The Human Rights Law Centre today urged the Victorian Government to reject any proposal that would require protesters to obtain a permit to peacefully gather and demand change on issues they care about. Requiring a police permit to participate in democracy will undermine the ability of every person in Victoria to exercise their right to peacefully protest. 

In recent years across the country, Australian governments have enacted a worrying number of anti-protest laws, including permit systems in NSW. These permits are inconsistent with international human rights law, and if pursued in Victoria would potentially conflict with the right to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly and association protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. 

Police already have the powers necessary to intervene if people become violent. Victoria has laws that enable police to move people on, or to arrest someone for violent or anti-social behaviour. Asking for police to also have the power of granting “permission” to people wanting to hold the government to account through protest – is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of protest.  

Last year, the Human Rights Law Centre and 60 other civil society organisations drew a line in the sand with the Declaration of Our Right to Protest, which set out the minimum standards governments must meet to protect our fundamental right to protest. One of the principles includes ensuring prior notice provisions for protests are optional, not mandatory.

Quotes attributed to David Mejia-Canales, Senior Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre: 

“The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy. Protest has been crucial to achieving many important social changes from voting rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to the eight-hour workday. Under this proposal, the people who stood up for these rights we now take for granted, may have been shut down by Victorian police.

“We should all be free to come together peacefully on issues that matter, regardless of our opinion. Police should focus on stopping crimes, and governments should be focused on protecting our right to protest peacefully to create a stronger democracy.

“The right to protest is not a gift from the police or parliament, it is a fundamental right of all people in a healthy democracy. Having to ask for permission from the government to protest the government is not only absurd, it is an affront to democracy.”

Read the Human Rights Law Centre’s Declaration of Our Right to Protest.

Media Contact: 
Thomas Feng
Human Rights Law Centre
0431 285 275
thomas.feng@hrlc.org.au