Note these are bail conditions (so presumably an alternative to a much more constrained existence in prison) for a charge that indicates potential for inflicting severe economic damage after organization via communication devices.
When compared to bail conditions for other charged crimes which may also be strict and context-related (eg. trackers or keeping distance from a victim of violence) it sounds tough (and right to be strictly monitored under rights laws) but not necessarily unreasonable.
Is it wrong/excessive/draconian? Possibly. But I don't think a knee-jerk assumption that it is any of those things is appropriate.
All this was done in an effort to suppress non-violent protest of Australian climate policies, and in particular it's extreme coal exports, which are among the largest in the world.
So yes, this is a draconian bail condition that is meant to do harm against the few Australian that seek to prevent harm to come to you.
If I steal a car from a car dealership, what am I guilty of other than "causing economic damage"? Isn't economic damage the fundamental issue of any theft?
You are guilty of property theft. You forcibly took away something that belonged to another entity. The fundamental issue is property. No "economic damage" slips into the argument.
If that was the case, market competition would be illegal as you cause economic damage to your competitors. Advocating for veganism would be illegal because you cause economic damage to meat sellers. Inventing new technologies would be illegal because you cause economical damage to the old guard. Leaving anything other than 5 star reviews would be illegal because you cause economical damage. Calling for boycotting of unethical companies or states would be illegal (all hail anti Israel boycotting laws in the US). Etc etc.
The basis of the law disagrees with you - the likely consequence of me stealing something is being forced to compensate you for it. It's redress the economic harm. I'm not saying all economic damage is illegitimate, but I'm saying economic damage can be a legitimate cause for something to be illegal.
It's the way of the economic damage that matters, similarly to other offenses. It is not illegal to tarnish your reputation, for example. What is illegal is to do so through lies. Damaging a fellow human is not, in any of our current sociopolitical systems at least, a crime in itself. It is only a crime if you damage a fellow human outside the agreed upon rules, which also vary.
Agreed, you don't have access to a phone at all while in remand. Bail conditions can restrict who you live with, where you live, interstate travel etc. These are all huge losses of liberty that we accept as a society the same way we accept prison as a loss of liberty.
If the road carries trade and blocking it prevents that trade, like for example if they block the only access road to a coal mine. How it would happen in a city where you can just go around I don't know.
But here I think they got nabbed on a city road protest and charged for the blocking of coal transport. Though it sounds like blocking the coal exports actually happened before the new law was in force, meaning the new charges are basically vindictive.
This attitude speaks to a rather severe amount of privilege that not all enjoy. If you “cause economic damage” that then raises prices, you hurt the poorest in rather large ways.
Economic damage is real damage. If you break windows, and the govt has to repair those windows, it has less money to spend on welfare and charity and doing other stuff that a govt wants to do.
You realize there's a famous essay on economy that uses precisely the allegory of windows being broken and repaired to argue that not all GDP is good. That's right, "it's creates jobs" is a terrible argument.
The checkbook must balance eventually, or at least grow in a controlled fashion. If you could add arbitrary expenses to the deficit and get +ve value out, a lot of things fall apart.
I'm not sure what else "economic damage" could refer to that isn't some sort of physical cost? If, say, an activist uses social media to incite people to blockade a road, making 10k people an hour late for work, that's up to 10k less hours of stuff done^1. That's a cost, even if it's a "virtual" one. Say x% of those people worked in healthcare, that's x00 hours less healthcare done, and that's people killed in expectation.
^1: or up to 10k people working an hour late, which is a cost in and of itself.
I might have been wrong. I thought that "economic damage" means something like release some bad press release, which wipes a lot of economic value from stock prices.
When compared to bail conditions for other charged crimes which may also be strict and context-related (eg. trackers or keeping distance from a victim of violence) it sounds tough (and right to be strictly monitored under rights laws) but not necessarily unreasonable.
Is it wrong/excessive/draconian? Possibly. But I don't think a knee-jerk assumption that it is any of those things is appropriate.