The Greens stopped debate in the Upper House today to debate the draconian policing of protest in NSW. Abigail set the record straight - Labor can no longer profess to stand for the working class while eroding the fundamental right to protest.
Abigail said:
I make a contribution to debate on the matter of public importance. The fact that it began some years ago in this place does not mean that it is not impacting people on a daily basis. Let us not forget that only a couple of weeks ago the current Labor Government brought in a regulation that expands the operation of protest laws. We have the most draconian anti-protest laws in the country and, according to many commentators, they are some of the most draconian anti-protest laws in the world. Yet the Minister stood up on behalf of the Government and the Hon. Chris Rath stood up on behalf of the Opposition to tell us, quite passionately, that they agree with the right to lawful protest.
It is worth looking at how we got to this point of so-called lawful protest and how it does not really fit in with what we mean when we talk about the fundamental democratic right to protest. I looked at the dictionary because I feel that there has been a bit of fancy footwork around those words: "Protest" means to express disagreement, disapproval or opposition. "Express" means to convey, in words or by gestures and conduct. "Convey" means to communicate or make known.
I love to describe New South Wales's protest laws by reference to an episode of Arrested Development. I may have talked about it a couple of years ago when we moved our disallowance motion against the regulations that first came out. There is an episode where Lindsay decides that she wants to protest, but the laws are such that she effectively gets on a truck and is driven with a bunch of protestors out to the middle of the desert. They are put in a cage with their signs, and they protest with nobody watching. That is the definition of a lawful protest in that context. Obviously, how can we protest if the person to whom we are protesting cannot hear it, be bothered by it or be told about it? That is not a protest.
New South Wales now has a system of laws where people can only protest at a particular time, with approval from the police. They can only do it on certain topics, they can only hold certain types of signs and they can only do it in a particular way. It is all incredibly tightly regulated by the State. To still call that protest is farcical. At its core, protest is the ability to convey disapproval, in this case of the government of the day, and sometimes of governments from other countries. It is expressing disapproval. In order to do that, people need to be able to freely come together to rally, take to the streets and make a nuisance of themselves, quite frankly.
What we have in New South Wales is the opposite of support for the right to protest. To say, "We support protest unless it is unlawful," when it is the government of the day that has created the laws that make it impossible to properly protest, is an absolute absurdity. The Minister talked about the history. It is interesting to reflect on how we got here, because it explains why Labor is failing its own historical underpinnings. Labor has forgotten that it was born out of class struggle. It has abandoned entirely its worker roots and its understanding of what it meant to take it to the bosses in order to get the rights, progress and improvements that society needed.
The history of all existing human society hitherto is the history of class struggles. That is the foundational insight that the left have put forward, and it distinguishes us from mere meek liberalism. The central fact of social evolution is that it is born of class struggle. "Struggle" is the operative word, not simply request, petition or letter‑writing, although they play a part in the movement. At the end of the day, politics is about power, and the powerful have innumerable avenues to exercise their coercive might over the people. What the people have is the numbers. History has shown that significant social change rarely happens without disruptive action, which is precisely why the State is seeking to prevent it.
In the time available, I want to talk about that concept of power. When we talk about protest, there is lot of talk about inconvenience. It seems to come from people who have never experienced powerlessness. They have never been in a situation where they have written a letter that has been ignored, where they have done all the polite things they needed to do and have been ignored, and where they are absolutely desperate for a particular change. Those are the people who feel strongly enough to protest. Without inconvenience, protest probably does not mean very much.
We brought a couple of Standing Order 52 [SO 52] motions in 2022 when I was trying to disallow the regulations. It was fascinating to see the way the documents came in. The Hon. Natalie Ward wrote an op-ed about how she was stuck in traffic. It appears—and I said at the time—that the entire anti-protest regime came about because the Hon. Natalie Ward was stuck in traffic. It was interesting to look at the op-ed, which came out in the SO 52, where she talked very clearly about being on the Spit Bridge and how everything came to a halt without warning. The protestors were back. "Sabotaging innocent commuters is not peaceful protest" was the proposed heading for the op-ed. It was even more interesting when Mark Speakman was asked for comment on the op-ed and responded only "too shrill". I have not done the work of looking at whether the eventual op-ed was less shrill or not, but I find it pretty offensive that it was referred to as shrill in the first place.
What was really telling in those SO 52 documents was the discussion around peaceful protests. I note that the Hon. Chris Rath talked about how the Liberal Party support peaceful protest. There was a great bit from Mark Speakman, who on Friday 1 April 2022 wrote, "Should we put the boot into Labor for trying to sabotage the laws with a so-called peaceful protests carve-out?" He then went on with a bunch of talking points about how Labor would basically gut the whole purpose of the laws if any sort of peaceful protest exception was included. That is what the Liberal Party was doing when it first introduced those laws in 2022—it was deliberately trying to get rid of peaceful protests. To now say that it was something different is a little disingenuous, to say the least.
I am proud to be in a party that has stood against those draconian laws for a good few years now. The now Senator David Shoebridge was here in the Chamber with me as we moved disallowance upon disallowance and stood against the passing of those laws. That Thursday, when it was rushed through in a hurry, was his last day in the Parliament, and we decided we were would filibuster the bill because it was so horrendous. He ended up staying all night—well after his valedictory party—and on the Friday he came back to see the job done, because this is core work for The Greens. Today we put up a bill in the lower House to remove those laws, and we will keep trying because the situation is absurd.