Only the convictions for offences against the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act were quashed. The Pine Gap 4 did not challenge their convictions for damaging property under the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth).
10.
Sections 6 and 7 between them establish a different mechanism by which a prohibited area can be established, with a different (but somewhat similar) precondition. Pine Gap was also declared a prohibited area under these provisions, but the Crown ultimately elected not to rely on them in its prosecution, and so their meaning and effect were not judicially considered.
Not for the purpose of challenging the validity of the prohibited area declaration, which the Judge's previous ruling had prevented them from doing, but to show that their beliefs about Pine Gap's purposes were reasonable, in order to establish an element of their defences of necessity and self-defence.
14.
It is an offence to name an ASIO agent: Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act1979 (Cth), s 92.
Similarly (along with Goldie) he did not admit that Pine Gap was on Commonwealth land, asserting that it is on unlawfully acquired Arrernte land.
17.
Ron Merkel QC was principally assisted by Rowena Orr in the interlocutory and appeal proceedings.
18.
‘A former beauty therapist will start a petition in Alice Springs to send anti-war activist Bryan Law back to jail if he breaks into Pine Gap again’, Centralian Advocate (Alice Springs) 29 February 2008, 7.
19.
Except, perhaps, in relation to the important but technical issue of the nature and scope of discovery in criminal proceedings: The Queen v Law & Ors [2008] NTCCA4 at: [48] – [89] per Martin (BR) CJ; [129] – [134] per Angel J; [157] – [159] per Riley J.
20.
The Queen v Bryan Joseph Law & Ors [2007] NTSC45. See also Limbo v Little (1989) 65 NTR 19 per Martin (BF) J (Kearney and Rice JJ concurring) at 45–48, in which similar defences raised by a protester convicted of trespassing at Pine Gap on 19 October 1987 were rejected by the Northern Territory Court of Appeal, for similar reasons.
