Brenna McNeil is coordinator of Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS), an all-volunteer organisation that provides training for protest movements, offers information and resources on the right to protest and trains and fields legal observer teams that monitor and report on the policing of protests in Australia’s Victoria state. She speaks with CIVICUS about increasing restrictions on the right to protest in Australia.

Australia is experiencing an escalating crackdown on the right to protest, with state governments introducing increasingly restrictive legislation and law enforcement officers adopting more aggressive tactics against protesters. Initially targeting climate activists, these measures have expanded to affect other movements, particularly those mobilising in solidarity with Palestine. Restrictions include new anti-protest laws, surveillance of activists, deployment of riot units, strict bail conditions and the use of ‘strategic incapacitation’ tactics to discourage participation in protests. Civil society warns that these developments represent an unprecedented threat to freedom of assembly and democratic expression in Australia.

How has the protest environment changed in Australia?

Discursive and structural attacks on the right to protest have escalated across Australia in recent years. Politicians and police are using dangerously hostile and demonising language to describe protesters, amplified by major media organisations. Corporations, wealthy individuals and governments are increasingly engaging in lawfare through civil lawsuits known as Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), meant to silence critics by making the legal costs of defending themselves against the lawsuit so high that they give up. And state governments across Australia are introducing restrictive anti-protest legislation aimed at repressing dissent.

Initially targeting climate activists, these tactics have expanded to affect other movements, particularly people protesting in solidarity with Palestine, who are being falsely framed as violent, antisemitic ‘terrorist sympathisers’.

We are seeing a concerning rise in strategic incapacitation as a tool to intimidate activists and create a hostile environment at protests. This includes increased surveillance of activists and legal observers, police visiting activists’ homes for ‘informal’ questioning, deployment of evidence-gathering teams and data collection vans, massive police presences including mounted units and anti-terrorism investigators and disproportionately strict bail conditions typically reserved for organised crime.

How is MALS responding?

MALS has defended protest rights since its founding in 2011. Our main areas of focus are on training independent legal observers and deploying them in teams to monitor police operations and responses to protests, documenting police misconduct and human rights abuses and, hopefully, influencing police behaviour by deterring the abuse of police powers and use of force against protesters.

Evidence collected by our legal observers forms the basis of our statements of concern and other reports, which include comprehensive analyses of police actions at protests and recommendations for police, governments and human rights organisations. Our most recent report was on the extremely violent and aggressive police and media response to Disrupt Land Forces protests against the weapons trade in September 2024.

MALS also engages in advocacy through regular meetings with human rights organisations, politicians and law firms. We work to increase awareness of police misconduct, encourage parliamentary scrutiny and connect activists with legal support. We also produce training materials, protest guides and activist support resources and hold educational activities such as ‘know your rights’ workshops.

What prompted Victoria’s new anti-protest laws?

In December 2024, Victoria’s State Premier Jacinta Allen announced the Victorian Labor Party’s intention to introduce extremely restrictive anti-protest legislation to parliament in early 2025. The announcement came in response to the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne. Although the perpetrators and their motives were unknown, and still are, Allen claimed the incident was a terrorist attack and blamed the Palestine solidarity movement by falsely claiming it incites hatred and attacks against Jewish people. It’s important to note that members of the Jewish community who regularly attend Palestine solidarity protests have strongly criticised these characterisations.

The announcement came after over 15 months of intense public vilification of the Palestine solidarity movement and relentless criticism of its protests, which police have acknowledged have been overwhelmingly peaceful.

What restrictions does the draft law propose, and what has been the civil society response?

The proposed legislation includes banning face masks at protests, prohibiting items that could be used as an attachment or lock-on device, such as glue or chains, banning protests near places of worship and prohibiting the display of listed terrorist organisations’ symbols. Legal experts have criticised these measures as disproportionate and potentially dangerous, warning they could lead to a permit system and police overreach.

Civil society has responded strongly. MALS has received numerous requests for legal rights workshops from concerned community groups. While details of the proposed legislation have not yet been released, key concerns include the criminalisation of protesters, subjective enforcement of symbol bans, impacts of the mask prohibition and how worship-site exclusion zones could effectively ban protests in urban centres. A coalition of organisations including the Australian Democracy Network, the Human Rights Law Centre and MALS has launched a petition and plans to analyse the proposals once tabled in parliament.

How can the international community help?

It’s crucial to acknowledge that all our struggles are interconnected, and threats to freedoms in Australia are also threats to freedoms everywhere. Dangerous precedents in one country create space for legislators elsewhere to justify limiting civil liberties and restricting the right to protest in their jurisdictions. For this reason, it’s important for local civil society organisations and activists to organise and campaign to protect the right to protest in their countries.

International action can take several forms. The international community can engage with Australian diplomatic staff to express concerns about civic space and freedom of assembly, referencing Australia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Major international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Civil Rights Defenders and Human Rights Watch can also mobilise to monitor the situation, support local movements and advocate directly with Australian governments.

The international community can also amplify civil society messages through global media coverage, helping raise awareness about how restrictions on protest rights in Australia could impact on civic freedoms worldwide. This media engagement should highlight the experiences of diaspora communities and the broader implications for democratic expression.

It’s important to recognise that our actions should be led by First Nations and Indigenous movements around the world and guided by their staunch centuries-long advocacy for justice and what human rights and freedoms can and should look like now and in the future.

Despite being a small volunteer-run grassroots community group, MALS’s work has significant impact. Supporting organisations like ours through donations and resource sharing helps ensure we can continue protecting activists, defending human rights and safeguarding freedom of assembly at this critical time when protest rights in Australia face unprecedented challenges.