The Protest Rights Wrap

August & September

It's Anastasia here with the latest Protest Rights Wrap, a bi-monthly overview of the protest rights landscape in Australia.

Communities nationwide are engaging in inspiring protest action, which is too often met with repression. Simultaneously, more and more people are speaking up for the right to protest, with over 140 community organisations and thousands of individuals endorsing the Declaration of Our Right to Protest.

Here’s our wrap of protest rights news for August + September.

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NATIONAL

The Fair Work Ombudsman encouraged employers to dock 4 hours pay from workers who walked off the job to take part in rallies regarding CFMEU administration. Restrictive strike laws allow employers to dock 4 hours pay for protest action that is not protected industrial action according to Fair Work rules, even if workers were not absent from work for the entire 4 hours. Union leaders criticised the threats of docked pay as interfering with the democratic right to protest.

The Federal Senate passed a motion recognising that peaceful freedom of assembly are inalienable rights which the Senate must defend. The motion was brought by Malcolm Roberts in relation to misinformation legislation, with Senators using their remarks to address issues such as anti-protest laws, whistleblowers, strategic litigation against public participation and the use of dangerous weapons by police.

VIC

Police injured at least 100 protesters with rubber bullets, OC spray and stun grenades at protests against the Land Forces military conference in Melbourne, causing one protester to lose part of their ear. Independent legal observer accounts of the protests from Melbourne Activist Legal Support identified that coercive crowd manoeuvres from police and the use of police weapons created tensions between police and protesters.

Media reporting of these tensions uncritically repeated police accounts of events, including the claim that acid was thrown at the police, with accounts since stating that police were sprayed with a smelly but harmless liquid.

ADN and thirty seven other community organisations have called on the Victorian government to ban dangerous police weapons at protests, establish an independent body to investigate police misconduct and run an independent inquiry into the police response to Land Forces protests.

If you’re in Victoria, help protect the right to protest by emailing your local representative via our handy tool - it takes less than a minute.

Screenshot of ABC live blog. Headline: Human rights and legal groups call for police weapon ban. Text: Human rights and legal groups are calling on the Victorian Government to ban the use of dangerous police weapons in policing protests. It comes as police deploy a range of crowd-controlling tools at protests today, including OC spray. Seven groups including the Human Rights Law Centre and Amnesty International Australia have written to the Premier and Attorny-General calling for the ban of explosive devices, OC spray and police horses at protests. Anastasia Radievska from the Australian Democracy Network said governments had an obligation to facilitate the rights of protests rather than curtailing them. "Communities deserve to be able to participate in the democratic tradition of protest without fear of serious injury from dangerous police weapons." Ms Radievska said.

Excerpt from the ABC live blog mentioning the open letter coordinated by Australian Democracy Network.

The Victorian government has also come under pressure from the Opposition to introduce a protest permit system, with Bill Shorten echoing this call. ADN joined together with the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Federation of Community Legal Centres, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Centre and fourteen other organisations to support the Premier’s rejection of protest permits and express concern about the impact their functioning has had in NSW and the NT.

NSW

The NSW Police sought to oppose a Palestine rally in the Supreme Court on October 4, citing safety concerns around crowd management. ADN organised a joint letter from over 50 community groups to the NSW Police Commissioner calling on her to drop the case, with our Protest Rights Campaigner appearing on ABC Radio and in The Guardian. We also engaged the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney to come out against the police case and encouraged civil liberties groups to highlight the problems with the NSW permit regime. The police withdrew the case on the day of the hearing, having reached an agreement on safety measures with rally organisers.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has launched a Premier’s Department review into the use of policing resources in protest, suggesting that police should be able to oppose a protest on the basis of it costing too much to police. Unions and civil liberties groups have spoken out against this. Meanwhile, the report from the legislative review of the 2022 anti-protest laws is now 3 weeks past the deadline. Labor MLC Anthony D’Adam, President of NSW Council of Civil Liberties Lydia Shelley, Maritime Union of Australia Sydney Branch Secretary Paul Keating and our Protest Rights Campaigner called for the report to be released and for the review to take into account alternative policing approaches at an event on 17 October.

Australian Democracy Network Protest Rights campaigner Anastasia Radievska speaking as part of a discussion on protecting the right to protest hosted by NSW Council of Civil Liberties.

Nine protesters were arrested in Newcastle and one in Sydney following actions on coal trains to protest the Environment Minister granting extension approvals to three NSW coal mines. All nine were denied bail by police and forced to stay in custody overnight, as well as having their phones confiscated for investigative purposes.

Students at the University of Wollongong were ordered to disband an encampment protesting the university’s ties to companies involved in the genocide in Gaza. The university used a newly introduced campus access policy, modelled on the one introduced by the University of Sydney in July to order for the encampment’s disbandment. ADN, Human Rights Law Centre and NSW Council for Civil Liberties wrote to the Vice Chancellor reminding them of the university’s obligation to respect protest, echoing our joint letter to Australian VCs in May. The University of Newcastle instituted a similar policy in early October.

NT

The new Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro told protesters who gathered outside a fossil fuel conference in Darwin “you are not welcome here in the territory”, accusing them of being from Victoria. The recently elected Country Liberal government has also affirmed they will strip funding from public interest litigator Environmental Defenders office.



As government and corporate pressure on protest rights continues, communities around Australia are standing up for their right to democratic participation. Join the movement by sharing the Declaration of our Right to Protest on your social media or with friends.

If you’re in Victoria, take one minute to email your representative about banning dangerous weapons at protests and share the call with others.

The right to protest has been in the news a lot lately which has been a great opportunity to help shape the conversation around our democratic and human rights. Listen to our interview on The Briefing, starting 8m30s.

Please share this Protest Rights Wrap with anyone who you think may be interested and thank you for your ongoing engagement with protest rights.