The real news story – staff and student anger at the federal government’s crude working over of tertiary education – is not getting media attention. The focus instead is on the protests themselves, and on police conduct.
NSW Police officers’ violent conduct on 14 October – evidenced in part by the Honi Soit video – has been reported around the world. NSW is seen to be coming down hard on protest activity, whether about indigenous justice, environmental and climate concerns, animal cruelty, or tertiary education.
Perhaps that is why, on 23 October the Public Health Restrictions on Gathering and Movement Order was amended to add an exception for ‘protest or demonstration about a governmental or political matter.’ This is the language of the implied constitutional right to free political communication.
While protest is now possible, the right is conditional: max 500 people, according to a Covid health plan, and on ‘a governmental or political matter.’ So it remains important to watch how it is policed. Police maintain their ‘move on’ powers and summary offence powers (such as offensive language and obstructing traffic). These are powers that the police can use to constrain the way in which the right to protest is exercised.
That brings us to the issue of how the police behave. It is not only at protests that police are behaving badly. One example is when a court recently dismissed charges against a man sleeping in a park who was handcuffed, pepper sprayed and tasered by police.
Accountability measures are important, if hard to pursue. Depending on the circumstances, fines can be contested (protesters who are fined should contact Redfern Legal Centre for expert advice and assistance). Police conduct can be complained about, and it will be important, quite quickly, to make a GIPA application to the police to obtain their body-worn camera video footage.
The police complaint system in NSW is inadequate; a complaint can be made to the Commissioner of Police (Mr Fuller; see above), or to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission. But the Commission has a high threshold, such as corruption, meaning that there is no independent body to receive complaints about police misconduct.
In the meantime, whether excepted from the Public Health Restrictions or not, protests will continue and people will peacefully exercise their rights to free speech and movement. The world is watching.
Read the full story here. (Honi Soit, 29 October 2020)
