At time of writing, anti-Jewish activists have announced their intention to conduct a hatefest at the Sydney Opera House on 12 October to celebrate the second anniversary of the barbaric invasion of Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023.  The Police Commissioner has lodged an application in the NSW Supreme Court to prevent this gathering. The Commissioner will argue that public safety demands that the protest not go ahead, as he did in relation to the recent Harbour Bridge protest.

Let’s hope the matter is not heard by Justice Belinda Rigg who approved that event.  Justice Rigg’s judgement pointed out that the right to protest necessarily encompasses the right to disrupt the normal activities of the general public.   Fair enough.  Nothing, however, about balancing the right of protesters against the right of taxpayers to not fund extravagant, self-indulgent, dangerous and ultimately pointless displays of virtue-signalling.

According to NSW Police, between October 2023 and September 2024, some 13,320 police officers attended 52 anti-Israel protests in Sydney. Get that?  In one year!  I have not been able to obtain the figures for 2024/2025, but Sunday, 3 August, must alone have made a major contribution to this travesty. God knows what the cost has been, in just Sydney alone. Based on an average duration of four hours per protest, I estimate the wages bill alone to be in the vicinity of $2.5 million for just that one year.

In Her Honour’s opinion, on this occasion, the protestors’ right of free speech outweighed the interests of the general public.  This glib assessment takes no account of the severe and ongoing nature of this disruption.   And it takes no account of the futility of the putative aim of the protests – of the action having any effect whatsoever on events in Gaza.

Protesting on this scale is not an exercise of free speech.  It is an industrial-scale exercise in bullying.

That said, in order for the presiding judge, whoever it is, to find against the protest, he/ she will have to be convinced by NSW Police that the gathering at the Opera House will pose an unacceptable public safety risk.

The Police Commissioner has already offered to support a different venue – saying he understands there are heightened tensions at the moment but ‘can’t get into the politics of it’.  Assistant Commissioner Peter Mc-Kenna said emotions could be running high.

‘We’re not anti-protest … we’ve been facilitating protests and public assembly for the last two years, so it’s not a matter of us not wanting them to have a public assembly, he said. ‘It’s not even about it being at the Opera House itself — it’s about public safety.’

On the other hand, the Palestine Action Group said it would not be deterred by attempts to stop the protest, rejecting claims it posed a risk to public safety, saying:

‘International human rights law guarantees the right to protest, the right to free expression and the right to political assembly.’

International human rights law has no effect in Australia, unless it is enacted by a parliament. In NSW, the right to protest is established in common law and its exercise is governed by Part VI of the Summary Offences Act 1988. And, in the unlikely event the court rules against the protestors, the protest will be permitted somewhere else. But the venue is not the issue. It is a reprise of the joyous celebration of 9 October 2023 and should not be permitted anywhere, certainly not on this weekend. The anti-Israel mob will say this protest is an exercise of free speech. I have argued before that free speech and the right to protest are related but not the same thing. However, that was not apparently the view of Justice Riggs who cited the principle of free speech in her judgement. So let me proceed on that basis.

The NSW government should oppose this protest in principle – it is divisive and inflammatory. I suspect that the Minns government would rather it not proceed. We have no law that allows the government to proscribe this protest, and nor should we.  So, they have to work with what they’ve got. And they do have a means at hand to intervene. It is called Section 18C of the Anti-Discrimination Act.  Let me be clear, I am totally opposed to Section 18C. It should be repealed. We have already seen how it can be abused to stifle free speech. But like the proverbial broken clock, even a bad law sometimes gets it right.  What’s sauce for the goose and so on. While a bad law is in force, why would any government – even a truly conservative one – refuse, on principle, to use it when it offers them the chance to feel the collar of a genuine villain?

And make no mistake, in the context of 18C, the organisers of this protest – not necessarily their useful idiots – are genuine villains.

I am no lawyer, but I think the presiding judge will not be able to consider an argument that is not put to him or her by one of the protagonists. The government will not be invoking 18C, but I’ve no doubt the organisers will argue that this is a legitimate exercise of free speech. That might give the judge, if he’s smart enough, leeway to consider the 18C implications. Under that provision, speech that causes offence to any group on the basis of race or religion is outlawed.  This demonstration undoubtedly will give offence to, and intimidate, virtually our entire Jewish population. It has its genesis in the 2023 demonstration – which coming as it did before any Israeli retaliation, and when all we knew at the time was that 1,200 innocent Jewish men, women and children had been brutally slaughtered – could not be construed as anything other than antisemitic. The timing and rhetoric allow no other interpretation. 18C, for all its faults, is the law of the land and it demands that this one not proceed.

In late developments, the organisers have called upon the Supreme Court to issue a finding of genocide against Israel.  That is a ludicrous proposition.  The Court cannot issue a finding on any matter unless it has heard arguments for and against, and unless the matter comes under its jurisdiction.  This is just inflammatory rhetoric.

And the Jewish Board of Deputies has sought to intervene in the process.  No doubt they will make the same representation I have above. Once again, the under-siege Jewish community has had to pick up the cudgels in their own defence, in the absence of any moral clarity or courage from either the federal or state government. ‘There is no place for antisemitism in Australia,’ we are routinely told by Albanese and others – including Premier Minns – at the same time deep-sixing the report of antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal. It’s too late for this one, but from here on, it’s time for them to put their money where their mouth is.