Being a law-abiding protester in Australia has become more difficult with each passing year, experts say, and some fear the right to protest is being slowly eroded.
Over the past two decades, at least 49 laws affecting protest have been introduced in federal, state and territory parliaments.
Most recently, on 17 December, following a series of antisemitic attacks in Melbourne.
David Mejia-Canales, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said the public should be “very, very, very critical” about such legislation.
“Protest is the purest expression of democracy in many ways … because protest is democracy in action. And any politician who does not like democracy in action, as long as it is peaceful, maybe we should really question their motivations.”
For over a century, the right to protest has been a fundamental pillar of Australia’s democracy.
It’s delivered the eight-hour workday, voting rights for women, native title rights and marriage equality — among many other achievements.
Now, in the context of regular pro-Palestinian demonstrations, civil rights advocates like Mejia-Canales say this right is under renewed attack.
The post-October 7 climate
Since a on 7 October 2023 killed almost 1,200 people, a devastating Israeli assault on Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
The series of weekly rallies held across the country in solidarity with the Palestinian people has become the biggest anti-war movement in Australia since the Iraq war and a significant thorn in the side of politicians.
But, alongside protests and debate in parliament, a ratcheting up of vandalism,
One of the most shocking examples came just weeks ago with , which is now being investigated as a likely terrorist incident.
Off the back of the attack, Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan has flagged that her government intends to legislate a number of anti-protest measures, including banning the use of face masks at protests, banning flags of groups listed as terrorist organisations and banning the use of glue and lock-on devices at protests.
Allan also claimed that antisemitism and hate were thriving within the pro-Palestinian movement.
“It would be wrong for me to say that everyone who’s attending these protests is antisemitic. There’s no one saying that. But we know that some are, and they are showing that. We also know that hate and antisemitism are thriving in these environments,” Allan said.
Pro-Palestinian protest organisers have denied the link between their protests and incidents like the Adass Israel attack.
Palestine Action Group organiser Amal Naser said: “The attack of a synagogue is an abhorrent and racist act that should be condemned and has been widely condemned.”
“However, there has been no police investigation or conclusion which suggests that it has anything to do with the protest movement.”
Ohad Kozminsky, an executive member of the Jewish Council of Australia, is critical of Victoria’s protest crackdown. Source: Supplied
Ohad Kozminsky, executive member of the Jewish Council of Australia — a group formed in the last year by progressive Jewish academics, activists and lawyers — said the laws were counterproductive.
“There are laws against hate speech. There are laws against firebombing and the destruction of property. We don’t need additional laws to fight that,” Kozminsky said.
The proposed measures also include banning protests outside of places of worship, something that Kozminsky also thinks is misguided.
“Religious institutions, irrespective of their denomination or their faith are legitimate sites of protest. We saw that perhaps most strikingly in the protests that took place in response to revelations about institutional, historic and contemporary sexual abuse of young people, of children,” he said.
Mejia-Canales said: “If the premier thinks that these measures criminalising peaceful protest is going to fix antisemitism and other forms of racism, then she’s deluded.
“This will not do that.”
A long history of protest crackdowns
The Victorian government’s approach fits into a broader context of governments across Australia cracking down on protester rights, Mejia-Canales said.
“We are now seeing that Victoria is following the example of NSW and South Australia and Queensland in some respects, trying to rush to implement these really severe anti-protest laws,” he said.
The NSW government passed legislation in 2022 that banned protesters from disrupting certain major roads, bridges, tunnels, public transport and infrastructure facilities.
Meanwhile, South Australia currently has the toughest financial penalties with fines of up to $50,000 for protesters who intentionally obstruct a public place.
The NSW government passed legislation in 2022 that banned protesters from disrupting certain major roads, bridges, tunnels, public transport and infrastructure facilities. Source: AAP / Flavio Brancaleone
Mejia-Canales said there’s nothing new about the government trying to make it difficult for citizens to demonstrate publicly.
“It’s been happening anytime that someone seeks to challenge power,” he said.
“Queensland banned all protests in the streets in the ’70s. The suffragists, the women, the very brave women who were traversing the country, seeking petitions to give women the vote, they faced some severe repression in the same way that climate and environment protesters are being repressed today.”
A recent study from researchers at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom has found that Australia is the world leader when it comes to arresting these environmental protesters.
Their findings show Australia’s arrest rate was higher than all other countries measured, with more than 20 per cent of protests involving arrests, more than three times the global average of 6.3 per cent.
‘Increasingly difficult to be a law-abiding, peaceful protester’
One of those activists who has found herself arrested on a number of occasions is 58-year-old Liz Conor, a climate activist and associate professor of history at La Trobe University.
Conor said she finds it odd that the Victorian government is now seeking to ban materials like glue and lock-on devices in an attempt to combat antisemitism as they are well-known for being used primarily by climate activists to target the infrastructure of fossil fuel companies.
“I see them as more associated with protests that go directly for that corporate infrastructure,” she said.
“So I think that’s pretty interesting that we have a Labor state government bringing in laws that target the very kind of protest techniques that are much more about targeting corporate infrastructure than about public disruption.”
Liz Conor joined forces with other climate activists to found The Climate Guardian Angels in 2013, a group of about 100 activists who sought to bring more media attention to the climate crisis. Source: Supplied
Professor Luke McNamara, a member of the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales, says each of these 50 odd protest-restricting laws, such as the measures proposed in Victoria, may seem acceptable, but over time, they accumulate.
“Individual instances of restrictions on protests might in and of themselves seem from one particular point of view, acceptable, necessary, tolerable,” McNamara said.
“But when you put them all together and ask the question, ‘what is happening to the shape and resilience of the right to protest in Australia?’ And I do think it’s being chipped away.”
He said this means it’s becoming more and more risky for Australians to engage in the age-old democratic tradition of public protest.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to be a law-abiding, peaceful protester,” he said.
“What I mean by that is the rules keep shifting and governments continue to redraw the lines in such a way that places protest activity of the past recognised as maybe disruptive, but lawful and acceptable and to be tolerated.
“Increasingly, those sorts of behaviours are being put on the unlawful side of the line.”
SBS News contacted the Victorian government for a statement on its proposed measures regarding protests but it was unable to respond before deadline.
