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cases
This page highlights selected sedition and treason cases
in Australia and New Zealand.
It covers -
As
with the preceding page it supplements the discussion
elsewhere on this site of censorship
and hatespeech.
 Australia
The last major incidents in Australia appear to be action
against Gilbert Burns and Laurence Louis Sharkey - aka
Lance Sharkey - in 1949 and Brian Cooper in 1960, although
sedition charges were apparently laid in Queensland during
protests against the Vietnam War.
Sharkey had attracted attention as General Secretary of
the Australian Communist Party and the putative author
of effusions such as
We
know Comrade Stalin as a great organiser, a man of action
and of indomitable will. We know him as a great military
strategist in all of the campaigns of the Red Army,
including the present colossal conflict with the Fascists.
Comrade Stalin led the Russian Communists and the toilers
of the Soviet Union to Socialism, successfully pointing
the way to the overcoming of incredible obstacles. We
know Comrade Stalin as a practical leader of genius.
In this short work and in his more comprehensive works,
Stalin appears before us also as a theoretical leader.
He appears as the continuer of the theoretical labors
of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He is the foremost living
Marxist-Leninist scholar, the Lenin of to-day. ... In
the difficult complicated task of building the new Socialist
society, at every twist and turn of the long and hard
road the Soviet workers had to travel, Stalin held aloft
the "lamp of theory that lights the path for the
feet of practice", and solved the problems, in
brilliant fashion, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
Prosecution
centred on the charge that in March 1949, during a telephone
conversation with a journalist, he
uttered
the following seditious words: 'If Soviet Forces in
pursuit of aggressors entered Australia, Australian
workers would welcome them. Australian workers would
welcome Soviet Forces'.
The
charge reflected Section 24D of the Commonwealth Crimes
Act 1914-1946, establishing an indictable offence
for a person to "write, print, utter or publish any
seditious words" to
a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt;
b) to excite disaffection against the Sovereign or the
Government or Constitution of the United Kingdom or
against either House of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom;
c) to excite disaffection against the Government or
Constitution of any of the King's Dominions;
d) to excite disaffection against the Government or
Constitution of the Commonwealth or against either House
of the Parliament of the Commonwealth;
e) to excite disaffection against the connexion of King's
Dominions under the Crown;
f) to excite His Majesty's subjects to attempt to procure
the alteration otherwise than by lawful means, of any
matter in the Commonwealth established by law of the
Commonwealth; or
g) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between
different classes of His Majesty's subjects so as to
endanger the peace, order or good government of the
Commonwealth.
Sharkey pleaded not guilty, claiming that he was responding
to a question, rather than addressing a crowd. He was
convicted by a jury and served 18 months of a three year
prison sentence after an unsuccessful appeal to the High
Court (R v Sharkey, 1949).
Gilbert Burns was charged with sedition over statements
he made during a public debate in Brisbane about communism.
He responded to a hypothetical question regarding the
allegiance of the Australian Communist Party if the USSR
went to war with the West. He was initially condemned
by a magistrate under the federal Crimes Act 1914
before appealing to the High Court, where he argued in
Gilbert v Ransley (1949) that his answer to the
hypothetical could not establish the seditious intent
required under the 1914 Act. His appeal was rejected by
the High Court on the same day that the Court confirmed
the jury's conviction of Sharkey.
The last federal prosecution for sedition in Australia
prior to 2005 was in 1960, when Department of Native Affairs
officer Brian Cooper was prosecuted for urging "the
natives" of Papua New Guinea to demand independence
from Australia. Prosecution coincided with a federal general
election in which Menzies was returned by a whisker
Earlier prosecutions included action against radical Henry
Holland (1868-1933), jailed for sedition in NSW during
1909 over advocacy of violent revolution during the Broken
Hill miners' strike and jailed in NZ during the 1913 waterfront
dispute.
Ballarat Times, Buninyong & Creswick Advertiser editor
Henry Seekamp (1829-1864) was imprisoned
for three months in 1855 over comments on Eureka Stockade,
including calling on his "fellow-countrymen, on nature
and on Heaven itself" for a "vengeance deep
and terrible".
He had earlier proclaimed that
Instead
therefore of the diggers looking for remedies where
none can be found let them strike deep at the root of
rottenness and reform the Chief Government. What if
we lop off the branches from an unwholesome trunk. Only
unwholesome branches can spring. We must undermine the
tree and burn it off. ...
the die is cast, and fate has cast upon the movement
its indelible signature. No power on earth can now restrain
the united might and headlong strides for freedom of
the people of this country ... The League has undertaken
a mighty task, fit only for a great people - that of
changing the dynasty of the country.
New Zealand
Prosecutions in New Zealand prior to 2004 included
1865
- interpreter and land agent Charles Davis (1818-87)
was prosecuted in the Supreme Court for seditious libel
after he assisted Tauranga Maori to publish a pamphlet
critical of 'te Arawa mangai-nui' (big-mouthed Arawa)
who - with government endorsement - had claimed Tauranga
lands. The prosecution argued that the pamphlet would
incite other tribes against the Arawa and thereby lead
to bloodshed. Davis was found not guilty.
1913 - radical and Maoriland Worker editor
Henry Holland (1868-1933) and unionist Tom Barker (1887-1970),
charged with sedition during the 1913 waterfront dispute.
Holland was sentenced to prison for a year, of which
he served 3.5 months. Barker received a three month
sentence. Seaman's union leader William Young (1870-1953)
was jailed for two months for sedition and inciting
violence
1913 - Edward Hunter (1885-1959) of the Buller Miners'
Central Strike Committee was arrested and charged with
sedition for allegedly telling unionists gathered in
Wellington that the government's violent response to
the 1913 General Strike justified revolution. He received
a period of probation.
1916 - Maori mystic and political leader Rua Kenana
(1868-1937) for using seditious language and counselling
others to murder or disable the police, and resisting
arrest on the earlier occasion of 12 February. He was
found innocent of sedition, with no jury decision on
the counselling charges, but found Rua guilty of 'morally'
resisting arrest and sentenced to a year's hard labour
followed by 18 months' imprisonment.
1916 - Peter Fraser (1884-1950), later Labour Prime
Minister, for calling for an end to conscription through
repeal of the Military Service Act and commenting
"it is time that the working classes of the different
nations were rising up in protest" against the
ruling classes. He served 12 months in prison after
unsuccessfully arguing that in urging repeal of the
law rather than disobedience or resistance to it he
was acting within his constitutional rights.
1916 - Hubert Armstrong (1875-1942), sentenced to a
year's imprisonment in Lyttelton gaol after he told
a street-corner meeting that conscription was more about
controlling and intimidating a disaffected proletariat
than about beating Germany, and would be unnecessary
if soldiers were adequately paid. Armstrong was later
elected to Parliament and served as a Cabinet Minister.
1916 "rabid declamator" Robert Semple
(1873-1955) convicted of sedition after warning workers
not to be "lassoed by that Prussian octopus, conscription"
and sentenced to 12 months in prison. Concurrent charges
that he had published "matter likely to interfere
with recruiting, discipline, or administration of His
Majesty's Forces, or with the effective operation of
His Majesty in the present war" were dropped. Sempl;e
later became an MP.
1918 - Hiram Hunter (1874-1966) campaigned against compulsory
service as secretary-treasurer of the United Federation
of Labour. In 1918 he received a three-month prison
sentence for sedition, from which he was released after
19 days.
1918 - Unitarian minister James Chapple (1865-1947)
charged with two counts of seditious utterance at Greymouth;
subsequently convicted in Christchurch Magistrate's
Court and sentenced to 11 months in prison. He had unwisely
proclaimed
The
patriotic poison is in our schools. Childen are taught
to salute the flag and taught to sing the National
Anthem. I tell my children, when they come home, not
to sing the National Anthem ... The old Russia has
gone and the new Russia has come in. I hope before
I die to see a similar movement in New Zealand.
Chapple's
life was reflected in Plumb, the 1978 novel
by his grandson Maurice Gee.
1921 - 19 year old university student for possession
of a Communist newspaper and association with "anti-militarists
and revolutionaries"
1922 - Roman Catholic Bishop James Liston (1881-1976)
for a St Patrick's Day speech criticising British policy
in Ireland and New Zealand and praising the 1916 Dublin
insurrection (apparently describing the rebels as "murdered
by foreign troops"). He was acquitted by an all-Protestant
jury after two day trial in Auckland Supreme Court in
mid May 1922. Irish Free State supporter and Green
Ray publisher Albert Ryan (1884-1955) had been
less fortunate, sentenced to 11 months' imprisonment
in 1918 for sedition. The Green Ray was suppressed.
1942 - Reverend Ormond Burton (1893-1974), editor of
the Christian Pacifist Society newsletter, tried by
the NZ Supreme Court in 1942 for "editing, publishing
and attempting to publish a subversive document"
regarding the Barrington case. Burton served 30 months
in prison under the 1910 Crimes Amendment Act.
Fellow pacifist Archibald Barrington (1906-1986) served
a year's hard labour after speaking a mere two sentences
at Wellington's Pigeon Park in breach of restrictions
on anti-war advocacy. After release in 1942 he was prosecuted
for "publishing a subversive document"; conviction
by the Supreme Court was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
As highlighted earlier in this note, Timothy Selwyn (tartly
derided by one contact as Tombstone Tim) was jailed for
two months in 2006 over his call for citizen activism
after attacking the Prime Minister's electorate office
with an axe.
studies
The 1922 Liston case features in Roy Sweetman's Bishop
in the dock (Auckland: 1997). For Seekamp, Holland
and Barker see the Dictionary of Australian Biography,
Patrick O'Farrell's Harry Holland, militant socialist
(Canberra: ANU Press 1964) and Tom Barker and the
IWW (Canberra: ANU Press 1965) edited by Eric Fry.
For Rua Kenana see Peter Webster's Rua and the Maori
millennium (Wellington: Victoria Uni Press 1979).
Cooper has attracted attention in recent years. Studies
include 'A Foolish Young Man, Who Can Perhaps Be Straighted
Out In His Thinking' by Anthony Yeates in 129 Australian
Historical Studies (2007), 'The Political Uses and
Abuses of Sedition: The Trial of Brian Cooper' by Michael
Head in 11 Legal History (2007), 'The Use and
Abuse of Sedition' by Laurance Maher in 14 Sydney
Law Review (1992) and his 'Dissent, Disloyalty and
Disaffection: Australia's Last Cold War Case' in 16 Adelaide
Law Review (1994).
The Burns case appears in Roger Douglas' 2005 'The Ambiguity
of Sedition: The Trials of William Fardon Burns' in 9
Australian Journal of Legal History.
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