A Dunedin climate activist convicted of trespassing after blocking a coal train at the city's railway station has paid his offender levy with a $50 note in a plastic bag full of coal.
Bruce Mahalski and five other 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.
Mahalski was found guilty of trespassing last year.
Mahalski said he was protesting the wording of the offender levy which helps address the harm offenders’ crimes cause.
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.
