You can protect our right to peaceful protest
As industry and police continue to lean on government, we are seeing increasing trends of anti-protest legislation from all parties and all levels of government.
It is essential that laws which attempt to further criminalise peaceful protest are met with a strong resistance.
Past campaigns -
Summary Offences and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019
(“Dangerous Attachment Devices”)
The DAD laws have now been assented to - this means they are now in force.
The “Dangerous Devices” Bill was introduced into the Queensland Parliament on 19 September 2019 by Mark Ryan MP, Minister for Police and Minister for Corrective Services. The Bill was flagged by the Premier in a speech to Parliament on August 20th when she argued that “everyone has a right to protest”, but “the activities of some are not peaceful, they are not, and I’m not going to let them continue”.
Submissions are now open on the bill - this is when members of the public as individuals or organisations are able to express their views on proposed legislation. It’s very important that we have our opposition to laws that erode our rights to protest on the record.
Civil disobedience has been used by countless historical social movements as an effective tool in implementing transformational change. The bill appears to have been specifically created to demonise protesters with no evidential basis for the claims that the lock-on devices used by activists are dangerous. Injuries in relation to traditional lock-on devices have only been sustained by the protesters themselves when police have attempted to remove them unsafely.
You can read the explanatory notes to the Bill here. These notes are designed to explain the basis for new laws and the specific new provisions.
Please help by sharing this resource and asking people you know to make a submission on the bill.
Send your submission to: lacsc@parliament.qld.gov.au and make sure you include your name and address so that your submission is valid.
you can also contact your local politician - we have prepared a template email and calling guide here.
John Sheridan from our Brisbane crew, arrested for locking down the Townsville operations of Iplex with some friends. This NZ-owned company want to provide 100km of PE Pipe for Adani's mine.
“It’s important to understand the philosophy behind “locking-on”. By choosing to put their own bodies in a vulnerable situation, the protesters are appealing to the humanity of police or others to treat them with care and respect.
...
As a symbol of non-violence, the lock-on celebrates a shared social contract where there is implicit trust that neither police nor protesters will use personal violence, but rather the rule of law will prevail in an orderly manner.”