It’s just so tiresome. You only have to nod off for a second and the Coalition will be crashing its clown car into Parliament, trying to sneak through some god-awful piece of appallingly drafted legislation which will literally strip away some of our last remaining civil liberties, all with the supine complicity of the Labor Party.
I speak of the NSW Parliament, and the anti-protest laws the Perrottet government rammed through the lower house on Wednesday. At last count, the Greens were valiantly trying to block it in the upper house before we lose yet another round in the endless fight to retain some tiny shred of personal freedom from these maniacs. What makes it all the more galling is that Attorney-General Mark Speakman bloody well knows better.
The supposed justification for this latest mad rush to criminalise ordinary human activities is the unproductive decision made by a few protesters a couple of times recently to block Sydney’s Spit Bridge in peak hour to make their point about climate change. Nothing motivates the civic spirit in Sydney more than being unable to drop the kids off at school on time, so Facebook fairly lit up in dudgeon. The government saw its chance.
The new laws have three parts. Background: the Roads Act has for a long time made it a criminal offence to disrupt traffic on the Harbour Bridge, with penalties of up to two years in jail or a $22,000 fine. The bridge being the city’s literal lifeline, nobody has ever had a problem with that.
The act also says that “any other major bridge or tunnel” can be given the same legal protection by regulation. Until a week ago, none ever had, but the government quietly amended the regulation on March 24 to include every bridge and tunnel in Greater Sydney within the offence’s reach.
The second piece is that the act is being amended to further expand the scope of the criminal offence by adding roads to bridges and tunnels — that is, once the amending bill passes, it will become possible for the government to further amend the regulation to include any roads it likes. It can include every road, street, lane and cul-de-sac in the state.
What is the practical effect? It means that, if you do anything on a bridge, tunnel or designated road which “seriously disrupts or obstructs vehicles or pedestrians attempting to use” it, you will commit a serious crime and could go to prison. The only way to avoid that is to get a permit from the police beforehand.
The practical effect is that no protest, rally, march, sit-in, peace parade, spontaneous street celebration or flash mob will be lawfully possible unless the police have been asked and agreed. Otherwise they can arrest the lot of you, and you’ll be facing a criminal record.
The third piece is just as outrageous: amendments to the Crimes Act to add the same penalties for anyone who enters a “major facility” in a way that disrupts its use. Major facilities are defined to include railway stations and other public transport facilities, ports and infrastructure facilities.
Labor’s role in this has been confined to negotiating an exemption from these laws for “industrial action” and then voting in favour of the laws. This is a fig leaf; Labor itself has admitted that “industrial action” is a very narrow term which will not protect a wide range of legitimate activities such as a demonstration the Nurses and Midwives Union was undertaking on the same day.
These laws are probably unconstitutional. The implied constitutional freedom of communication on government and political matters includes protest action. The legal principle is that any law which impinges on the freedom must have a legitimate purpose and must be appropriate and adapted to achieve that purpose without overreach.
This law goes so far beyond any genuine social purpose that it is difficult to reach for sufficiently graphic adjectives to describe it. The supposed justification is public safety and… what, traffic flow? Fine, but handing to the police the sole discretionary power to decide who gets to stop the traffic — and when — is just insane. Making it a serious crime to flout that rule is purely fascist.
But we should not have to resort to the law to stop this madness. Recall this: in 2015, Peter Dutton’s Australian Border Force (ABF) decided it would be a good idea to launch a mass operation in Melbourne’s CBD, targeting people without valid visas or outstanding arrest warrants by randomly stopping citizens in the street and questioning them.
This triggered a spontaneous protest rally, with about 200 people quickly gathering and blocking a major intersection to denounce the ABF’s bizarre plan and force the backdown which then followed.
With these new laws, such an action would be a crime and all those people, who acted solely in what should be recognised as the national interest, would be subject to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment.
This law must not pass. If it passes, it must be repealed. Every politician who voted for it should never again be allowed to claim that they stand for freedom — they don’t.
Thank you for this report Michael.
It’s great to see someone in the media stand up and call out another big fat step our governments have taken to strip away our civil liberties.
The right to protest should be protected, not taken away
Is it not passing strange that corporations (who are not citizens, but mere legal persons) can engaged in massive crimes that significantly diminish the lives of real citizens and suffer no concomitant consequences (think Crown, Star, Adani’s and Whitehaven’s serial and serious breach of its environmental conditions etc etc.), but it becomes a gaol-able offence for a group of citizens to cause mere inconvenience. It tells you everything you need to know about who controls ‘democracy’. Hint: it is not the Demos.
Every politician who voted for it should be knocked out of parliament asap
Put incumbents last is a solid voting tactic – a pox on them all.
Thank you for this Michael.
“…penalties for anyone who enters a “major facility” in a way that disrupts its use. Major facilities are defined to include railway stations…”
Uhm but, very recently, didn’t the NSW government do just that, and not just disrupted, but closed down, Sydney’s train network to the detriment of millions of citizens? Bloody economic terrorists.