David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum, and I seek leave to have the second reading speech in relation to the Right to Protest Bill 2025 incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This bill seeks to protect one of the most fundamental democratic rights, a right from which so many other rights stem: the right to peacefully assemble and protest. It does this by codifying in Australian law the rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), specifically Articles 19, 21, and 22. These articles affirm that all people have the right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association without arbitrary restriction.

It is no coincidence that as global temperatures rise and urgent social movements demand action, governments around the world are responding, not with solutions but with suppression. In Australia we have witnessed an alarming erosion of our right to protest over the past decade, with successive state and territory laws criminalising dissent, expanding police powers, and imposing severe penalties on peaceful protesters. This bill is a necessary response to that trend.

Protest is not an incidental feature of democracy; it is at its foundation. Without protest, workers would not have won the five-day work week, women would not have the right to vote and the world would not have come together to help end apartheid in South Africa. Aboriginal land rights, protected rainforests and nuclear free communities are all thanks to protest.

Yet in recent years, governments across Australia—Liberal and Labor alike—have worked to dismantle this right. New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and Queensland have all enacted laws that target and criminalise protesters, particularly those who challenge the fossil fuel industry, logging, police violence, and government inaction on climate change. In doing so, they have chipped away at one of our most precious democratic rights.

The Right to Protest Bill 2025 is about reversing this dangerous trajectory. This bill affirms that all Australians have the right to engage in peaceful protest in public spaces and that any restrictions on this right must be strictly limited to those necessary for national security, public safety, public order, public health, or the rights of others.

Importantly, this bill ensures that excessive penalties—such as lengthy prison sentences and exorbitant fines—are considered unnecessary and disproportionate limitations on the right to protest. The bill provides that where state or territory laws conflict with this federal protection, those laws will be invalid to the extent of their inconsistency.

This bill operates by clearly defining the right to peaceful protest as a federally protected right drawing on long standing international precedent in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. It establishes that a person has the right to engage in peaceful protest in a public place, and that any restrictions on this right must be justified in accordance with principles necessary in a democratic society.

The bill sets out five narrowly defined circumstances under which this right may be restricted:

(a) National security

(b) Public safety

(c) Public order

(d) Protection of public health

(e) Protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

However, these are not blanket restrictions. Any limitation on the right to protest must be proportionate and necessary to address an unacceptable risk of harm, as determined by an objective legal standard.

The bill explicitly invalidates any state or territory law that imposes excessive penalties for peaceful protest. Laws that criminalise protests through disproportionate fines or imprisonment terms would be rendered inoperable to the extent of their inconsistency with this federal protection. Importantly, this bill does not prevent states from regulating protests within reasonable parameters; it simply ensures that these regulations cannot be used as a tool to unduly suppress public dissent.

I note Australia's international obligations do not allow for the curtailment of fundamental freedoms solely to protect corporate profits, business convenience or to protect governments from public scrutiny or mass movements for change. This is despite what Labor and Liberal Governments would like the community to believe.

Let us be clear about the pattern we are seeing. State governments are too close to their police forces, who have pushed for harsher laws under the guise of maintaining order. At the same time, these governments—both Liberal and Labor—are preparing for the inevitable public backlash against their continued inaction on climate change, inequality, and human rights. Rather than addressing these crises, they use their close ties with police forces to justify laws to criminalise those who expose them.

We have seen this in action. In 2020, when thousands gathered in New South Wales to protest for Black Lives Matter, police and government officials claimed the protest was illegal because of public health restrictions—even though at the same time they were encouraging people to gather in their tens of thousands in sporting stadiums and shopping centres.

In 2022, NSW passed laws to punish climate protesters with up to two years in jail and $22,000 fines simply for demonstrating on certain roads. Victoria passed draconian forestry protest laws. Tasmania introduced harsh penalties for causing "public annoyance" and unconstitutional limitations on protesting in pretty much any forest. Meanwhile Queensland banned basic protest tools like lock-on devices and gave police largely unchecked powers to stop and search to find them, drawing condemnation from the United Nations.

This creeping authoritarianism must be stopped. We cannot allow governments to make protesting so legally dangerous that the only demonstrations left are those that cause no inconvenience, challenge no authority and achieve no change. The right to protest exists precisely because it disrupts—it forces those in power to listen. Once we need to seek permission to protest, then we have already lost the right. If that happens, then other rights will topple over behind it.

Australia has ratified the ICCPR, and as such, the Federal Government bears the responsibility to uphold its principles. That is why this bill relies on the Commonwealth's external affairs power under Section 51(xxix) of the Constitution.

This bill ensures that our domestic laws are brought into line with international human rights standards. It makes clear that peaceful protest cannot be restricted merely to protect commercial interests, nor can vague notions of "public inconvenience" justify severe criminal penalties.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Australia Institute, the Human Rights Law Centre and even the High Court have raised serious concerns about the erosion of protest rights in this country. It is time for the Federal Government to act.

The Right to Protest Bill 2025 affirms that dissent is not a crime. It enshrines into law what should already be understood: that Australians have the right to gather, speak, and demand better from their governments without fear of police crackdowns or punitive legal consequences.

We know that the challenges of the coming decades—climate crisis, social inequality, corporate overreach—will not be solved quietly. The people will not stand idly by as their future is compromised. This bill ensures they won't have to.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.