Letter to Victorian Premier regarding permits for protest

15 October 2024

Dear Premier,

We write concerning the recent calls for a protest permit system in Victoria and in support of your continued position on their inappropriateness for our state.

Protest permit systems infringe upon internationally accepted human rights and place an untenable burden on communities, courts and police. If they are ever imposed by a government in the state, they will be used to suppress lawful protests, including union pickets and industrial disputes. We strongly believe the introduction of a protest permit system would fail all Victorians.

Despite the recent comments from Minister Bill Shorten, the protest permit system in New South Wales is not “working well”. The experience of protest permit systems in New South Wales shows that over the last four years NSW Police have run three unsuccessful Supreme Court challenges to protests, taking up police and court resources. The process of permit negotiation takes up an enormous amount of resources without creating substantially different outcomes in terms of crowd management and police mobilisation.

Permit systems have been used to suppress the rights of First Peoples to protest, with documented cases of police in the NT and NSW requiring First Peoples to fund traffic control and public liability insurance in order to receive authorisation to hold a protest. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has expressed alarm at the impact a permit system could have on the Aboriginal community in Victoria and stated that such a system “defeats the point of a protest and impacts our democratic rights”.

A permit system would likely be challenged on the basis of its infringement on the Constitutional implied freedom of political communication and could be incompatible with sections 15 and 16 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act (2006). Specifically, under Article 21 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), upon which the Victorian Charter is drawn, permits cannot be made a precondition to enjoying the right to freedom of assembly. A failure to have a permit cannot render an assembly unlawful, or be used as a basis for dispersing the assembly.

Thank you for your continued stance against this dangerous proposal. We urge your government and Victoria Police to continue working together with communities to facilitate the exercise of their fundamental democratic rights.


Signed,

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
Friends of the Earth Melbourne
Australian Democracy Network
Pax Christi Victoria
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights
Melbourne Activist Legal Support
Federation of Community Legal Centres Victoria
Victorian Trades Hall Council
Human Rights Law Centre
National Justice Project
Environment Victoria
Amnesty International Australia
Fitzroy Legal Service
Environmental Justice Australia
Sisters Inside
Tomorrow Movement
Victoria Forest Alliance

Liberty Victoria