Dunedin climate activist Bruce Mahalski, who was found guilty for trespassing last year, holds a bag full of coal and his $50 offender levy enclosed inside it outside Dunedin District Court yesterday.
Mahalski said he was protesting the wording of the offender levy which helps address the harm offenders’ crimes cause.
Mahalski and five other coal protesters shut down Dunedin Railway Station in December 2021 by blocking a train carrying 500 tonnes of coal bound for a Fonterra plant near Temuka.
It inadvertently caused the cancellation of the Dunedin Railways’ Victorian excursion to Oamaru.
Photo: Gerard O'Brien
He did not regard himself as "morally culpable" for causing harm and the reason he was trespassing was to prevent a "person’s actual physical death".
He said the government was "knee deep" in coal in the middle of a climate emergency.
