The right to protest is essential to our democracy, it’s currently under attack

By Kalila Welch, Editor of Cheek Media Co

This weekend, the Supreme Court declined a prohibition order requested by NSW Police that would have removed legal protections for the hundreds of thousands of people who marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday in protest of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. Justice Belinda Rigg ultimately decided that concerns around disruption and public safety were not sufficient reason to prevent the demonstration.

“It is in the very nature of the entitlement to peaceful protest that disruption will be caused to others,” she said. 

But now, Premier Minns has suggested his Government may look to introduce new legislation that would prohibit future bridge marches - or else, he says activists could assume it is “open season on the bridge”. 

Notwithstanding the fact that Sunday’s rally was far from the “near catastrophe” much of the media made it out to be, or that organisers have confirmed there are no immediate plans to protest on the bridge again, this is a blatant slippery slope argument. Minns’ fear-mongering is based on unfounded hypotheticals of regular disruption and so-called “chaos” in the wake of what was one of the largest and most impactful “anti-war” protests in Australian history. He does this even in the face of criticism from his own caucus raising concerns of political overreach.

This is a pattern. If the NSW Government were to attempt to appeal the Supreme Court’s decision, as Minns refuses to rule out, it would be the latest escalation in two decades of attacks on protest rights in Australia, according to the Human Rights Law Centre’s 2024 Protest In Peril report. It’s important to note that in Australia, the right to protest is implied, not constitutionally enshrined. But in recent years, even that limited protection has been eroded. 

Earlier this year the Minns Government rushed through a suite of new anti-protest laws under the guise of combatting a rise in antisemitic arson attacks and vandalism, including a suspected caravan bomb plot that Minns himself had quickly labelled as “terrorism”, despite police doubts early on in the investigation. 

These laws made impeding or intimidating a person accessing a place of worship a criminal offence punishable by a fine of $22,000 or two years in prison (or both), amongst other amendments. Just two months later, the AFP discovered the alleged caravan plot, along with 14 other anti-semitic attacks, were in fact “con jobs” by organised crime figures. 

Despite this, the new laws remain in place, and have already raised concerns of their potential to be misused. This was demonstrated when former Federal Greens candidate, Hannah Thomas, was left potentially blind in one eye after she was violently arrested by NSW police while protesting outside of a company understood to supply plating services for the F-35 Jets used by the Israeli Defence Forces to bomb Palestinians. Several other protestors were also arrested outside of the business, which happened to be located opposite the Teebah Islamic Association Mosque.

While Minns and the NSW police denied the new laws were invoked at the scene, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that police fact sheets and court documents it had obtained contradicted these claims, citing a place of worship in regards to a 29-year old man who was arrested for failing to comply with move on orders. 

But the right to political expression is not just under threat in NSW, with Victoria having launched an “anti-hate taskforce” to investigate whether police powers should be strengthened following a series of alleged anti-semitic attacks in the state - some of which turned out to be separate and legitimate protest actions that much of the mainstream media had deceptively linked to an arson attack at a Melbourne Synagogue.

This is not a new phenomena: lawmakers and enforcers in NSW and across Australia have worked hard to suppress our ability to take to the streets, all in the name of mitigating disruption and hushing uncomfortable conversations. But the very purpose of protest is disruption, and in causing discomfort to those in power - the political class will seldom wave through progress without their hand being forced. Those who suggest otherwise are simply more interested in maintaining the status quo.