Australian farmers are under unprecedented threat of trespass and harassment from animal activists opposed to livestock industries.
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They need your support, and you can do this by sharing your voice of why you support Aussie farmers’ right to produce food on their family farm free from activist pressure.
That’s why this publication is launching a campaign to #protectourfarms and force government to grant stronger protections from extreme activists in the wake of the social media storm around the release of farmers’ personal details on the anti-farming website, Aussie Farms.
You can write to your local, state and federal politicians demanding they commit to support food producers and develop new protections against the animal activist movement.
We will use our social media to share your images of support. All you need is to jump in front of a camera holding a piece of paper with the #protectourfarms slogan on it.
And you can share a video with a verbal message of support for our farmers, which you can share with us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter using #protectourfarms.
You can also add a Facebook Frame to your Facebook profile picture to show your support. Simply click Update Profile Picture on your Facebook profile pic, then Add Frame and search for protectourfarm.
Preliminary advice to the federal government indicates it doesn’t have powers to block Aussie Farms from publishing farmers addresses on its animal activist website, and state governments administer trespass and criminal laws in their jurisdictions.
“State governments need to make sure trespass laws carry huge penalties. A big deterrent is required here,” Mr Littleproud said.
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Aussie Farms executive director Chris Delforce told the ABC the map was created to “force transparency on an industry that's dependent on secrecy”.
“We never encourage people the break the law, we encourage people to drive past and snap a few photos from the road we’re not encouraging anyone to trespass.”
David Vaile, lead of privacy and and data surveillance at the Allens Hub for Technology Law and Innovation at the University of NSW said individuals can sue for a serious breach of their privacy in most developed democracies like New Zealand, the UK, USA, the EU, South Korea or Japan.
“Here, despite five recommendations in 30 years, Australians still have no right to protect their own privacy interests in court,” Mr Vaile said.
Mr Vaile said a new civil ‘tort of privacy’ would be a big improvement on the recourse currently available to farmers or their families.
Currently individuals have to report the incident to police who can investigate and suggest a prosecutor bring a criminal charge of trespass, or try to use the law of nuisance, neither of which address the information abuse issue at the heart of it.
“It sounds like tough ‘law and order’ response to say ‘call the police’, but in fact most actions that would violate a new civil tort of privacy would not lead to a successful criminal conviction,” Mr Vaile said.
“You’ve got a much higher criminal standard of proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ for criminal offences, which can be very hard to prove.
“But if there was a civil privacy action open to you, you’d only have to prove it ‘on the balance of probabilities’. If you ran a hopeless case, you may still lose, but at least you’d be the one in control, not some prosecutor with other priorities, and the case would address the information abuse, not some unrelated criminal issue.”
