The group face charges – not laid in more than 30 years – of disturbing the legislature during a protest in which they unfurled banners with anti-fossil fuel slogans from the public gallery and interrupted question time by chanting for about three minutes last November.The charges fall under section 56 of Queensland’s criminal code, which sets a three-year maximum jail term. But a Brisbane court heard on Monday that a later section of the same act repeals section 56 as an offence.
The police prosecutor Martin Payne lodged a lengthy written submission over which section of Queensland’s laws was in effect at the time of the protest in parliament after amendments to the legislation in 2012. Hoare said there had been an application for a joint trial in May but Pinder said there was no record of it.
The ambiguity left one of the accused, 24-year-old Moorooka woman Aisling Geraghty, to describe the result as “disappointing”.