The Napthine government in Victoria hangs on to power only with the vote of corrupt ex-Liberal MP Geoff Shaw. This hasn’t stopped it going on the warpath against democratic rights.

Napthine proposes changes to the Summary Offenses Act to give police and the police academy dropout PSOs more powers to break up protests. These are particularly aimed at picket lines and non-violent civil disobedience, such as the ongoing protests against the East-West toll road.

The Law Institute of Victoria states that the law’s effect “would be to limit the ability of individuals and groups to assemble and protest in public. It would remove existing and important protections against move on orders for individuals and groups engaging in picketing, protesting and public demonstration, and by introducing provisions which allow for arrest for breaches of a move on direction, increase criminalisation of direct protest action in Victoria.”

The existing Summary Offences Act grants police the power to order people to leave an area, but explicitly prevents these powers being used against most protests. Napthine’s proposed changes remove those protections, allowing police to order people to leave an area just because an officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that an offence may occur – something that police can always give an excuse for thinking.

Police can then arrest anyone who defies the order, even if they did not hear it issued, and can issue fines and request court orders banning people who are given three “move on” orders in an area within six months. Breaching one of these court orders carries a two-year jail term.

These laws trample on several key civil rights – the presumption of innocence, freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty and freedom of assembly. They allow people to be harassed by the legal system for things they are merely suspected of doing.

In addition to the attacks on the right to protest, these laws will have a terrible impact on the homeless. Police and PSOs will have the right to order them to move on if they suspect them of having littered, jaywalked or committed other trivial offences within the last 12 hours.

Ordering a homeless person to leave a safe sleeping area with accessible toilets could get them killed. And a racist cop or PSO – of which Victoria has plenty – could use these powers to harass Sudanese youth without the victim having even the limited right to redress in the courts.

Laws aimed at curtailing democratic rights are business as usual for capitalism. Whilst most advanced capitalist countries have some form of formal democratic process and some right to protest, these rights are always under attack and must be actively fought for if we are to keep them.

In Australia we have more right to protest than people in many other countries, and these rights are a legacy of the radicalism of the 1970s and late 1960s, when protesters marched and leafleted illegally so often that the police were unable to enforce laws against them. If we are to keep the rights we have now, we need to fight for them again.

Victorian Trades Hall is organising a protest against these laws at 10am on Tuesday, 18 February. Democratic rights are worth fighting for.