A prominent Australian anti-war activist, Ciaron O’Reilly, has told a Brisbane court how “good law breaking has led to good law making” before becoming the only person convicted under G20 laws that no longer exist.



O’Reilly pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrates court on Tuesday to entering the restricted zone around the G20 meeting in November while being one of a handful of individuals pre-emptively banned from the area by police.

The activist – who had announced online his plans to confront the US president, Barack Obama, over the treatment of US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – was convicted but given no further punishment after spending 42 hours in custody after his arrest.

His lawyer Terry Fisher told the court the laws were no longer in operation and O’Reilly’s only avenue of appealing the ban, which was never explained, had been the police commissioner who had applied it.

“At one point the magistrate acknowledged how well motivated I am [but] I still had to obey the law,” O’Reilly told Guardian Australia.

“I kind of interrupted him and said that in recent Queensland history, good law breaking has led to good law making in terms of civil liberties and other struggles in the past that have involved non-violent civil disobedience. He kind of listened to that a bit.

“My lawyer raised that I was the only person ever convicted of this charge and the legislation is redundant now.

“The reason I plead guilty is I took legal advice, they convinced me I didn’t have a leg to stand on … the legislation was so authoritarian and undemocratic,” he said.

“I think there was a lot of fear generated before the G20 and obviously yesterday with the prime minister’s speech, it’s not over yet, there’s more fear being generated all the time.”

O’Reilly came to prominence during the 1991 Gulf war when he served 13 months in jail, mostly in Texas, for his role in “disabling” a B-52 bomber in upstate New York.

WikiLeaks’s release of US diplomatic cables revealed the US government’s annoyance at his acquittal in Ireland over another damaged warplane.

O’Reilly said he believed he was the only person processed through special holding cells under the Brisbane supreme court built to accommodate hundreds of G20 arrests which did not eventuate.

“I think they were going to run a night court there and I said I wouldn’t cooperate with bail conditions so they then moved me from there to the watchhouse,” he said. “A few people were in the watchhouse for carrying masks and things like that.”

That was despite senior police revising their interpretations of the some of the temporary G20 laws just before the event – including the blanket ban on protesters wearing masks in the city centre – after they were challenged by former solicitor general Walter Sofronoff.