Chris Minns' overreach backfires – time to stop the crackdown

The NSW government’s anti-protest laws crossed a line, Greens MLC writes.

By Sue Higginson

We’ve just had another brilliant win for our democracy in the Supreme Court. NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns has again been defeated and his latest draconian anti-protest crackdown held entirely unlawful.

We warned him but he didn’t listen, or he just didn’t care. Minns’ repeated attempts to weaponise the tools of democracy against the community has become a pattern of abuse. It’s a fundamental failure of his leadership, he needs to stop, and his Labor colleagues have a duty to stop him from ever doing it again.

There are some powerful and seriously consequential aspects to this latest judgement against Minns. One of the strongest rebukes is against the state government’s purported argument for the purpose of those laws. The premier and the attorney general asserted that preventing protest was for the benefit of social cohesion, but the Supreme Court has knocked this back and made clear that preventing protest is the actual threat to social cohesion. Their ‘purpose’ for forcing these invalid laws through was an invalid purpose.

It was a dangerous purpose and at its core was a play into the politics of division, fear and hate. The effect of these invalid laws being used against the community had, and continues to have, real and harmful impacts. Far from being just an attempt to stymie democracy, Minns was briefly successful in undermining our community, oppressing our freedom, and inflaming division.

The Court’s judgement has also revealed the actions of NSW Police at Sydney Town Hall in February to be without authority, and fundamentally unlawful. The police brutality was shocking and something that will be etched into our memories forever. The ‘kettling’ of the community, the deployment of chemical weapons, the brutal assaults and charges of armoured cops against a peaceful community were unjustified and violent attacks.

People are being prosecuted by police who perpetrated violence and harm upon them. The police are currently hunting down members of the community who attended the protest, breaking down their doors and arresting them while they are half naked in bed. Then they are being charged with offences that, on the spectrum of offending, are not serious.

Minns needs to immediately call off these prosecutions. The police must immediately step back – they can’t continue in their role as prosecutors. They are the perpetrators of state violence and now the central legal basis upon which they acted has been struck down. While politics should not ordinarily interfere with police prosecutions, this is not ordinary and the entire political scheme was manufactured by Premier Chris Minns and his cabinet colleagues.

Regrettably, rather than take a principled position in response to this landmark ruling of the Court, and see the monumental error of their ways, the Minns executive will now try to double down. They will say they invoked the Major Events Declaration, which provided police with excessive and arbitrary powers, for the purpose of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit. They will argue that this provides legal cover for the police violence and harmful prosecutions. Once again I warn Minns this is wrong, don’t do it. Stop now rather than digging yourself, your government, the police and the people further down the dark hole of authoritarianism and improper purpose.

At some point Minns will need to take responsibility for the police violence at Town Hall. The government under Minns enacted bad laws, the police acted on the command of unlawful directions, they were emboldened and some were violent. People’s rights to march were trespassed upon and people have been harmed, and many of them will have the legal grounds to demand compensation.

The premier has opened the door wide for civil claims of damages to be launched and won against NSW – and at the end of the day it is our community who will have to pay for those damages, while Minns gets to swagger back to his office, as unaccountable perpetrators often do.

The arrogance and entitlement practiced by Chris Minns in this is not surprising, not from a man who was educated through exclusive private schooling, and by attending Ivy League private university in the United States. The same guy that went on an all-expenses paid tour of Israel hosted by the Zionist lobby, who received an award from the Israeli president and rolled out the red carpet for him here in NSW (all while Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian people). The same guy who has ignored and punched down on diverse communities across NSW while singling out Zionist entities for special protection by the state.

Never forget that Minns is the guy who tried to stop our 300,000-strong March for Humanity across the Harbour Bridge, and even on reflection was not able to see the goodness in our humanity. He just doesn’t seem to get the breadth and depth of a vibrant and diverse democracy.

It’s perhaps not surprising that this premier has acted the way that he has, but there is a train of accountability coming down the line, and Minns shouldn’t be surprised when it gets to his stop.

Sue Higginson is a Greens member of the NSW Legislative Council