Would the campaign to save the Franklin River work today? | Keiran Pender

A new film celebrates the 1980s battle to protect the Tasmanian environment, but now protest rights in Australia are under attack

The imagery is iconic, etched into the Australian national consciousness. Pristine Tasmanian wilderness. Bulldozers trying to destroy it. A man with nothing more than a placard, desperately trying to stop heavy machinery with his bare hands. Masses of people taking to city streets. Bodies, and campsites, in the path of construction. Heavy-handed police intervention. The power of the people against the power of the state.

This past comes rushing back through archival footage in Franklin, a new feature-length documentary on the most significant environmental protest campaign in Australian history: the battle to save Tasmania's wild, white-water river. The film has a happy ending: the protesters won and the Franklin still runs today.