Power, People and Protest

It's been making me seven years to get here, to the epic country you fought to save. I can hear the river far below, just a trickle. It sounds tame, but I know it's wild. There's a part of me that's afraid, that wants to stay up here where it's safe and dry. But as you always said, there's no turning back on the Franklin, only one way home. It was the biggest environmental rally in the country's history. The plan to dam the Franklin has caused bitter and divisive protests that have drawn world attention to the region.

Tasmania's hydroelectric commission dominated an era of hydro-industrialization. The hydro had built dams on every major river in Tasmania, except the Franklin. And now it wanted one there too. Ecologically it's very important to our survival that that's what the earth, the left, understood. This is part of life. If we get a living human being, we're better all of it. But who can put a value to the world's last remaining natural areas? Hello and welcome to our special digital event today.

My name is Stephanie and I'm the learning manager here at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. We are so excited to have you join us for this event where we are celebrating 40 years of the Franklin River. We have some fantastic special guests who are joining us today as we walk through the story of what happened back in the 1980s. Now I'd like to introduce you to Chris who's joining us from the Franklin movie.

Hello.

And I'd also like to introduce you to the National Portrait Gallery to Kate who will be sharing information with us too today.

Hi everyone.

And right here in the studio with me I have Jess Cram from the High Court as well.

Hello.

He's also incredibly tall standing next to me here.

Thank you so much Jess.

Now we are so excited to be able to bring you this special event and I would like to start our session today with an acknowledgement of country. So I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are connecting from here in Canberra, the Nunawell, Nunawell and Nambri peoples and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Now feel free teachers, those of you that are connecting from home to drop into the Q&A. This will be our main form of communication today, the lands on which you are connecting from as well. I'd like to take you on a trip down the Franklin River so you can see some of the important heritage and the strong connection that our First Nations people have to this beautiful place.

First time I saw the masterpiece we were leaving the Great Levine very swiftly down on the current through this narrow rock chasm and here on the left is this large rounded sculptured rock set back in an old coat. It made me think of all that is immutable and unchangeable but the big rounded rock sits there from year to year with the flood that went to coming by and the suns of summer shining on the front of it. The water here representing all the things that do change and change quickly and in particular the passage of human life, these bubbles beginning one second and washing past the next second. It was a relationship with a beautiful place that preceded me by not just thousands but millions of years had human history going back beyond the time that I could imagine. The people sat in those places at the beginning of the dawn of human history. They watched the first human sunrise. There were the most southerly living people on earth in a landscape that had glances above loading down the valleys, ice sheets above a place that we can only imagine today because of the things so different. So there you go.

You can see that there is a strong and ongoing connection to the Franklin River. And I hope that you are noticing how incredible some of the footage is from the Franklin movie. We will see more of these clips throughout our session today in between hearing from some of our cultural institutions including the Portrait Gallery and the High Court. But what I would like to do first is to set the scene with Oliver who is our lead protagonist in the Franklin movie and Chris who is the producer.

I would like to introduce you to them first so you get a sense of what the Franklin movie is all about.

And I believe that we have Oliver with us. So Oliver, can you talk us through what inspired you to create this incredible movie?

Hi.

Sorry for joining at a late second there.

Thanks for having me.

And yeah, one of the things that really inspired me about making this was my connection with my dad. And he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer about 10 years ago. And during that period of time we were looking back at a lot of his slides and stories. And I got to hear a lot more detail about what this whole experience back in the 80s had meant to him and also from his friends that would gather around and share some of these stories. And so yeah, so when he passed away, it just felt like that's the place that I need to go and I'm going to learn more about all of it via this connection that I had with him. It was an amazing time and I'm really grateful for having had it.

That is so special, Oliver.

And I look forward to our participants seeing throughout our session today, your connections to the Franklin and some of that historic footage, but also you exploring your trip down the Franklin River.

Now, Chris, can you talk us through your role in helping to create the Franklin movie?

Hi, Stephanie.

Greetings from Roe Runderyland down in Melbourne on the Mary Creek.

I'm trying to turn my video camera on, but it's not letting me turn it on for some reason.

Sorry.

Yeah, so do you want me to just give you a quick rundown on my role on the project?

Absolutely, Chris.

And we'll try and sort out your video for you while you're talking.

No worries.

Well, I'm the producer and a producer on a film production can mean a lot of different things. It's a very broad job description. It involves everything from getting the money together to imagining what the whole project should be and helping to actually make the project and get it out. So it was a seven year labor of love for Oliver and I.

We met back in, here we go.

Hi, everybody.

Oliver and I met back in 2015, way back. And I had just discovered the whole story, the Franklin, through studying the High Court case in my, when I was studying my law degree. And I was born the year the Franklin was saved, as was Oliver. And I think we were both inspired to bring this incredible story of people power, of democracy in action to a new generation. Because everyone that, like if you speak to baby boomers or people who are, I guess, older than, I don't know, older than 40, they all remember the Franklin as this massive thing that happened back in 1983.

But for anyone kind of my age and younger, not many people have heard of it. And so, yeah, we were inspired to bring the story to a new generation because of all the environmental strife we've got going on today. And just to give solidarity to activists who are working on environmental issues today, like the student strikers and whatnot. So it's an environmental movie with a happy ending. And I was really proud to work with Oliver to bring it to fruition.

Thank you so much, Chris.

And, you know, Oliver and Christopher, I really appreciate your time today, but also the sharing of the clips that our wonderful students are going to be able to see throughout this digital event and the links that you made there, Chris, between the Franklin being in the 1980s, but to our ongoing issues that, you know, our young people participating today are very passionate about the environment and that there is strong ties to, you know, lots of ways that we will discover today that we can, you know, actively participate in our democracy and share our messages in different ways and considering how they can become involved and talk about causes that they're interested in.

So I really appreciate you highlighting that.

And hello, I'm so glad that we can see you now, Oliver, as well.

And I hope too that we get a cat sighting.

Oliver has the most beautiful cat as well.

Oh, there we go.

Excellent.

On cue.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Now, participants, thank you for those that have started using the Q&A. There will be an opportunity towards the end of our program for you to ask Oliver and Christopher more questions. So start thinking about what else you would like to know about their experiences about creating the Franklin movie and you can drop those into the Q&A as well. So I'm able to see them.

But what I would like to do is take you back in time. Our story today starts here at Old Parliament House. And so I'm going to play a little clip to get us started.

Good evening. And in a sensational day in Australian politics, the Prime Minister announces a general election on March the 5th. I recommend it to his Excellency that there should be a double the solution of the parliament. That has been agreed. The election will be on the 5th of March. The flooding of the Franklin River is being counted by some. There's not just any issue, but the issue. Not the power state of the economy, not soaring unemployment, but this. An undeniably beautiful, but nevertheless remote and until now little known expanse of bush. It's voters' feelings on this, we're told, that will determine who governs Australia. So conservationists, this election are determined to be more than just a voice in the wilderness.

So here we are. We've moved into the House of Representatives Chamber here at Old Parliament House. Now feel free to drop in the chat anything you're noticing or something that you might be interested in me talking a little bit about. But I'm going to set the scene for our story today. So in that footage, you will have noticed that it was an election promise to be discussing the Franklin River and it was debated here in federal parliament. So the government who at the time was Bob Hawke was the leader. And the opposition was Andrew Peacock. And so we had the government who was Labour, they wanted to save the Franklin River. So they felt that it was a federal issue to be discussed here in parliament. And so they introduced the World Heritage Properties Conservation Bill. Now our opposition thought that it should be left with the states. They wanted to build the hydro on the Franklin River. And so they believed that it was the state's decision to be able to decide what they do. Now here in federal parliament, there were lots of arguments for and against. And I'm going to come back to those because I'm going to get you to help me a little bit later on with what you think some of the foreign against arguments might have been. But I want to talk particularly about a special group of people that sit in this chamber. So government on this side with the Prime Minister opposition on this side, but up the top here. So not everyone can come and sit in parliament and watch what's happening here. So these seats up the top are reserved for some very important journalists. And they help to get the message out about the discussions that were happening here in parliament.

And so this is how in the 1980s, a lot of people found out about what was being said by their members. So take a moment to think about the ways that you connect with the media, the ways that you find out what's happening in the world. And then go back to the 1980s and think about the main ways that they would have shared through newspaper articles, through radio. How did people make sure that they knew what was going on? I love that I'm seeing some fantastic answers coming through the chat. Nillie has let us know that one of the ways that she finds out about what's happening in the world today is through behind the news. Also one of my favorite ways as well.

But you'll see today in our story that there's lots of ways that people then communicated their message and made sure that their voice across Australia and especially down in Tasmania was heard in this story. Now I've introduced you to two of the key players in this debate, but there's someone else that I would like you to meet. And to introduce Bob Brown, I'm going to hand over to the portrait gallery. But first we're going to see a wonderful clip that talks about the importance of the artist. So there was the river spaking for itself and so it did through more than a million reproductions during the Franklin campaign. In many landrooms around Australia, people could look at that image and feel connected to that place. So that is the power of art. It's a wonderful old maintain environmental campaigns and it comes naturally. But the power of artists to embellish it and make it a show really makes a campaign come alive.

Hi everyone and welcome to the National Portrait Gallery here in Canberra, which stands on Ngunnawal and Nambri land.

My name is Kate and in this session we're going to unpack this portrait of Bob Brown. It's not your typical portrait, but that makes it fascinating to explore. To start with, I want to ask you what's the first thing you notice about this portrait? The first thing I notice is that it is huge. It's about four metres wide. It's almost two and a half metres tall. I think it's probably the biggest portrait perhaps that we have here. The other thing I notice is that we've got a huge figure of Bob Brown standing here. He's also, he's in this business suit and a tie and he's holding a question mark. I wonder what question he's asking. And that suit also, it's not quite what I'd expect of a protester that's living down in a wet, soggy kind of rainforest for months on end. So what's the artist trying to tell us putting him in a suit? He's also got this kind of halo effect around him, this kind of wipes line. Why has the artist done that? What's he trying to tell us? Is he a saint like figure? Perhaps he's the Messiah who's come to save the Franklin. The other thing I notice is that there is more than one Bob. In this image, we can actually see that there are three. It's a bit like where's Wally, except it's kind of like where's Bob.

And I want you to keep your eyes peeled as we go through this session. See how many bods you can find by the end. There's one also that's quite tricky to find. So I'll be impressed if someone can find that one. So I think here you can tell which side the artist is on by the way he's depicted Bob Brown. The artist Harold Thornton was one of the protesters and he was very much involved in painting these banners and his studio is actually right in the middle of this portrait. But we're going to come back to him a bit later. We've also got a lot happening on that river there. We've got barges and ships and canoeists and we'll talk about that also. So this is told in a very quirky fantastical style, but it's also very careful and skillfully done and packed with details. And Bob Brown says it's actually a very accurate record of this snapshot in time of Christmas 82 to I think March 83 of when around over 6000 protesters came to Tassie to save the Franklin River.

In the end I think about 1600 were arrested and 500 were jailed including Bob Brown here. He was jailed for 19 days over Christmas. In fact all three of him, all three of him were jailed. They're going to go to our next slide because the way that we're going to unpack this story today is we're going to have a look at the sky first, then we're going to go down the river have a look at the blockade and then go and have a look at some of the things that were happening on the forest floor.

We're going to start up here with this big head up here. It's very realistically drawn but also a bit cartoony. This is Robin Gray and he was the Tasmanian Premier aka the Whispering Bulldozer and he also famously said that the Franklin was nothing more than a brown leech-ridden ditch. So he was both loved and hated in Tassie. He was loved by everyday Tasmanians who saw the dam as an opportunity. They saw it as putting food on the table. Would guarantee them jobs and employment and make Tassie wealthy. But of course for conservationists he was a huge threat and danger because it meant environmental catastrophe for them if the dam went ahead. Now just up above him can you see the figure up there and what he's doing? This is the head of the Hydroelectric Commission. His name was Russell Ashton and what he's doing is he's actually pulling strings there. Back then the Hydroelectric Commission was very powerful. It had as we saw and heard it had damned a lot of Tassie and that had created cheap hydro electricity, brought in a lot of big businesses so set up manufacturing and goods were being exported around the world. So there was a lot of guaranteed employment in Tassie and even the HEC it employed one in four Tasmanians.

But what the artist is implying up here is that Russell Ashton is pulling the strings. He is manipulating the Premier to get him to do what he wants and that is to build the dam and to keep money rolling in. And that's why on the other side of all these clouds and lightning again a bit cartoony. We have a judge from the High Court. He's in his black robes there in his wig and with his gavel he is literally trying to knock over the HEC to kind of bring the weight of the law to bear and change what's going on with the power dynamic there. We've also got these eyeballs over to the left here. What's the deal with the eyeballs? And they are actually you can see connected to these F111 fighter planes. And this was really controversial because the new Hawke government wanted to get photographic evidence that the dam was being built. They didn't believe the Tasmanian Premier that it had stopped.

So controversially they sent these fighter pilots down. They used to do sort of training through the gullies there but they weren't meant to be used against the state in this way. So there was a huge national furor. Hullabaloo was really controversial. I think we can go to the next slide and the next guy I think this is my favourite image in the whole picture. This guy flying on a banana.

Who is this guy?

Why is he on the banana?

This is Joe Biocopiderson and he was the Premier in Queensland and he flew down to support Robin Gray and you know kind of said you know mate look I don't know if he said mate actually I'm just waxing lyrical here but like let's roll with it. He said like mate you can't let those blokes in Canberra tell you what to do. This is your state. You decide if you want to build that dam and you've been elected with the mandate then you build that dam. So you can see here what the artist is thinking of Joe Biocopiderson because he's painted him as the devil. He's got these horns. He's got the wings. He's got talons and these red devil markings. So if we've got Bob Brown as the Messiah we've definitely got the devil up here in Joe Biocopiderson.

What's to deal with the banana? He's from Queensland right? And they are about 95% of Australia's banana production comes from Queensland. What's he dragging behind him you might ask. Well Joe Biocopiderson he was a peanut farmer and so he's pulling a big bag of peanuts. If we can go to our next slide. This slide is on the far right of the sky and over here you can see why the Commonwealth Government wanted photographic evidence that the dam was going ahead. Here we can see bulldozers at work. You can see little greenies in front of them. They were literally putting their bodies on the line. They said that's all they had. We can see policemen running around trying to try to catch them and arrest them. We can see there's a key that's been built here so that all the barges can come up and they can unload all this big earth moving equipment. They can take the logs.

We've also got Bob Brown here again with another big question mark. If we can go now down drill down we can see that again these are the Tasmanians. If we can go the next slide because we've got a nice close up. These I said there were some people who loved Robin Gray and these are the Tasmanians who are protesting for the dam. So here they've got signs like dammit and take your brown leeches. So again for them the dam was going to be a lifeline and it was going to promise jobs. But seeing this and knowing the bulldozers were each day getting closer to the Franklin River this is where the conservationists led by Bob Brown. They knew they had to up their game and they had to take the rallies as you saw in that footage early on. They had to take them from the cities to the river. And that's where now we're going to have a look at what was happening on the river itself. We can see it's pretty chaotic. Okay. There's barges with wanting to take up earth moving equipment and down around them there's lots of people in their canoes trying to stop them. It's kind of it doesn't look like it's possible and it's so dangerous and again putting their bodies on the line right. We've got also and I know that some of them were diving underneath. We've got up there that Rock River Island Bend.

That was such an iconic image to help with letting Australians know how beautiful this environment was. You can see protesters are all over that with their banners. We had Bob Brown he organized for these abalone divers who were off season to use their really fast motor boats and they would take journalists up the 20 kilometres to the to the protest site and back across Macquarie Harbour by 2pm. So it was up and back in the day by 2pm because back then they had to have their footage flown out so it could be on the evening news.

Also down here you can see there's all these faces in the trees. These are representative of all the protesters that came and we've got a big one there above the trees feed the earth banner. That is of a guy called David Bellamy. He was a professor of botany in the UK and he came across to also protest for the Franklin to save the Franklin. He famously he was arrested, spent his 50th birthday in jail. That made headlines around the world and suddenly everyone's kind of saying what's going on in this place called Tassie in this crazy little place. So you can see here that it really looks like chaos and mayhem but for Bob Brown and the conservationists it was a really big thing to keep the protest peaceful and in fact they did training.

People couldn't join the movement unless they'd done anti-anger management and they actually put people in groups to practice like if this bulldozer is coming towards you you have to be totally calm and you'll see in some footage they just go limp. If they're being arrested they're not going to protest and get angry they're just going to peacefully be arrested. In fact being arrested was really great because then they were going to cause this problem in the jail so it was a win-win kind of solution for them. But this was all inspired by Gandhi and you protest in a moral way that doesn't create harm.

We're now going to have a look at a slide. I want to show you something that two things that really helped with the World Heritage Listing. First of all down here we have this Aboriginal man with a flag above a Bannisane land rights. So an Aboriginal cave was discovered. It had lots of bones and it also had a stone tool and when those items were taken away and analysed it was found that the cave had been inhabited 20,000 years ago. So that's when Tassie was an Arctic tundra you know that they kangaroos four metres tall. So there was the cave and then there was also on Bob Brown's shoe is perched a swift parrot. This is a bird that only breeds in Tassie. So I love the way that it's perched on Bob Brown's shoe like he's got these massive feet but this bird feels so confident it seems to me that Bob Brown is going to save it that it's perched there on his shoe.

If we go now to the next slide I'm taking you back this is a big picture okay. We're going to go down to the next level which is going to be down at Bob's feet is the next slide we have and then I think are we going to go down one no wait we're stopping here because what I want you to have a look for is the artist's self portrait and my hot tip is to have a look for the blue tent see if you can see the artist's self portrait. If we go down to the next slide see if you can see in there and then to the next one here he is this is Harold Kangaroo Thornton. So he did have apart from the little green legs this is pretty realistic he did have this grey hair he had this glasses he was pretty eccentric he was a real character and on his tongue it's a bit hard to see but he actually had painted no dams and if we go to the next slide I want to show you his studio here that was in this is in the middle of the painting.

So that is telling us that this is all from this whole painting is from his point of view okay so it could be biased Bob Brown says it's accurate but it's all from a protestors point of view but he's got his studio right there in the centre he was called Harold Kangaroo Thornton so there you've got a kangaroo painting a no dams sign that yellow no dams signage that was you know iconic again for the protest.

We've also got kind of a campsite here where we've got these little greeny people maybe they're meeting to strategise people came from all over the world from the UK from Germany they were really brave because they thought they might lose their passports if there were public servants from Canberra they were worried that if they got arrested they might they might lose their jobs so these people were very brave putting their bodies on the line as well as potentially their life and their livelihoods.

If we go to the next slide I want to show you these are the kind of big banners that Harold Thornton was painting in that studio so these are huge aren't they these are in these big human pine trees thousands of years old huge I just wonder how did they get these banners up there they must have scaled the trees but these banners would have been fantastic again for media footage for these helicopters flying around so as you heard at the start art and the media these guys were pretty savvy in what they were doing.

If we can go to our next slide I'm again going to take you back we're at the big portrait but we're going to go down to the next one which is I think Amy if we just go down to the next one yeah we're yeah if you have I want to show you some of the practicalities because it was pretty primal basic living no hot showers no waters lots of leeches up here we have a greenie sitting on a pit toilet an open pit toilet so life was pretty basic and up there there's some sign saying put lime in the pit after you've gone was like a disinfectant they all these people living in the forest they couldn't get disease there's also a sign they're saying wash your hands if we come over here we've got a fenced off area it's saying hidden treasure don't camp here once was a toilet hidden treasure once was a toilet you can probably work out what that hidden treasure might be so Harold Thornton there's lots of toilet humour here we have a policeman in the corner down there running what's he doing let's go and have a look at what he is doing up the top here we can see he is chasing greenies through the forest he's trying to capture them but then down to the left you can see there's actually a policeman having a cup of tea with the greenies so policemen were on both sides as well this whole down was so divisive in Tassie it's split families and it's still a really sore point today so we have policemen both sides of the camp there's a policeman down here he's lining up with the greenies he's on if you can see the writing on the tent he's waiting to go into the horse pitle tent the horse pitle tent the hospital tent and it is where there's a decent tree so there's lots of silly puns lots of humour that howard Thornton has put into this story if we go to the next slide I had asked you at the start you know we saw three bobs that we could find quite easily and I said keep your eyes peeled where are the others how many did you find if we can go to the next slide I'm going to reveal that there are actually five bobs in this remember it was like a Wears Wally it is such a Wears Bob there was one that was down by the feet of the greenie that's down near his left shoe you can go and have a look for that later and there's also on a tree there's a poster of Bob Brown here with a victory and that iconic no damn signage if we go to our next slide what I Bob Brown you know had this question five question marks throughout the whole painting what I want you to think about is what question was Bob asking is it how are we going to save our environment why are we doing this am I going to be jailed and if you had something you were really passionate about some environmental cause that you wanted to save what would it be how would you go about protecting it what would you do it's been great talking to you about this portrait today from the National Portrait Gallery it would be lovely to see you here in person at some point I am now going to hand over and we're going to give the last word to Bob Brown.

And in March just as this blockade was tailing off they changed the government the Hawke government came in it decided it was going to oppose Robin Gray and his damn building that went to the High Court the judges up there and by four judges to three on the first of July 1983 they effectively made the decision the damn must stop the wilderness must be saved for the whole of the world according to the World Heritage Convention so when this was painted it looked very grim but now I've got a smile on my face because what Harold depicted there was a huge peaceful protest with people from all over Australia which ended up saving the river.

Thank you so much Kate I really enjoyed seeing the up close details that were included in that Bob Brown portrait and I promise you after this digital excursion I'm on my way down to the Portrait Gallery to see it in person because that was absolutely incredible and I love the attention to detail and thank you so much for the storytelling layer that you added to our session today.

Now I have a clip that I want to show you and Kate has already helped us out with this but I'd love to talk about some of the issues that were raised some of the discussions that were had for and against the damning of the Franklin so please while we're watching this clip and we're looking at different ways that people communicated their message see what you notice and start to write it in the chat what you're seeing.

If we want to look after ourselves we're going to look after the planet and if we couldn't look after the Franklin here in one of the wealthiest places on the planet what could be looked after so in this very room 16 greenies and beanies all of us huddled against the coal decided the Wilderness Society $2 membership was underway and because it was action oriented against the threat of dams on the Franklin it grew very very rapidly teachers lawyers doctors and adventurers they were feisty people very bright they knew what the odds were. Well the Franklin River empowered a whole generation of people to become involved and this group enjoyed such amazing camaraderie.

The mood of it was just unbelievable this was what really inspired me and Mike was certainly wanting to be involved in that just to make a stand and so he was the convener in the north of the Wilderness Society arranged rallies and meetings in the life which was just the very essence of him really that you don't want to spoil all the natural beauty of the world.

We knew the river had to be able to speak for itself but we've got to make a film so we bought a second hand Bollocks 16mm wind it up yourself movie camera and we went back down the river this time with Paul Smiths Peter and Rick and Sam Stark. I was a little bit apprehensive I'd never done any kayaking or river rafting or anything before but I was up for an adventure.

Alright so I wonder what ways you noticed in that clip that people shared their message. Now we are really fortunate today we bought out some items from our collection here at the museum to show you and so you can see two pieces in front of me today and you'll notice that because these are from our collection I'm wearing special gloves so that I can look after these important pieces about Franklin's story.

Now I wonder what you're noticing in these pictures what you're seeing in ways that people have communicated their message and feel free to drop it in the Q&A what you're seeing there. I hope you noticed from that clip that we were watching that you saw the platypus your sits represented on two pieces here. I wonder how that helps to communicate our message and to draw interest into our conversation about the Franklin.

I can see there's a lovely comment in the Q&A that it does look like a military poster. It says on here your Franklin your river needs you. If you were going to communicate a message just like Kate said what would you put on a poster that would draw people's interest in would you choose animals from the local area so that you can build empathy with your audience? Would you choose something that's more direct that connects the history telling them that they need to join your cause?

Oh there's a lovely comment. Thank you Millie about how cool platypuses are. I think the same thing and as soon as I saw that little clip that we played for you before and I saw that giant platypus on the beach I knew that that was a wonderful way that the Franklin River conservation team was sharing their message. So I wonder how you would communicate a message. What would you do to make sure that people were listening? Would you create a poster or perhaps you would design a sticker? Are you interested in wearing your cause? I know Oliver has a t-shirt on today that talks about his passion for the Franklin. Is that a way that you would share your message? Would you, are you into craftivism? Would you create something like a banner or perhaps a stuffed toy? What would draw people's interest in being able to discuss an issue that you are passionate about?

Now thank you for looking at those objects with me and I would like to say a special thank you to our wonderful heritage team here at the museum for helping us to bring those out for this very special event for you to be able to look at. We're feeling very privileged to be able to show you them today from our collection. Now I'd like to take you to the High Court so we can meet Jessica and look at what happened after the decision was made here and the Labor government were successful in passing the bill to save the dam but then it went to the High Court. So I'm going to leave this chamber now and Jessica will meet you out the front of the High Court.

So the passing of the World Heritage Coppities Conservation Bill in 1983 by the federal government did not stop the Tasmanian Hydroelectric Commission from their construction activities on the river. The Tasmanian government argued that the constitution did not give the federal government the power to stop the dam construction. So in May 1983 the federal government meant proceedings here at the High Court to stop work on the dam.

Now one of the main jobs of the High Court is to explain and apply the laws of the Australia especially the Constitution. Here's my little copy. The Constitution is like the rule book for how to govern the nation of Australia including outlining the powers of the federal government.

So I have a question for you.

Why do you think it's important that the Constitution is interpreted?

Why do you think the Constitution may need interpreting?

You can pop that in the chat box for me.

So we've got some answers here.

It's over 100 years old.

It's created in 1901.

It's very old.

It uses lots of old language and sometimes we need to interpret that.

I've also got another one there that some ideas that we've got today like aeroplanes,

internet went around when the Constitution was created.

Fantastic.

All seven justices of the High Court sat on the case to determine whether the federal government's law, their legislation was supported by their power in the Constitution. Before we dive into what the High Court considered, it's important to clarify that when Australia signs an international treaty, so an agreement with other nations such as with the World Heritage Committee, the requirements included in the treaty don't actually apply in Australia until they are converted into domestic law, into Australian law.

So when the Southwest of Tasmania was declared a World Heritage Site, the federal government actually had to make a law in Australia to legally protect the area, which they did with the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act. With this in mind, let's turn back to the case, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Tasmania, or commonly known as the Tasmanian dams case. There are several key questions the High Court needed to consider. The central question was whether the federal government could rely on the external affairs power in the Constitution to support the validity of the law. So here we are in our main courtroom where the case was held. Now section 71 of the Constitution outlines the powers of the federal government and part 29 refers to this thing called external affairs power.

But what does external affairs mean? This is what the justices had to consider. Before I let you know the final judgment, I want to read out the beginning of the media release that was issued by the High Court. And this was the first time High Court issued a media release, and it summarized the main judgment for the public.

It reads, "The questions concern the validity of certain Commonwealth acts, regulations and proclamations which have been brought into being for the immediate purpose of preventing the construction of the Gordon below the Franklin dam. They are strictly legal questions. The court is in no way concerned with the question whether it is desirable or undesirable, either on the whole or from any particular point of view that the construction of the dam should proceed. The assessment of the possible advantages and disadvantages of constructing the dam and the balancing of the one against the other are not a matter for the court. And the questions concern the validity of certain Commonwealth acts, regulations and proclamations which have been brought into being for the immediate purpose of preventing the construction of the Gordon below the Franklin dam."

The assessment of the possible advantages and disadvantages of constructing the dam and balancing the one against the other are not a matter for the court. And the court's judgment does not reflect any view of merits of the dispute. So basically this opening summary stresses that the justices' decisions were based purely on legal questions, on the interpretation of the Constitution, not the moral question of whether it was right or wrong to construct a dam on the Franklin River. On the 1st of July 1983, the High Court delivered their judgment. The court found parts of the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act to be valid. That is that the federal government did have the power to exercise the external affairs power in the Constitution to pass that legislation to protect World Heritage sites. As we heard from Bob Brown, it was a four-three split, meaning four justices held that according to the Constitution, the federal government had that power, but three justices did not uphold this reading of the Constitution.

So why do you think it's important we have an odd number of justices on the High Court bench? Have a quick discussion, pop some answers in the chat. Why do you think it's important we have an odd number of justices? Oh, I see some great answers there. Yeah, we always have an outcome that's right. So we've got a majority. We're always going to have a decision with our cases. So from a legal point of view, this case greatly expanded the areas in which the federal government could make laws and perhaps in ways the authors of the Constitution couldn't even imagine. It also helped to find how lawmaking powers are divided between the state and federal governments.

From an environmentalist point of view, this case saved the Franklin River. Let's take one more look at the Franklin. How bloody marvellous this is. It's not the new Tasmania. It's the true Tasmania, one of the truly great places on this earth. As to all the unsung heroes, the living and the dead. It was not just a river you saved. Tasmania changed, Australia altered. It liberated me as it liberated so many. It was more than a river then and is far more than a river now. It is a vast and never-growing delta of destinies. So when people say it is just a moment in the past, they're wrong. Because the river began to run through all of us and it continues to flow with a strong

go.

Thank you so much, Jess. And I hope you enjoyed seeing that final clip of Oliver travelling down the Franklin River. Now I hope you have a better understanding of the story of the Franklin and the significance of this debate after our digital event today.

We will make this event available after so that you can go back and watch any of those clips or especially watch the fantastic work of the National Portrait Gallery and Jess from the High Court today so you can take another look. Now we have a little bit of time so I am keen for you to be able to ask a couple of questions of anyone of our participants today and you'll see that I've shifted into a very important space in the museum.

We are in the Prime Minister's office and this is set up for Bob Hawke, who was our last Prime Minister to work in this space before Parliament moved up to Australian Parliament House so you can see his desk here. You can also see the hands-on records on this side of all the things that are set in Parliament are recorded.

Now Oliver, I'm going to throw to you first.

One of our participants has asked if you can tell us a little bit more about your trip down the Franklin.

What was that like?

I saw someone was asking if it was as arduous as it looked. And well, yeah, I can say it was and not least because we were also shooting a film while doing it. But I mean, it's an amazing place. It takes, it took us about 10 days to do it and it's a commitment because once you're on the river, if you decide that you need to leave the river then you're still looking at a couple of days walking out from only a few spots along the way. So there's no mobile reception or anything like that. We had to have all of our gear with us for that entire 10 days. But it's the arduousness and the connection with nature that you just sort of have that you kind of delve into within a couple of days and being in that place. You just see so much and you just really experience all the colors and the bush and all the species that are around you in that life.

And you can't come out of that without feeling changed in some way. I really think it's worthwhile, I think, for people to do of any sort, if getting out to nature of any sort. But you know, if you are capable of getting into the Franklin, I recommend it so highly. It's just an absolutely extraordinary adventure for anyone. I can see your passion, Oliver, there and your joy for, you know, that it's bringing back memories of you traveling down the river.

I'm going to come back and ask you another question, but I want to ask Chris a question.

Chris, can you tell me how many people you take on an experience like this when you're filming on the Franklin River? What does a crew look like?

It's a good question.

We wanted to keep the crew as small as possible to make Oliver's journey as authentic as possible. So, but having said that, we had, I think, for memory, I think we had 11 crew. We had five river guides who were experts at taking untrained people like us down the river to keep us safe.

And they know every rock in every corner, every tree on the river is quite amazing. Our friends at Franklin River after. And then we had, I think, yeah, so that meant there were six of us, including Oliver. So we had Casimir, our director. We had Ben, our cinematographer. I was on, I was, I had had two jobs. I was a sound recordist and I was also looking after all the data wrangling at the end of each day. So that's taking all the footage off the cameras and backing it all up to make sure it was all safe. And we had a couple of others. We had a drone, a drone cinematographer whose job was it just to fly the drone. And we had Annie, another producer who was helping us with all the logistics and planning and everything. And we also had a stills photographer as well. So yeah, there was a crew of 11 of us. So 10 people behind the camera. But yeah, it doesn't really look like that.

It looks like Oliver was out there on the river all by himself. But no, we did have a crew. We were a film production, so we needed to make sure it was safe. So we had all these guides behind the camera. The river, I mean, it's, it's worth saying that the river is a very dangerous place. There's a lot of hazards. So it's definitely not the kind of place you'll just, any punter can just go down with no training. You know, the best way to do it, if you're interested to do the Franklin is to go with a guide. So we went with Franklin River rafting. And there's other, there's other really professional guides that take people down. And if you ever get the chance, it's a wonderful thing. You don't need to have much training. They really look after you. They feed you. They keep you safe. And it allows you just to go along for the ride.

Oh, that's wonderful.

I'm glad to know you don't need much training to be able to go, Chris.

Um, Oliver, I'm, I know this story has significantly influenced your life and your journey.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Oh, wow.

Um, yeah, well, I was thinking about it because, uh, given my family history, the Franklin protest had sort of always existed.

Um, you know, it was sort of almost the saving of the river was this inevitable history, like how we sort of talk about, you know, the second world war or all these kinds of points in time where it's like that was always going to be. But the actual fact is that it was so close.

And what I really learned diving into the story behind this protest was to realize how uncertain it was at any given moment. And nobody knew what the outcome was actually going to be until that final high court case that we were talking about earlier. And that's actually given me quite a lot of hope because everything that we face today with climate change and any issue that anyone listening is, you know, important to somebody's heart, you don't know the outcome, but it doesn't mean that it's not worth taking a stand on it because what the Franklin can tell us is that that makes a difference. Now, Oliver and Chris, I've got one more beautiful question that is in the chat from Carmel and Perry for you today.

And I'll give you both a chance to answer this one before we wrap up our session.

They're very keen to know how can young people get involved in conservation?

Maybe if we start with Oliver.

Oh, there's a lot of different ways.

I mean, take a stand yourself.

That's great.

If you want to join in with some people that are working on particular issues, like some of the ones that are really centered towards younger folks, we've got the Australian youth climate group. We've got the school strike. We've got, you know, there's a whole range of different things that pop up in your area. And where you are locally really matters. Everything actually that would have kind of brushed over a little bit, but I just wanted to bring attention back to the fact that on the Franklin, there were a number of people in straw and in Tasmania that were really fighting for saving that river and especially in straw and itself without those people, we wouldn't have been able to get the protesters up there.

So we had, you know, the boat drivers and people running the stores there and people with their properties that they let people kind of come and camp and they were supporting saving that river because it was absolutely part of who they were knowing what that wilderness was like just on their doorstep and they wanted to keep it that way. So taking an action where you are joining a group that's looking at, you know, asking a question of a politician, challenging what the, what the sort of status quo is. It doesn't always have to be the way that it seems like it is. So you can always step up and and put a little bit of pressure on and ask some questions and get out there and experience some nature. And it's also good for making friends and getting in with like minded groups.

Lovely.

Thank you all of our Chris.

Would you like to add to that?

Yeah, I'm reminded of advice that Bob Brown gave that I always remember is you don't, if you to get into conservation, you don't have to be an activist, you know, you know, you don't have to be right out on the streets getting arrested every day. I mean, if that's what you're into, you can totally do that. You can join groups like XR and be quite out there. But I think the key thing for a lot of people, it's maybe a bit daunting and there's so many other ways you can get involved. And I think what Bob Brown says is think about what, what, what's your special thing that you can contribute. So as we try to outline in the film, you can be if you're an artist or if you're a musician or in particular, I'm a, I'm a lawyer and a filmmaker. So I use this is a real passion project for me. This is kind of my contribution to the whole environmental thing is to make a film that tries to inspire the people about it. So whether it's cooking, going down to support other people who are on the front lines with cooking or just, there's just so many different ways you can get involved in, in environmental movements.

So yeah, I would second Oliver and finding a group that's doing something that you care about, whether it's in your local area, working on a really local issue or could be a really global issue too.

Yeah, just keep in mind that it's, there's not just one type of activism that you can get involved in so many different ways and contribute your superpower to that. I really love the way you've summarized that, Chris, you know, that's so important to us here at the museum as well, that there are lots of ways that you can participate. And I love that both of you have highlighted linking to your passions, your interests, but also finding the unique way that you can either support or be able to share your message. So thank you for both of those final remarks.

It has been an absolute joy, Oliver, Chris, the National Portrait Gallery, Kate having you with us today and Jess in the studio here with us for this very special event. Thank you to all of you who connected with us across Australia online and for those that have contributed to our chat, we really appreciate your comments and we look forward to seeing what you do next.

So if you would like to have a look at the whole Franklin movie, you can have a look on the Franklin movie web page, teachers, those at home, there are lots of resources available that the fantastic Franklin movie team have put together and a special thanks to Andrea.

For those, you can also head to the Moad Learning website as well and we've dropped some activities to help you as well.

But thank you for today.

Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you at our next digital event.