Victoria Police to Unleash Excessive Policing Powers on Disrupt Land Forces

Although Disrupt Land Forces officially kicked off on Sunday, Naarm-Melbourne’s notorious Lizard Car made an appearance on the city’s West Gate Freeway on the day prior, as it came to a halt in the middle of an offramp with a 27-year-old antiwar activist having locked on to the green, scaled automobile.

The Disrupt Land Forces protests continued on into Sunday, with separate Extinction Rebellion and Free Palestine movement processions joining forces to express shared opposition ahead of Land Forces 2024, which is the nation’s biannual premier arms and weapons manufacturing trade show that’s taking place over three days at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC).

Victoria Police is warning it expects Disrupt Land Forces is going to comprise of the largest protests the city has experienced since the massive outpourings against the 2000 World Economic Forum meeting that took place in Naarm. So, state law enforcement is pulling in officers from regional centres, and it’s unlocked a swag of special policing powers to apply to the nonviolent protesters.

Indeed, the Victorian government declared on Friday that the area around MCEC has been deemed a designated area over the three days of the weapons expo, which commences on Wednesday the 11th of September and goes through to next Friday.

But according to revered legal group Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS), Victoria police are required to act in accordance with human rights –  as, unlike NSW, Victoria has laws that protect basic rights – and the application of excessive policing powers to suppress public assemblies is in breach of these protected freedoms.

A profiling nightmare

The Victorian Government Gazette announced on Friday that under section 10D(1) of the Control of Weapons Act 1990 (VIC), the North West Metro Region assistant commissioner of Victoria police has declared the MCEC site and its surrounds a designated area from the 11th to 13th of September 2024.

The order includes major intersections and road routes leading in to the site and the public places in and around it, while the convention centre was fenced off last Friday, with 1,200 police officers having been deployed on that same day.

As MALS explains, designated areas can only exist for 12-hour periods at a time. And the 2009 enacted law, permits police to stop and search a person within the zone without a warrant or the need to hold a reasonable suspicion to search them or anything in their possession or search their vehicle or anything in it for weapons.

An individual can be stopped for as long as necessary for the purposes of the search to take place and anything perceived as a weapon can be seized, while officers can further request that civilians divulge their identity and also direct a person wearing a face covering to leave the area if they consider that individual is attempting to conceal their identity.

And Victoria police officers can direct civilians, including protesters, to leave a designated area simply based upon their belief that person might be aiming to engage in affray, or a disturbance of the peace, or they could potentially engage in violent disorder.

MALS also advises that when Victoria brought in these laws, it was the first time the state had to concede that a law it was passing was partially incompatible with its Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 2006 (VIC).

And Victorian law enforcement raised its own concerns about the extreme risk this regime poses in terms of police officers applying bias when deciding who they choose to search amongst a crowd, especially in terms of racial profiling, and initially, over the first years the regime was in use, anti-profiling measures were taken by Victoria police, but these protections have since been dumped.

Not serving stated purpose

Liberty Victoria raised concerns about the designated area powers in June this year, as whilst the measure is supposed to be about weapons control, it considers the law has been applied as a “means of protest control, to target otherwise lawful gatherings of citizens” and these laws further impinge upon the basic rights to freedom of association and political expression.

The civil liberties group further cited figures relating to designated areas over the 24 months to January 2023, which found that 61 designated areas had been declared under the scheme over that timeframe and of the almost 24,000 warrantless searches carried out, just over 1 percent, or about 250 of them, had turned up illegal objects or substances.

MALS outlines in its November 2023 report on designated area powers that they began to be used as a means to control protests in 2017, when far-right mobilisations were attracting counterprotests, and whilst some instances of violence did occur, no reports of any knives or other weapons have ever been reported at these events, that is except for when police use pepper spray upon demonstrators.

That same year also saw the Andrews government go on to broaden the designated zone regime so that people wearing facemasks at events like protests in an apparent attempt to conceal their identity can be singled out and moved on, even if agitators are employing the use of the coverings in an effort to protect themselves against the pepper spray police may use upon them.

The legal observer group further points out that designated zones can only be declared in an area where a violent incident involving a weapon has occurred within the past 12 months or when violence involving a weapon has transpired at an event in the past and the concern is that this could be repeated at that same event.

MALS, however, warns that these criteria are rarely being met when designated areas are being declared, especially when it comes to protests events like Disrupt Land Forces, as it’s never even been staged in the Victorian jurisdiction before.

The yearlong Gaza genocide continues

Over the last two years both Queensland and NSW have implemented wanding laws, which are somewhat similar to Victoria’s designated area regime, in that police can identify an zone where officers are then permitted to run a wand, or a handheld metal detector, over civilians clothing without the need of a reasonable suspicion in order to check them for potential possession of knives.

Indeed, the Victorian regime was specifically enacted over a decade ago over fears about knife crimes. However, it is hard to see how the NSW and Queensland wanding regimes could be used to target protests in a similar manner to Victoria’s designated area laws.

Of course, the reason why Land Forces is set to be protested so persistently and with heightened participation this year is that for the last eleven months, Israel has been perpetrating a high-tech militarised genocide upon the people of Gaza and the entire globe has become well-versed in the destruction that’s being wrought after deals in trade shows, like Land Forces, have been struck.

“Antiterror or designated area powers should not be used to deter, repress or control protests or assemblies” said MALS spokesperson Anthony Kelly in a statement on Sunday. “Victoria police have an obligation to act compatibly with human rights and to consider human rights in all their decisions, including the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.”

“The size, nature or political context of a protest does not change the obligations of police to act lawfully,” the legal observer made clear.

Main image: Protester is arrested and taken away by Victoria police after having blocked the West Gate Freeway, as she locked on to the Lizard Car, which was parked in the middle of an offramp. Photo credit: photographer and filmmaker Matt Hrkac