Announcements of eased COVID-19 restrictions in New South Wales occur almost daily, but the Liberal government is not budging on its nearly total ban on protests. It is a huge attack on democratic rights, which cannot be justified.
Gladys Berejiklian is working furiously to open the state’s economy for her big business mates. Recent announcements allow up to 1,000 people in theatres, 300 at corporate events and a 50 percent operating capacity for major sporting venues, which would green-light up to 40,000 attendees at Sydney’s Stadium Australia. Schools will soon return to their pre-coronavirus state. The city’s high streets are already bustling—cafes, restaurants, bars and even nightclubs have been operating for months. Star Casino has been open to the public since July.
Yet small outdoor protests continue to be targeted by police for breaching COVID-19 restrictions. Health minister Brad Hazzard encapsulated the absurdity of the situation in a press conference on 24 September. Asked whether it was a flagrant contradiction to allow people to attend community sporting events while protests of twenty people are banned, Hazzard cautioned the people to “apply our new spring freedoms in a sensible way”.
What is the sensible way to exercise your democratic right to protest? “The sensible way is to remember that there are still rules and the rules are that outside there should be no more than twenty people in a particular group”, Hazzard said. This is the circular, self-serving logic of the government: you must abide by these rules because they are the rules, even though they contradict everything else we have done in opening the economy. And this despite there being not a shred of evidence that protests are unsafe compared to casinos or schools.
The idea that police are motivated by concern for public health has been debunked by recent experience. A protest in Chatswood organised by the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union tried to keep numbers below the twenty-person limit. The eleven people who showed up were nevertheless targeted by police, activists being followed and interrogated for the next hour. A socially distanced student protest at Sydney University didn’t escape arrests and persecution either, despite being split into groups of nineteen people and spread across the sprawling campus.
Even common paraphernalia of protests, such as megaphones and banners, seem to make the police jumpy. A video shared by the Democracy is Essential campaign shows four officers harassing a Sydney University student who has a megaphone slung across her back while eating her lunch. She admits to planning a socially distanced discussion on the lawn about cuts to higher education. One officer becomes flustered when asked whether megaphones are now illegal. His answer is Orwellian: “Carrying a megaphone around campus would be indicative of a willingness to go to a protest that’s illegal”. Attending crowded tutorials and eating in packed cafes all over campus is perfectly fine though.
The government and police should cut the crap. They ban protests purely because they don’t like protests, not because of concern for public health. It is a cynical, hypocritical move to rob us of a basic democratic right.
