Steve Bolt talks activism and the law

Lismore-based lawyer Steve Bolt has recently retired, after thirty years of practice in the Northern Rivers. The Echo caught up with this illustrious local legal legend to talk about the intersection of activism and the law, in his own life and the wider community.

Eleven years ago, Mr Bolt was among the community protectors at the Bentley blockade, often wearing his rainbow beanie. He described his involvement in the gasfield fight as a highlight of his professional life, having represented many clients who were arrested at the preceding blockades of Glenugie and Doubtful Creek, often working pro bono.

As he explains, ‘I was an activist before I was a lawyer.’

Mr Bolt remembers being heavily involved in student politics in Sydney, and then being active in the public service union for many years (following in the footsteps of his father, a lifelong metal working unionist), before returning to university to study law, which led to new opportunities.

‘Lawyers have a number of roles to play, and if you have a social view or a political view about the need for urgent social change, then activism is something that you get involved in, by defending people who are across the line in terms of being arrested. That line is sometimes very arbitrary, determined by the police,’ he said.

‘A lot of my experience as an activist was not so much being arrested – although I was arrested a couple of times in my earlier life – it was being at protest events, and observing that the police were not always as well behaved as they should be.

‘Many times there were ways of dealing with those charges in the court system that worked out to be reasonably satisfactory in terms of having charges dismissed or very limited penalties.’

Drug law reform

While in Sydney, Steve Bolt worked for the Redfern Legal Centre, where he published a book called Rough Deal: a plain English guide to drug laws in NSW.

How did that come about? ‘One of my core beliefs is that we should be reducing crime, and we reduce crime by reducing policing and reducing the prison population. The biggest single way of reducing the prison population and reducing interaction between police and citizens is to drastically, radically reform the drug laws. It’s been a huge, long, slow process. We’re getting there somewhere, maybe!

‘Thirty years ago, Redfern had a project around drug law reform, and I was involved in that. The book was about how the law works and what can you do, what can’t you do?

‘We wanted to call it A Consumer Guide to the Drug Laws of NSW, but the publisher said, “No, you can’t do that!” It was directed at drug users and family and friends of drug users concerned about what might happen to their kids if they got busted.’

It remains an issue close to Mr Bolt’s heart, as Australian prisons continue to be filled by people who have committed minor drug offences.

‘The prison population increases, increases, increases,’ he said. ‘It’s not so much about direct drug law stuff as the powers that police have to stop vehicles, search vehicles, to search people, to do strip searching, to get search warrants and to come into people’s houses.

‘It’s that creep of police power infringing on, in my view, liberties that we all should have in terms of what is effectively a personal decision – when you use drugs or don’t use drugs. Yes, there are impacts on society, but that should be addressed in a different way than trying to police a way out of what is seen to be a major problem. Is it a major problem? I don’t know, but it’s a problem anyway.’

Police and prosecutors

Steve Bolt has been unafraid to put his head above the parapet on this and other issues for many years, speaking at public forums such as Mardi Grass.

Has that caused problems for you? ‘As a professional, you go to court and you have conversations with prosecutors. You go to court and you cross examine police officers in the witness box, and then you see them outside court and say “how are you going?” It’s all friendly and respectful enough. And so it should be, professionally.

‘I’ve never had any blowback at all from cops. I’ve never been stopped and searched, or had any harassment.’

Are there police who resent having so much of their work to do with minor drug offenses when there are so many other pressing issues? ‘The NSW Police Force is very large, so you get a range of views.

‘Going back to the Bentley situation, when they were going to bring up 800 cops or something, from Sydney, a lot of police said, “I don’t want to be involved with that. That’s not for me. You can make me if you have to Sarge, but I don’t want to go.” There was a fair bit of resistance.

‘In a day to day way, police can’t just say, “I don’t want to follow that law, I’m not going to do that” [but] police have discretion about lots of things, and I think police could and should use their discretion more often to look past things that might otherwise result in a charge.

‘In the drug law area that’s become codified into this system around cautioning, which has probably interfered with a general power to be discreet. The common example is police getting a call about a domestic violence incident, or an incident where someone is in physical danger. They turn up and there’s a couple of cannabis plants, growing in the backyard, someone gets busted for the cannabis plants.

‘Well, why? You know, what’s the point of that? The real issue is some physical harm that should be addressed, but some police will just say, “we have to lay the charge.”‘

Politics

Are the solutions political then? Have you been tempted to go down the political route, like your fellow activist lawyer Sue Higginson?

Steve Bolt said, ‘I don’t think that’s for me. I’m a great admirer of Sue’s, she’s a colleague and comrade of mine. I’m a very big fan. But I don’t have the same skill set or capacity or patience. I’m fairly patient, but I’m not that patient!

‘The thing about parliamentary democracy is it’s not the worst system, but it’s slow. Myself and many other people think, well, we need to have more justice in the world. We need more peace in the world. We need more fairness in the world. Politics is a slow way of having that occur.

‘That’s what activism is about. That’s what civil disobedience is about, and protest marches and rallies and standing outside politicians’ offices with a sign that no one’s going to read… in a sense, it doesn’t matter. It’s that exercise of attempting to push things further. That is what people are entitled to do, and I think people should be encouraged to do.

‘If they get into some trouble with the cops, that’s when people like myself can step in and help them out a little bit, but it’s more about putting that pressure on the system to have everything move forward in a faster way than it would otherwise.’

Lawfare

What about environmental lawyers, like Sue Higginson’s old employer the EDO, and those on the right who talk about ‘lawfare’, as though the law is not a legitimate way to create progressive change?  ‘It’s not as if the corporations and the fossil fuel mob don’t use lawfare themselves! It’s an avenue.

‘If you have rights and obligations, as we do, and companies and corporations have rights and obligations, and we have a framework with some level of environmental protection, it’s absolutely legitimate that companies who want to make a zillion dollars out of extracting fossil fuel should have to jump through every hoop.

‘Rules aren’t put into place just for the sake of having the rules, but to protect the environment. So if there’s a court case that says, well, you didn’t do this properly, or the minister skipped this step, or the minister didn’t consider this absolutely legitimate, then that should be tested.

‘It’s not lawfare and it’s not illegitimate for that to be taken through the courts and for that to be argued about. The judges will make a decision, and that’s the way the law unfolds. The law is mostly determined by decisions made by parliament, but it also comes from interpretations by judges and courts.’

Civil disobedience

‘It’s sometimes said in context of the discussion we’re having that activist protesters have no regard for the law. My experience is the opposite. Protesters do have regard to the rule of law, and do respect the law.

‘In a civil disobedience situation, fair enough, you’re not meant to do something. In a logging protest you’re not meant to go onto a particular piece of land owned by the Forestry Corporation, for example. Okay, you’ve broken the law. What should happen to you?

‘You get charged. The police have to prove, just like an assault charge or any other charge, that you have committed an offence… If that is proved, then what is the appropriate penalty? You don’t necessarily have to go to jail every time you break the law. Most people who break the law in the criminal context do not go to jail, and most people who are arrested and charged at political events, even if found guilty, do not get a serious penalty.

‘That’s quite appropriate, because the people who are engaged in that activity are very, very often first offenders, people with no significant criminal record, if any at all, and their motivation is not about greed or personal gain. It’s about social benefit, and the court as a general rule will recognise that and give a fair bit of leniency in terms of convictions being recorded and so on.

‘In most cases, when it becomes two or three or four times you’re involved in that sort of activity, okay, you don’t get that benefit anymore. You start to get fined. But it’s about the process of the law being applied. It’s not in any real way showing disrespect for the law. It’s accepting that if you break the law, there are consequences, and lawyers are involved in guiding people through that system.’

The theatre of protest

Do you think it’s legitimate for people to break the law as a piece of public drama, to advance a cause or highlight an issue? ‘There is inevitably some inconvenience caused by people exercising their right to free speech, their right to express a political view. To some extent, people who don’t agree with that point of view are offended just by hearing the opposite point of view!

‘Inevitably when you have any kind of group activity involving numbers of people blocking footpaths, blocking the road, marching down the road, whatever it might be, there is inconvenience, absolutely. The recent history [in NSW] has been to increase the penalties.

‘But how do you get attention to a cause? How do you get attention to a point of view you’re trying to get across that otherwise is drowned out by (sometimes) nonsense and (sometimes) other important views?

‘So yes, it’s perfectly legitimate, in my view,’ he argues.

‘If we had a system where the parliament was moving forward making changes in a faster way than they do, then there’d be less need for theater, there’d be less need for public obstruction. There’d be less need for protest action. It’s a bit rich to say it’s all the protesters’ fault.

‘For example, we’ve had the Koala National Park announced three years ago. It hasn’t happened yet. Logging is going on. The logging is increasing year by year by year. If people go into the koala park forest and say, we want to stop logging on this particular cache of trees, we’re going to lock ourselves on to machinery to stop this happening, well, there’ll be some of the community who think, yeah, good on you. That’s what you should do.

‘There’ll be others who think, no, that’s the worst thing to do. It’s up to the individual to decide, are they going to do that or not? When it comes to the law, if they get busted for that, it’s got to go to court.’

Not minor issues

What about those who have been saying (since the time of the suffragettes) that this kind of behaviour is wasting limited police and court resources?

‘What we’re talking about are not minor issues. We’re not talking about trivial things. We’re talking about the future of the planet. We’re talking about the future of a large group of people in Gaza, for example, in the most recent Harbour Bridge protest. These are important issues.

‘Generally speaking, I don’t agree with every single action that’s ever been taken, but as a general rule, people who are from a progressive point of view, looking to increase the protection for the planet, increase the degree of fairness and justice in the world, looking to increase peace and minimise war, they’re my kind of people, and I’m more happy to help them out legally.’

How did you survive doing so much pro bono work, when the lawyers on the other side were generally getting paid hundreds of dollars an hour? ‘You’ve still got to pay your rent, and pay your staff. It means you take a bit of a hit in terms of the bottom line. I was my own boss in private practice, and before that I worked in community legal centres.

‘In private practice I made those decisions foolishly, perhaps, in many cases, “Oh, I’ll do that for free. That’s a good cause. I won’t charge you for that.” But in other ways, maybe not so foolish. I don’t have any regrets about being involved in Bentley, for example. I think that was important.

‘Don’t we have an obligation to make the world a better place? That’s the starting point. Otherwise it’s that kind of individual attitude; “I’m going to look after me and look after my immediate family, and that’s all I care about” – there’s far too much of that in our society.

‘I take a different view, which is, we’re all in this together. We’ve all got to pull our weight. We ought to get a bit uncomfortable.’

Lovemore

After he and his young family toyed with the idea of moving to Darwin, Steve Bolt made the big switch from polluted Sydney to the beautiful Northern Rivers in the mid-90s, when he joined the newly opened Northern Rivers Legal Center.

For all its challenges (two metres of water went through his house in the last flood), he remains a great supporter of Lismore, where he feels very much at home with its mix of National Party supporters and progressives.

‘There is that significant alternative culture here, which makes me feel comfortable. Byron had already jumped the shark!

‘Lismore has always been divided, politically speaking, but there’s respect across that divide. Yes, there are people who are doing their best to shatter that mutual respect for each other’s positions, but with the two large social groups, there’s no hatred between them. I remain optimistic, perhaps foolishly.

‘In terms of my own work, we had clients who were sometimes quite conservative voters, and sometimes not very conservative people at all. But people are people. When you get to work with people on that one to one basis, you realise that although they might disagree with most of my opinions about most of the things I think are important, they’re also good people, and their perspective is also valid.

‘If it’s respectful and not destructively expressed, fair enough.’

Maybe you brought out the best in them? ‘Well, lawyering is not hostility, really. The best lawyers are not hated by their opposition. The best lawyers are on friendly, collegiate terms with all of the people they deal with, judges who might disagree with you most of the time…’

Respect and the rule of law

‘Part of what I’d be doing is changing people’s opinions, showing them respect as the bottom line, listening to what they’ve got to say; putting arguments that are rational and hopefully factually-based, evidence-based. And that’s where I think the problem is with the last twenty odd years. We’re getting further and further away from that respect for facts, that respect for science, that respect for an opinion that should have something behind it, rather than just ‘how your feels are’.

‘People say, “I feel very strongly.” Okay, but why do you feel very strongly about this particular point? Are you sure you’re right about this?

‘The law is rational. That’s the attraction for me. It’s a peaceful way of resolving disputes. We’ve got too much violence in the world. If there’s a disagreement about whether this should happen or should not happen, that should be resolved peacefully by discussion, by debate.

‘If it has to go before a judge in terms of a court, okay, that respectfulness carries on. It’s about evidence.

‘By definition, as a lawyer, you spend half your time listening to other side, and then picking holes in terms of the stronger points that you’ve got, and the weaker points they’ve got, hoping that the judge agrees with you…

‘It doesn’t mean that every single law is a good law. Many individual laws are very unfair. But the rule of law means that you don’t just go off and execute people because you think they’ve done something wrong. That’s a kind of barbarism, isn’t it? We don’t want to go down there. But in a less dramatic sense, that respect for rational argument is where I come from.’

Sailing into the sunset

Steve Bolt is an AFL fan, and explains his decision to retire by saying, ‘you don’t want to play a season too many.’ After working far too many hours for too many years, his practice at Bolt Findlay is now going to carry on without him or his wife Vicki Findlay, who was previously the firm’s mediation partner.

The new principal is Daniel Haig, who has been with the firm for five years.

While reluctant to focus too much on himself as he sails into the sunset, at least professionally, Mr Bolt said, ‘Having integrity is an important part of anyone’s life…

‘Our philosophy was not so much to make every single dollar we could as a legal practice, but to help people, you know, to provide a service. Yes, charge them a fee, but not to make sure there’s another zero on that bill.

‘It’s such a glib thing to say, but it’s a helping profession. It’s about analysis and thinking through and problem solving, but from the client’s point of view, it’s about explaining why we’re doing it this way.

‘It’s also about empowerment. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.” And it’s certainly true for the law. These arcane expressions, and this language. What does it all mean? If you understand it properly yourself as a lawyer, and you can explain it, well that’s what you should be doing.’