A trend is emerging in Australia. Governments are criminalising protest with growing fervour. 
Since the “war on terror” began in 2001, the Australian parliament has passed more than 200 new laws that restrict civil liberties. A focus on restricting protest has accelerated in recent years and has become increasingly explicit in its aim: the protection of profit.
The laws that have the widest scope are those passed in Tasmania in 2014. The Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Act criminalises any activity that “hinders” business activity “for the purposes of promoting awareness of or support for an opinion, or belief, in respect of a political, environmental, social, cultural or economic issue”.
 In tabling the legislation in parliament, then minister for resources Paul Harriss said: “The central objective of the government is to ensure wealth creating businesses can develop and grow free from disruptive protest action”.
He went on to state that the bill was specifically motivated by the government’s aim to protect the mining and forestry industries in the state. Developments in Tasmania did not go unnoticed by other sections of business.
The government will … increase penalties for protesters who break into mining operations, damage equipment or disrupt work. <cite class="quote-attrib"> – Mike Baird</cite>
Writing in the Australian on 14 April 2014, Stephen Galilee, chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council, said the government needs to “get tough too” in NSW. “Governments cannot sit idly by and allow these reckless attacks on our economy to go unanswered … Where the laws are inadequate they should be strengthened”, he demanded.
This clarion call to protect the mining industry did not go unanswered. Speaking to representatives of the mining industry in the lead-up to the 2015 NSW election, Mike Baird promised, “[T]he government will … increase penalties for protesters who break into mining operations, damage equipment or disrupt work”. Since being returned to government, he has done so.
Legislation recently passed in NSW extends police search and seizure powers “to deal with people who intend to ‘lock-on’ to equipment or structures for the purpose of interfering with a business or undertaking”. It significantly increases existing penalties for a range of civil disobedience tactics and gives police the power to shut down protest that interferes with traffic.
Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, described the NSW laws as “harsh” and “unnecessary”. “Governments across Australia are eroding some of the vital foundations of our democracy, to entrench their own power and that of vested business interests”, he said in a statement.
While the new laws in NSW appear primarily directed at environmental protesters, the deliberately vague language of the legislation may have more far reaching implications. Unions NSW has warned that amendments to existing laws “make it an offence for anyone to interfere with a business on enclosed lands. This could extend to employees taking part in industrial action or union organisers visiting members at their workplaces”.
In Western Australia, similar concerns have been raised about extreme new laws being proposed by the state Liberal government. The legislation would create new offences such as “physically preventing a lawful activity” and “possessing a thing for the purpose of preventing a lawful activity”. The laws would also reverse the burden of proof, requiring that accused protesters overcome a legal presumption that their actions were in breach of the law. 
In February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement condemning the proposed laws, which “would result in criminalising lawful protest and silencing environmentalists and human right defenders”. The UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, said that the laws “would have the chilling effect of silencing dissenters”.
With these types of laws increasingly finding their way on to the books, this is exactly the point.

Kosta Rologas

More new laws ban protest

The Australian imprisonment rate has risen by more than 20 percent in the last decade, a new report has found.
The Productivity Commission’s annual report on government services found that in June 2015, 34,982 people were incarcerated. In the year 2005-06, the imprisonment rate was 157.9 people per 100,000 of the population. By 2015-2016, that rate had jumped to 190.3 per 100,000. The report described this as “substantial growth”.
Alarmingly, between June 2014 and June 2015, there was a 7 percent increase in the permanent prison population. Most states have raised prison populations dramatically, with record highs recorded in all states and territories except Tasmania. 
Government spending on prisons and community corrections stood at $3.7 billion in June 2015 – an increase of 7.6 percent over the previous year, in real terms. According to the Productivity Commission’s figures, this is more than government spends on public housing. Across Australia, more than 250,000 people are on public housing waiting lists.
The expansion of the prison system comes at the same time that the government is seeking to cut vital social services. In December, the federal government set out to cut $650 million from health care funding by reducing or removing access to bulk billing for pathology tests, diagnostic imaging and MRI scans.
The Productivity Commission’s report comes on the back of a 2015 report detailing the degrading conditions in New South Wales jails. Full House: The growth of the inmate population in NSW, prepared by the inspector of custodial services, found that in some jails, three people live in cells designed for one and that rates of self-harm and death among prisoners are “greater now than at any time in recent years”.
Currently 21 of 44 correctional centres in NSW are overcrowded. The inspector of custodial services wrote in the introduction to the report, “[T]he state treats inmates in a way that denies them a modicum of dignity and humanity”.

Prison population soars

Eleven days before the 2014 Victorian state election, Daniel Andrews addressed more than 1,000 firefighters at Collingwood Town Hall. He promised to respect, honour and value their work. He vowed to end the Liberal government’s war against them. He lied.
On the strength of Andrews’ promises, hundreds of firefighters gave up their weekends door-knocking in marginal seat electorates to help get rid of the anti-worker state Liberal government.
Steve Mundey, a member of the United Firefighters Union (UFU), was one of them. On the morning of 8 December, he was marching to state parliament with more than 1,000 firefighters to protest the Andrews government’s broken promises.
“We campaigned for them, we wanted the Liberal government out, they were hell bent on trashing and terminating every condition of employment for fire fighters”, he told Red Flag.
“We believed that they [the ALP] were going to be different, they have changed from being our friend to now being our adversary”.
Ridge, came into the rally from his station in Melton said the government had backtracked: “Everything that they have agreed to is now off the table”. Victorian firefighters have not had a pay rise since 2013.
Safety standards are also a key concern. “At the moment we are well under the international standard”, explained Ridge. “They want to go back to the dark ages – where the international standard for house fires is 11 we are running at 4. What they are compromising is my safety.” 
The UFU had an important win last year when it fought of an attempt by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade to scrap long-standing safety standards. The Andrews government is now trying to re-open that dispute.
Addressing the crowd on the steps of state parliament, secretary of the firefighters’ union Peter Marshall labelled Andrews’ betrayal a “disgraceful act”.

ALP now our ‘adversary’ say firefighters

In the early evening of 21 May, Kumanjayi Langdon, an artist, was arrested under the Northern Territory’s “paperless arrest” laws. Handcuffed in public, Kumanjayi was put into a cage in the back of a police van and taken to a prison watch-house. Detained in a cell without charge, he was found dead later that evening.
The “paperless arrest” laws, introduced in December 2014, give police the power to detain a person, without charge, for up to four hours – longer if they are deemed intoxicated – on the suspicion that they might commit any number of minor offences. 
Investigating the death of Kumanjayi, NT coroner Greg Cavanagh reported that his repeated requests to see a doctor were ignored. Commenting on the impact of the laws, Cavanagh said, “It is no coincidence that just five months after the ‘paperless arrest’ laws were introduced, the first person to die being held in custody … is an Aboriginal man”. He described the laws as “manifestly unfair” and called for their repeal. 
A High Court challenge to the laws was dismissed on 11 November. Community lawyers at the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) argued that the laws give police the power to impose extrajudicial punishment at their discretion.
“The High Court has found that the law is valid, but that doesn’t mean it is a good, effective or just law”, the principal legal officer at NAAJA, Jonathan Hunyor, told Red Flag. “It remains a bad law … not least because it is leading to more Aboriginal people being locked up.
“Unsurprisingly, the weight of the law has been felt overwhelmingly by Aboriginal people. In the first seven months of operation, the law was used to lock up 1295 people. Over 70 percent of those people were Aboriginal.”
In the moments leading up to his arrest, the coroner said that Kumanjayi was “an old man minding his own business”. His crime was being Aboriginal. 
Describing a divided society, Cavanagh said: “The new laws create a system where a large portion of the population drinks freely in pubs and taverns using sections of the public footpath that have been fenced off for outdoor drinking. Just one street away, Aboriginal people (some of whom have come in from remote communities that are under federal fiat banning alcohol …) are being detained for drinking in a designated public place, even if they are enjoying peaceful, quiet time with family and friends.
“In my view, unless the paperless arrest laws are struck from the statute books, more and more disadvantaged Aboriginal people are at risk of dying in custody, and unnecessarily so.”
The Northern Territory government has rejected all calls to abolish the laws, which the NT attorney general commonly refers to as a “catch and release” scheme.

‘Manifestly unfair’ NT arrest law to stay

Addressing the Queensland Chamber of Commerce and Industry on 20 May, Tony Abbott was selling his “real work for the dole” plan to Australia’s bosses.
Abbott urged businesses to take advantage of the scheme, which will “allow” workers who have been unemployed for more than six months to work for them for one month without pay.
“That person can do up to four weeks of work experience with your business … so it gives you a chance to have a kind of try before you buy look at unemployed people”, he said, referring to unemployed workers as you might a used car or a pair of shoes.
Alongside this proposal, this year’s budget also included measures that will increase work for the dole requirements from 15 to 25 hours per week for those aged under 30. The government also wants around 37,000 mostly Indigenous job seekers, aged between 18 and 49, to undertake work for the dole for 25 hours per week, five days a week, for almost the entirety of the year.
The “Growing Jobs and Small Business” component of the budget is a massive handout to business. A 1.5 percent tax cut for all businesses with turnover of less than $2 million, combined with a 100 percent tax deduction on any business equipment expenditure up to the value of $20,000, amounts to a $5.5 billion gift.
While the government showers business with cash, ABS data released on 7 May showed worrying trends in unemployment. The rate of unemployment now stands at 6.2 percent, with 769,500 unemployed – up from 453,100 in 2008.
In response to the budget, growing unemployment and proposed laws that will give employment service providers increased powers to penalise the unemployed financially, the Australian Unemployed Union has called for a series of protests across the country on 1 July.

More new laws ban protest

Prison population soars

ALP now our ‘adversary’ say firefighters

‘Manifestly unfair’ NT arrest law to stay

‘Try before you buy’, Abbott tells bosses

Other Media

Shop

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us