NSW Government Considers Banning Protests Due to Cost, While Opposition Flags User Pays System

After the Gaza genocide reached its 12-month mark, and this state’s Free Palestine rally against Israel’s yearlong mass slaughter had taken place, NSW premier Chris Minns got on 2GB radio on Tuesday to unveil his new protofascist proposal, which involves providing the NSW Police Force with the power to refuse protests if they’re law enforcement costs are too much.

Minns dropped this the day following the Palestine Action Group Sydney 7 October vigil and the 52nd consecutive weekly Free Palestine protest having taken place on Gadigal land in Sydney, which followed an unsuccessful legal attempt by the NSW police commissioner to have the events shut down, which was accompanied by bipartisan federal and state political pressure to see this occur.

The NSW premier told AM radio shock jock Ben Fordham that the 52 weeks of protests against the ongoing perpetration of genocide by the Israeli state had cost the city $5.4 million over the past 12 months and he considers that police should be able to refuse to provide law enforcement services at protests, in order to free up its resources to be utilised in the pursuit of tough-on-crime measures.

The NSW Labor leader has been a chief critic of pro-Palestinian protesters since October 2023, and in a sign he’s losing sight on the constituency he’s governing being a democracy, Minns advised that he’ll be holding an official review into NSW police use of resources, while the NSW opposition has flagged user-pays policing as a solution, which is how the state killed the music festival industry.

When resisting genocide is just too costly

“It’s my view that police should be able to be in a position to deny a request for a march due to stretched police resourcing,” Minns said on Tuesday. And the premier added that because of the high costs of policing the yearlong protests against the illegal mass slaughter of innocent civilians by the Israeli state, of which he is a supporter, he’s going review how NSW police is using its resources.

Minns then made clear that he doesn’t want NSW police supressing union actions over wage deals, but rather its persistent protest campaigns, which would specifically point to the 52-week-old Free Palestine-End the Genocide protests that have been taking place in the Sydney CBD every week for the past year,which is likely been the most consistent demonstration the city has ever seen.

“I think taxpayers should be in a position to say we would prefer that money spent on roadside breath testing, domestic violence investigations, knife crimes, rather than the huge resources that’s going into the city and the community,” Minns further told on 2GB on Tuesday. But the truth of the matter is that NSW Labor is not going to start polling the constituency on police budgeting.

The premier is flagging a system whereby NSW police could decide to shut down an ongoing protest campaign, like the weekly Palestine protests, via the justification that the agency can’t afford it. And the raising of this catchall means to prevent protest comes directly on the back of last week’s effort to stop the protest by NSW police commissioner, haters-gonna-hate, Karen Webb fell flat on its face.

User pays killed the music festival

The view from the ground is much different from that of Macquarie Street, as grassroots protesters have long complained of the unnecessary and ever-increasing saturation policing of NSW protests, and prior to the last 52 weeks of pro-Palestinian marches, the criticism has often been the large numbers of blue bodies that are sent out to police First Nations justice protests held in this state.

Stifling protests has been a major preoccupation in NSW since the Baird government enacted inclosed land reforms in 2016, while the death knell for unapproved direct actions came in 2022, when the Coalition, with bipartisan support from Labor under Minns, banned obstructing major bridges, tunnels, roads and facilities, via threat of up to 2 years in gaol, due to climate actions.

NSW Liberal opposition leader Mark Speakman, however, has attempted to trump Minns’ financial crackdown on protests by calling for the implementation of the NSW police user-pays policing services scheme for demonstrations. User-pays policing requires organisers pay for officer presence at events, when it’s consider that policing them is beyond the agency’s normal responsibilities.

As of 1 July this year, organisers of private events that want to hire the services of NSW police have to pay $147.60 inclusive of GST an hour per officer.

The imposition of user-pays policing is a tactic that NSW police began rolling out in respect of music festivals that it considered shouldn’t be allowed to go ahead. After it failed at having the 2018 Bohemian Beatfreaks festival shut down by the courts, NSW police upped its initial $16,000 quote for attending the event to $200,000, which sent event organisers over the border to Queensland.

Indeed, the NSW music festival industry was continuing to decry the imposition of NSW user-pays policing, which is now a requirement under the Music Festivals Act 2019 (NSW), at events in March this year, as it is costing organisers up to 12 times that of their counterparts in Victoria. And going on the assessment of critics since its first imposition in 2018, this system was designed to cancel events.

Backdoor protest bans

Palestine Action Group (PAG) representatives Amal Naser and Josh Lees outlined in a statement on Tuesday, that the saturation policing that occurred at last week’s 52nd consecutive protest procession against the mass killing of Palestinians was “an outrageous and racist law-and-order campaign, which sought to criminalise protesters, who have been peacefully rallying for 12 months”.

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network also called out Minns over his proposal to allow police to shut down protests due to expenses, insisting that this was an attempt at “framing human rights as a financial burden”, as well as underscoring that the “democratically elected representative” has shown “a troubling disregard for fundamental rights and democracy”.

While the Murdoch press went on to produce a hit piece on PAG organiser Josh Lees on Tuesday, as Minns labelled him a “serial protester”. But luckily, the rag gave the social justice advocate right of reply to say, “I’d rather be a serial protester than a serial killer, and right now we have Chris Minns backing the serial killer Benjamin Netanyahu, who has killed over 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza.”