The NSW Government has spent years fighting protestors
Because they're effective.
Arguments that protests must be stifled because they are disruptive to everyday punters doesn’t hold ground, because that’s the point. Protests are one of the levers that drive important change in this country, that’s why Minns is suppressing them, writes Cheek’s Editor Kalila Welch.
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Six months ago, hundreds of thousands of Australians marched solemnly across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people. They demanded the Albanese Government take urgent diplomatic action against Israel after two years of genocide in Gaza, and a week later, the plan to formally recognise a Palestinian State was formally announced.
That decision was, of course, effectively meaningless when Australian-made F-35 parts continued to flow covertly to the Israeli war machine. But it served as a much-needed reminder of why we were all doing this: protests work. They apply pressure that forces our leaders to do something, even if that something is symbolic at best - a small appeasement that shows governments are ‘listening’. More importantly, these moments open the door to more meaningful change.
It’s that mechanism of change that our political class has done everything in their power to resist in recent years - and none more than NSW Premier Chris Minns. Advocates and civil rights experts have spent years raising the alarm about the gradual erosion of protest rights, which are not constitutionally enshrined, instead relying on the implied freedom of political communication.
Cheek highlighted this risk after the last-ditch attempt of NSW Police, backed by Minns, to appeal to the Supreme Court to block the Harbour Bridge march in August.
