Climate activists have received months-long sentences. Are tougher laws eroding Australians’ right to protest?

New laws across Australia have expanded police powers to break up protests. Photograph: supplied by Blockade Australia

Brad Homewood describes his first steps into a maximum security facility, where he spent the first three weeks of a two-month jail sentence, as intimidating.

“You’re in there with the worst of the worst,” he says. “There’s a lot of violence in there. I didn’t experience any personally, but you hear it, especially after lockdown.”