NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) welcomes Australian Democracy Network’s (ADN) landmark ‘Permission to Protest?’ Report. The report’s key findings provide damning confirmation of what human rights advocates and community members have experienced for years: Australia’s protest permit systems are fundamentally broken, non-compliant with international human rights law, and increasingly weaponised to restrict public participation.
Both State and Local Government across Australia treats peaceful assembly as a privilege reserved for those deemed agreeable or tolerable, rather than as the fundamental human right for all. Community leaders trying to organise a protest face absurd bureaucracy in the form of exclusionary conditions, public liability insurance demands, funding traffic management, and arbitrary timeline restrictions. All with little resources available to appeal refusals in courts.
The impact of this broken system is felt deeply at the grassroots level. NSWCCL has received numerous reports from community members across NSW who have been priced out of their democratic rights by exorbitant insurance and administrative requirements. In some cases, local councils have demanded that individual rate payers wanting to hold a public assembly pay the council over $2,000 directly to expand the council’s own insurance coverage.
At the state level, the Minns Labor Government has dramatically accelerated the erosion of protest rights by actively trying to criminalise public dissent. Rather than reversing the draconian anti-protest regimes of previous NSW Governments, the current government consistently rushed in harsh new laws like the Public Assembly restriction Declaration (PARD) laws, which granted the Police Commissioner unilateral authority to veto authorised protests, in a way we haven’t seen since 1978.
It was under the shield of these powers and political landscape that the NSW Police unleashed violent crackdowns against peaceful assemblies - including the shocking scenes of police brutality at Sydney Town Hall on 9 February. Even though these powers were later ruled unconstitutional, the premier continued to defend police actions and his regressive agenda publicly, causing a chilling effect on protests.
The findings of this report ultimately point to a larger systemic failure that there is zero supportive infrastructure in NSW and Australia to allow peaceful assemblies to safely occur. Instead, the state relies on a culture of exclusion and red tape to manufacture chaos and suppress democratic participation.
Comments attributable to Timothy Roberts, NSWCCL President:
“The 'Permission to Protest?' report must serve as an urgent wake-up call for the NSW Government. The rights to protest and march are fundamental to democracy, yet our current permit system has mutated into a de facto authorisation regime that aims to restrict assembly by all means."
"We are seeing a terrifying regression back to the 1970s, where dissent is vilified, unconstitutional laws like the PARD regime are rammed through parliament, and heavily armed police are deployed to intimidate peaceful crowds. The NSW Government must seriously re-consider its approach to protests and adopt the Australian Democracy Network’s recommendations to build a genuine protest notification system that facilitates public participation."
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