The New South Wales police commissioner has extended a restriction on protests in Sydney for a third time, but narrowed the area it covers in a bid to get “the balance right between community safety and a right to protest” ahead of Invasion Day.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mal Lanyon, said the restrictions would no longer include Hyde Park, allowing police to authorise the major annual Invasion Day protest to march from that location to Victoria Park on Monday.
Police have also authorised an anti-immigration march, run by March for Australia, from Prince Alfred Park to Moore Park.
Lanyon said the 14-day extension to the declaration preventing the authorisation of protests under NSW’s form 1 system would still apply “from Darling Harbour through the north of the CBD … and then out through Oxford Street and take in all of the eastern suburbs police area command”.
Police were given the controversial power last year after the Minns government rushed laws through parliament in the wake of the Bondi terror attack. The power effectively bans the ability for organisers to carry out major protests on the city’s streets without the risk of people being arrested by police.
“It’s about getting the balance right between community safety and a right to protest,” Lanyon told reporters, after being asked why Hyde Park had been exempted from the restriction.
“I reinforce this is a time for calm. It’s a time for peace. It’s a time for the community to come together. We are still less than six weeks from the most serious and devastating terrorism act ever [committed] in New South Wales.”
Laynon was asked if protests around the arrival of Israeli president Isaac Herzog – the date of which is yet to be confirmed – would get authorisation to go ahead from police. He warned in his response that he would be monitoring the “behaviour” of protesters over the next 14 days and the declaration could change again if there was a heightened community risk.
Lanyon said there would be 1,500 police deployed to 26 January events and a third of those would be monitoring protests.
Lanyon said that the declaration, which has now been in place for almost a month, hadn’t stopped protests or “free speech entirely” and there had 49 “static protests”.
Asked if, given that, the laws had any real function or effectiveness, Lanyon said: “it’s taken the heat out of the community.”
Protest laws tested
The limits of the declaration were tested on Sunday after a group protesting deaths in custody attempted to march from Hyde Park while the ban for that area was still in place.
NSW police assistant commissioner, Peter McKenna, suggested on Sunday police outnumbered the demonstrators, estimating 200 rallied while a “few hundred” police were present or standing by. The crowd was collectively ordered to move on by police. McKenna said if the crowd had kept moving, there “absolutely” could have been arrests.
The crowd instead dispersed with no arrests.
Facing police lines, the crowd chanted “we’ll be back” and “see you on Invasion Day”.
Paul Silva, a rally organiser and nephew of David Dungay Jr, who died in custody, told reporters a crowd 100 times bigger was expected on 26 January.
The crowd cheered its loudest when Paddy Gibson, an advocate and researcher, said “we will break the ban”.
McKenna on Sunday acknowledged thousands of Australians could attend Invasion Day rallies and make police operations more difficult, especially if crowds wanted conflict with police rather than cooperate.
“We’ve got an obligation to enforce the laws. They’re only a temporary law, just remember that,” McKenna said.
Greens MP Sue Higginson, who attended Sunday’s protest, said she was “utterly astounded at the wasteful number of police in attendance”.
“The number of police required to prevent a peaceful street march on Sunday far exceeded the number of police that would be required to facilitate a peaceful march through the streets,” she said.
She said Lanyon had “rightly bent to the will of the people” in authorising the Invasion Day March.
But the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Timothy Roberts, said he was angered by the decision to extend the ban, even with the carve out for Hyde park, describing it as a “political” call.
“While we welcome the NSW Police saying that it will not mass arrest people for marching in the Invasion Day rally in Sydney, what a very low bar that is for our democratic freedoms in NSW,” he said.
