The Western Australian Liberal government is introducing draconian new anti-democratic laws.
The Criminal Code Amendment (Prevention of Lawful Activity) Bill 2015 is a reprehensible document that savages the right to free assembly. Provisions of the bill include penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment or a $24,000 fine for the ill-defined crime of “physical prevention of lawful activity” during a protest. The bill also renders illegal the possession of a “thing” which might be used for that purpose.
Yes, “things” are to be prohibited.
The shape of smoke is clearer than this bill, which gives police almost free rein to interpret as illegal anything from marches to sit-ins to industrial actions such as picket lines. Further, under the proposed laws, the accused have to prove their innocence, rather than have it assumed until proven otherwise.
An alliance of community groups and individuals, known as Protect Peaceful Protest, has formed to oppose the bill. Sixty-six organisations have signed a joint statement supporting the budding campaign. Protect Peaceful Protest’s Simone van Hattem spoke to Red Flag, explaining that activists opposed to the drilling of coal seam gas were the most immediate target of the laws. “The government is definitely worried about protests around fracking by farmers and environmentalists”, she said.
State government representatives have frequently pointed to devices used by activists to lock themselves onto heavy machinery as their prime example of a “thing” used for “physical prevention”.
Lock-on tactics have been common in a number of recent environmental campaigns. These include the successful protests against the big mining interests that wanted to engage in fracking at the Kimberley’s James Price Point.
Repressive legislation is bound to be used not just against environmental campaigners, however, but also against unions and other activist groups. Mining and big business are given licence to do whatever they like in WA, whether that’s trashing workers’ rights, driving Aboriginal people from their communities or devastating the environment. But authorities are shamelessly hostile toward the freedom to resist.
Yet, resistance is our greatest strength. In Victoria, anti-protest laws were recently overturned, in no small part because they inspired opposition and protest rallies. Now a new front is opening in WA, and we must again defend our civil rights.

Tom Marcinkowski

Right to protest under attack in WA

“It has to stop”, demanded Diane Gregory, speaking at a Perth rally against Aboriginal deaths in custody on 23 October. “They can’t keep taking our children and our husbands and our fathers and our grandfathers.” Her niece, 22-year-old Aboriginal woman Ms Dhu, died in custody on 4 August after being denied proper medical treatment.
The rally, numbering 300, marched to parliament house. In a national mobilisation, hundreds more joined similar protests in most other capital cities and the towns of Geraldton and Port Hedland. Protesters expressed outrage over the death of Ms Dhu, who had been imprisoned for an unpaid fine and had complained of pain, necessitating three hospital visits while she was locked up.
Aboriginal deaths in custody are on the rise in WA. The rally heard that there had been another death the night before the protest. In WA’s Casuarina prison, a 31-year-old Aboriginal man allegedly hung himself in his cell. More than 20 years ago, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommended the removal of all hanging points in prisons. Most of the commission’s 338 recommendations have not been implemented; those that have been have been done only partially or only in some locations. “There’s been 340 deaths since the Royal Commission”, protest organiser Vanessa Culbong told Red Flag.
Speakers condemned WA’s appalling record of locking up Indigenous people. “Last night one in 14 Aboriginal men in this state were in prison”, said Aboriginal activist Jim Morrison. “That would add up to 140 prisons if white men were locked up at the same rate.” WA’s Aboriginal incarceration rate is the highest in Australia, and nine times higher than that for Blacks in apartheid South Africa. 
When premier Colin Barnett appeared on the steps of parliament, there was a turbulent response. He was confronted by an angry crowd. Ms Dhu’s mother, Della Roe, demanded to know why her daughter had died; Barnett had no answer. He eventually addressed the crowd, claiming the two most recent deaths were a “complicated issue” and that the police would investigate.
Red Flag asked prominent Indigenous activist Marianne Mackay what she thought of Barnett’s speech. “He basically didn’t say anything, even though he spoke for 15 minutes”, she said. “How is it complicated? It’s complicated because the government has failed once again.”
No WA police officer has ever been charged for a death in custody. “There’s been police investigations of all deaths in custody, and the result is always the same”, Culbong said.
On why Aboriginal imprisonment rates are so high, Mackay identifies the government’s agenda of stealing and exploiting Aboriginal land. “They see the land as part of the economy. The prisons are just a replacement for the missions, to segregate us and wipe us out”, she said.
Protest organisers demanded Indigenous control of Indigenous affairs, and remained determined to fight institutionalised racism. The criminal justice system has already claimed hundreds of Aboriginal lives. Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chair Marc Newhouse said the campaign would continue until the deaths stop.

Rally against custody deaths: ‘They can’t keep taking our children’

Last month, the Western Australian government bulldozed the Swan Valley Nyungah Community (SVNC) despite desperate protests by the Bropho family, on whose traditional land the community is located.
For six months, weekly protests had been occurring outside the community’s locked gates. A week earlier, they took the protest to the steps of Parliament House.
The Barnett government’s cruel response was as much about crushing hope as it was about destroying buildings.
There’s a plaque in the SVNC acknowledging residents as the “last of the river-people”, the remnants of a culture that, through its survival on that land, had defied white colonialism. Although the recent fate of the SVNC is a vivid illustration of the brutal, state-sanctioned racism faced by WA’s Indigenous population, the community’s history also shows the power of struggle.
The SVNC was first built after a struggle by the traditional owners that began in 1977. Nyungah people from the Bropho family had set up a protest camp in the north-eastern Perth suburb of Guildford, after local authorities burned down their original dwellings.
In 1980 the protesters relocated to their traditional land in nearby Lockridge. For a long time the Swan Valley Nyungahs lived in abject conditions. They erected tents and occupied old cabins that had originally been built by mining companies.
A section of land was finally given back to the Nyungah by the government in 1994. The Brophos then built their own housing. The Swan Valley Nyungah Community was born.
A people who had been colonised and dispossessed for generations had scored a resounding victory.But the SVNC’s control over their own affairs was to be tragically short lived. WA’s racist political establishment hungered for revenge.
In 2003, amid sexual abuse allegations levelled against elder Robert Bropho, the entire community was shut down by Geoff Gallop’s state Labor government. Due investigation of the allegations was sidelined in favour of blanket assertions, amplified through the media. Despite protests outside parliament by women and children from the community, a bill was rushed through, leading to the eviction of all residents.
Just as with the NT Intervention, the true intentions of the government had nothing to do with concern for Aboriginal families. For current community elder Bella Bropho, the real reasons for shutting down the SVNC were blatantly political. “You can go after Robert Bropho, but why close down the community? Because of who dad was”, she says. “When he was too outspoken about the protection of sacred sites from development, he became a political target.”
Following the mass eviction, the SVNC was left to grow derelict for more than a decade, while former residents died on the streets of Perth (many were never provided with the alternative housing promised by the government).
The appalling treatment of the SVNC, both in the past and to this day, serves as further proof that Australia’s genocidal dispossession of the First Nations continues. But the Brophos will continue to fight for the rights of their community, for their culture and for an end to the crippling life on the streets to which the government has damned so many.
Anti-racists in WA and around the country should stand in solidarity with the Swan Valley Nyungah people as they demand justice.

Right to protest under attack in WA

Rally against custody deaths: ‘They can’t keep taking our children’

Swan Valley Nyungah Community razed, but fight continues

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