This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The operators of Melbourne’s Federation Square have censored the content of an anti-Adani slideshow presented there, demanding that all images of newspaper headlines and politicians, as well as “explicitly negative” environmental messages be removed.

On Saturday, a coalition of environmental groups held a screening of the documentary Guarding the Galilee at Federation Square, attended by about 300 people. The film is about the fight to stop Adani’s Carmichael coalmine, which would be the biggest coalmine ever built in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.

In the week before the event, Federation Square demanded to see the slideshow that would be presented before the screening and then demanded much of it be removed.

In email correspondence a Federation Square representative told the event organisers they “cannot permit any slides with protest messaging, slogans or memes together with slides that show pictures of politicians, newspaper headlines or any explicitly political messaging”.

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The operators objected to any content that was “negative and inflammatory” and demanded the majority of the slides be removed or significantly altered.

That included removing all pictures of newspaper headlines, politicians, political memes, protests or pictures of the Great Barrier Reef with “inflammatory messaging”.

Federation square also demanded that the “stop Adani” logo be changed to black and white, and that it not take up a whole slide.

The original slideshow that the organisers forwarded to Federation Square’s operators. Slides crossed out were censored from the final presentation.

“I would recommend putting together a slideshow that focuses more on the environmental aspect of the reef without the protest messaging,” the Federation Square representative said.

Federation Square is managed by Fed Square Pty Ltd and owned by the state government of Victoria.

The demands surprised the organisers, since Federation Square had approved the screening of the Guarding the Galilee, which included footage of protests, criticisms of the federal government, images of politicians presented in a negative light as well as explicit protest messaging.

As part of the agreement for hiring the venue, the organisers were told the material must be “G or PG rated” and the written agreement stated: “The hirer understands that Fed Square reserves the right to reject material that is deemed unacceptable or inappropriate for public exhibition in terms of quality, format type or content.”

Federation Square had told the organisers over the phone that “politically partisan” slides would not be allowed but the organisers said they were told that related to messaging related to political parties.

When challenged by the organisers over email, Federation Square said: “Although not associated specifically with a political party, the content is certainly political in nature and partisan in its opposition/protest to the current governments and their policies.”

In order to ensure the meeting went ahead, the organisers removed more than half the slides.

Odette Joannidis, a Stop Adani volunteer and co-organiser of the event, said the debacle revealed Federation Square was not “a friend of the people”.

“The management had us over a barrel, threatening to pull the plug on our event unless we obeyed their crazy request to cut the most benign of images from being shown,” she said. “It felt like being in an Orwellian nightmare, not Melbourne.

“It’s disturbing that in 2017, in an era of climate change, executives at Fed Square would actively censor photos of mums, dads and grandparents engaged in peaceful actions and suggest they were ‘inflammatory’ images.”

Because Federation Square refused to tell the organisers exactly which slides were causing the problem, and discussion was occurring just days before the event, the organisers removed anything they thought might be considered partisan, negative or inflammatory.

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“We asked for guidance from Fed Square on a slide-by-slide basis so we could better understand what exactly it was they objected to,” said Pablo Brait from Market Forces, who also organised the event. “However, Fed Square refused to give us this guidance and instead issued an ultimatum that the next version of the slideshow had to be acceptable to them, or else there would be no slideshow at all.”

Federation Square refused to answer a series of questions from the Guardian asking which sort of material was and wasn’t allowed and why. Instead, a spokeswoman sent through the following statement.

Fed Square was delighted to approve the screening of an important environmental documentary, Guarding the Galilee. The event organiser subsequently requested to present a large PowerPoint presentation, which Fed Square did not approve. Fed Square’s venue hire agreement states that Fed Square can refuse the right to play or remove from display any screen content considered offensive or inappropriate for any reason whatsoever. This was communicated to the event organiser and a mutual agreement was reached.

The event was organised by groups including Bayside Climate Change Action Group, StopAdani Eltham, Crochet for Coral not Coal, Darebin Climate Action Now, GetUp Melbourne East, AYCC Victoria, Melbourne Ports Stop Adani Group and Market Forces.

The groups crowdfunded the event and major sponsors included the National Tertiary Education Union and Melbourne builders Jenkinson Building.