A climate activist who ignored police data access charges order over fears she would be sacked by her employer, the Australian Greens, has been convicted.

November 20, 2023

A high-profile climate activist who disobeyed police data access charges citing fears she would be sacked by her employer, the Australian Greens, has been convicted and fined.

Joana Veronika Partyka, 38, previously pleaded not guilty 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.

They were seized from her apartment in March and allegedly contained confidential Australian Greens political information and a list of about 200,000 party donors.

Partyka told the court in September she asked her boss for permission to provide investigators with the pin and pass code to her devices but was told it would breach her employment contract.

Magistrate Andrew Maughan on Monday handed down his judgment, saying Partyka’s “belief, although perhaps honestly held, was not objectively reasonable given the situation she found herself (in)”.

He said it was uncontentious that Partyka was subjected to an employment contract that stated she not disclose or discuss any Australian Greens information or data to any third party without their consent.

Partyka, who is a campaigner for the Disrupt Burrup Hub group, was fined $1200 plus court costs.

Outside court, Partyka said she would likely appeal the convictions due to “multiple errors in the decisions given today and in a previous trial”.

Her lawyer Zarah Burgess previously told the court the activist informed police before the order expired that she risked breaching her employment contract by co-operating.

Ms Burgess also claimed 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 Disrupt Burrup Hub 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 but she was at parliament when the incident occurred.

The other offence listed on the warrant was conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

“WA police admitted under cross-examination in my trial that they raided my home and seized my electronic devices in relation to potential future offences that had not occurred,” Partyka said on Monday.

“That’s a pretty dystopian vision.”

Partyka was previously 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.

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

Disrupt Burrup Hub claims Woodside’s operations in the area and its proposed expansion form the biggest new fossil fuel project in the country and could produce billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2070.

It has carried out a series of actions against Woodside this year including the release of stench gas at the company’s Perth headquarters in June, forcing the evacuation of about 2000 staff.