Drugs are not going to go away any time soon,'' he said.

  ''We need to be able to exercise freedom – freedom of action, freedom of protest.''

  Highway discussed fascism using a roll-call of infamous names – Stalin, Hitler, Mao
Tse Tung – then balanced the scales by quoting American Anarchist Rob Tefton.

  Justice Angel: ''Am I right to say that the Network Against Prohibition . . . wants to
legalise . . . not just cannabis, but all drugs?”

  Highway: ''Yes.''

  ''We are not advocating that all drugs be used, just that they be regulated and
controlled,'' he said.

  During a dissertation on honesty – ''police and politicians lie through their teeth;
they're used to lying and cheating,'' Highway said - Justice Angel added: ''You've got to
have a good memory to be a good liar''.

  It was one of several sagely remarks that sprang from his Honour, who surprised the
appellants by presenting each of them with a copy of a letter written by Lord Buckmaster
to his ''dear Elizabeth''. It included reference to his own, Buckmaster's, heroin use and
was signed ''yours affectionately''.

  (Lord Buckmaster died in 1934. His body was cremated.)

  Earlier, Mr Angel was told that the initial hearing had ''more holes than a swiss cheese''
and that Australia's greatest diplomat was the father of David Hicks, because of
something he had said to an American journalist on Radio National, on August 29, 2004.

  Mr Hicks was asked, ''Did your son express remorse for his actions?''

  Mr Hicks had replied: ''I told him, 'David, don't ever be sorry for something you believe in'.”

  The prosecution limited its response to saying that Meyerhoff's deposition was nothing
more than a history lesson, and that the Dietrich ruling applied only to ''serious charges''.

  (The appellants were sentenced to jail terms of up to 21months, suspended after five
months and in Lambe's case, four.)

  Lambe, co-ordinator of People Against Racism In Aboriginal Homelands, spoke of 
racism and the corruption he faced dealing with the anti-discrimination commmission.

  While the odds of a favourable outcome are slim, there were several moments that
lifted the apellants' hopes.

  The first came when the issue of rights was raised, and how it had been ''incumbent''
of the magistrate to explain them thoroughly to each of the accused.

  Two more magic moments resonated through the courtroom like the ring 
of a silver bell.

  It was the same question asked twice by Justice Angel, which he put to the prosecution:
  ''Should we not . . . be asking whether there has been a miscarriage of justice?”

  Justice Angel will hand down his decision on Friday, September 17.
  
  The appellants remain free on bail.