Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said.

Arguments against Australia's new protest laws

Voting in an election is the primary way electors in a democracy express their opinion; however, elections only occur every three, four or six years in most jurisdictions which means voters often must wait to express their views through the ballot box to influence what their governments do. Further, voting usually involves a degree of compromise. Many citizens may support much of what a particular party proposes but find themselves voting for a group that does not act as they wish on other key issues. Equally, the party that wins an election may be one many voters did not support, and which takes actions many in the electorate want changed. These limitations in voting make protest very important.

Protest is seen as an important way that citizens can affect what their governments do. It is seen as especially important for people without wealth or influence. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian on June 22, 2022, Kieran Pender, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, explained, 'Not all of us have the connections to get an audience with politicians, or the funds to buy political advertising. Few can engage well-dressed lobbyists and schmooze at fancy dinners. There are many well-documented shortcomings with Australia's political system, which give powerful industries a louder voice in policy debate.' It has been claimed that protest can be one of the most direct ways to express the will of the people to government. Part of the power of protest is said to be that it is available to everyone. Kieran Pender has stated, 'When enough of us come together to express our views, to show solidarity and demand change, decision-makers must listen. Protest is the ultimate in equal-opportunity political action.' The same point has been made in the United Kingdom. Involve, is a United Kingdom public participation charity, established in 2003, to develop and support ways to involve people in decisions that affect their lives. On March 16, 2022, Involve's former director, Tim Hughs, explained how freedom of assembly helps ensure democracies function. He states, 'Freedom of assembly is a fundamental right, and critical to ensuring healthy and vibrant democracies. Protest plays an essential role in giving voice to people and issues and holding institutions [including governments] to account for their actions.'

Protest has been claimed to be particularly important in ensuring that the views of minority groups are heard in a democracy. Because the views of these groups may not coincide with those of the majority in a state or country, they can easily be ignored by governments. Protest is seen as a way for minority groups to educate the larger electorate about what they want, and of ensuring that governments do not disregard them. Concern has been expressed that minority groups suffering disability or disadvantage will not be heard if protest is curtailed. Referring to the situation created by protest laws in Tasmania, Adrienne Picone, chief executive officer at the Tasmanian Council of Social Service, has stated, 'Protests and demonstrations are important ways for people who are excluded and marginalised to have their voices heard in public debate. We are concerned the [law] could discourage people from engaging in peaceful, legitimate protest...' Indigenous groups, as a disadvantaged minority in Australia, are also concerned that they will be overlooked. Nala Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has cautioned, 'Public protest is critical to the advances made by the Aboriginal community in the last half century. Without public protest there would have been no Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and no reforms to Tasmanian law to remove discriminatory provisions. As a community without easy access to public media, public protest is one of our very few avenues for seeking law reform to protect the interest of our community.'

It is claimed that when the freedom to protest is threatened or taken away, democracy is seriously damaged. Commenting on the new protest laws in New South Wales, Kieran Pender warned, '"This is a dark day for democracy in New South Wales. Our freedom to come together and speak out on issues we care about is fundamental to democracy.

From Aboriginal land rights to voting rights to the eight-hour workday - protest has been crucial to achieving countless important social changes.

2. The risks posed by direct action have been exaggerated
Those who object to the new laws established in Australia to restrict and punish protesters claim that the damage created by protest action has been exaggerated.

Contrary to the claims frequently made by environmental activists' opponents, their supporters argue that the movement has been predominantly non-violent. The school climate strikes of 2019, for example, involved a series of peaceful mass demonstrations, with an estimated 1.7 million people taking part globally. Environmental activists also claim they have been falsely accused of taking actions that have led to deaths. In one prominent recent instance, protesters and their supporters claim that the death of a Berlin cyclist that occurred on October 31, 2022, following a protest on an autobahn was unjustly attributed to the actions of the protesters. Last Generation, the group to which the protesters belonged, has claimed that following the cyclist's death they faced a 'wave of accusations, falsehoods and hate speech.' Their supporters have stated that members of the German government knowingly misrepresented the circumstances of the death to have it appear that the protesters were to blame. A traffic jam, caused by the protests, delayed the arrival of a rescue vehicle by seven minutes. However, it has since emerged that this did not contribute to the cyclist's death. The emergency doctor on site had decided before the planned arrival of the special vehicle not to use it and to let the concrete mixer which was pinning the cyclist drive away under its own power. The German government was aware that the protest had had no effect on the outcome of the rescue but continued to raise the possibility of homicide charges against the protesters and Last Generation. Supporters of Last Generation claim that the German government fomented hostility toward the group to assist it in passing more severe legislation against protest action. Similar claims have been made regarding Queensland's new protest laws put in place because it was alleged that protesters were using hazardous locking devices which could injure police. Greens MP Michael Berkman said that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's claim that devices containing butane gas were used stems from an unconfirmed incident from 2005. Mr Berkman stated, 'There is absolutely no evidence of protesters designing or constructing devices with an intention to harm anyone.' Ben Pennings, a spokesperson for the group Galilee Blockade, stated 'If [Palaszczuk's] claims were true, police would have laid extra charges and produced evidence in court. This clearly hasn't happened. Pennings further stated, 'Protesters rely on rescue personnel for their safety and would never design lock-on devices to injure them.' It has also been claimed that accusations made against Victorian anti-logging protesters of placing lives at risk are false. One such disputed accusation made in April 2021 is that a woman protester brought her child onto a logging coupe where heavy machinery was being used and so endangered the child. A spokesman for the protesting group has stated, 'On the day of the action ... no work was being carried out by any contractors at the time of the mother and the child entering the coupe.'

Similar complaints about false accusations of recklessness or violence have been made regarding Black Lives Matter protesters in the United States. In 2020, then United States President Donald Trump described Black Lives Matter protests as violent attacks on American civil institutions. He said, 'Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy.' These allegations of 'violence and anarchy' have been condemned as substantially false. According to a report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit organization that tracks global political protest and violence most Black Lives Matter protests conducted in 2020 were peaceful. The report states, 'In more than 93 percent of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity. Peaceful protests are reported in over 2,400 distinct locations around the country. Violent demonstrations, meanwhile, have been limited to fewer than 220 locations - under 10 percent of the areas that experienced peaceful protests.'

3. The protest laws are too broad
Those who argue against Australia's new protest laws claim that they are too broad. They contend that these laws are too wide in their scope and penalise too many protest activities. These concerns have been expressed particularly regarding the laws recently passed in New South Wales.

Critics claim that the protest laws in New South Wales have a very wide reach. According to their opponents, these laws could be used to ban almost any form of public protested staged on a thoroughfare or other public facility. Joanna Psaros, in an opinion piece published in Independent Australia on August 31, 2022, stated, 'Controversially, the new laws take a far broader approach to the extent that they could represent a blanket ban on all activity that could disrupt "a major facility" such as a public road. And as anyone who's seen an even moderately well-attended rally must know, that's all but inevitable. (The 2020 Black Lives Matter march and the 2019/2020 bushfire rallies are but two historic events that would have breached this standard.)' The wide scope of these laws has been repeatedly condemned. The Human Rights Law Centre has stated, 'Where previous legislation in New South Wales covered disruption on major bridges or tunnels, the expanded offence covers roads, train stations, ports, and public and private infrastructure, and has been widely condemned...

These new laws are part of a concerning trend nationwide of bipartisan support for regressive legislation that further criminalises peaceful community activists. This week alone, there has been significant community push back against anti-protest laws before the Victorian and Tasmanian parliaments.' On April 1, 2022, the Human Rights Law Centre stated, 'The broad and vague wording of the new offence dramatically expands its coverage and leaves ordinary Australians unsure of their lawful ability to protest.'

It has also been noted that the new laws are being used pro-actively. That is, protesters have been taken into custody before they have staged a protest. This has been condemned as unjustified police action against a group that has yet to commit an offence. The action was taken against climate activists Blockade Australia. On September 29, 2022, Monitor, the news magazine published by Civics, a global civil rights lobby group, reported, 'Police raided a private property where climate activist group Blockade Australia was camped, a week before the group was planning to "converge" on Sydney for a protest on 27th June 2022.

On 19th June 2022, about 100 police descended on a bush property in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. The huge raid featured helicopters, the paramilitary Public Order and Riot, Raptor Squad and Operations Support Group, the Dog Unit, Police Rescue, and plainclothes officers. According to the New South Wales (NSW) police, it was a "preemptive operation" against "planned unauthorised protest activity."'

On June 23, 2022, the Human Rights Law Centre noted, 'Police had been covertly surveilling a private property where individuals linked to Blockade Australia were camped...Serious concerns have been raised regarding the legal basis of the surveillance, the reported failure of police conducting surveillance to identify themselves, and reports of injuries sustained by activists from an encounter with an unmarked police car.' The Human Rights Law Centre further noted, 'The extensive covert surveillance and pre-emptive policing sets a disturbing precedent for protest rights.'

On November 21, 2022, the Sydney City Council moved a motion contemning the pre-emptory nature of the enforcement of the New South Wales laws as an attack on the right to protest. One of the councilors drew attention to 'Strike Force Guard', a militarised police unit that was formed at the time the laws were passed. The unit targets environmental campaigners before they protest. It was further noted that the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties and other human rights groups have written to the New South Wales government expressing concern about "pre-emptive and intimidatory police tactics leading up to the International Mining and Resources Conference held" in Sydney in early November 2022, including "making unannounced visits to suspected activists' homes, car stops and searches, and arrests of climate activists and networks prior to the event".'

Mark Davis, a lawyer representing several members of Blockade Australia, has claimed that these are the same strategies that the police apply to biker gangs. He stated, "Even if they can't catch them in the conduct of a crime, they can make their lives and organizations ineffective. They can make their lives miserable by constantly following them and harassing them and goading them and dragging them to court for very minor matters.'

4. The legal penalties against protests are too severe
Critics of the new protest laws recently imposed in Australia claim that they penalties they impose are so severe that they will effectively prevent many people from being able to take protest action.

Australia's new protest laws have been condemned for the severity of the penalties they impose on those who take direct, non-violent protest action. Under the new laws in New South Wales, people can now be fined up to $22,000 and/or jailed for a maximum of two years for protesting illegally in many locations, including on public roads, rail lines, tunnels, bridges and industrial estates. Victoria, meanwhile, has introduced penalties of up to $21,000 and twelve-month's jail for those who trespass on logging sites. In Tasmania, the government has attached fines of up to $13,000 and up to two years' imprisonment for illegally entering a property and either impeding or intending to impede someone on the premises 'carrying out lawful work.'

These laws have been condemned as intending to prohibit protest. Environmental activist, Bob Brown, a former federal senator, and the founder of the Greens Party, has stated, 'These laws are meant to kill environmental activism and frighten people into silence.' There are those who maintain that the penalties are so harsh that they are likely to succeed in preventing direct action protests. Mark Davis, a lawyer representing several members of Blockade Australia, has stated, 'Who would be insane enough to organise any sort of free protest? You can go to jail for a long time. It's nuts.' Ray Yoshida of the Australian Democracy Network has argued that the intention of these laws is to criminalise a certain form of protest. Yoshida argues, 'It's doublespeak for the New South Wales government to say they support protests as long as they don't break the law, and then pass new laws that shrink the space for people to act...The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy - we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it's too late.'

As further evidence of governments' intention to remove the capacity to have direct, non-violent protests, critics complain that penalties are not only being imposed on those who take the action but also on any organisation which supports them. In Tasmania, organisations that financially support protests can be fined up to $103,800. The inclusion in the Tasmanian law of a clause that targets 'body corporates' - organisations - has been interpreted to be specifically aimed at the Bob Brown Foundation, which has protested against logging in native forest logging coupes and drilling by mining company MMG in the Tarkine rainforest, where the company is planning to build a pipeline and waste storage facility. It is also claimed that for the last decade increasing attempts have been made by state and federal governments to penalise organisations that support protest action, especially those that support climate change protest. Charities and other groups have repeatedly been threatened with the loss of tax-deductible donations if they support protests.

It has further been claimed that the new penalties have become so harsh that if they had been in operation in the past, they would have stymied many protest actions that achieved goals Australia now values. Maeve McGregor, in an article published in The Mandarin on December 8, 2022, stated, 'Had such laws existed at the time of many of Australia's historic environmental wins - from the Franklin River to the Kakadu and Jabiluka blockades - most, if not all, would not have succeeded.' The same point has been made by Greg Barns of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. Barns has claimed, 'There's no doubt these laws would certainly have had an adverse impact on bringing to the public's attention the Franklin Dam issue and, for that matter, a range of issues that have been brought to prominence in the public's mind because of protests.' These claims are used to demonstrate the harm that will be done by the current severe anti-protest penalties.

5. The new laws prioritise convenience over more significant rights
Those who oppose the new protest laws claim that they represent misplaced values. They claim that the governments who have introduced these laws and the parliaments which have passed them have preferenced short-term convenience over both the right to protest and the significance of the causes that the protesters are promoting.

Opponents of the new protest laws claim that they are dangerously short-sighted when applied to protest actions such as those directed at reducing climate change. Bitt Hare, a physicist, climate scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) has stated, 'The inconvenience occasioned by protest is not comparable to [the] catastrophic risk to [the] environment and serious damage to our way of life caused by fossil fuel emissions.' Climate activists argue that it is governments' desire to keep things running as usual and not to inconvenience those living in the world's most powerful nations that is preventing effective action against climate change. British Just Oil protester Miranda Whelehan has stated, 'At Cop26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference), the people who run things effectively confirmed that they were going to let billions of the poorest people on this planet die in order to keep business as usual going. Well, to that we say no.' Just Stop Oil argues that people need to be inconvenienced so that they can recognise that some inconvenience will be necessary (such as giving up fossil fuels) in order to reduce some of the far greater dangers caused by climate change. Christopher Knittel, professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has explained that inconvenience is going to be part of the price if the world is to reduce climate change. Knittel has stated, 'Modern conveniences like electricity, transportation, and air conditioning contribute to climate change, and remedies potentially involve significant sacrifice and lifestyle change...There is no free lunch when it comes to overcoming climate change.'

It has also been noted that governments are prioritising the convenience of their current electorates over the longer-term interests of children who do not vote and whose lifelong benefit is being discounted. Dr Elizabeth Cripps, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the university of Edinburgh, has stated, 'The climate crisis threatens our children and grandchildren with heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and untold mental anguish. By propping up the fossil fuel industry, our government puts their whole future in jeopardy. If that's not a serious injustice, I'm not sure what is.' World Vision has stated, 'Climate change arguably poses the single greatest challenge to the realisation of children's rights and threatens to undercut decades of hard-won progress to improve their lives. Despite being least responsible for this unfolding crisis, children bear the brunt of the climate-related impacts, while possessing the fewest resources to respond and cope. At its core, climate change represents a shocking abdication of one generation's responsibility to the next, violating principles of intergenerational equity.' According to this line of argument, governments must allow climate change protest and act on what is demanded in the name of the children within their constituencies.

The overall argument put is that outlawing protest actions because they will inconvenience one set of people, places the short-term convenience of that group above more fundamental rights of other groups. This argument is particularly put in relation to groups which have very little influence and who find it hard to put their demands before governments. This is termed 'participatory injustice' and refers to the situation of those groups, such as children, prison inmates and animals, who are without the ability to vote. The rights of endangered species or abused animals are a clear example of this. Animals are generally agreed to have a right to existence and to humane treatment; however, they are unable to assert their rights. Others must protest on their behalf. This is the position adopted by the Australian animal rights group Voiceless which claims, 'We chose our name - Voiceless - because animals cannot raise their voice in protest or advocate for themselves in a court of law. We have a moral, ethical duty to speak up for them.' There are those who argue that people have a particular obligation to protest on behalf of animal welfare and conservation because otherwise these issues will be ignored. On this basis, it is argued, governments need to adopt more diverse and thoughtful criteria when making laws that restrict protests than simply what might inconvenience most citizens.