Protesters forbidden from speaking about a protest

Australian climate defense activists who protested a company drilling for fossil gas have been hit by court orders forbidding them from speaking about the protest, and demanding they hand over all communications pertinent to the protest. The company also threatens to sue them for the cost of expensive precautionary reactions.

I don't know what actually happened in the protest. In particular, I don't know whether the protesters released a (possibly malodorous) gas or not. I expect that they are opposed to violence against persons and would not have considered releasing anything dangerous.

Therefore, I think that we have here an instance of a technique frequently used by businesses and sometimes governments to repress protesters: overreacting to the protest in a paranoid way at great expense, then suing the protesters for the "damages" the organization did to itself.