Ben Eltham (@beneltham.bsky.social)

The NSW parliament is once again rushing through anti-protest laws. Will they survive a supreme court challenge? | Anne Twomey The legislation’s opponents will argue that it is over-inclusive and disproportionately limits free speech History tells us that anti-protest laws rushed through parliament often have an unhappy ending in the courts. In 2022 laws were whipped through the New South Wales parliament in response to a series of climate protests to prevent protesters disrupting infrastructure and major facilities. They were challenged by the “knitting nanas”, who succeeded in having part of the law struck down for impermissibly burdening the implied freedom of political communication. Then we had the Dural caravan episode, which led to more laws being urgently passed – this time to restrict protests outside places of worship. Again, part of the legislation was struck down. It had allowed police to issue “move-on” orders to people who were protesting near a place of worship, even though they were not obstructing, harassing or intimidating any people who were entering or leaving the place of worship. But the NSW supreme court held that this went beyond what was necessary to achieve its legitimate purpose of protecting worshippers. There were more narrowly focused equally effective alternatives which could have been adopted and would have had less of a burden on political communication. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/23/nsw-parliament-rushing-anti-protest-laws?CMP=aus_bsky