Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Bills

Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of David Davis:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (14:26): I rise today to make a contribution on the private members bill introduced by Mr Davis, the Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025, a bill that Mr Davis brought before the chamber a couple of weeks ago that attempts to create a protest registration system and a ban on face coverings in Melbourne and Victoria. Mr Davis’s second-reading speech that he gave in the chamber on 27 August provided an overview of some of the protest activity that we have seen in the city in recent times and made some broad remarks about how this bill would go about trying to address some of the concerns that he spoke of. At the heart of it is a concern that he expressed and I think others in the community have expressed about the impact that some of the things that have been said at some of the protests are having on members of the community. Honestly, I would take the concerns of Mr Davis and the Liberal Party about the things that are being said at protests in our community more seriously if they had the courage to stand up in this Parliament and vote for laws that criminalised hate speech, but they did not. The Liberal Party had an opportunity earlier this year to actually make a difference to the conduct of the civil discourse in the state of Victoria. They actually had an opportunity to vote for laws that made it a crime to vilify people on the basis of who they are or what they believe in, they had a chance to stand up for the multicultural communities who have been the subject of racial vilification and they had an opportunity to stand up for the religious groups that have been the subject of vilification and hate speech, but they walked away from them when they had an opportunity to take a stand when they stood in this place earlier this year and voted against the government’s laws that would have criminalised hate speech in this state – laws that passed and will come into effect later this month, no thanks to the Liberal Party. So you will forgive us that we are not particularly capable of believing the sincerity of the words that the Liberal Party have to say in a debate about community safety when they trivialise it or in a debate about making people feel safe in our community when they are against trying to seek protection from words and vilification and when they vote against laws that make those words a crime.

No-one from the Liberal Party has had the courage to stand up since then and apologise, let alone explain why. They took a decision earlier this year to vote against laws that would have criminalised hate speech in this state. They have never done it. They can come in here and introduce this bill. I am sure we will hear contributions later in the debate imploring the government to do something. My message to the Liberal Party is you had a chance to stand up against hate speech in this state, and you sat down. You had a chance to lend your vote to your voice, and you did nothing. In fact it was worse than doing nothing – you voted against it. You voted against the communities that are on the receiving end of the hateful words that can spew out on our streets. When you come into this place with bills that pretend to care, you will forgive us for not believing you.

That is the reality of what we are facing today. That is the reality that sits behind this piece of legislation. Let us not forget what has preceded it. Let us not forget the actions of those who purport to care, but when it comes to the crunch, when their vote is on the line, they walk away from multicultural communities. They walk away from religious groups. They walk away from creating a Victoria where people feel more safe and secure in practising their religion, in being who they are. That is what the Liberal Party has done in this chamber, in this city, in this state, over the last few months, and that is why it is very hard to take the posturing and the grandstanding that we see from them at the moment.

I made the point earlier today in my contribution on the short-form documents motion about the Liberal Party’s attitudes to the machete ban, the way that they have sought to trivialise important measures that are designed to improve community safety, that they have sought by their actions and their words to misrepresent wilfully, in the face of corrections, information in the community that is just false. They stand there on social media, out in the community, wherever anyone will put a microphone in front of their faces, and they continue to trivialise and undermine the government’s responses to community safety here in Victoria. I talked about it earlier today in the way that their actions and their words are trivialising the efforts that this government is making to get machetes off our streets, and we see it again now with a piece of legislation that they are trying to use as a cover to hide from their failures to stand up when it counted against hate speech, their failures to put their votes where their voices are when it matters.

They have no credibility. We do not believe them, members of the community should not believe them, when they say one thing out there and do another thing in here, because that is when politicians get bad names. It is actions like that that give politics a bad name – when you say one thing to the community when you meet them and shake their hand and you do the exact opposite when you get the chance, when there is a vote on a law that will criminalise hate speech in this state. That is their track record. That is the context for this bill. That is why it is so, so difficult to take them seriously in this debate here today.

The Labor government have very clearly said – the Premier and the Attorney-General – that we are committed to making sure that there is safety at our protests, that there is peace at our protests and that the right of Victorians to protest peacefully and safely within the law is protected. And for actions that go beyond the law, there are consequences. One of those consequences, which starts later this month, is if people go to protests and racially vilify people they will be committing crimes – not because of what the Liberal Party has done, but because of what the Labor government has done. That is what is going to happen to protests in Victoria when our anti-vilification laws come into effect later this month.

What we want to do with the laws that the government has committed to developing and that are underway – in fact it was in December last year that the government committed to dealing with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations through a range of measures. I will go through these now, because I think what the government’s approach is demonstrating is that we take the underlying issue seriously – the damage that the speech causes to others – because we have passed the laws to criminalise it. We are working constructively with people like Victoria Police and community organisations in the development of these laws, and we will take the time to do the work, the consultation, the thinking and the drafting to get it right. We are not going to use vulnerabilities in the community – fear in the community – to exploit for political gain the way that the Liberal Party seeks to do again and again and again that is manifest in what we are seeing here today.

In December last year the government committed that we were working on legislation to deal with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations by things like prohibiting the flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations; by empowering police to unmask violent, hateful, dangerous individuals who attend protests and, cowardly, hide behind masks; and by addressing the use of dangerous attachment devices. We also committed as part of that to introducing new laws to protect the rights of people to gather and to pray free from fear, free from harassment and free from intimidation, and consultation has begun. Targeted consultation has occurred with police and with faith leaders, with legal and community groups across the public sector and with community and union stakeholders on what those safe protest laws will look like. That work that is being done thoroughly and comprehensively, and laws will be introduced soon, because we do need, as part of any civic and civil society, to find where the balance exists between the right of individuals to come together collectively as part of a protest in a democracy and to protect those who feel impacted by those protests.

One of the key elements that we have as part of the laws that are being developed is developing laws that will allow Victoria Police to unmask violent and hateful demonstrators. We have seen quite recently the use of masks in the cowardly attempts by neo-Nazis to strike fear into the community and in their unwelcome parades on our streets. We had last month the midnight run through the city by masked goons, and other incidents recently of people with masks spewing vile hatred on the streets. The laws that the government is developing, that we will bring into this chamber and that we are working on with people like Victoria Police, will make sure that those thugs – those goons, those cowards – are unmasked and that they put their faces to their words and face the consequences of their actions. That is what this government is working towards, that is what this government is working on, because we actually put the first part of that equation in place with our anti-hate speech laws, which again I will remind people are laws that criminalised hate speech in Victoria that the Liberal Party voted against. Because there is no point, I think, dealing with the laws to regulate protests or dealing with the laws to regulate masks at protests if you do not have the anti-vilification laws in place to protect those you are actually trying to protect; otherwise it is just false. That sums up the problem with both the Liberal Party on this bill and the Liberal Party more broadly.

One of the reasons we are taking care with these laws and taking the time to develop them properly is because they are complex. They do involve the balancing of different rights and interests, and we are taking soundings and advice from many in the community. We did see and read with interest the comments from the new Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police in July and his response to questions about proposals for a protest registration scheme. Chief Commissioner Bush said to the Age:

We’ve had a look at it, and it’s not something we’re going to drive towards … We’ve had a look at other jurisdictions that do that, and it’s not the game breaker.

The majority of people that protest, do so peacefully and they are more than entitled to, and we support that.

That is what the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police has said, and it was not just once. He reiterated the position when he spoke on ABC Radio Melbourne on 28 July. The Chief Commissioner reiterated that position by saying:

We’ve had a look at that. We’ve had a look at what our neighbour jurisdictions do. We don’t believe it’s something that will make a material difference, so we’re not going to pursue that line.

That is a pretty clear statement from the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police about what the tools are that they think they need to deal with this issue, and what is proposed in this bill is not one of them. So we need to I think bear some due consideration to those words in the development of policy as we move this forward and as we decide how we are going to deal with this.

I will make the broader point that the efficacy of the bill that is proposed is questionable in terms of the harm that it is trying to address. One aspect is that we need to take a step back and think about the sorts of people denied under the registration scheme the Liberal Party proposes. It would be interesting in the course of this debate if the proponents of this bill and those who support this bill could give us examples of the types of people who they think should be denied the right to protest, because one of them I expect would be the neo-Nazis that we have been seeing on the streets. But I think it defies credulity to think that neo-Nazis are going to stop because they cannot get a permit. I do not think that they are going to stop because they cannot get a permit. Despite the laws in New South Wales, we have seen examples of neo-Nazis marching in Sydney.

The other aspect of the bill that we think is a problem is the reintroduction of some of the move on related powers that were repealed in 2015 because of their impact on peaceful protests, particularly in certain industrial disputes. We certainly do not believe in handing more powers to those who seek to disrupt particularly working people’s rights to withdraw their labour and establish picket lines in accordance with federal industrial laws. The other element of the bill that I wanted to touch on in a bit of detail is on the question of face coverings. The bill seeks to make amendments to the law with respect to face coverings and offences with respect to wearing them. I articulated earlier that the government, in its statement in December, made commitments to working on measures relating to face coverings, because we should not fool ourselves that masks give anyone who wears them a free pass to break the law. There should be no place to hide, whether it is behind a mask or otherwise if you are a racist that is stirring up hate on our streets. But this bill is not going to target them. It is not going to deal with them. It is going to target other people wanting to engage in peaceful protest. These laws would make it a crime for a person to wear a mask at a protest in a number of circumstances that we think are unacceptable. One of the outcomes that is clear on the face of these laws is that it could possibly criminalise the wearing of a mask as a part of a costume at a Mardi Gras parade or a Pride parade. That is certainly not something that we think –

Richard Welch: Is that a protest? Mardi Gras is not a protest.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Mr Welch, it is your bill, and it is your job to explain it – and if it is not right, get up and say it.

Members interjecting.

Renee Heath: On a point of order, Acting President, once again Mr Batchelor is being angry and nasty, but he also knows that he is not allowed to speak to Mr Welch directly; it has to be through the Chair. Secondly, he is not allowed to point.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): I ask Mr Batchelor to direct his comments through the Chair.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Acting President, through you, if Mr Welch is so insistent that something I am saying about the terms of the legislation that the Liberal Party is proposing is incorrect, I encourage him or anyone else on their side to get up and clarify it, because it is their bill we are talking about, not ours. If they want to get up and clarify whether their bill would criminalise the wearing of masks at Mardi Gras or a Pride parade, at the Midsumma Pride parade –

Renee Heath interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: It is your bill. It is the Liberal Party’s bill so they can get up while they are making that explanation and address the issue I raised at the start of my speech as to why they voted against the criminalising of hate speech. I would also like an explanation from the Liberal Party as to why they voted against the criminalisation of hate speech in this state earlier this year, because they are not willing to do that. They are not willing to admit that they made a mistake back then, probably as they have just made another mistake here with the terms of this bill that would make it a crime to wear a mask at Midsumma.

What the government is working on, as we have demonstrated, is that we will be bringing into the Parliament, as soon as possible, proportionate laws that deal with the issue of face coverings at protests, with appropriate exemptions, including for health, cultural and religious reasons, laws that will build on the work we have already done to improve social cohesion. That is where I want to end the debate here today. We do have challenges with social cohesion in our community. I do not think anyone who bore witness, whether in person or through the media, to the events that took place in Melbourne on 31 August can deny that we have got a problem with social cohesion in this state and we have got a lot of work to do. I know that the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, amongst many in the government, is taking this issue very seriously and working tirelessly with our multicultural communities, with our faith groups, with civil society and with the police to end the hate.

One of the ways that we can do that as a community and as leaders in our community is to stop using these incidents as political weapons in this Parliament – to stop the attempts at pointscoring that we see from those opposite on a regular basis about issues of social cohesion and community safety. They could join with us in an attempt to rise above some of the language that is being used to divide our communities. Sadly, some of that language is being used by senior members of the Liberal Party to divide our community and make some groups in our community feel unwelcome and unsafe. They should lend their voices to condemn those amongst their own ranks who seek to sow division in our community, and hopefully they take the opportunity that this debate affords them today in this place to do that very thing. I think that would be an indication that they are willing to stand up and stand above the petty division that is befalling too many in our community.

What we are trying to do in the government, led by the Premier, the minister and others, is work on strategies, not just one thing – not just on a piece of legislation and say ‘job done’; not just on one particular strategy or grants program and say ‘job done’; not just with one part of our community and say ‘job done’. Across the board the task we have collectively as community leaders to rebuild trust, to rebuild respect and to rebuild cross-cultural understanding is more important now than ever, because what we are witnessing on our streets – the way that nastiness and divisiveness are slipping through the cracks and fissures that are emerging in the fabric of our community – should be alarming to us all and should be a concern to us all.

Instead of trying to break those cracks and fissures a little wider, instead of trying to let more of the unrest bubble up and bubble through because they might see some short-term political advantage in it, instead of giving a pass to some of the terrible comments that are being directed at people who come here because our country is great and they too want to build a better life, I think what we need from everyone in our community, in the Parliament, in the debate today, is to rise above some of that rhetoric and to do all that we can to make sure that everyone feels valued as part of Victoria; that everyone feels that they belong in this great state, whether it is supporting our First Nations communities through the simple act of an acknowledgement of or a welcome to country at the beginning of proceedings, right through to making sure that we absolutely condemn neo-Nazis for violently attacking First Nations communities in this state; that we support our multicultural communities when they come under attack from so-called leaders in the community; and that we stand up against antisemitism, against Islamophobia and against all forms of racial discrimination and racial vilification. That is what we can do.

What we have got before us today is a bill that will not do that. It is a bill that will not solve the problem that it is trying to. On its terms it will not do that. But broader, and that is where I started, it is coming from an opposition that has no credibility on this issue, because of their actions in this place. They have no credibility on protest laws when they vote against laws to criminalise hate speech. They are seemingly more interested in cracking down on the protests than on what is being said, and I find that to be an upside-down set of priorities. That is why we cannot take them seriously, that is why this bill does not stand worthy of support and that is why the government is getting on with the job of dealing with these issues around protests. Laws will be brought forward by the Attorney-General to do so, and more importantly, people like the Minister for Multicultural Affairs are leading our work trying to improve social cohesion across this state. We will not be supporting this bill.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:56): There are a few things to say, and I believe my colleague Mr Davis covered a lot of it in my absence. There are a lot of things to take in from the contribution we just heard, and if I could describe it in a two-word summary I would say, ‘Spare me.’ I mean, when we look at the anti-vilification laws – and he spent a lot of time on the anti-vilification laws, which is not what this is about – I suggest the member should put his piety in a box and show some humility, because when it comes to what he was talking about, the machete ban, it was he and his colleagues who opposed my bills in 2023 and 2024, which would have seen a ban on machetes and would have seen machetes off our streets. Arguing against it, he had colleagues say that we were just after a Herald Sun headline and that no-one is really concerned about this – absolutely spare me the sanctimonious nature of what we just heard from Mr Batchelor.

Mr Batchelor spoke about the anti-vilification laws; we supported the criminal elements of the laws, but we were not going to support the civil element, which we wanted removed: a reasonable person with a protected attribute to judge the offence instead of the reasonable person test, which had been in place for a long time. Mr Batchelor spoke about supporting religious leaders. If I had been eating Weet-Bix, I would have choked on them, because he spoke about supporting religious leaders, and the government gave rock-solid guarantees to religious leaders regarding the anti-vilification laws and then went off and did a deal with the Greens political party to narrow the religious freedom defence as part of the anti-vilification laws. They did a dirty deal with the Greens, and the same religious leaders on whom they spent over $10,000 of taxpayer money trying to schmooze and host at Shrove Tuesday events were absolutely appalled that the Labor Party would do a deal with the Greens political party to narrow the religious freedom defence, to narrow the scope of religious freedom in this state. That is what they did. I use the term ‘narrow’ because that was how it was described in committee by Mr Puglielli, who was part of the negotiations by the Greens.

The Labor Party say they support and listen to religious leaders. They went and did a deal with the Greens to narrow the religious freedom defence in this state. So spare me the sanctimony of Mr Batchelor, who comes in here and gives moral lectures to us full of absolute hypocrisy, who talks about opposition claims about machete bans and how Labor’s machete ban is working. It is the same Labor Party who for years opposed any attempt – and Mr Batchelor stood up in their spot – to impose a machete ban as we introduced bills and motions to try to get the government to deal with this issue. Really it is just astonishing what we heard in the previous unfortunately 30-minute contribution – 30 minutes that we will never get back thanks to the sanctimony of what we just heard, but we have come to expect nothing less from the Labor Party. He was talking about opposing the anti-vilification laws, and as I said we only opposed the civil elements because of four words inserted in there, and the government, being basically stubborn in not wanting to negotiate with the opposition, then went and weakened religious freedom. Also now in law, thanks to a deal with the Greens and the crossbench, the police and courts will have to consider the social, historical and cultural context of the perpetrator committing the hate. We are an egalitarian country where everyone is equal under the law, but under those laws not everyone is equal. That is what the government did – shamefully that is what the government did – and it is rightly what we ought to oppose, because when the government passes unequal laws there are winners and there are losers. The social, cultural and historical context of the perpetrator committing hate or the perpetrator committing a serious criminal offence should not matter, but that is what we get under this government, who do dirty deals with the Greens political party and the crossbench.

It is important to speak on this bill, a proposition the Deputy Premier supports. We know through countless media briefings that the Deputy Premier supports a bill like this, so it is important to introduce it and to get on record from many other members why they would oppose a simple bill such as this. This weekend there are four protests that are planned by extremists at a time when a cop killer is at large and the police force is 2000 police short of its capacity. Our bill will allow for police to be better allocated to deal with these protests. Since October 2023 there have been over 500 protests in Melbourne, diverting 22,000 police shifts away from frontline crime prevention. Fifty per cent of crime is unsolved in Victoria, the highest ever, and it will only get worse while hundreds of police are being diverted to babysit extremists and a certain amount of losers and a rabble, a noisy minority who would seek to divide Victorians. I have, as the local member, spoken to many CBD traders who are really feeling the impact of regular disruption in our city. Protest activity has increasingly involved fires being lit, roads blocked, Australian flags burnt and attacks on citizens and police officers. The Allan Labor government promised to ban masks at protests over 267 days ago but has failed to deliver, so we will. Victorians deserve the right to protest lawfully and peacefully, but not at the expense of public safety and at the expense of frontline police being ripped out of the community. I have chatted to many police officers around Broadmeadows and Craigieburn who have had this exact experience, where they were forced to go into the city instead of patrolling the community like Hume, where there are two aggravated carjackings a day. They should be out on the streets monitoring the local community.

Under the protest registration system organisers must provide purpose, time, location and participant details to Victoria Police. Police can recommend changes to reduce risk to public order, safety and infrastructure. There will be a ban on face coverings, so neo-Nazis like Thomas Sewell and other cowards will not be able to have face masks. It prohibits masks at protests; lawful excuses, like religious attire, are excluded and protected. And it of course strengthens move-on laws. This government got rid of the move-on laws, shamefully. This would target repeat offenders. Courts can impose exclusion orders banning offenders from protest areas for up to 12 months. And of course it would safeguard free speech. Mr Batchelor made some wild claims about Mardi Gras. He should know that Mardi Gras is in Sydney. But beside that, peaceful protesters at authorised events would be protected from obstruction charges and protected from those rules around face coverings. It would guarantee lawful protest while maintaining community safety, and I think that is particularly important.

We have seen a lot of disruption in our CBD. Most of it is peaceful protest – the lion’s share of it is peaceful protest – but there is a small, noisy minority that will go out of its way to seek to divide Victorians, to seek to cause hate and division. One such example we saw the other weekend – and you could see it coming a mile away – being the march for Australia rally. Not everyone at that rally was there to cause trouble, but you could clearly tell that the people behind it were. The singling out and targeting of our Indian community in particular was a shameful episode, something that I spoke out very strongly about in the days before the rally itself. I do believe that people who single out and target our Indian community here in this state have probably never actually met a member of our Indian community. They are industrious, entrepreneurial, vibrant, life-loving people. They are patriots. There is somehow this mood to hijack the Australian flag – that that is Australia and that is not Australia. I just want to say I am run off my feet every single Australia Day attending events with our Indian community, our Nepalese communities, our multicultural communities, who are so proud to be Australians. They consider themselves Australian. They love Australia and the opportunities that it has provided to them. So for these losers to single out the Indian community and target the Indian community is an absolute disgrace, and the scenes that we saw at the rally targeting sacred sites, again, were shameful.

A member interjected.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Again – I will take up the interjection – I thought the senator’s comments were deeply regrettable. And I have spoken to many people in our Indian community who feel the same. I do think that she should apologise. I do think that she should apologise because, firstly, it was wrong; but secondly, when you make a mistake – and she said that she made a mistake – you should admit that mistake and actually say the words that are required. That is what decency is about. As the Leader of the Opposition said this morning, we do think she should apologise. We love our Indian community in Victoria, and frankly the claims made by the pollster in question are wrong. If 85 per cent of Indians supported the Labor Party, the Labor Party would hold the seats of Berwick and La Trobe and other seats across the country. The Indian community come to Australia with an open mind. The Indian community come to Australia, start a business and sometimes hold down two or three jobs to get ahead, to buy a house, to take part in the Australian way of life. They are a great community. I will not stand, and the opposition will not stand, for attacks on our Indian community, because they are a great community. I have many lifelong friends in the Indian community. I have many lifelong supporters in the Indian community and close friends in the Indian community who contribute a great deal to the Australian way of life. But I am very pleased to support this bill, and I am looking forward to hearing the debate.

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (15:11): I also rise to briefly speak and express my strong opposition to the bill before us this afternoon, which describes itself as creating safer protests with a registration system, and it is hard to see a bigger oxymoron. By its very nature, protest does not ask for permission. Protest is not meant to be convenient. It is meant to bring about change, and sometimes that does not always come at the times that we would like it to. So we really should call it what it is, and it is a blatant attack on our fundamental right to protest that means so much to so many of us.

I have said this before, but long before coming into this place I was an activist. I will always be an activist before I am a politician. It is through those movements that I was led to politics and I was led to being a member in here. It is not guaranteed that I will always be a member of this Parliament, but it is guaranteed that I will always be an activist and I will always engage in protest. It is so fundamentally important to me and the many, many communities that I represent, and any attack to tear it apart should terrify all of us who care about bringing about change, no matter what side of politics we are on.

The protest registration system created in this bill requires that the Chief Commissioner of Police only register protests which they are satisfied will not be highly disruptive to the public. I think this proves just how little the opposition understands about some of these protests and some of the people engaging in protest and just the very nature of civil disobedience. I know that this bill if passed would be an attack on my core base, my core community, the animal protection community, who regularly engage in civil disobedience, but they are not highly disruptive to the public. They are not violent. They are not harming anyone. In fact they are trying to stop harm. They are trying to stop violence in the work that they are doing.

We know that New South Wales has had a permit protest system in place since 2022, and it really is hard to see a major difference that it has made to the lives of its citizens over there. Both the government and the opposition have argued that their respective changes – because of course the government have flagged changes to protest in Victoria as well – are in response to rising antisemitism in communities and Nazis on our streets, and I do not think anyone at all is saying that should not be addressed. But this bill and the government’s bill, which I am apparently going to see at some point, are not the response to solving these problems. You only need to look at how these laws that are similar to this one before us today are applied in New South Wales to see who they are actually being directed towards, and they have the very same problems as us when it comes to social cohesion, when it comes to rising antisemitism and when it comes to seeing literal Nazis on the street. Their permit system has not stopped that.

After successfully denying their request for a protest permit, New South Wales police arrested 173 people for blockading coal exports from the Port of Newcastle, but when Nazis stood on the steps of Parliament, police were nowhere to be seen. I think it is really timely to remind people that there are already laws to stop Nazis on our streets; they are not being used and not being exercised. Of course nobody wants to see these people walking among us. It is terrifying – I probably know better than a lot of people in here just how terrifying it is – but these laws are not going to stop these people. They are only going to embolden these people, who want to be challenged. I am also not sure how exactly anyone can see a registration system as effective. Mr Mulholland touched on this as well. We saw Thomas Sewell on the streets on the weekend. This man is beyond any comprehension and any control. I cannot see him applying for a permit for his next goose walk down Bourke Street with all of his mates to make sure it is done in a legal, cooperative way.

David Ettershank interjected.

Georgie PURCELL: That is exactly right, Mr Ettershank. These people are not going to see these laws and a new protest system in place and suddenly start complying with the law and being citizens that are engaging with the laws of our communities and caring about social cohesion. Even Victoria’s brand new police commissioner opposes the introduction of a protest permit system. It has been mentioned elsewhere and is worth noting that neo-Nazis still joined in the racist march for Australia in Sydney despite protest organisers having a permit. That did not stop Nazis there. Police already have considerable and broad powers in Victoria. Officers can arrest or detain protesters if they reasonably believe a criminal offence is being committed. The removal of face coverings is something the police can already enforce and have enforced. In fact at the recent, revolting, racist march for Australia the CBD was declared a designated area, giving police the powers to search individuals for weapons and of course direct people to remove their face coverings.

The proposed ban on face coverings must be called out for what it is and what many people have already highlighted, given that the government has flagged they also plan on doing this: it is dangerous, and it also impacts many, many vulnerable communities that have multiple reasons why they must cover their faces. There are a wide range of reasons that people might choose to cover their faces. One is that, for immunocompromised people, wearing a face mask when in a large crowd keeps them safe and protects their health. Banning face masks at protests limits the ability of persons with a disability, elderly people and those with health conditions to participate. That is not fair. It is an attack on democracy. Protest should not just be for the healthy and able-bodied, it should be for everyone. This is a clear infringement on the rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of association and freedom of expression, as granted under our charter. The penalty of a $6000 fine or three months imprisonment proposed in this bill for not removing a face covering is simply outrageous.

David Ettershank interjected.

Georgie PURCELL: It is, Mr Ettershank – it is ridiculous. Here is something that perhaps will shock precisely nobody. Under this bill I would be a criminal, because something that I do every single year without fail – in fact I have done it for the past 12 years – is cover up my face, head out to the wetlands and go on duck rescue. I cover up my face for a range of reasons. I cover up my face for safety. I cover up my face because it is bloody cold out there on the wetlands at 4 o’clock in the morning and I cover my face because I do not feel safe around shooters. I think I have canvassed very well in this place the reasons why I do not feel safe around shooters and the threats and the attacks that I have received from the duck-shooting fraternity. But under this bill I would be the one penalised, not them, for their appalling, misogynistic and frankly dangerous behaviour.

There are so many in my community that choose to cover their face because they are professionals, they have jobs but they have issues that they care about and they do not necessarily feel safe revealing their identity, and I do not blame them for that. This is not some tinfoil hat issue. I have had the Game Management Authority follow me around the wetlands with a superzoom lens trying to work out who we are, because they want to target us, not the duck shooters. By enforcing these laws, which would make us feel unsafe and like we cannot engage in these issues that we care so deeply about, that would be fundamentally an attack on our democracy, on our right to protest. Like I said from the outset, that should concern every single one of us, because no matter what side of politics we are on we all deeply care about our issues, we all deeply care about our communities and every single one of them engages in protest as a form of opposition to government decisions and laws that are being made.

It is ironic that this bill has been put forward by a political party that actually regularly claim to stand for liberty and that claimed Victorians’ right to freedom of speech was at high risk in the recent anti-vilification laws that we passed in this place and that they in fact voted against. Today’s bill was introduced by the opposition, but as I have said, we know that the government concerningly intend to introduce their own shiny new protest restrictions, and we will basically be here again in a few months time saying the exact same things about those laws. These laws before us today do not work and the government’s laws do not work. They do nothing to repair the growing cracks in our struggling social cohesion, which I think every single one of us knows we need to do something about. This is not the solution – in fact it only makes it worse. I encourage everyone to vote against this bill before us today.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (15:21): This bill does not make protests safer, it does not strengthen community safety and it does not target the real danger on our streets. The Allan Labor government has already made clear its commitment to both safety and democracy. We are introducing laws that will give police the powers they need to deal with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations. We are doing this by prohibiting the flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations, empowering police to unmask violent, hateful and dangerous individuals who attend protests and cowardly hide behind masks and addressing the use of dangerous attachment devices. This government also recognises that the right to protest is a critical part of any democracy and that we need to get the balance right. I will cover off a little bit more on that later.

Our approach is balanced, proportionate and informed by the advice from Victoria Police. It protects the right of ordinary Victorians to gather, to march, to raise their voices and protest. It also makes sure that hate and violence are never given free rein. On that I too would like to refer to the criminal anti-vilification laws that come into effect later this month. If the opposition were actually concerned about hate, why didn’t they support them? I will tell you why: because they are peddling division to get votes – trying to get votes – from it. They say they want safety, but the truth is their bill would tie peaceful protesters up in red tape while leaving the real threat untouched. These are the people who want to dismantle our democracy, yet this bill creates loopholes they can exploit while restricting the rights of ordinary Victorians to peacefully protest. We only need to look to Sydney, where despite strict registration schemes, 30 Nazis marched openly, handed out flyers and led chants. Permits and paperwork did not stop them. Neo-Nazis are not out there applying for protest permits.

The government’s goals are twofold: to ensure community safety and protect Victorians from undue disruption but also to defend democratic rights. The Chief Commissioner of Police himself said that mandatory protest registration is not the answer. He said:

The majority of people that protest, do so peacefully and they are more than entitled to, and we support that.

That is the voice of common sense, and it is the advice this government is following to achieve our goals. You really have to wonder what are the goals of those opposite. This bill is from a party that hates migrants. We had federal MP Jacinta Nampijinpa Price criticise migration to this country and then from right across the chamber, ‘We love our Indian community.’ My question to you is: do you love this state? Do you love Victorians? Because 50 per cent of us are from another country or are children of someone from another country and quite frankly all of us, except First Nations people, are migrants. We are all migrants except for First Nations people. I think the existential question is for you across the chamber. This is from a Liberal Party that peddles conspiracy theories. You only need to refer to Mrs Deeming’s speech last sitting week to see that. This is from a Liberal Party that compared Daniel Andrews to horrific dictators.

The last time this chamber sat Mrs Deeming compared the Labor government to an authoritarian regime such as those created by Lenin, Mao and Saddam Hussein. And Mrs Hermans likened the former Premier to Stalin. Let us look at what authoritarian regimes actually do. Totalitarian leaders throughout history have spoken openly about crushing protests and harnessing zealots to destroy democracy. Take Mrs Herman’s example of Joseph Stalin. Stalin said:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

He knew the power of protest, and he feared it. These are the words of a dictator who sought to suppress democracy. What is more, he and others like him used violent fanatics as an excuse to do so. Tolerating or enabling extremists is not just grubby politics. In their book How Democracies Die historians Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt warn us – this is very ironic – that:

One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats … to justify antidemocratic measures.

Sounds concerningly familiar to me. Those opposite have dared to compare Dan Andrews, a democratically elected Premier who won resounding mandates from the people of Victoria, with dictators. These are not slips of the tongue; they are deliberate.

Attempting to recast democratic government is tyranny. It is reckless, it is offensive. It diminishes the real suffering of those who lived under true totalitarian regimes and distracts us from the discourse about those who are doing it tough in this state. For me and many other Victorian citizens of this great state, this is not abstract. My grandfather-in-law was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp by the Nazis in World War II. His crime was helping to feed and hide Jewish people from his local neighbourhood. He was part of the Dutch underground resistance movement, helping Jewish people escape that persecution. He was not even a Jewish person himself. He was just a decent guy standing up against the wrong thing. He saw firsthand what happens when fanatics are emboldened and when governments fail to act against them. He knew the price of standing up for others, and he paid it with his freedom and with his mental health. He suffered PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, until the day he died in Melbourne at 94 years of age. I had quite a long number of years where I knew him and loved him and his wife, who put up with that trauma.

When I see neo-Nazis marching openly in our cities, I think of him and I think of the millions who suffered. I know that the responsibility we carry in this chamber is not theoretical; it is deeply human and deeply moral, and the opposition’s bill is absolute hypocrisy. It creates permits and exclusions that will not deter violent extremists and threatens the rights of ordinary Victorians who march for climate action or workers rights or women’s safety or for peace. It is really just a tokenistic suggestion that they actually care about this stuff, that they are not peddling conspiracy theories, not hiding away from condemning Nazis and in true, deepest form actually not liking migrants, being racist and failing to condemn it categorically. ‘It’s unfortunate what she said. It could’ve been reframed better.’ That is not a condemnation. This government will not follow the path of those who suppress protest and encourage fanatics. We will legislate with balance and with principle to protect both the safety of our communities and the right to dissent, and that is the responsibility of a democratic government.

On my grandfather-in-law further, the legacy of his experience in World War II goes down the generations in the family. They migrated to Australia post Second World War, and they did so for the very same reasons that millions of other people migrated to Australia after various wars – many wars actually – and that is the devastation and horror that was living in Europe at that time after World War II. People were hungry, people were devastated and people were traumatised. They literally left their world and came here to another world for safety and for a democratic life with respect. I am very, very proud to have visited Buchenwald concentration camp with my husband 30 years ago. We were a young couple, and we walked through the gas chambers that were still there. It is real, and we have to stand up against this and never let any of this come forward. I am really proud that my daughter and her partner a few years ago also visited Buchenwald concentration camp, and I can tell you that, like us, they did not do so out of being tourists. It was about the burden of Peter Van Wees’s experience in Buchenwald concentration camp and the lessons we all want to hold in our hearts and in this democracy, and in my case now in this chamber, to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again. It was an unpleasant experience, and it was not pleasant for my daughter and her partner as well. But they are important stories to tell, and I am unbelievably sad to have to tell this story today in this chamber against behaviours that just imply and facilitate and do not condemn and literally just loosely stand for nothing and therefore let the doors stay open. That is really what we get from those opposite. With that, I stand very proudly against this bill, and I am very proud of all of the people in this chamber who also stand against this bill.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (15:34): I rise today to speak on this bill, the Safer Protest with a Registration System and Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025. I support this bill, but after having just listened to the contributions made in the last hours I just want to make some comments before I continue speaking on the bill. No wonder we are in a crime crisis. No wonder we are having an increase in violent crime at the moment. I feel like we are in a bubble. We are talking about legislation put forward in the chamber at this moment, but we have heard nothing but smokescreens, diversions, going on about migrants, going on about Nazis, going on about activists and how to benefit themselves whether this legislation passes or not. We are here to make legislation for the community, for those people out there who voted us in here. We are here to make legislation for the benefit of our economy, not the benefit of what the outcome of this particular bill will have on ourselves.

The fact is we are in the middle of a crime crisis. This weekend there are four protests planned within the CBD. From October 2023 to February 2025, 17 months, there have been over 500 protests, diverting over 20,000 police shifts away from the front line. Those are the facts. The fact is protesters’ activities are increasing, involving more violence and creating firebombs. The fact is they are blocking roads, sticking themselves with glue onto freeways and highways, stopping traffic. The fact is that these protesters have started burning our national flag. I do not know about you, but patriotism is a little bit in my heart, having served in the police, having served in the Australian Army. Patriotism means a lot to me when people start burning the Australian flag. These protests are now increasingly an attack on innocent citizens walking past and also an attack on our police officers, on police horses and on police dogs. That is what the facts are.

This legislation we are talking about, in summary – before going into detail – is just about creating a better system where people can protest safely and people can protest in a manner where there is more safety for those around them. It introduces legislation which gives peace of mind to those who protest, as they will know they will be protected against these authorities. Also, this legislation puts forward and gives police the opportunity for those who break the law and gatecrash these protests to be identified and brought before justice. That is it in a nutshell in relation to what these protests are about – nothing about migrants, nothing about discrimination, nothing about Nazis. It just so happens a group of people are wearing masks, whether they are Nazi believers, whether they are animal activists or whatever they are. It is not about those groups. It is about providing police powers and providing a system where people can protest safely and where there is safety for the community. It does not disrupt business, it does not disrupt ongoing bystanders and it does not cause fear for the safety of those in the community. That is what this legislation is all about – nothing about discrimination and nothing about what happened in the last legislation put forward about this.

In this chamber we must speak on this legislation itself and stop cutting it apart in relation to what you agree about on this legislation put forward and what you do not agree on; speak on the legislation itself. This legislation, as I mentioned, has two main parts. It introduces a registration system, so the organisers of protests can register with the police, speak to the police, put a proposal for the time and place they would like to have this demonstration or protest and at the same time give the police the ability to assess the risk for their safety and for the community’s safety and also the resources that can be put forward to protect the protesters and the community in case something happens. We have got to understand we are in the middle of a crime crisis. We do not need extra police pulled off their shifts to look after another protest. There are 1100 vacancies in police at the moment. Every station across Victoria is between 23 per cent and 33 per cent manpower down, per station, across the board. That is why you see so much less police outside patrolling, looking after the community. That is where we are with the situation at the moment, besides the debt. I am not going to even talk about the debt in relation to what has been cut from the police budget. But that is what this is – legislation to assist police to assist those who want to protest in a safe manner. That is all it is – nothing about discrimination.

The bill recommends changes in public order safety and infrastructure. This legislation allows those who want to protest to nominate a definite route to where they want to protest. At the same time it gives the police time to assess whether it is safe or not and also to put out barriers to protect the route the protests want to take. It also gives the police time and the ability to assess the risk and also negotiate and communicate with those protestors that maybe there is a different option because of A, B or C of the risks involved.

In relation to the second part of the registrations, it allows police to move people on when they are not registered. Those who do not register under this proposed legislation, it will allow police to move those people on. They will have the power to move people on. If they do not move on and if they obstruct police, obstruct traffic or obstruct the community, then that will be an offence. That is what this legislation is all about. There is nothing about discrimination. There is nothing about Nazis. I do not know where you are getting all this from. There is nothing saying ‘ban Nazis’. There is nothing in here at all about banning activists. So let us face the legislation and talk about the legislation.

You talk about banning face coverings. There is a reason for proposing the banning of face coverings. This is what the Premier Jacinta Allan, back in December 2024, promised. Because there was an issue, she promised to ban masks at protests. She did, back in December, but nothing has happened yet. That is why this legislation has been put forward. She spoke then because she knew there were issues because there were protesters who were deliberately wearing masks for a reason – to cover themselves from being identified when they committed an offence. We saw rocks being thrown at police horses and at police and faeces and rocks being thrown by people who were wearing masks. They go to these protests not to protest. They go to these protests to commit an offence. That is one thing I know – they are committing an offence. If you are going to protest, that is fine. Part one, as I mentioned in relation to the registration legislation, is all about protecting your right to protest. The second part in banning face mask coverings is so that those who do not follow the legislation can be identified and brought before the court for having committed an offence. That is all it is. It is very simple and straightforward.

Then we are talking about freedom to protest. You have got freedom to protest – just register. Simple. I want to protest down the road with a group of my friends – register. The police will talk about it, and then you are up and they will make sure you are safe to protest. Register, grab the people and protest.

In relation to prohibited masks and protesting unlawfully, for the elderly and for those who are disabled and those who need to wear face masks for whatever reasons or for religious reasons, there are exemptions listed in the legislation put forward. It says it will ban or prohibit masks worn without a lawful excuse. However, there are exemptions. Because of health reasons, there are exemptions. There are religious reasons. There are exemptions for it. So you can still wear masks if you have got a lawful excuse. Do not just chop that part off and say, ‘I’m unhealthy, I’ve got to wear a mask, but I’ll get charged.’ It gives you an exemption for it if you can provide a reasonable excuse, a lawful excuse. In relation to it being cold, do not say, ‘Well, I’ll stay home and not protest.’ If you think it is cold and you should wear a mask, as some member in here mentioned earlier, then if you are out there protesting, give it your voice. If you are getting out your thoughts in relation to what it should be and you are worried about the cold, put a jumper on, put a hat on, put a beanie on.

Going back to the bill, it will amend the Summary Offences Act 1966. I think it is fair to say that Victorians are tired of consistent protests in Melbourne that incite violence in our streets. We have seen that day in and day out over the last two years. Repeated disruptions in the communities in the CBD cause businesses to shut down and create economic issues and concerns. Let us think about that. It sends a very negative perception of our state. It also creates a state that is quickly becoming defined as a hate state. This is about protesting in an orderly fashion. What is concerning is the timing of dangerous protests happening at the moment, disrupting police resources.

I did mention before the cut to police funding, the $50 million cut in the budget, which does not help either. Being soft on crime does not help this. To bring it back to what this legislation is all about, for decades we have gone soft on crime. We have gone backwards in relation to people committing offences, so this is a step forward. It is not committing anything extra in relation to charging people. It just provides that people can protest safely and in an orderly fashion and the community can go about without fear. If they walk down the street, they will know it is a protest, and they are not going to fear that someone will come and trample them or that people will throw things in their direction. This is what the legislation put forward in this chamber will do.

I suggest those who will contribute after me address what is being put forward in this legislation, what was proposed in the legislation sought to be introduced by my colleague David Southwick in the other place. It will strengthen the move-on laws so that if a group of people is assembled for protest or for whatever reason and is not registered, if they are disorderly and disrupting traffic, disrupting businesses and disrupting community, police will have the power to ask them to move on. That is what this legislation is putting forward: giving police the power to move protesters on. When they refuse to move on or they hinder the police, hinder traffic, hinder communities, then that will be an offence, not before. This will give police the power to ask them to move on.

There are people in this chamber who have mentioned New South Wales. We are the only state in Australia that does not have a registration system. Just think about that. We are the state that has the most protests in the country, and at the same time we are the only state that does not have a protest system. Someone obviously is not listening to our community. Unfortunately, it is all pointing in our direction, the Victorian state, and that basically ends up with the Victorian government. The Premier hinted several months ago that she was going to do it this way. This is basically taking her words and putting them into place. We have waited so long, and nothing has happened. It is getting worse. This is what this legislation is basically putting forward in relation to a protest registration system and banning face masks.

With the last minute, I just want to say I hope all my colleagues, the crossbenchers and the opposite side focus on the legislation put before us and support it, because you know it is right. The Premier has mentioned it, it is right, so vote for it.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (15:49): I rise to speak on the private members bill Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025. The Greens will not be supporting this bill. Just a month ago I spoke to a large rally on the steps of Parliament, right here, a rally that was called to defend the right to peaceful protest. As I told the crowd assembled on that rainy night, that right is not a gift from the government. The right to protest is not something that we ask permission for. It is a right that was won. It is a right that we in Victoria continue to use, and it is a right that the community will defend.

Peaceful protest has been central to so many huge wins that we have had for this state and this country. The Franklin River was saved because people took to the streets, took to the river and said no to the dam. The eight-hour day, the first in the world, was won a century and a half ago right here in Victoria because the labour movement and unions marched and would not back down. Our forests in Victoria finally are protected because people stood between the bulldozers and the trees. Rights for LGBTQI+ people – including, historically, same-sex marriage – were won by people who refused to be hidden and silent but instead took to the streets to demand equality. In the last few weeks, and indeed over the last months and years, we have seen literally hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians and Victorians take to the streets firmly but peacefully demanding that our governments take action to end the genocide in Gaza. These have been some of the biggest rallies in Australian history.

This bill seeks to create a police-run protest registration scheme. It is interesting to note that the opposition are pushing ahead with this despite the Chief Commissioner of Police clearly being on the public record that he does not support a protest permit system. Liberty Victoria also have warned against any moves towards a registration or permit system for protests in this state. They say that peaceful protest is fundamental and that linking public order incidents to a permit regime is not a justification. They oppose restrictions on protest rights introduced under the guise of community safety or social cohesion. They call for governments instead to protect the right to protest. The Human Rights Law Centre has consistently cautioned against criminalising peaceful protest tactics, including those that are temporarily disruptive, and it has criticised broad expansions of police powers which then limit people’s right to participate in democratic activity.

The bill also seeks to criminalise face coverings at protests, noting that there is an exemption for religious reasons. The Human Rights Law Centre again has criticised mask bans, including the ones that are being floated by the government, as affecting vulnerable groups and limiting the rights of people who need to mask for health or safety reasons or cultural reasons to participate in protest. It is pertinent to note also that the Human Rights Law Centre has pointed out that extremist right-wing groups are thriving on the dynamic caused by criminalisation. This allows them to paint themselves as victims, drawing further attention to their causes and using the law as a platform for recruitment and provocation. We have certainly seen this dynamic, unfortunately, playing out.

It has been interesting to see that over the last months unions and community coalitions have pushed back against government proposals to tighten protest laws, particularly blanket bans on masks, on the basis that they will be used against peaceful dissent – for example, climate and workers rights rallies. Given this bill also seeks to impose stronger move-on powers, the Victoria Law Foundation’s comments are pertinent. They say that the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities includes a right to peaceful assembly. By repealing section 6(5) and layering exclusions on top, the foundation argues that the threshold for removing people from protest areas and then later banning them could be significantly lowered. This would escalate the legal risk faced by people exercising their democratic right by being present at protest sites.

Let us not forget, as I have outlined a number of times in this place during different debates, Victoria Police do already have extensive powers. For example, the Summary Offences Act 1966 already gives police and protective services officers the powers to direct someone to move on if they suspect on reasonable grounds that the person is or may breach the peace, endanger the safety of someone, cause injury to a person or damage public property. These orders can be made in any public place, and failing to follow a move-on order can result in a fine or being charged with a criminal offence. I keep underlining these existing powers because they seem to be completely missing from both the context of the debate that the government is advancing as its argument and the bill that the opposition is bringing forward today. For all of these reasons, the Greens do not support this bill.

Coming back to first principles, the right to peaceful protest is central to our democracy. When people speak truth to power and when we stand up for a better world, we may make those in power uncomfortable, but the voice of people making the powerful uncomfortable is not a crime. It is how people in this place are held accountable. Without the ability to raise our voices through peaceful protest, the power to make good change is severely hobbled. We will not support this bill today.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

I rise to make a contribution on the bill before the chamber.

The pithily titled Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025 is, according to Mr Davis, about ‘balance’, about ‘protecting the right to peaceful protest’ as a ‘cornerstone of our democracy’. It all sounds pretty reasonable.

As Mr Davis noted in his second-reading speech:

… this bill is about drawing a clear line between the right to protest peacefully and the right of every Victorian to live free from intimidation, disruption, and violence.

The bill itself looks a bit more like creeping fascism to me, but I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

In Australia the right to protest and assemble is protected under international law and is an integral part of a functioning democracy. This right comes from the implied freedom of political communication found in our constitution.

Mr Davis mentioned that 500 protests had occurred in Melbourne since October 2023, so I’m assuming he is specifically targeting the pro-Palestinian rallies, which I would suggest many people have attended because they want to see an end to what both the UN and the International Criminal Court have denounced as the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and, I would say, not unreasonably, they want to see the Victorian government sever ties with the weapons manufacturers who are enabling that genocide.

I myself have attended a number of these rallies.

No doubt the recent protests have been disruptive, but sometimes democracy is disruptive and messy and inconvenient. It’s what separates democracy from authoritarianism.

I wasn’t around in Parliament to see how those opposite responded to the anti-government, anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination protests that took place in Melbourne a few years back, but I do wonder if they spoke as passionately about the right of Victorians to live free from intimidation, disruption, and violence during the protests of that era.

Regardless, this bill and some of the recent laws introduced by the government are quite chilling and put me in mind of how government abjectly failed to respond to the rise of fascism in Britain. It’s quite a fascinating example.

As we know, fascism started to take root in Europe in between the two world wars, but one wouldn’t have thought Britain was a natural home for fascism. Britain didn’t lose the war, for starters, and the impacts of the Great Depression were not as severe as in other parts of the world. But nonetheless a small group of fascists were able to tap into the genuine concerns of working people, sowing fear, propagating images of chaos and destruction.

What does that have to do with the bill before us?

Well, we’ve seen neo-Nazis doing the same thing here. We heard Thomas Sewell on the steps of Parliament addressing his fellow protesters and promising that his men would fight for ‘our survival’ against the ‘ginormous empires of the Third World’.

If the bill’s aim is to free us from intimidation, disruption, and violence, and we take last week’s anti-immigration protests as an example, how would providing for the authorisation and prohibition of certain public protests work? Would it permit everyone bar the Nazis to protest in that case? This bill does not provide guidance on how we might respond to groups like the fascists, merely a means to stop any protest – and there’s the rub.

And by the way, can we please stop calling them neo-Nazis? There is nothing neo or novel about these people or their hateful ideology and love of Adolf Hitler. They are the same excrement on the sole of your shoes that they have always been; the only thing is, it’s easier to clean your shoes.

Anyway, this bill will empower police to ‘move on’ protesters, but this is unnecessary, as police already have sufficient move-on powers under the Summary Offences Act, so why do they need further powers?

The provision enabling a court to exclude a protester from certain places is similarly redundant.

Our position on the introduction of a permit system was informed by the comments of police commissioner Mike Bush. On 28 July he was asked in an ABC interview about introducing a permit system and said, and I quote:

We’ve had a look at that. It exists in other jurisdictions like New South Wales. We’ve had a look to see if it would be effective. Where we’ve landed is that it’s not worth bringing in.

Now there is a valid argument that the commissioner is not the lawmaker, that that responsibility is vested in the Parliament. But could I respectfully suggest to you, my colleagues, that to simply ignore that expert assessment is folly.

As for prohibiting protesters from wearing face coverings, it is not a crime to wear face coverings in public. The proposed change in this bill would hand Victoria Police extraordinary powers to arrest peaceful protesters where there is no danger to the public.

People wear face coverings for a variety of reasons. The banning of face coverings at protests will prevent people with a disability, elderly people and people with health conditions from participating in their democratic right to protest.

It will have a similar chilling effect on people who want to protect their anonymity and privacy. Who are we to say that someone who has been subject to gender-based violence, stalking, doxxing or retaliatory violence does not have the right to protect themselves or their families, for that matter, by preserving their anonymity while exercising their democratic right to protest?

And of course, there are people who wear face coverings for religious or cultural reasons.

How are we protecting these people from intimidation, disruption, and violence?

Are people not allowed to protect themselves from the unlawful and indiscriminate use of OC spray and tear gas by police – which we’ve seen a bit of lately – or from racial profiling, which we also know still takes place in this state?

It’s already a crime in Victoria to wear a disguise with ‘unlawful intent’ and police have powers to remove face coverings if a crime is reasonably suspected. So why do they need more than that?

So are these new laws only there to protect certain Victorians from intimidation, disruption, and violence?

As I’ve mentioned before in this place, I cut my political teeth in Queensland, protesting Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s anti-protest laws, which handed power to the police to approve or reject protest applications and to declare that a gathering of two or more people without a permit was illegal. I was one of thousands of Queenslanders not willing to stand idly by while our democratic right to protest was violated.

So I went along to those protest marches to fight for our democratic right to assemble and march, was duly arrested and charged a dozen or so times, copped a couple of very professional beatings at the hands of the Queensland police and have never looked back or regretted taking that stand.

For the second time in as many sitting weeks, I get to use my favourite philosophical baseballer’s quote: ‘Oh no, it’s deja vu all over again.’

Because the bill before us is not the ‘strong, fair, and necessary reform’ that is argued by the opposition. It is yet another attempt to weaken our democratic right to protest and to restrict people’s civil liberties. It hands more power to the police, enabling them to criminalise ordinary people for protesting.

We are aware that the government is in the process of formulating its own protest bill. It is my sincere hope that they have done the necessary work of consultation and engagement with the community and have developed specific measures that uphold our rights and liberties rather than impose these sorts of lazy blanket bans.

It’s worth noting that, at the end of the day, extremists love these sorts of restrictive laws. It enables them to paint themselves as martyrs, while drawing ever more attention to their cause and allowing them to recruit more easily.

The laws we have in place already afford police the tools they need to deal with violent and intimidatory individuals on our streets. We do not need more.

Spoiler alert: we will not be supporting this bill.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:56): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned until the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.