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Last-minute resolution brings Palestine protest proceedings to sudden stop
At the eleventh hour, the Commissioner for NSW Police has shut down a court bid to prevent a pro-Palestinian protest from taking place on the first anniversary of the war in Gaza.
Naomi Neilson
Minutes before proceedings were due to wrap up, the NSW Police Commissioner and the organisers behind a planned pro-Palestine protest told the Supreme Court they had resolved the matter.
Justice Jeremy Kirk said it was to the credit of both parties that the dispute was resolved and said they were to be “congratulated”.
Earlier, Assistant Commissioner and Central Metropolitan Region Commander Peter McKenna said that while police understood the right to free speech and public assembly, officers “have broader community safety concerns that we always have to consider”.
“We are apolitical; we don’t get involved in that side of issues, but certainly, things come to us that would seem a clear provocation or even placing people in a position where it often only takes one or two people to do the wrong thing, and it can be a tinder box. It can be quite a significant thing we have to deal with,” McKenna said.
The police application was filed after some members of a recent protest waved Hezbollah flags. A woman was recently charged for displaying the symbol of a prohibited terrorist organisation.
This weekend’s protest was originally to take place on Sunday and Monday, but the latter was withdrawn prior to the hearing.
The organisers had also proposed changing the location from Town Hall to Hyde Park, but McKenna said police were concerned the location would place protestors close to the Great Synagogue.
He also told the court there has been a shift in the environment during the weekly protests, with police on the ground reporting they have “felt a different undertone in the protest group”, which has been described as a “more aggressive feeling”.
“It won’t take much to put community members and the police in a very precious situation, and I think it is completely avoidable. I think we can negotiate a far better outcome than by allowing them to go past that location, which is something I say is provocative, and we will not agree to,” McKenna said.
In closing submissions on behalf of NSW Police, Lachlan Gyles SC said the right to public assembly must be weighed against “the equally important right of all citizens not to have their safety put at risk … or to have their own activities unlawfully impeded”.
He said that beyond it being the anniversary of the Hamas attacks last October, the protest would occur during “highly emotive and significant periods of hostilities in the Middle East”.
“Recent attacks on both sides have created a situation where there are highly emotive and passionate positions being taken by different interests, which is unusual in the sense that it is very heightened from where it has been over the last 12 months,” he said.
In response, counsel Arjun Chhabra for the defendants said the right to public assembly is “integral to the democratic system of government and the Australian way of life”.
He said the police have not provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate there will be an “undue level of disturbance or social upheaval” during Sunday’s protest and have made “compounding speculations” of events that may never occur.
Turning to the issue of the Hezbollah flags, Chhabra said the evidence “at its highest” suggested those who waved the flags made up just 0.2 per cent of the attendees, and to rely on their wrongdoing would be to deny “the 99.8 per cent of socially conscious, engaged and legally compliant individuals” their rights to freedom.
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
