Right to Protest

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:46): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Attorney-General on the topic of the right to protest.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: There are many examples in our history where civil disobedience has led to significant positive social change. For instance, the global suffragette movement ran numerous campaigns that involved women chaining themselves to railings, large-scale marches and public demonstrations. It is widely accepted that without the women's suffragette movement we would not have women in our parliaments today.

In 1955, both Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks famously refused to give up their bus seats to a white man in an act of civil disobedience. These events sparked the Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King and resulted in the prohibition of racial segregation on public buses in Montgomery. In the 1950s, Nelson Mandela initiated several protests against apartheid. Attended by tens of thousands of people, these events built the antiapartheid movement in South Africa.

In 1969, the Stonewall riots in New York were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid. One year later, on the anniversary of this event, the first gay pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, and gay pride events now take place across the world.

Closer to home, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra was first established in 1972 to call on the federal government to give that group land rights and cultural protections. While the original tent embassy was formally evicted under laws designed to prohibit it, the ACT Supreme Court later ruled against using those laws to prohibit the embassy. In 1982, the blockade at the Franklin Dam, led by former Greens leader Bob Brown, resulted in the Hawke government moving to save precious wilderness in Tasmania. In Adelaide, on 16 February 2003, 100,000 people marched on our streets against the war on Iraq.

This morning on ABC radio, the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition foreshadowed their intention to move to increase fines and introduce imprisonment for protesters who cause community disruption and obstruction of the public space. My question to the Attorney-General therefore is: does the Attorney-General support the right to protest in our state, and if these historic figures engaged in this conduct today, would they be subject to fines and imprisonment under Labor's antiprotest laws?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:49): I thank the honourable member for his question, and I note the honourable member's interest in this area and the leadership the honourable member has taken in many areas of public debate. We have introduced legislation that has now passed the lower house in relation to increasing the fines available to courts for breaching section 58 of the Summary Offences Act.

The intention of these changes isn't to increase the scope of these laws—that is, to capture more people whose behaviour could be caught by section 58, which has been in place since 1990-ish and the last time the penalty was updated, I understand, was 1998. What the changes to the law do seek to do, however, is significantly increase the penalties that the courts can impose after conduct.

In the last few days I think it is the first time that I have had members of the public stop me and want to talk to me about the problems that they have seen and the disruption that has been caused from protests to them over recent days. One thing I would absolutely hate to see is protests that block thoroughfares that actually end up causing harm to a person, for example if an emergency services vehicle wanted to get to a hospital.

We are increasing the fines that are available to courts for people who breach a law that has been in the Summary Offences Act, as I have said, since 1990. As I say, if someone's behaviour hasn't been caught by this before, it is not the intention of these changes to broaden it to capture them but certainly to give the courts more discretion in the fines that they impose. I note that other states in recent times, I think both New South Wales, if I remember correctly, and also Victoria, have significantly increased their fines for similar things that have included much longer jail terms.

I also note that the fines that are in place now and the fines that will be in place, should these changes go through, will be maximum penalties. They won't be the penalties that apply for any sorts of breaches of these; they will be the maximum penalties. Maximum penalties are often imposed for the most egregious breaches of the kind. Sometimes you find rarely that the actual maximum penalty is imposed but is reserved for that theoretical worst sort of breach of these fines.

I do completely understand the honourable member's question. I do completely appreciate the significant wins that have been made in civil rights and a whole range of other areas in society by those who have protested. I have taken part in protests, in rallies, in demonstrations in the past, and I suspect I will continue to do so in the future.

But when things can lead to such significant public disruption—and I don't think any of us would want to see either emergency services personnel who are attending these protests or those who are impeded by these protests have situations where even lives could be put at risk. I don't think that would be a desirable outcome. Certainly, I don't want to see things stand in the way of seeing progressive democratic change as we have seen in decades and centuries gone by.