Wednesday, 29 October 2025

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:10): I am pleased to rise to make a contribution today on this matter that has been put forth by the opposition. I must say, it was a little galling to read the comments from the opposition in the paper this morning calling for bipartisan support for this private members bill while those opposite who claim bipartisanship only do so when it suits their political end. I want to just remind those opposite that our Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 was a classic example of where bipartisanship would have been welcomed, I am sure, not just in this place but in the broader community, and would have been absolutely appropriate given some of the pressure we have seen across the community and how that has impacted our particularly diverse communities and the way that they feel. But those opposite proved that they are not really focused on that. They are not really concerned about improving that social cohesion across our community. When it came to vote on that particular legislation, which would have made a real difference to protecting our community from hate, they were found lacking. They were only focused on division, with perhaps a bit of internal division in the mix there as well. They have been pretty focused on political pointscoring in this area of debate today. If they were truly interested in bipartisanship and a commitment to tackling hate, as I said, they would have supported our anti-vilification bill. I might remind those opposite that that bill had the support of multicultural and faith leaders from right across our community, and they would commit to supporting the bill that we as a government will soon be bringing before the Parliament to improve safety at protests.

We are committed to protecting the rights of Victorians to peacefully and safely protest. Our new laws are around strengthening safety at those protests, and unlike the laws that are proposed by those opposite today, they will crack down on those individuals who use protests to drive hate and violence. These laws, when they come before the Parliament later this year, will make a real difference for the community, for those who want to participate in protests safely and, I might add, for Victoria Police, who often bear the brunt of violence at protests.

Our protest laws will deal with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations through a number of different means, including prohibiting the flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations; empowering police to unmask violent, hateful and dangerous individuals who attend protests and in a quite cowardly way hide behind those masks; and address the use of dangerous attachment devices. I say again, if the opposition is serious about a bipartisan approach to these issues, they will support our carefully drafted legislation when it comes before this place and not seek to play wedge politics with these issues.

Our laws will give Victoria Police the power to unmask violent and hateful demonstrators, like those cowardly neo-Nazis who hide behind masks and spread their racist ideology, neo-Nazis who turn up – announced or unannounced – to demonstrations that target our proud multicultural communities, neo-Nazis who must all be unequivocally opposed by all of us in this place. As part of this work we are also committed to introducing new laws to protect the right of people to gather and pray free from fear, harassment and intimidation. Once again, these are laws that should be truly bipartisan. These laws will help protect our social cohesion and the right of Victorians to protest peacefully and safely without interference from extremism, whereas the opposition’s bill before us today is contrary to the advice of Victoria Police and will infringe the rights of ordinary Victorians. Our government is strongly focused on the safety and wellbeing of our community, and we are focused on balancing this, like any good government, with the rights of individuals to protest peacefully.

Nobody has the right to hide behind a mask to commit dangerous and violent acts. There should be no place to hide in this state if you are a racist stirring up hate in our streets. This bill will not target those dangerous, violent and extremist protesters, it will target everyday people who want to engage in peaceful protest. It would make it a crime for a person to wear a mask at a protest to protect their health, for example – we know that a face mask can be an essential protection for people with underlying health conditions; to protect their identity, for example, if they are a victim of family violence who might be fearful of retribution, and family violence victims should be allowed to attend a protest free from fear; and also to celebrate pride. Masks have long been a tool of expression in many cultures and communities. Our laws will be proportionate and get that balance right with appropriate exceptions, including for health, cultural and religious reasons.

These laws will build on the work that we have already been doing to improve social cohesion, of which I must say the list is extensive. I have already mentioned our anti-vilification laws, which protect more Victorians from vilification, the worst kind of hate speech or conduct that profoundly harms people and undermines our social cohesion. These laws came into effect last month and introduced new criminal offences for serious vilification, such as inciting hatred or threatening physical harm against someone because of who they are or what faith they follow. These laws will also strengthen existing civil protections against vilification and provide more options for remedy and resolution where people have been harmed. They will protect the right to free speech and religion by recognising exceptions for religious and artistic purposes and more.

These protections will for the first time cover disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protected attribute – for example, a parent of a disabled child. These are significant reforms that are all about making sure that Victorians have the protections they need. There is also the work of the Anti-Hate Taskforce that is being led by our Premier, which is engaging those communities who are at the receiving end of some of the most hateful behaviour that we have seen. The Anti-Racism Taskforce in the release of the anti-racism strategy, which is the first of its kind in Australia, provides a four-year road map for government to tackle racism and discrimination in all its forms and across all sectors. But it also importantly recognises and calls out that taking action to stamp out racism is a whole-of-community effort as well as a government effort, and I am proud that our government has been able to develop that strategy in close consultation with our community and particularly our wonderful diverse communities.

We also commissioned the Lekakis review to look at how our multicultural settings and institutions can better build bridges and heal divisions. George Lekakis is someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for, and the working group that worked with him – some really eminent Victorians, including Hass Dellal AO, Carmel Guerra OAM, Miriam Suss OAM and Mark Duckworth PSM – worked closely with George and really did deep engagement across the community in formulating their review and work for government. They spoke with more than 600 individual Victorians; they had over 50 open and targeted consultation sessions, and there were dozens and dozens of written submissions made to the Lekakis review. Last month the Premier and I announced the Allan Labor government’s initial response and the strong immediate action which we will take; they are all about putting multiculturalism at the heart of government where it belongs, tackling racism and improving safety for our multicultural communities.

We will create a new statutory body, Multicultural Victoria, and it will be established and have a new chair appointed to lead it. The chair will be supported by two deputies, with one from regional Victoria, plus a five-member advisory council of commissioners. At the heart of this reform, the creation of this new organisation will combine the engagement role of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, a proud institution in Victoria, with the policy role of the department, and it will have new responsibilities, including developing safety plans for communities affected by serious and distressing events, to name but one of the initiatives. The Premier will also lead a whole-of-government multicultural strategy to elevate community needs across all of our portfolios, and it will require multicultural needs to be considered in all cabinet decision-making. Let me just repeat that: we will be required to take into consideration the needs of multicultural communities in all cabinet decision-making. That is a really important cultural change, which we are proud to endorse 100 per cent.

Organisations applying for multicultural grants will be empowered to pilot a social cohesion commitment before it is rolled out as a standard funding agreement across all government portfolios, and we will create a new $5 million fund to strengthen the capacity and the sustainability of multicultural organisations to deliver for their communities and equip them to be leaders in resolving conflict and division but, more than that, equip them to be leaders in building social cohesion and connection across and within communities. In line with the recommendations made in the review and a recommendation from the anti-hate taskforce, an additional investment of almost a million dollars will support more people, including children, to visit Victoria’s multicultural museums, which are currently seeing reduced visitation. They are places where our kids get to know and understand the multicultural and multifaith stories at the heart of our state, including the wonderful Holocaust museum – if you have not been there, please go, as it is a very powerful reminder of what we must never, ever see again; the Islamic museum; the Jewish museum; the Chinese Museum; the new Vietnamese museum; the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo; and more. We are also doing work combating Islamophobia and antisemitism, which sadly have been on the rise, and we are working closely with our Jewish and Muslim communities to combat this hate. We are also working closely with our Sikh, Hindu and broader South Asian communities to make them feel safe, despite recent increases in anti-Indian and anti-immigration sentiment, including from, shamefully, the federal opposition.

All of these initiatives work together to improve our social cohesion, to tackle hate and make sure that everyone, regardless of their cultural background, their faith or their political beliefs, has the right to participate in every aspect of our society free from discrimination.

In summary, there have been many opportunities for those opposite to show their bipartisan commitment to tackling hateful behaviour – too many to go through again – and improving our social cohesion. Time and time again they have failed, instead succumbing to their natural state of division and political point-scoring.

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:26): I rise to make a contribution on the bill before the chamber. The Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025 is, according to Mr Davis, about balance and 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, it 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. In Australia the right to protest and assemble is protected under international law and is an integral part of our functioning democracy. This right comes from the implied freedom of political communication found in our constitution. Mr Davis mentioned that 500 protests have occurred in Melbourne since October 2023, so I am assuming he is specifically targeting the pro-Palestinian rallies. I would suggest many people have attended these rallies, me included, because they want to see an end to what both the UN and the International Criminal Court have denounced as an 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.

No doubt the recent protests have been disruptive, but sometimes democracy is disruptive and messy and inconvenient. It is what separates democracy from authoritarianism. I was not 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 is quite a fascinating example. As we know, fascism started to take root in Europe in between the two world wars, but one would not have thought Britain was a natural home of fascism. Britain did not lose the war, for starters, and the impacts of the Great Depression were not as severe as in other parts of the world and Europe in particular. But nonetheless, a small group of fascists were able to tap into the genuine concerns of working people, sow fear and propagate images of chaos and destruction. What does that have to do with the bill before us today? Well, we have seen neo-Nazis doing the same thing here on the steps of Parliament. We have 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 the recent anti-immigration protests as an example, how would providing for an 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 on the means to stop any protest. This bill empowers police to move on protesters, but police already have sufficient move-on powers under the Summary Offences Act 1966, 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 has been informed by the comments of police commissioner Mike Bush. On 28 July, he was asked in an ABC interview about introducing a permit system, which exists in other jurisdictions like New South Wales. He said:

We’ve had a look to see if it will be effective, where we’ve landed is that it’s not worth bringing in …

There may be a valid argument that the commissioner is not the lawmaker and that responsibility is vested here in Parliament. But I believe that to simply ignore that expert assessment is reckless.

As for prohibiting protesters from wearing face coverings, it is not a crime to wear a face covering 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 wearing face coverings wear them 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 that has been the subject of gender-based violence, stalking, doxing, or retaliatory violence does not have the right to protect themselves or their families 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 have seen a bit of lately, all from racial profiling, which we have also seen take place in this state. It is 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 we need to give them more power? Are these new laws only there to protect certain Victorians from intimidation, disruption and violence?

This 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 is worth noting that, at the end of the day, extremists love these 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 any more. The Legalise Cannabis Party is a party built on peaceful protest, and we will not be supporting this bill.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (14:33): I am looking forward to the opportunity to talk to this particular bill today, particularly given the issues that have come up around the sorts of challenges in the public domain and in the way in which we are addressing rights to exercise public gathering in spaces where, again, there is democratic action at play, but also an inherent danger of compromise to public safety. In this sense, I do want to make sure that we can address the importance of balancing various interests. When we talk to balancing various interests, I want to take us directly to the anti-vilification bill – the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 – which was debated and passed in this place. After considerable debate, it was revealed that no matter how much work would be done to provide a measure of balance, there are people in this Parliament – namely, those opposite – who were never going to support anti-vilification legislation.

It is very, very easy to say that people want to ensure that freedom to love who we love, to pray to whom we pray or to live in cultures where stories, history, experience and culture are embedded as part of the DNA of particular groups and organisations, some of our many vibrant migrant communities who call Victoria, one of the most multicultural places on earth, home. And we are also determined to make sure that people have the right to peacefully and safely protest, so strengthening safety at protests is another matter that will be addressed through legislation that we will be introducing very shortly. But the focus of that legislation is on the way in which we address people, and their behaviour, involved in the driving of hate and violence at protests. We do want to make sure that the starting point is one based in real-world experiences of people at protest gatherings, at public gatherings.

As people in this place might be aware, at the end of last year it was made very clear by the Allan government that we are dealing with violent and hateful and dangerous participation and conduct in public demonstrations through a range of mechanisms, including the prohibition of flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations, the empowering of police and the capacity to unmask violent and hateful and dangerous individuals who attend protests where those individuals – those cowards – hide behind masks. There are several emblematic images of people undertaking protest which, on their reading of it, might be said to be peaceful – until you take a step back and look at their masks, until you take a further step back and look at their stance, until you take another step back and realise that the gestures that they are using are Nazi salutes and that they are happy to invoke the most abhorrent, disgraceful, vile ideologies that continue to cause a ripple effect of terror, of fear, of anguish and of grief upon those who have lived and experienced that ideology translated into action.

Addressing the use of dangerous attachment devices is also really important. But the other side of this coin is also making sure that we are protecting the right of people, as I said earlier, to gather and to pray, free from fear and harassment and intimidation. As the Minister for Multicultural Affairs Minister Stitt said just before in her contribution, we are developing law that is a consequence of really deep consultation and engagement, work that is being done in good faith for a proper purpose, to make sure that balance is struck. Making sure that we develop safe protest laws is a process that does not, in and of itself, hang upon three-word slogans or front pages. It is deep work. It is work that takes place based in relationships and discussions, based in work that meets people where they are to understand the importance of cultural safety, to understand the existence of disadvantage because of membership of, or identification with, a particular group, culture or faith.

The right to protest is a really important one. It is really crucial to the bedrock of democracy. The way in which we create and sustain the balance to assist with that right to protest is the nuance that is inherent in a debate like this. On the one hand, the development of laws that enable Victoria Police to unmask violent and hateful demonstrators like the instances that I referred to earlier is incredibly important not just to protect social cohesion but also to send a really strong, clear message, an unambiguous message, that we have zero tolerance here in Victoria for interference by extremist thugs. I think that there is nobody from any kind of multicultural background who would not be able to recall an experience of having been singled out, of having been treated differently and for particular cultural groups – depending on the period or the era in which we are, depending upon the place where you are, depending upon the news cycle at any one time – experiences of hate, whether in language or in conduct, and exposure to compromised safety.

I also want to make sure that we are really clear in this debate about the importance of balance in the way in which we are assisting police to do their valuable work. Chief Commissioner Bush has been really clear about the protest permit issue, and he said, amongst other things, that protest permits are not the game breaker, that the majority of people that protest do so peacefully, that they are more than entitled to do so and that Victoria Police supports that. Chief Commissioner Bush also said that in coming to this position Victoria examined what occurs in other jurisdictions and is not of the view that it will make a material difference and that on that basis it was not an avenue that Victoria Police was inclined to pursue.

The other issues that are inherent in the opposition’s bill relate to the use of the proposed registration scheme. Let us be clear about the environment in which violent and extremist behaviour occurs. It is based in a flouting of the rules. It is grounded in an inherent disregard for the structures and the systems that would under other circumstances apply. To that end, the vast majority of people who do protest peacefully are more than likely overwhelmingly to be those who apply for protest permits. Violent extremist thugs have little reason to ask for permission to undertake the sort of conduct that they are wilfully prepared to engage in by attending protests or counterprotests simply for purposes or for reasons that include the incitement to criminal behaviour, the compromise to public safety, the causing of injury or the creation of unsafe environments. Just last month in Sydney we saw 30 Nazis take part in a march – in New South Wales, where those permits operate. They handed out flyers and they took to the stage to lead chants – ‘Heil Australia’, ‘Blood and honour’. These are the sorts of lightning-rod phrases and slogans that resonate with very, very particular parts of our community who loathe multiculturalism, who are happy to incite violence.

Neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens like these are not out there applying for protest permits. They have no regard for the law. The whole point of the sovereign citizen movement, or a key point of the sovereign citizen movement, is the virulent opposition to systems such as these. It would be an inherent contradiction for a sovereign citizen on the one hand to say that they refuse to accede to systems and processes, whether through the collection of taxation, the use of currency or the rule of law, and in so protesting say, ‘But we will in fact apply for a protest permit.’ It is hardly consistent with ideology to agree to be part of a system that is at its heart something you are protesting.

Masks are not a free pass to break the law. Let us be really clear about that: there should be no place to hide in this state if you are determined to stir up hate on the streets. The bill is not actually going to target those violent and extreme protesters. It is almost like a dragnet – it will scoop up so many categories of people who do wear masks for proper, appropriate, legitimate reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with violent or extreme behaviour. It was not that long ago that we sat in this place after we returned to limited sittings and very specific systems of work with face masks on. This is about essential protection, not just in respect of our own health but in respect of the health of others. It is not a new concept, but it is not excluded by this particular bill.

People ought also to be in a position to protect their identity because they are a victim of family violence fearing retribution. Family violence victims should be allowed to attend a protest free from fear, because victim-survivors of family violence experience so much fear, intimidation, coercion and control that this is, as far as the ignorance of the issue, something that really belies the corner-cutting that has taken place in development of this bill.

The laws that we are introducing to Parliament will build on the work that we have already done to improve social cohesion. We want to make sure that as our anti-vilification laws that commence next week get underway, we are also continuing with the work on social licence, respect, recognition and safety. This bill does not do any of those things.

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (14:48): I too would like to rise to make a contribution to the private members bill, Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025. As my colleague Ms Copsey already outlined in her earlier contribution to this debate, the Greens will not be supporting this bill. Victorians have always fought for a fairer state by standing together in public places – sometimes loud, sometimes inconvenient, but always essential. From the first 8-hour day in the world, which was won in Melbourne, to calling on the government to protect rivers and forests and the long, unfinished work of equality and justice, peaceful protest is the engine room of democratic change. It is not a favour the state extends, it is a right the people exercise. This bill seeks to tip the balance away from that right. It seeks to create a police-run protest registration regime and criminalises face coverings at protests with limited carve-outs. It widens the doorway to move-on and exclusion-type orders. It will chill peaceful assembly and burden those least powerful in our community. For those reasons, and because the bill does not satisfy the charter’s proportionality standard, the Greens cannot support it.

Let us take some time now to run through these issues one by one. The charter test – section 16 of Victoria’s charter protects the rights of every person to peaceful assembly and freedom of association. These are not ornamental words; they are binding human rights that require public authorities, including the Victoria Police and this Parliament, to act compatibly with them and to limit them only where demonstrably justified under section 7(2). The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission explains that section 16 protects the freedom to gather, pursue common goals and protest, gather or meet, whether in public or in private. That right belongs to everyone. Under section 7(2) the proportionality test asks us to justify any limit to:

the nature of the right; and

the importance of the purpose of the limitation; and

the nature and extent of the limitation; and

the relationship between the limitation and its purpose; and

any less restrictive means reasonably available to achieve …

the same end.

On each of these tests the bill fails. The next one – registration is a permit by stealth, and it would chill free speech. The premise of compulsory registration is that the state should be empowered to licence dissent in advance. Human rights law protects peaceful protest even when it is temporarily disruptive of traffic – for example, such disruption does not make a protest unpeaceful. Criminalising tactics used in nonviolent direct action and requiring prior permissions are classic forms of authoritarian overreach. Requiring registration creates a chilling effect. People fear being identified, recorded or burdened with conditions they cannot meet, so they stay home. That is precisely what a democratic society should guard against.

We are told by the opposition that the bill is needed to ‘give police tools’. Well, let us listen to police leaders on this point, shall we? Victoria’s Chief Commissioner of Police has said publicly he does not support a permit system for protests. When the state’s most senior police officer says a permit model is unnecessary and undesirable, but this bill proceeds with that regardless, I can only infer that the opposition is wilfully deaf. Let me be very clear: Victoria Police already have extensive arrest and search powers and even more powers in designated areas declared under the Control of Weapons Act 1990. These areas can be declared on a planned or unplanned basis by the chief commissioner. Recent declared areas have covered large CBD blocks. Once declared, police and PSOs already have existing powers. I will repeat that to make it clear: police and PSOs already have existing powers to stop and search people and vehicles without a warrant in public places, seize any suspected weapons, require people to disclose their identity and require people to remove masks – yes, this power already exists, which begs the question why this bill has been brought forward in this place and why the government will be bringing forward their bill later this year. Police are able to use these powers in addition to ordinary arrest and evidence-gathering powers for any criminal offending, such as offences of assault, property damage and incitement to violence, to name just a few.

It is also important to be precise about move-on powers in and around designated places. Under section 6 of the Summary Offences Act 1966 in Victoria, police and PSOs at designated places can direct a person to leave a public place where they reasonably suspect risks like breach of the peace or danger to safety. However, move-on powers cannot be used merely because a person is lawfully protesting. Protest activity per se is not a ground for a move-on, noting that police may still intervene where specific criminal offences are reasonably suspected. In short, Victoria has already granted police strong powers to mitigate risks and maintain safety at protests. Indeed the Greens would argue that many of these existing powers go too far without introducing a new generalised permit regime for protests or broad mask bans.

In terms of addressing community concerns about violence and hate, let me be clear: violent conduct at protests is unacceptable, antisemitism and Islamophobia are unacceptable and racial hatred is unacceptable, but we have the legal tools to respond to violence and vilification already. We do not need to criminalise peaceful assembly or force people to pre-register with police. The Australian Human Rights Commission reminds us that police powers are already very wide to respond where problematic behaviour occurs. Let us use them lawfully, proportionately and with human rights at the centre.

Let us consider masks and face coverings. The bill mask ban provisions look at a first glance like a neat answer to isolated instances of violence or anonymity, but broad prohibitions are a blunt instrument. The Human Rights Law Centre has cautioned that mask bans can harm vulnerable groups: people masking for health or disability reasons, immunocompromised Victorians, workers seeking to avoid employer retaliation for lawful participation, survivors of family violence or harassment who must protect their identity and communities who have legitimate fears of targeted online abuse. Narrow religious exemptions cannot fix the broader rights harm to privacy, expression and assembly. The better answer, the obvious answer and the available answer is to enforce existing offences against violent or hateful conduct, not to criminalise the act of covering one’s face. We all condemn violence – antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of hate – but conflating hateful conduct with protest activity is simply wrong. Offensive or violent acts are already unlawful and can be prosecuted, as I have outlined in detail above. Banning masks and enforcing registration will not prevent an individual intent on violence; it will, however, deter thousands of peaceful people from attending a rally at all. In a democracy we should not be trading off these rights. The Human Rights Law Centre Protest in Peril report charts two decades of creeping restrictions on protest across Australia. Vague offences, high penalties, specific protests and specific laws – these trends have drawn criticism from the United Nations experts, who warn that criminalising non-violent direct action is specifically anti-democratic. Surely as we look around the world, particularly now, why would we want to shrink our democratic spaces?

Let us now consider the disproportionate impacts of a bill such as this and ask: who bears the cost? Registration schemes and mask bans do not affect everyone equally. These include those who work in jobs that depend on employers’ goodwill, First Nations communities, migrants and refugees, climate activists and students, women escaping violence, LGBTIQ+ communities who have faced harassment – these are the people who most need the shield of anonymity and the freedom to gather without pre-clearance. A system that compels identification and advance notice will suppress their voices first. That is not theoretical. The Human Rights Law Centre’s evidence base shows how laws such as these skew participation and shrink civic space. Mask bans will be hard to enforce fairly. I mean, how do you distinguish a person masking because they are immunocompromised and those that have a fear of doxing from a person concealing identity for unlawful reasons? How can police officers make those distinctions at scale and in real time across thousands of people? They cannot. The likely result is selective enforcement among marginalised groups, black and brown communities, who always bear the brunt of this. A recent Human Rights Law Centre analysis underscored that blanket mask bans risk penalising the many for the acts of the few and are not a proportionate response under human rights law.

As I finish my contribution, I note that now of all times, when we look across the world and see democracy under pressure, the mark of a healthy, confident democracy is not that we fear disruption in a knee-jerk fashion but that we can absorb it without lurching to overreach. The registration scheme in this bill is a permit system by stealth, and the mask ban is a sweeping limit that will fall heaviest on vulnerable people. As a member of the Victorian Greens, it is useful for me to reflect that the Greens were founded on four pillars: ecological sustainability, social justice, grassroots democracy, and peace and nonviolence. This bill undermines at least three of them. Peaceful protest is the practical expression of grassroots democracy – ordinary people assembling to be heard. Peaceful protest is also an instrument of social justice. It is the way communities press for fair treatment when institutions fall short, and it is inseparable from our commitment to peace and nonviolence. We change society not through force or fear but through collective, nonviolent action in public. A registration regime and broad mask bans chill that tradition. They would not make Victoria more peaceful, they would make it more silent. Our task is to safeguard the nonviolent means by which people seek change, not to legislate those rights away.

 Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Treasurer, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Regional Development) (15:02): My assessment of this bill is that it is a retrofit from a press release – they tried to work backwards – or perhaps it was a meme or a social media tile, because there is no substance to it. I can kind of see the strategy, and it is disappointing because that strategy is pure politics and actually has nothing about safety at its heart. It is about saying ‘We want a safe Victoria’ without doing the hard work to get there. At the outset, if they are going to present a narrative that they care about these things, I would start by pointing out that those opposite opposed – they voted against – the government’s anti-vilification laws, which is frankly out of step with everything they are purporting to try and stand for through their empty words and this flimsy bill.

Enver Erdogan interjected.

Jaclyn SYMES: There is form in this regard, Minister. I agree with that. I will spend a bit of time just touching on the anti-vilification laws, because they came about in the way you should legislate: through consultation, through talking to people on the ground, through consulting with police and through consulting with courts and working out what actually might make a difference so that you can stand up and say ‘We want to send a strong message’ but back that up with laws that are actually enforceable and work. The laws about anti-vilification introduced a new criminal offence of serious vilification, and this was something that, as a former Attorney-General, I know was really important to those that have been subjected to discrimination, hate speech and fearful conduct in their communities. They wanted to see consequences and they wanted the threshold lower, and we delivered on that. Again, these new offences and reforms commenced last month. It is a sigh of relief for those that worked so hard to ensure that there was a response to those that incited hatred and threatened physical harm against others just because of their faith, their appearance or those they loved. We have also got the civil scheme coming into effect very soon, strengthening the existing protections against vilification and providing more options and remedies where people have been harmed. Again, it is lost on me how we have an opposition who is presenting a bill like this and saying it has a similar purpose to the bill that they chose to oppose.

This bill, in its 18 pages, does nothing to counter hate or protect communities that need it. Instead, it sets out, as I said, points on a web page or perhaps a press release. I think it is called the five-point plan – wishy-washy, empty statements on the Liberal’s website. As part of the five points or the five sentences, the opposition promised to introduce the registration and authorisation of public protests, introduce protest move-on laws and exclusion powers and make face coverings at protests an offence, which they have tried to pick up in this bill.

I will start with the protest permits proposal. Victoria Police have sufficient powers to do their job, including enforcement of offences such as trespass, obstruction of roads and violence. I do not believe much thought has really gone through to the workability of these provisions in the bill. I was here to listen to Ms Shing’s views on the fact that the very conduct you want to stop is committed by people that are unlikely to check a box on a website or sign up for approval for wanting to go out and cause disruption. I would go further in that the experience of Victoria Police right now is that they have good engagement with a lot of the leaders of the protest movements, regardless of what the cause might be, I will exclude your extreme people that purely come to disrupt, but most of the protests that occur in Melbourne actually have engagement with police, and there is a free flow of information.

If you introduce a permit system, what you could potentially do is discourage those conversations out of fear that you might be told, ‘No, you can’t.’ So I do not think it would discourage people coming to protest, but it would drive underground that free flow of information and the police being able to respond appropriately for their own safety and the safety of the people that have come to protest. Frankly, that is what the job of police is. They do not have a view on the cause. They are there to protect safety of the people who are participating and people who are just going about ordinarily in the city at the same time, for instance. I am concerned that a permit system really would discourage those open conversations, not to mention that we have a new Chief Commissioner of Police who, frankly, is out there on the streets. He has made Melbourne his home. He is really getting to understand it. He is committed to community safety; he has made this his number one priority. And I think the community is getting right behind the chief commissioner and the police. But we have an opposition who have got form in undermining public officials. This is not the first time they have done it. But rather than listening to Victoria Police, rather than working with them and seeking advice from them, they are basically just saying, ‘Oh, we don’t really care what they think. We’re just going to create a bill that asks them to do something that they don’t think will work.’ That is not usually how the Liberals operate, I have got to say. They usually say that they support police and are advised by police and want to give police the resources and the tools and the legislation that works for them. Well, this is in contradiction to some of that past practice and those empty words.

I just want to touch on face coverings at public protests. I picked up the bill from the centre table, and I thought there were some pages missing, because part 4 deals with offences and it merely says:

A person participating in a public protest must not wear a face covering other than for religious purposes.

Full stop – that is it. And:

A police officer may direct a person participating in a public protest who is wearing a face covering other than for religious purposes to remove the covering while participating in the public protest.

Honestly, I thought I should get another copy. I wondered where the other pages were, because as someone who has spent a lot of time crafting laws and seeking advice on how to make sure that those laws are effective, this is nonsense. Not only that, I do not think you can apply this law; I honestly do not. You need much more detail in legislation for police to be able to apply a law. Our job as legislators is to craft laws, but you have got to give enough detail as to how it is going to work in practice. What is a religious purpose? I do not know. There is no definition. It is unworkable. There is no account of vulnerable cohorts. There are no exclusions for people that have health issues, have a genuine reason for their –

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

Jaclyn SYMES: Respirators are a great example. There is nothing in here to protect the community. It is so incredibly empty that it is offensive. At the outset, as I said, this is working backwards from a social media post, because what I think the Liberals want to do and what I would ask Mr Mulholland to explain in their suggestion around splitting the bill – and it is not for me to talk about the Liberal strategy, but I would like him to refute this – is how this is about a strategy of splitting the bill because the government have said that they will ban face coverings. We have said we will do that, but we are doing the work to make sure it is effective, to make sure it is targeting those that come with violence – examples are your black-balaclava types, where police have got issues in identifying those people that cause intimidation and hate on the streets. The feedback from police is it would be useful to identify some of those, frankly, scary people that are causing harm in the community. That does not mean that we are going to sign up and say, yes, we agree with the coalition’s bill that is so poorly drafted and has so many unintended consequences. But it gives them an opportunity to say, ‘We wanted to go first. We were out there saying how tough on crime we are, and Labor opposed.’ That is what I am expecting is probably actually being drafted now. I reckon there is a ready-to-go –

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

Jaclyn SYMES: The press release was drafted weeks ago, but the social media ties will be, probably with all our faces, ‘They don’t care about safety in the community.’ That is the only reason I can see that the bill is drafted in the way it is – because there is no substance, there is no strategy, there is no impact, there is no care for the community. It is a stunt. And I would ask Mr Mulholland to explain why he is proposing to split the bill, even though I understand that the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel were not given enough notice to be able to do it anyway. Even if we were able to get past the second-reading today, I understand that you guys would have to adjourn because you would not be able to bring on your instruction motion to split the bill, which can only go to my suggestion, which you are welcome to refute, that this is a stunt. You are trying to bring the Labor members in to vote against the stunt so you can turn around and say, ‘Oh, actually, look how they don’t care about community safety.’

So, Mr Mulholland, please explain your strategy for splitting the bill, because we are opposing both elements of your bill, and we are opposing them because they will not work. In fact the bill could cause harm. In fact it is unenforceable and probably subject to challenge. Police did not ask for it. You have not done the hard work. You are ostracising people who legitimately have the right to protest. This is all in the name of politics, and it is disgraceful. I look forward to your social media memes.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (15:14): I was really getting into the contributions there by the Leader of the Government and then realised that I was indeed next on the list, so thank you very much for bringing me back to the room.

I rise to speak in, well, strong opposition to the Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025. The bill from those opposite does not make our state safer. It does not make protest safer, and it does not reflect the advice of Victoria Police or the lived experience, truly, of communities across Victoria. The Allan Labor government is absolutely committed to protecting the rights of Victorians to protest safely, peacefully and free from hate. We recognise that protest is at the very heart of our democracy, from the land rights movement to the campaign for marriage equality. The right to gather, to speak up and to call for change has been central to who we are as Victorians. But we also know that this right must be exercised in a way that keeps people safe. That is why our government is developing a balanced and evidence-based package of safe protest laws, reforms that target the small amount of violent and hateful actors who threaten public safety and social cohesion without burdening the vast majority of Victoria’s peaceful protesters. The bill before us today fails that basic test. It is not evidence-based, it is not supported by police and it punishes the wrong people. The centrepiece of this bill is a protest registration and authorisation scheme – in other words, a permit system. But as former chief commissioner Shane Patton has made clear, this idea just simply does not work. In July, when asked about similar proposals in New South Wales, he said:

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.

On ABC Radio Melbourne he reiterated the same point that a registration scheme is not something that will make a material difference. That is advice from Victoria Police – not a political statement, not a talking point. That is an operational reality from the people responsible for keeping Victorians safe. A protest permit scheme might sound good on paper to some, but in practice it only creates bureaucracy, not safety. The people that we are all most worried about – neo-Nazis, sovereign citizens, extreme agitators – are not going to fill in a registration form. They are not going to submit an itinerary or wait for approval before marching. As has already been shown in New South Wales, with 30 neo-Nazis able to march in Sydney last month handing out flyers and leading some really hate-fuelled chants, their registration laws did nothing to stop them. This bill will not stop extremists. It will simply tie up police, councils and community groups in red tape while giving false comfort that something meaningful has been done.

Perhaps even more concerning is how this bill will criminalise ordinary Victorians exercising their democratic rights. It reintroduces protest move-on and exclusion powers, which this Labor government repealed back in 2015 because of their effect on peaceful protest and industrial action. It goes even further to create a new offence for wearing a face covering at a protest. No-one on this side of the chamber believes a mask should be a free pass to break the law. There should be no place for people to hide if they are using anonymity to spread hate or incite violence. But that is not what this bill does. This bill makes it a crime for a person to wear a mask at a protest even if they are protecting their health – something we all learned the importance of during the pandemic – or are a victim-survivor of family violence protecting their identity from an abusive ex-partner or community member. It makes it a crime if they are celebrating pride or cultural identity, wearing costume or creative expression, as thousands of Victorians do every year at Midsumma. In other words, this bill would criminalise Midsumma. It would criminalise a woman who marches in solidarity with family violence survivors who chose to cover her face for safety. It would criminalise an immunocompromised Victorian wearing a mask to protect their health or the health of those they love. Our Labor government here is taking a very different approach. We are preparing targeted, proportionate reforms that will give police the powers they need to respond to violent or hateful conduct without undermining human rights or democratic freedoms.

Last December we made a clear commitment to deal with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations by prohibiting the flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations, empowering police to unmask violent or hateful individuals who attend protests and hide behind these masks. We are addressing the use of dangerous attachment devices like those that have endangered both protesters and police officers. We are also committed to introducing new laws to protect the right of people to gather and pray free from fear, harassment or intimidation, ensuring that faith communities, women and minority groups can come together. Since then, targeted consultation has occurred with Victoria Police as well as key faith, legal, union and community stakeholders to make sure the law gets the balance right. Those laws will be introduced very soon, I can assure those in this chamber. Unlike this bill from those opposite, the bill that we will introduce will very much make a difference, because we have listened to the experts. Victoria Police have said that a permit system is unnecessary and is unhelpful. We have listened to communities across Victoria who want to be safe on our streets, who want to stand up against hate and who also value their right to peaceful assembly.

The truth is social cohesion is not built through overpolicing or red tape, it is built by standing up to hate and fiercely defending inclusion, and this government has already taken some of the strongest action in the country to do just that. Earlier this year we passed landmark reforms to strengthen Victoria’s anti-vilification and social cohesion laws. These new laws protect more Victorians from the most extreme forms of hate speech and conduct. They introduce new criminal offences for serious vilification, including inciting hatred or threatening physical harm against someone because of who they are or the faith they follow. Those offences commenced on 20 September this year and strengthen civil protections which give people more options for remedy and resolution. Others will come into force on 30 June next year. For the first time, these protections cover disability, gender identity, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association, because hate does not stop at one attribute – frankly, it is intersectional and so should our laws be.

These are real reforms that make our communities safer and fairer. Yet when those laws came before this chamber, the Liberals and the Nationals did not support them. If the opposition were truly serious about tackling hate and violence, they would have backed those laws, but they did not – because of division in their own party room. When they talk about safety, what they really mean is control; they want to control who can speak, where they can gather and what they can wear. It is an approach that runs against the grain of what Victoria and Victorians stand for: fairness, equality and respect for difference. Victorians do not want a government or opposition that tells them when they can raise their voice, they want leaders who trust them and who know that ordinary people standing together in solidarity are not a threat to safety but a sign of a healthy democracy. Our state has a proud record of peaceful protest movements that have changed our history, from the women who marched for equal pay to the climate rallies led by young people demanding a safer future. These movements were not registered and they were not approved; they were driven by conviction, driven by courage and driven by the belief that democracy only works when people are free to participate in it.

That is what this bill fails to understand. It mistakes dissent for danger, and it seeks to solve division not through unity but through restriction. It is hard to take seriously their sudden interest in safety when they have had a chance to support real protections and have chosen to walk away. Victoria has a proud record of balancing rights and responsibilities. We can protect the right to protest while ensuring that hate and violence are never tolerated. That is exactly what our new safe protest laws will do. They will empower police to unmask violent and hateful demonstrators, like the neo-Nazis who have been protesting outside on the streets of this Parliament, and they will strengthen protections for many ordinary Victorians who simply want to be heard. They want to stand together, and they want to stand up for what is right.

The opposition’s bill is not only unnecessary, to my mind, it is dangerous – and for so many reasons. But beginning first and foremost, it is contrary to the advice provided by Victoria Police and very publicly by the former Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton. What we also know is that this bill is contrary to human rights and, foundationally, that it is contrary to the values of a fair and democratic Victoria. Every Victorian should be able to gather safely, to march for equality, to pray in peace, to call for climate action or demand justice or so many other causes that I too have stood proudly with my fellow Victorians for. I would hope that to do that – to march for equality, to pray in peace, to call for climate action or to demand justice – you can do that in this state without fear of violence or intimidation. That is what Victorian Labor is building – a state where social cohesion is strengthened, not undermined; where diversity is celebrated, not criminalised; and where safety and freedom go hand in hand.

We will always condemn hate, racism and extremism. I am thinking to the work that I do as the co-chair of the Anti-Racism Taskforce. I think about the members of that committee and what they want to see for the future of social harmony and social cohesion in our state and how they talk to me of the lines of fear that now entirely engulf some members of our multicultural community. I know that their aspirations for themselves and their communities and their children are something that we should all strive for in this place, a place where those here in Parliament want to defend the rights of Victorians to speak up, to assemble and to be part of a proud, democratic life and history of this state, because for so many of them the simple act of speaking up for what they view as right and just and fair for them and their children is something that they did not have before they found a home right here in Victoria, and that is exactly what they want to continue to protect and defend. This bill does not do that. It creates red tape, it punishes the wrong people and it ignores, frankly, the experts.

I am very much looking forward to seeing the bill, when it comes to this place, on the reforms that we are presenting that will make protests genuinely safer without silencing the voices of Victorians. I look forward to discussing that, as I do with many significant pieces of legislation, with leaders of the faith community, with representatives of the Anti-Racism Taskforce that I lead and also with other members of faith and community groups right across Northern Metropolitan Region. I am going to absolutely take the opportunity to speak to them about what we hope that bill will deliver for the safety and security of Victorians but also the safety and security of democratic life here in our state. It is for those reasons that I look forward to the government presenting the bill very soon, as I said earlier, and that I stand here today unable to support this bill.

With my final time on the clock I will say that I do encourage other members of this chamber to join me in opposing the bill before us.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Gaelle Broad): I would just like to acknowledge a former member, Neil Lucas, in the gallery. He was a member of the Victorian Parliament from 1996 to 2002. It is good to see you.

 John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:29): Today I rise to contribute to the Safer Protest with a Registration System and a Ban on Face Coverings Bill 2025. This bill, as proposed by Mr Davis, seems designed to have the government, civil society and regular Victorians spend more time in court. You may as well call it the ‘clog up the court system bill’. The supposed five-point plan of those opposite involves (1) introducing a protest registration system, (2) banning face coverings at protests without lawful excuse, (3) ending the autonomy of those who commit violence, (4) re-establishing move-on laws and (5) increasing police powers. Hang on – I thought it was a five-point plan, but there you go. To continue on, there is (6) introducing exclusion orders for repeat offenders, (7) removing serial troublemakers off the streets, (8) at the same time safeguarding free speech for lawful protesters and (9) protecting those who do the right thing. Just a month ago, our criminal anti-vilification laws came into effect, and the opposition is doing this, which again I want to make clear is ironic given they opposed the bill. But why have they now introduced this bill when a month ago they opposed our government’s bill? I think it is because of division in their party room. It is that simple.

The Allan Labor government is committed to protecting the rights of Victorians to peacefully and safely protest. That is why we will be introducing laws very soon to strengthen safety at protests. Our laws, unlike the laws proposed by those opposite today, will focus on people driving hate and violence at protests. We have seen it in our communities, and we know who they are. I know in my community of Southern Metro, in particular the community that has the largest Jewish population in the country, many have expressed concern to me about the pro-Palestinian rallies that have been occurring. These rallies still keep taking place, despite the temporary peace, having all too often descended into hate. In New South Wales we saw the Stand for Palestine Australia group plan a ‘glory to our martyrs’ event in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown. Shockingly, we saw the ‘Glory to Hamas’ messages on billboards and even more disgraceful ‘Oct 7, do it again’ messages painted on at least two walls in Melbourne. As the Premier said, this was definitely:

… not in the spirit of wanting peace.

It is just so deeply wrong and offensive.

Those are the Premier’s words, and I could not agree more. And the Prime Minister said it was abhorrent and that the AFP would work with the Victoria Police to bring those responsible to justice.

If those opposite wanted to make a difference, they would have supported our harsher laws. They would have supported the laws that actually make a difference – not random bureaucracy, not more clogged courts. Even the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police says we do not need them. Our government is committed to dealing with violent, hateful and dangerous participants in public demonstrations. We are prohibiting the flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations, and our legislation will actually empower the police to unmask violent, hateful and dangerous individuals who attend protests and cowardly hide behind those masks, and addressing the issue of dangerous attachment devices. We also committed to introducing new laws to protect the right of people to gather and pray, free from fear, harassment and intimidation. Targeted consultation occurred with police and selected faith, legal, government, communities and union stakeholders on what the safe protest laws would look like, and we will introduce those laws very soon.

Government recognises that the right to protest is a critical part of any democracy and that we need to get the balance right. We know that this bill needs to get it right. I had the opportunity, as part of preparing for this speech, to consider varying views of people in this place on these laws, and while I do not agree with all of what has been said, I do want to associate myself with a line that Mr Ettershank said. It pertains to this bill. He said:

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.

I know how important the rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are. I have used them countless times after countless times in my career as a union organiser, union secretary and before that a rank-and-file union member and delegate. That is why it is so crucial that we get this done right. Our laws will allow Victoria Police to unmask violent and hateful demonstrators like those thug neo-Nazis, who are unwelcome on our streets – those Nazis who crash press conferences and run around with their black masks. Our laws will help protect our social cohesion and the right of Victorians to protest peacefully and safely without interference from extremist thugs. The opposition’s bill is contrary to the advice of Victoria Police and will infringe on the rights of ordinary Victorians, and that is why we will not be supporting this bill.

The Allan Labor government is committed to curbing violent protests in our streets and city. In July this year, the Premier announced that we would establish an Anti-Hate Taskforce, a collaborative initiative between our government and Victoria Police to prevent vilification and hate speech against our most vulnerable groups. This built upon the strengthening of legislation in the landmark Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024, passed earlier this year. The commissioning of the Lekakis review, also referred to as the multicultural review, was announced in December 2024. Intended to address ways in which our government could strengthen support for our diverse multicultural communities, this review was comprehensive and far reaching: 641 Victorians had their say in 57 in-person or online consultations, with 157 submissions received and 41 recommendations published. Critically, it affirmed our commitment to social cohesion here in Victoria. The Anti-Hate Taskforce, commencing in July this year, began their work by updating the Premier on how Victoria Police plans to operationalise the criminal components of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Act 2025, providing progress and updates on local escalation and helping meetings to occur within the Jewish community. This commenced its operations earlier this year, working closely with our government, local councils, the Department of Justice and Community Safety and Victoria Police to promote the safety of the Jewish community and to combat antisemitism and is updating the Premier on the progress of community consultation and the development of legislation for increased police powers to stamp out extreme and violent protest.

It is a crime to promote hate and vilification against other Victorians based on their culture, ethnicity or religion, and through the anti-vilification and social cohesion bill in 2024 the Allan Labor government has made the way clear for the police to stamp out this disgusting behaviour. The bill increases protections for the rights, safety and dignity of all classes within the protected attribute group, whether this is in regard to disability, gender identity, race, religious belief or activity, sex or sex characteristics, sexual orientation or personal association with anyone holding these protected attributes.

We understand and respect the need for peaceful protest in this state. Section 16 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities protects the right to peacefully assemble and the freedom to associate. Victorian law does not contradict this, nor does the Allan Labor government seek to contradict this, but our government does not condone violent public demonstrations promoting discrimination and harassment. Hate does not belong in Victoria, and violence does not have a place in our society. The Allan Labor government has already committed to banning flags and symbols of listed terrorist organisations in public, giving Victoria Police more powers and filling in any of the gaps in Commonwealth and anti-terror legislation. These listed terrorist organisations include Hamas, Hezbollah and white nationalist and racist, violent, extreme right-wing groups. We have committed to banning the use of face masks at protests to conceal identities and shield agitators from crowd control measures. To touch on the point that the opposition has raised in their proposed bill, this ban is specifically to penalise individuals wearing a face covering who are refusing to cooperate with police or who police have reason to believe are committing a criminal act. There are clear provisions in this legislation for religious, cultural and health exemptions. This ban is not to punish those who use face masks to protect their health or, as the opposition has suggested, to punish those displaying pride through masks at Midsumma or other events celebrating LGBTQIA+ Victorians. This is a ridiculous suggestion from the opposition, and blatant fearmongering.

We have committed to banning the use of glue, rope, chains, locks and other dangerous attachment devices that protesters have used to cause maximum disruption and endanger others, including themselves. This is not the only legislation we have passed to protect vulnerable communities from hate speech and rhetoric. In October 2023 we passed the Summary Offences Amendment (Nazi Salute Prohibition) Bill 2023, banning the use of the Nazi salute as well as other gestures and symbols used by the Nazi party. This also gave Victoria Police powers to direct a person to remove the display of the Nazi symbol or gesture; to arrest or lay charges against an individual for doing such; and to apply to the Magistrates’ Court to search premises and seize property displaying a Nazi symbol or Nazi gesture. This is connected to a display offence, allowing police to seize symbols that may be publicly displayed in the near future or have already been displayed at a march or a protest.

This bill also imposes penalties of $23,000 or 12 months imprisonment or both for anyone intentionally displaying these symbols or gestures. Several high-profile radical extremist individuals have been charged under this legislation, preventing them from spreading their vile extremist rhetoric throughout the community. It is clear that our government does not tolerate violent, dangerous or extremist behaviour at protests, so we will not be supporting this bill, because we are already doing the work to stamp out violent extremist misbehaviour and protest in our streets. The Premier, the Minister for Police and the Minister for Multicultural Affairs have worked tirelessly to draft and introduce legislation restoring social cohesion in our state, and the Allan Labor government as well as the Andrews Labor government before that have been doing the work to stamp out violent extremist behaviour at protests since 2016.

This bill seeks to bring in laws against the wearing of face coverings at protests and laws that will allow police to identify individuals or groups of individuals whose intent is violence rather than a genuine desire to protest and demonstrate, providing police with powers to intervene to prevent individuals or groups with violent intent from entering a designated area or areas, with a requirement for local government to consult with Victoria Police prior to providing permits for certain types of protests. Passed in 2016, the Crimes Legislation Amendment Act 2016 is doing just that, bringing in stronger penalties against those who commit violent acts at public events. At the end of the day, the Allan Labor government completely rejects violence and extremism, and we reject division and hate in our communities. We have been doing all the work for years, demonstrating our commitment to protecting our most vulnerable communities. We have been empowering our tireless police force through a series of legislative acts over the past decade to protect these communities and to stamp out extremism and violence in Victoria.

I know how important this work is to Victorians, and particularly to my community in Southern Metropolitan Region. I proudly represent a diverse and proud range of multicultural communities across my electorate, including a large, historic and proud Jewish community, which has been exposed to rising antisemitic activity and rhetoric over the past few years. This bill, brought in by the opposition as a fearmongering tactic, is entirely unnecessary and, frankly, poorly considered. I will not be supporting this bill today, because our diverse, multicultural Victorian communities deserve reforms and legislation that work – reforms and legislation that community organisations and multicultural groups support – not increased bureaucracy, not overburdened court systems and not unnecessary fearmongering. I would urge the opposition to instead support us in targeted, effective consultation and the work that we are doing to protect these communities rather than exploit the safety of these communities in what appears to be a blatant attempt to score political points.

This bill brought by the opposition does not align with the consultation engaged in this year prior to the introduction of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Act 2025; it does not align with the recommendations from our parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections in 2021, supported by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, the Centre for Multicultural Youth, the Islamic Council of Victoria, the Law Institute of Victoria, the Online Hate Prevention Institute and a diverse range of multicultural faiths, LGBTQIA+ and other community organisations; and it does not align with the experience of our police force, who do not need to be facing more bureaucracy in their work to protect our communities. This bill contradicts the wishes of our diverse protected communities. Once again, the Allan Labor government and I will not be supporting the bill in this chamber today.

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (15:44): We have had an interesting debate, mostly entire slabs of text repeated by every single Labor MP, dragging on this debate to avoid a vote. That is literally exactly what we saw –

Members interjecting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: You can interject, as Tom ‘Speaking Notes’ McIntosh suggests, but it was the case that we heard entire slabs of text. They spoke about the multicultural review; over in the other chamber right now they are ignoring recommendations from that. They said, ‘Here’s what the Chief Commissioner of Police said,’ over and over again, the exact same quote by each and every one of them. You know who they did not mention? Mr Cheeseman, the acting commissioner, I believe, on the day, who went out after the worst day of protest we ever saw in our CBD. Do you know what was not mentioned by that side of the chamber? Who he blamed for it: issue-motivated groups on the left. We heard every other explanation as to who is causing trouble in our CBD except for that one. Not once was that repeated by those on that side of the chamber, and you have got to wonder why. This bill goes a long way to resolving a lot of the issues we have. Who on earth comes to the CBD with rocks, with trolley poles, with chains? I mean, it is a good thing that some of these Sunday protests have ceased. But we can see with the continuous protests in the CBD the undercurrent, underbelly of those protests in the CBD and continuing to protest. They miss their Sunday protest ritual. They are still coming to the CBD to cause trouble, and they are still cowardly behind masks. Show your face. Do not abuse police. We saw several police injured, hospitalised.

Again, this government does not want a way forward, and we have seen it with several pieces of legislation. We saw it with the child safety rapid review. Most of its recommendations for legislation that were due to be tabled by the end of October – not tabled. Clearly it is not in a hurry for urgent rapid review. Again, masks – the Premier wants to move on this. Where is the legislation? We have not seen it. We have not seen it from this government. It is too busy with other things that are clearly more urgent. What could be more urgent than banning masks at protests? What could be more urgent when our police are being injured? What could be more urgent when we know – they will not say it, some of them will not say it – issue-motivated groups on the left are disrupting our CBD. Businesses are going out of business because there are groups that are causing issues. We had masked neo-Nazis marching through the CBD performing hateful salutes – around 100 masked protesters dressed in black moving through the CBD spreading fear and disorder, a masked mob – and this was a disgrace, with an attack on Miznon restaurant on a Friday night terrorising diners, while a nearby synagogue was firebombed on the same evening, and of course we saw rocks hurled at police, Australian flags burned and violent confrontations in the CBD. These are not isolated incidents. They represent an alarming rise and pattern of hate and intimidation turning Melbourne streets into a battleground against police that has left police and the public exposed.

We have offered a step forward, to split the bill. If the government does not support the protest part of the bill, it can support a ban on masks at protests. Where is the legislation, Premier? That is what we want to know. Where is the Premier’s urgency when we see police hospitalised? I mean, seriously. Again, this bill should be supported, and I call on the Premier to act with a bit of urgency when we have got a CBD in tatters, businesses on their knees and people not coming into the city on a weekend due to the chaos that the Premier has unleashed.

Council divided on motion: