When riot police use force against peaceful protesters and premiers applaud the batons, it’s no longer just a rally, it’s a warning about how quickly democratic rights can be stripped away, writes James May.
DRAMATIC SCENES erupted in Sydney when 6,000 people gathered to protest the visit of Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza.
Video footage emerged of NSW police using brutal force, throwing punches and assaulting people. Many protesters told harrowing stories of being attacked and pepper-sprayed. A disturbing video shows Muslims engaged in peaceful prayer getting dragged off the ground.
Twenty-seven people were arrested and several were injured.
Josh Lees from the Palestine Action Group (PAG) said:
“But this is an attack not just on people who were trying to march, this is an attack on everyone who was just trying to have a static rally, which was completely lawful and allowed even under all these current protest restrictions at Town Hall.”
NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong said protesters tried to disperse peacefully but were obstructed by “riot police” and another Greens MP, Abigail Boyd, said she was punched in the neck and shoulder by police.
According to journalist Peter Lalor, a woman was convulsing on the ground from the effects of pepper spray and a police officer sprayed her twice more. They repeatedly punched a man they had pinned to the tram tracks and they kidney-punched a protester with a bicycle.
Lalor wrote:
‘These police were spoiling for a fight. Some had jaws set, others chewed on gum with an almost manic intensity before attacking.’
Despite video evidence and witness accounts, NSW Premier Chris Minns and former politicians like Tony Abbott have denied police brutality and praised their conduct.
Tony Abbott said the police should receive “quiet commendation” and “we need to see tear gas and rubber bullets”.
The scenes in Sydney were shocking and akin to what unfolded in Minneapolis, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agents used violence to disperse protesters and detain people of colour. Their actions were also excused by the Trump Administration who applauded their behaviour and denied video evidence.
Two U.S. citizens were murdered in those protests.
The new anti-protest laws created by the NSW Government since the Bondi terror attack have gone too far. They are designed to clamp down on protests and silence dissent in our community. They also allow police officers to use excessive force and act without impunity.
NSW has some of the most draconian protest laws in the democratic world, according to Ben Saul, the UN's special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights.
Protest laws in NSW were tightened by the former State Coalition Government in 2022 to restrict the freedom of climate action groups like Extinction Rebellion. The laws were also strengthened after the fabricated terror plot in Dural in 2025 and now they’ve been further strengthened.
According to Professor Anne Twomey:
...NSW parliament is rushing through anti-protest legislation with little to no scrutiny.
If a protest in a public place is not formally authorised, it means the protesters can be prosecuted if they obstruct people or traffic in a public place. It also means the police can issue move-on orders and it is an offence not to comply.
In the aftermath of Sydney, various state governments have proposed to make it a crime to chant the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada”.
Queensland could become the first state in Australia to outlaw the phrases under new hate speech reforms. Anyone found distributing, publishing, displaying or reciting a prohibited phrase would face a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
We’ve also seen attempts to hinder free speech and silence people at cultural events.
Palestinian-Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah was cancelled by the board of Adelaide Writers’ Week in January. One hundred and eighty guests boycotted the event in protest and the director, Louise Adler, resigned from her position.
Louise Adler said the Adelaide festival board’s decision is the ‘harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t’.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is considering defamation action against the Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas.
Despite the debacle, NSW Premier Chris Minns has opposed Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at the Newcastle Writers Festival in March.
Minns said:
“I think they’re crazy to invite that author... It’s a real head scratcher for me.”
More than 50 speakers withdrew from the Bendigo Writers Festival last year when organisers circulated a code of conduct to ‘avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful’.
The controversy centred on debate over the Israel-Gaza war.
Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf was awarded $220,000 in 2025 after suing the ABC for terminating her position at ABC Radio Sydney. She was sacked for posting a Human Rights Watch article on Instagram about starvation being used as a tool of war in Gaza.
The judge found the decision to remove Lattouf was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists behind a campaign of complaints.
We are hurtling down an authoritarian path when it comes to free speech and the right to protest in this country. There is a dangerous pattern emerging that gives citizens less freedom to express their views and more power to authorities to dictate what people can say, and when and where they can say it.
According to the NSW Government, the new anti-protest laws were designed to protect the community, prevent intimidation and allow police to keep people safe. They clearly had the opposite effect in Sydney. Some of the most violent scenes were on display in the city last week and the community is more divided than ever.
Chris Minns and the NSW Government must acknowledge police brutality against protesters and review this punitive legislation.
James May is a freelance writer and his work has appeared in The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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