Tuesday, 6 February 2024

Police conduct

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:47): (662) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Equality, and the action that I seek is for the minister to engage with the concerned members of the LGBTQIA+ community about police participation in government-sponsored Pride events. Over the weekend we had the Midsumma Pride March, an event described as celebrating solidarity in gender and diversity of sexuality. I attended, as I do every year, as a proud queer man. Some of you may have seen me; I was the twink in pink. Anyway, jokes aside, this is a place for queer people to gather and to march with pride to celebrate us. Part of our celebration also comes with the difficult task of acknowledging the hardships that the queer community have faced and still face. The reality is many queer people who want a safe space to celebrate have been made to feel unsafe by police. That pain is being felt, especially after recent police behaviour towards LGBTQIA+ Victorians, and to be honest with you, the police have not fulfilled their obligations to repair that long-broken relationship. I will remind everyone that Melbourne Activist Legal Support released a statement of concern less than a year ago where they asserted:

… Victoria Police failed to consider or uphold any of its numerous obligations to prevent discriminatory or prejudice-motivated acts towards trans and gender-diverse people in its policing …

in regard to a rally back in March. And Melbourne Activist Legal Support observed:

… that the policing itself constituted biased and discriminatory actions on the part of Victoria Police.

Another survey by the Victorian Pride Lobby about the queer community and police found that an overwhelming majority of LGBTQIA+ community members do not feel fairly treated or understood by and do not trust Victoria Police. That is not to say that queer people who are police officers are not welcome. However, the visible presence of uniformed police officers causes distress to many members of the community. It is the institution of the police that historically and still to this day has caused immense harm and distress to the queer community. Not only is this distress ignored, but when clashes like these happen, it is the straight police commissioner who is given the first word. And I will make the note that being a cop is not a gender or sexuality.

It was a shame to see the escalation of this tension reach the point that it did over the weekend, but for too long the queer community has been telling you that they feel unsafe, and no-one is listening. We need to actually have these conversations and not ignore them and allow tensions to continue to grow, because a straight police commissioner calling queer people an ugly rabble and commending officers for showing restraint – despite video showing violent interactions, including queer people being punched and choked – is not suddenly going to stop the queer community from protesting in the future. (Time expired)