A climate activist fighting data access charges disobeyed a WA police order over fears she would be sacked and sued by her employer, the Australian Greens.

September 21, 2023

A climate activist fighting data access charges disobeyed a police order over fears she would be sacked and sued by her employer, the Australian Greens, a court has been told.

Joana Veronika Partyka, 38, pleaded not guilty on Thursday in Perth Magistrates Court to two counts of failing to obey a data access order after she declined to give West Australian police access to her mobile phone and laptop.

Her lawyer Zarah Burgess said they were seized in an unlawful search of her apartment in March and contained confidential political information and a list of about 200,000 party donors.

Partyka, who worked as a communications officer for the Greens and for Senator Jordon Steele-John, asked her boss for permission to provide investigators with the pin and pass code to her devices but was told it would be a breach of her employment contract.

Ms Burgess said this was communicated to police before the order expired and Partyka had taken “every sensible step that one would expect”.

“What was one to do when faced with the possibility of a criminal conviction for disobeying a potentially invalid access versus the probability of dismissal from a job,” she told the trial.

Ms Burgess said the police search warrant used to seize the devices was invalid because it failed to provide enough detail about the offences on which it was based, making the operation and the subsequent data access court order unlawful.

Those offences included criminal damage committed at a protest at WA parliament when Woodside Energy’s logo was spray painted on several doors, an offence for which another woman was convicted.

Partyka was not accused of any wrongdoing over the action in the days before five police officers knocked on her door but she was at parliament when the incident occurred.

The other offence listed on the warrant was conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, which Ms Burgess described as an “Orwellian notion of a potential future crime”.

Detective Senior Constable Benjamin Harris told the court the warrant was to seize items connected with the Disrupt Burrup Hub protest group.

He also said a staffer from Senator Steele-John’s office made contact with police after it was executed amid concerns about the data on the seized devices and said he was likely to claim parliamentary privilege to protect it.

It prompted WA Police to contact their federal counterparts, who advised them they would have to travel to Canberra to access the data, which Det Sen Const Harris said did not happen.

Det Sen Const Harris was unable to provide details about Partyka’s alleged role in a conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, but said police were investigating a series of incidents linked to the protest group.

Partyka was convicted of criminal damage and fined after she spray-painted a Woodside Energy logo onto one of Australia’s most famous paintings – Frederick McCubbin’s work Down On His Luck – at the Art Gallery of WA in January.

Disrupt Burrup Hub has called for industrial development on the rock art-rich Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region to be stopped, including Woodside Energy’s expansion of the Pluto gas plant.

The Burrup Peninsula, known as Murujuga to traditional owners, contains the largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs in the world.

Magistrate Andrew Maughan said the case could have “multiple implications for the jurisdiction moving forward” and reserved his decision until November 20.