"We’re going to be speaking with Samantha Lee about Covid laws and how they should not prevent the public from protesting.
"Listeners may remember that Samantha has been on a few times in regards to police accountability but this is quite a different climate now with Covid. They’re quite unprecedented circumstances.
Samantha: “It is. So I am based in Sydney so I must say I’ve been really admiring the way Victorians have been getting through this really horrendous time.”
“So we still have restrictions here in NSW. Obviously not to the same extent as Victoria but there are still restrictions on gathering so people cannot gather in more than groups of twenty in public places. There’s also limits to gathering in the home and there’s limits on the number of people in hospitality areas such as restaurants and cafes. But what we’re seeing is that people are gathering and they are gathering for means of protest and that the police are coming down quite hard on them.”
“There was a protest just last week. There were students who were protesting about changes to education and they were young people probably in their early 20s. Police came along to the protest and really did use force as a first port of call. There was a young woman who was really a quite slim build and was pulled by police and shoved to the ground. It was a really terrible image and I’m sure it’s not unusual to people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background but it was really quite disturbing.”
“To me I think it’s really important to note that the public health laws are not anti-protest laws and they were never designed to be anti-protest laws. The main purpose of the Covid-19 laws is to reduce the spread of disease. Now obviously that’s really important and it’s equally important that police understand legal thresholds and abide by legal thresholds and don’t act above those legal thresholds.”
Listen to the full segment here (3cr, 19 October 2020)
