Cops Out of Mardi Gras Is Still Key, Says Pride in Protest’s Damien Nguyen

Pride in Protest is running four candidates in this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Board election, which is taking place at the end of 12 months that have seen the queer social justice group’s long-term goal of removing NSW police from the parade garnering more support than ever.

Final voting in the election will take place on Saturday at the Mardi Gras annual general meeting and as per usual, Pride in Protest will be moving a number of motions that will include one of the demands that the group has been raising since the 2018 AGM, which is ‘cops out of Mardi Gras’.

Right before this year’s Mardi Gras festival took place, a NSW police senior constable shot and killed a gay couple, using his police gun, which he’d managed to check out over the period of the murders.

This incident took place on the back of decades of prejudicial and violent policing in respect of the LGBTIQA+ community from an institution that has long been known to have a culture that’s steeped in homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and racial prejudice.

Such was the devastation throughout the queer community in respect of these deaths that for the first time the Mardi Gras Board made a request to the NSW Police Force asking that its officers not march in the parade, which in essence is a call for queer people to be free of state repressions.

In true form, however, NSW police understood the request from the LGBTIQA+ community not to actually apply to it but rather, it was taken as an invitation for the law enforcement agency and the state government to apply pressure to have the request reversed.

A last minute agreement was come to which entailed NSW police officers being reinvited to march in the Mardi Gras parade but that they do so without wearing their uniforms, which translated to all officers then marching in matching navy blue shirts, while flanked by uniformed riot squad officers.

Since 2018, Pride in Protest has been agitating for the NSW Police Force to be removed from Mardi Gras, as it raises the point that the original 1978 parade was a protest march seeking equal rights for LGBTIQA+ peoples and the police went on to violently attack the crowd and took many into custody.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Pride in Protest lead candidate for the Mardi Gras Board Damien Nguyen about why the police shouldn’t march in the queer pride parade, the disappointment in this year’s final passing of the Equality Bill, and how PiP’s demands receive wider support these days.

The Mardi Gras annual general meeting is taking place at 9 am this Saturday morning 7 December at Sydney University’s Eastern Avenue Auditorium and Theatre Complex on level 2 in room F19.

The final voting for members of the Mardi Gras Board will take place then, with the successful candidates being announced later that day, while online voting came to a close on 3 December.

Damien, you’re the lead candidate on the Pride in Protest ticket for the Mardi Gras Board. PiP is running four candidates. So, who are they, and why should people vote for them?

The four of us are Damien Nguyen, Quay Quay Quade, Skye Predavec and Cassandra the Queen.

We’re members of the queer community and we’re activists.

We believe in the vision of a community-led Mardi Gras and an end to pinkwashing. Unlike all other candidates, we believe that Mardi Gras should be an organisation that represents community demands, and it should be antiracist.

So, essentially, we want to bring back what Mardi Gras used to be: a protest in and of itself. Those principles should be brought back.

Since Pride in Protest first had candidates running for the Mardi Gras Board in 2018, the motions it’s been raising at AGMs have sparked controversy.

What sort of issues will PiP be prioritising this year?

We are moving several important motions this year. The most contentious one in the media is ‘no cops at Pride’.

There is a similar motion being moved by the board as well, to have the police removed from marching, which we support. That’s a result of community consultation and campaigning on this issue.

We are also moving a motion calling for ‘no Pride in detention’ or freedom and justice for trans women in detention.

We want to have Mardi Gras sign onto an open letter by the Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group (AMSWAG), calling on the ministers of immigration and home affairs to allow freedom to detainees in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, with the core story being around some of our trans friends in detention.

Another motion we are moving is on disclosure and divestment from Israel, the Gaza genocide and the human rights violations.

And we are moving another motion calling for equality without exemption. So, no bigoted politicians at Mardi Gras.

Bigoted politicians should not march in the parade, especially if they didn’t vote to pass our discrimination protections as promised in the Equality Bill.

Are there any specific politicians that you don’t want to see marching? 

What we saw with the Equality Bill, the crossbench decided to pass the bill in full, and it was mainly Labor that refused to pass it in full.

So, we are mainly focused on Labor and also the Liberals, who continuously fail to support the community but then march in the Mardi Gras parade for a photo opportunity.

As you’ve already mentioned, a key gripe that Pride in Protest has is in regard to the participation of the NSW police in the parade.

For the 2024 parade, NSW police officers agreed to march without their uniforms, however that meant those participating were flanked by some uniformed officers anyway.

What is PiP’s position on the NSW Police Force this year?

This year the police said they would march out of uniform, but they ended up making a different uniform and marching in that. And to be honest, that was a disgrace.

We have been consistent in our politics around no cops at Pride. The police are bigoted, and they are a racist organisation that continues to harm our community.

They should not march in the parade, because being in the parade allows them the social licence to continue to be homophobic and transphobic towards members of our community every other day.

Even when these politicians are at the parade, we still see so many members of our community having to face police violence.

According to the ABC earlier this year, over the past 2 years, 37 police officers had been charged with domestic violence offences. Some of those crimes were absolutely disgusting.

And further, there were 57 police officers charged with domestic violence offences who were still employed.

The Equality Bill had been before parliament since June 2023, prior to its being voted through in October. This was an omnibus bill that covered outstanding law reforms that sought to bring equality to those in the LGBTIQA+ community.

I spoke to PiP’s Quay Quay Quade and Rohen Snowball in August, who said they were afraid that NSW Labor would slash the legislation’s more controversial measures and pass those that didn’t pose them any political difficulties. And in October, that’s exactly what happened.

So, how is the community feeling about the Equality Bill two months after it was voted through?

We understand that there have been some small concessions achieved by the Equality Bill, including self-ID.

However, the majority of people in the community have been quite upset by the outcome, especially the sell out of sex workers and queer teachers and students at educational institutions.

What we have seen is a carve out of our rights. It was done in a way that failed to consult community demands at all.

We will continue to fight for those extra protections, as they are crucial. We will be moving a motion to put pressure on the government to pass those antidiscrimination protections as soon as possible.

We’ve seen that the laws to allow religious schools to discriminate against queer people being passed without a review process, yet protections for queer people and sex workers are not, as instead they are referred to a nonbinding review process.

The Minns government chopped up the Equality Bill and only passed certain parts of the package. So, overall, how does the queer community consider the NSW Labor government over its last couple of years in office? 

We believe that the Labor Party and this government have been a pinkwashing, homophobic and transphobic organisation that doesn’t really do enough to materially change our lives.

These are livelihoods at stake. They’ve basically played political football with our rights.

And lastly, as mentioned before, Pride in Protest first started agitating for changes to Mardi Gras back in 2018.

At that time, the calls made by PiP for the NSW Police and the Liberal Party not to march in the event were taken as extreme by some parts of the community. However, over this time, PiP’s agenda no longer appears to be as radical as it once was as the broader viewpoint has shifted.

Last year, those at the AGM voted to tear up the police accords in response to a PiP motion and after that meeting, Mardi Gras went on to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and wrote to the PM about this.

Damien, you’ve been a part of PiP for a number of years now. Do you see a shift in the broader LGBTIQA+ community in regard to your group’s political stance and can you see this further happening in the broader NSW community?

The community perception has been persistent, but the change has been the way in which the right has perceived that.

Our politics haven’t changed, as we have always represented community interests.

What is true though is that over the years by being consistent we have made more convincing points about these fundamental points making it easier for other members of the community to understand.

Antipolice positions have been held by LGBTIQA+ people for years, but it is just that in this terrain we are winning in representing the community and our positions are not held by business or politicians.