Woodside Energy’s chief executive has appeared in court over violence restraining orders taken out against a group of climate activists.
Meg O’Neill sought the interim orders following a foiled Disrupt Burrup Hub protest outside her family home in August.
She faced Perth Magistrates Court on Friday with an entourage of lawyers and spin doctors where she successfully applied for a final order hearing to be adjourned.
Magistrate Richard Huston also made orders for four strict interim orders to be relaxed.
Jesse Noakes, 34, Gerard Mazza, 31, Emil Davey, 21, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 19, can now make verbal and written reference to Ms O’Neill after the words “make any reference to” were removed from gag clauses.
The group can also come 50 metres closer to a series of nominated addresses after previously being restricted to 100 metres.
Outside court, Disrupt Burrup Hub’s lawyer Zarah Burgess said she was pleased Ms O’Neill’s legal team had agreed the gag clauses were “inappropriate”.
“We look forward to a similarly fair outcome when we’re next in court on December 4 on applications to remove the very onerous non-association conditions,” she told reporters.
About a dozen police were waiting for Noakes, Davey and Lane-Rose when they arrived at Ms O’Neill’s home on August 1 with an ABC camera crew.
The group were taken into custody amid allegations they illegally trespassed onto the property to intimidate her and her family.
They were later charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage, which has been criticised as police overreach and being contested by the group.
A police prosecutor in that case on Tuesday alleged the activists visited a park across the road from Ms O’Neill’s home in the days before the protest.
Police confiscated yellow paint, water balloons and a bicycle lock during the failed protest, which Premier Roger Cook previously said was carried out by “extremists” attempting to “terrorise”.
Ms O’Neill last week said she remains concerned about the threat posed by the activists, and that the incident was “extremely distressing” and she worries for her family’s safety.
She left the court in a black chauffer-driven luxury car via an undercover car park usually reserved for magistrates as a Woodside staff member surveilled the waiting media.
The Burrup Peninsula, in WA’s Pilbara region and known as Murujuga to traditional owners, contains the world’s largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs.
Disrupt Burrup Hub claims Woodside’s gas drilling operations in the area and its proposed expansion form the biggest new fossil fuel project in the country and could produce billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2070.
The restraining order matter was adjourned to January 30 before a likely two-day hearing for the final violence restraining order later next year.
AAP