Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of the Right to Protest Bill 2025 and commend Senator Shoebridge for bringing it on. At its heart, this bill is about protecting one of the most fundamental pillars of democracy: the right of people to gather, raise their voices and demand change from those in power. Right now, across Australia, that right is under attack. Instead of addressing the crises we face globally, from climate change to genocide and from inequality to environmental damage and systemic injustice, governments are criminalising those who dare to speak up. This is not an exaggeration. Across almost every state and territory, Liberal and Labor governments have chipped away at the basic freedom to protest. They've introduced harsher laws, longer sentences, bigger fines and sweeping new police powers.

In many places today, Australians risk arrest simply for planning protest action. We must be honest about what is happening here. When governments are confronted with rising public concern about climate change, deforestation, mining, war and genocide, they are not responding with solutions; they are responding with suppression. Anti-protest laws aren't about safety; they're about silencing dissent. This bill would seek to reverse this dangerous trend. It codifies the rights already guaranteed to us under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Australia has ratified. It makes clear that Australians have the right to engage in peaceful protest in public places. That right can only be limited in the narrowest of circumstances, and, even then, those limits must be proportionate.

The bill ensures that excessive penalties like the exorbitant fines and lengthy prison sentences we've slapped on climate activists cannot stand. It ensures governments cannot criminalise protests simply to protect commercial interests and it ensures that vague excuses like public inconvenience are never again used to justify crushing democratic freedoms. Once we need permission to protest and once it becomes a privilege instead of a right, we've already lost the battle.

The warnings couldn't be clearer. Melbourne Activist Legal Support, a community of human rights advocates in my home state, put it bluntly in their submission to the UN Human Rights Council. They said that Australia is failing to meet its international obligations to protect freedom of assembly. They warn of a raft of repressive anti-protest legislation, the dangerous escalation of police tactics and the obstruction of the vital work of legal observers who monitor abuses at protests. Their conclusion was stark: if left unchallenged, these attacks on protest rights will have a devastating effect on our democracy, stripping citizens of their power. International human rights and democracy organisations agree. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Australia Institute have all documented the erosion of democratic freedoms in this country. And, in December last year, the Australian Democracy Network released its In defence of dissent report, showing how activists—especially climate and environment defenders—are facing unfair punishments simply for speaking out. That same month, the ABC reported that Australia now leads the world in arresting climate activists. We lead the world in arresting climate activists—think about that for a moment. On the global stage, our country is ranked No. 1 for locking up people who demand climate action. What a shameful legacy of successive governments in this country.

The examples are everywhere, including close to my home. The Victorian government recently introduced new anti-protest laws. These laws, amongst other things, sought to ban face coverings at protests and create broad, ambiguous safe zones around places of worship, exposing protesters to fines or penalties for simply exercising their democratic rights.

Thankfully, following strong opposition from human rights groups, community campaigners and the Victorian Greens, these provisions were significantly watered down. But the fact that they were ever proposed should ring alarm bells about the ongoing erosion of our right to dissent, because right now it is easier for a multinational logging company to flatten a forest than it is for a group of citizens to peacefully protest its destruction. It is completely upside down.

Native forests are some of our most precious ecosystems. They are vital carbon sinks. They are habitat for endangered species. They are part of the solution to the climate crisis. Yet those who defend them are treated like criminals. I also want to acknowledge former Greens leader and staunch forest defender Bob Brown, who has put his body on the line time and time again to protect our environment, to protect our forests and to protect our rights.

We've also seen Aboriginal forest defenders dragged before courts in Tasmania for standing on country to protect it. We have seen climate activists in Newcastle threatened with lengthy jail sentences for blockading coal exports. We have seen peaceful rallies for justice for Palestine in Melbourne—rallies that I am so proud to have joined—face military-style policing tactics simply for standing up against genocide and forced starvation. Shame on this government. The message from governments could not be clearer: if you dare to dissent, you will be punished.

While fossil fuel corporations continue to receive billions in subsidies, climate activists are thrown into jail. While logging companies level old-growth forests, people who gather to protect them face crippling fines. While governments fail to act on the climate crisis, they pour resources into policing those who demand action. This is the police-government nexus at work: state governments captured by powerful police forces who are pushing for even greater powers to suppress dissent. And it is all done in the name of protecting order, or commerce, when in truth it protects the profits of powerful interests.

But democracy requires disruption. Protest has always been disruptive; that is the point. The eight-hour workday, LGBTIQA+ rights, women's suffrage, land rights, environmental protections—none of these were gifted by governments; they were won by people taking to the streets, taking risks and demanding better. If we criminalise disruption we criminalise democracy itself. These laws reach into every corner of society. They silence First Nations people's fight against the long history of criminalising land rights and cultural heritage protests. They target the campus demonstrations and rallies of students and educators. They undermine workers and unions whose ability to strike or protest against unsafe or unfair corporate practices is already under siege. They threaten civil liberties more broadly, as police surveillance of protestors expands and laws against so-called inconvenience become a template for silencing all dissent. And they reach into foreign affairs, with recent demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights facing intimidation and restriction. This is why protest rights are the canary in the coalmine. Once the freedom to dissent is eroded, every other freedom is next.

Australia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We have accepted recommendations from the United Nations to protect freedom of assembly. But, instead of implementing them, we are going backwards. Unlike almost every other liberal democracy, Australia doesn't have a national human rights act. That means our protest rights are left vulnerable to a patchwork of inconsistent and increasingly repressive state laws. This bill begins to change that. It ensures that, where state laws conflict with these international obligations, they'll be invalid. This isn't radical; this is simply Australia doing what we said we would do when we signed the ICCPR.

Dissent is not a crime. Protest is the lifeblood of democracy. We are living through a time of escalating crises: climate breakdown, inequality and injustice. If governments refuse to act, the people will.

That is how progress has always been made, and that is how it will continue to be made. This bill is about protecting the ability of ordinary Australians to hold the powerful to account. It is about ensuring that future generations inherit a democracy that is alive not hollowed out by repression. I urge every member in this chamber to remember the movements that made your own rights possible—the protests that built the world. You and I now have a responsibility to enshrine and enhance them. I again thank my colleague Senator Shoebridge for bringing on this vital bill. Protest must endure if our democracy is to endure.