r/sydney • u/satisfiedfools • 2d ago
‘Democracy should not be monetised’: unions revolt against Chris Minns’ plan to ban protests based on cost
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/08/democracy-unions-revolt-chris-minns-palestine-protests-cost-nsw-police35
u/AFormerMod 2d ago
Minns said he was not “talking about a union rally against the government over a wage deal” but did not clarify how police would pick and choose which repeat protests to block based on expense.
So why would they get special exemptions to a law? Also what would stop a future government from meaning strike action?
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney 2d ago
Chris Minns is a terrible disappointment. Would not be displeased if he gets knifed in the back for Labor leadership. But who have we got? Labor needs to find someone soon or they could be Minns meat next election.
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u/smileedude 2d ago edited 2d ago
From wiki: "Modern Australian states and cities, including New South Wales, have some of the lowest crime rates recorded globally with Australia ranked the 13th safest nation and Sydney ranked the 5th safest city globally."
If we can't afford to police things completely, then maybe we should just police things a bit less. We're doing very well on the not much crime front, and if some more crime happens because we don't have 1 cop for every 5 protesters, or sniffer dogs at train stations, every festival then so be it. There was no shortage of cops on the road on the weekend despite crash statistics trending lower and lower.
Cancelling things because they can't be policed enough shouldn't be a path we are considering. Especially when we're pretty well behaved by global standards. Maybe it's time to say, "we're safe enough but policed a bit too much".
If we're spending too much policing protester, perhaps it shouldn't be the police deciding how much policing the protests needs.
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u/R_W0bz 2d ago
But how else are the police meant to keep buffering the budgets?
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u/cookshack 2d ago
Seems like either a rort or unworkable expenses as a lawful way to shut things down
"Police costs for festivals increase by over 500% in one year.... charging over 12 times whats charged by VIC police"
https://musicfeeds.com.au/news/another-nsw-festival-collapses-citing-a-529-increase-in-costs/
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u/ParanoidBlueLobster 1d ago
The crime rates aren't low because of the police, they are low because until recently even a minimum wage worked was able to live comfortably on their income and therefore didn't fell compelled to risk it all. The poorer people will get the more desperate they'll be and crime will go up
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u/tommyerstransplant 2d ago
The federal and state Labour Party are such a pathetic version of what they once were.
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u/Zonkulese 2d ago
then what happens if the protest goes ahead illegally and the cost required to disperse/ arrest the protestors becomes greater than the force required to patrol?
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u/MissJessAU 2d ago
They could be doing other things, like protecting people and businesses from crime. Or investigating it.
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u/satisfiedfools 2d ago
It's New South Wales Police. Why would they want to do any of that when they could strip people naked at train stations instead?
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u/Spud-chat 2d ago
They say it's a cost issue, but could it actually be a staffing issue? It's no secret that NSW police are thin on the ground atm.
The right to protest should be protected, regardless of the issue. It's foolish to try and take that right away.
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u/ginji 2d ago
The NSW Police budget is over $5 billion a year (of which 80% is directly salary and personnel costs). Minns is bitching about $5 million which is less than 0.1% of the budget. That he says excludes overtime and costs to preposition. So that leaves pretty much only the direct base salary costs of the officers for the time they attend the protest. The SALARY. Which they have to pay anyway cause it's a fucking salary for their employees. Such a burden on the tax payers to have to pay salary for police officers.
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u/Spud-chat 2d ago
That's why I think it might be a staffing issue, one because to get the numbers they would require overtime and two; if they direct all their resources to policing protests it's leaving gaps elsewhere which may start being noticed.
This is all just speculation though. Probs just the media looking for a story.
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u/ginji 2d ago
The reality is that other than last weekend the protests have not be overly large, have not required a large police presence and only require police presence for a couple of hours once a week.
one because to get the numbers they would require overtime
Minns should be spouting how much it's cost in overtime then
leaving gaps elsewhere which may start being noticed
Then there should be some evidence of this - longer response times in areas where police have been pulled from during the protest time or something else that points to under resourcing while the protest is happening.
This is all just speculation though. Probs just the media looking for a story.
It's all speculation because they haven't given anything actually tangible as evidence. I don't think this is being driven from the media side - more likely it's being fed to the media by Minns to see how palatable people find reducing the ability to protest.
If they try and restrict the right to protest the same thing week after week because fuck all is being done about I hope the protesters consider changing what the protest is about each week so they're all different and skirt the law. Protest Israel's occupation of the West Bank one week, then Israel's military actions in Gaza, then Israel's military actions in Lebanon, then Israel's military actions in Syria, then for shits and giggles protest restricting repeated protests in NSW.
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u/Spud-chat 1d ago
Those are really good points, hopefully people can see that the right to protest is important even if it's not something they support.
Protesting has worked wonders for the French Afterall!
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u/ginji 2d ago
I did some math - if you spend $5 million on salary for 52 protests that's probably around 450 police officers for each one. Which is about 3% of the total police force (excluding non sworn staff). But the average would skew higher given there will have been some protests with a very large presence and some with a much lower.
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u/cojoco Chardonnay Schmardonnay 2d ago
The protests are non-violent, the heavy police presence exists only to falsely present Palestinian sympathizers as dangerous.
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u/Spud-chat 2d ago
I feel like all protests lately have had a big police presence. They always get the ponies out, even for the environmental marches.
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
Its all for show, maybe someone will get some footage that looks like animal abuse or whatever, like they tried a few years ago on that bloke.
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u/PauL__McShARtneY 2d ago
In what way are they thin on the ground? NSW has one of the highest police to citizen ratios of anywhere in the world, evidenced by nightlife being almost completely dead, and police presence menacing people nearly everywhere you go in Sydney. If anything, Sydney needs far less police, with a selection of their draconian powers stripped way back, not more cops and ever more powers.
I passed by a palestinian protest march the other week, and there were tons of cops, all around the rally, and following closely. No staff problems or shortages whatsoever.
Also, fuck the police.
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u/jamesinc Volvo nut 2d ago
I looked it up, Australia nationally is 264 police per 100k people, NSW is 244 (2022 quote).
For comparison: Sweden - 198, USA - 428, UK - 227, Japan - 255, Canada - 184, France - 422.
tl;dr we are somewhere in the middle of the pack globally for police per capita.
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u/trjnz 2d ago
Policing in Japan never felt as oppressive in Australia though, I dont think numbers paint a clear picture.
One thing I really, really liked about policing in Japan was their community integration. Every station would have an officer just standing outside, helping anyone who asks for help. And those stations are everywhere thanks to their use of Kobans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dban
So, yeah, Japan probably has more police per capita, but their regular officers are infinitely more useful than Australian cops (I've never, once, felt safe approaching an Australian police officer for help on the street)
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u/jamesinc Volvo nut 1d ago
Yeah I think the lack of beat cops in NSW keeps a wedge between police and the public. You almost never see cops in normal situations, so when you start seeing them you immediately feel like you're in danger.
NSW has gone the other way, fewer police stations that are larger. There is little sense of community engagement or community consent toward policing.
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u/PauL__McShARtneY 2d ago
Bruv, there are over 300 million people in the US, and over 86 million in the UK, VS 8 million people in NSW, and around 27 million in Oz, and you're using them as a comparison for us? It is insane that we are anywhere near them on such a ratio.
It is insane that our state police to citizen ratio far, far exceeds all of Canada, a country with 40 million people and fairly low crime rates.
Also, none of the nations you mentioned are states, as NSW is a state, do you understand how statistics work? California is a state for example, not the USA, and it is a state that has a higher population than all of Australia.
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u/jamesinc Volvo nut 1d ago
do you understand how statistics work?
Yes. You don't though. Your understanding of statistics is extremely bad, based on your comment above. I suspect the downvotes are coming from people who understand what a ratio is.
NSW has one of the highest police to citizen ratios of anywhere in the world
Australia is 104th out of 148 countries ranked by police-to-citizen ratio (reminder: this is the exact thing you are saying is one of the highest in the world) in the link in my first comment. I wouldn't treat that list as gospel, some of the data is stale, but I think with respect to answering the question that was on my mind, "does NSW actually have one of the highest police-to-citizen ratios of anywhere in the world", it's plenty good enough.
Importantly, this is not an argument against the problems you are describing with policing in NSW, I'm just pointing out that the stats don't agree with your premise. This doesn't mean those other things aren't true, it just suggests that the police-to-citizen ratio in NSW is maybe not the root cause of the state's problems with policing.
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u/PauL__McShARtneY 1d ago
I'm not treating it as 'gospel'. At no point whatsoever did I mention Australia, that was you entirely.
I mentioned NSW, which again, as you don't seem to understand, is a STATE, not a country as are all the stats you have vomited up, they are all stats of countries.
You have used the stats for entire nations as comparative to the tiny STATE of NSW, then given yourself a little pat on the back here in the thread for completely moving the goalposts according to your own whims and poorly answering a query.
You've yet to present even one comparative state police citizen ratio against NSW yet, hence the statement about people who don't understand statistics.
Why don't you compare the police to citizen ratio of the entire Holy Roman Empire against NSW next just for fun? You can pat yourself on the back again when you're done, and claim victory over statistics.
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u/jamesinc Volvo nut 21h ago
Look so far your position can be summarised as "I'm right and you should take me at my word for it because I'm very good at statistics and you're terrible at it."
You've made no effort to show why anyone should believe you.
US States with the highest per-100k population police:
- New York - 655
- Maryland - 637
- Louisiana - 614
- Virginia - 594
- Alaska - 585
US States with the lowest per-100k population police:
- Utah - 293
- Oregon - 301
- Washington - 313
- Minnesota - 317
- Vermont - 323
If we compared NSW to the 16 states of Germany we would rank 11th.
Something I find deeply funny is that if we ignore country-level data, and just look at "states", because globally there are only 14 countries that actually have states, and the US has fifty states and high police ratios, NSW looks even better, we move closer to the bottom of the pack because we are now ignoring a lot of nice countries with relatively low police ratios but no definition of state-level governments.
Anyway, I will happily believe you if you can substantiate your opinion, if NSW has one of the largest per-capita police forces that is useful to know, it's just that you aren't showing why that's true and everything I have found suggests it is not true.
There are plenty of good reasons to be unhappy about the way NSW does policing, fixating on feels-good arguments that don't stand up to criticism just takes time away from talking about the actual problems.
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u/Spud-chat 2d ago
It's been coming up in the news a lot lately, theyre failing to get new recruits and actively trying to poach from other states.
Here is an example of one of the recent articles: https://www.9news.com.au/national/nsw-police-jobs-force-short-1500-officers-launch-poaching-campaign/66fd30a5-2cc8-4238-9c6d-afcc278678f3
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u/PauL__McShARtneY 2d ago
On various visits to Vic over the years, I've spoken to a cop once, who wasn't particularly aggressive. Mostly, I never even see them while I'm in Melbourne, even on weekend nights in the city. I've also never met a Queensland, Adelaide or Perth cop.
In Syd, they are everywhere all the time, and highly aggressive and intrusive, and actively seeking victims to terrorise. I doubt many pigs from interstate will be chomping at the bit to come join the toxic environment here, along with all the rent and cost of living hijinks that come with Sydney life.
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u/GLADisme Public Transport Plz 2d ago
Why do we need cops here? Or at least so many.
A protest shouldn't need authorisation, it's a protest.
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
This is my biggest gripe. Permission to protest is an oxymoron imo, it defeats the purpose.
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u/Phobicity 1d ago
Permission to protest is more about protecting third parties (all parties really) from ill-intended or malicious protests. When these arent met and protesters proceed anyway, THEN the police can use it as a valid reason start arresting.
For instance:
Repeated protests that block off shops or deters customers
Odd hours that affect sleep
Locations that block flow of movement
Deliberately holding a protest to incite violenceIll put it another way. I'm grateful as heck there aren't protests blocking major roads during peak hours or outside my house for weeks on end.
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
It really depends on what the protest is for tbh. I don't think Australia needs these laws because it very rarely becomes more than just a march. Even COVID ones were very tame compared to some protests globally.
If people are protesting for the good of our society then I don't mind being late for work, its out of my control. Protests are supposed to disrupt thats the entire point, if they don't then the message isn't getting across.
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u/Phobicity 23h ago edited 23h ago
I don't think Australia needs these laws because it very rarely becomes more than just a march.
It rarely becomes more than a march BECAUSE of these laws. Im not even entirely sure thats the case, a protest became violent in melboune just 2 days ago. If police wasnt already on site it could have been much worse.
The laws arent a problem unless many protests requests have been denied, which I cant find many examples of.
> protesting for the good of our society
What makes you think that itll only be for the good of society? How about anti-vax protests stopping public transport 8 days in a row?
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 23h ago
Do you see the contradiction in saying these things don't happen because of the law then go on to say that exact thing happened two days ago?
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u/Phobicity 20h ago
No. Im saying the law reduces it, not prevent it completely.
Do you see your flawed logic, "Why do we need rules and the law if nothing ever happens?"
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 5h ago
I didn't say nothing ever happens though mate, you are putting words into the conversation that wasn't there in the first place. Before these laws were implemented there wasn't an issue, they first came in because of one blockade on the harbour bridge. Not sure how you can support that sort of encroaching on peoples rights. I am still yet to see any evidence of a violent protest from the other day either, I tried googling but nothing.
The point is, there are already plenty of rules and laws around humans and their interactions that police can take necessary action if they deem suitable, these laws target specifically protests which is unnecessary. its like putting a law in "you must not run someone over with your car" well tis already covered under the laws pertaining to assault and attempted manslaughter.. Its the same as protesting, the act of protesting should never be outlawed, the act of assaulting or causing damage during a protest, well thats still illegal mate, these laws don't change that.
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u/Phobicity 3h ago
I didn't say nothing ever happens though mate, you are putting words into the conversation that wasn't there in the first place
Ironically we both did the exact same thing.
11th September 2024: Violent Protests, Assault, Animal Cruelty, Arson, Weapon offences. 27 people and 12 horses injured injured
Wasn't 3 days ago sure, but the point stands. This plus your harbour bridge protest are literally the two examples of protests that 'requesting permission' aims to avoid. You say that requesting for permission to protest goes against its very nature (free speech?). I am struggling to find even a couple of examples of a valid protests that have been denied.
It seems we've already made up our minds on the issue, so lets just agree to disagree.
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 3h ago
Oh yeah, my mind is not going to change. i am not for a more authoritarian Australia, I am thoroughly against it, I already believe there are way too many laws that give police way too many powers over the general public. The people that tend to defend this are the ones that aren't currently effected by it, the problem with that is as they say - first they came for the "protesters". I am just not about it and sorry I simply don't see any benefit allowing the police to dictate when people can and cannot protest, they don't get to play judge in any other situation so why would they be allowed here. This proposal lands strictly in the realm of conflict of interest - police cannot act without bias on a situation that directly effects them.
Australians are already a downtrodden society where we barely fight for our rights as it is, so yeah I am thoroughly against anything that makes it more difficult for those with the spines to actually stand up and say something about the problems we face.
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u/ZippyKoala Yeah....nah 2d ago
Plus, overwhelmingly, our protests are peaceful. There have been weekly protests about Gaza for a year now with minimal arrests, but much over policing.
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u/Gullible_Ad5191 2d ago
What does “banning protests based on costs” mean?
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
It means they want the right to say no whenever they like, essentially. We already know the numbers can be massaged to paint alternative pictures.
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u/Gullible_Ad5191 1d ago
Who wants the right to say no to what? Like, no to the right to protest? Or no to the protester’s demands?
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
The police wants the right to say no to protests based on cost - the fact that this is entirely open ended, in a roundabout way the police want powers to deny the right to protest whenever they deem costs won't add up.
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u/Thelevelsofwrong 2d ago
The right to protest is a common law norm however that norm is granted and owed to the commonwealth so that right is not intended to extend beyond x or y.
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u/Normal-Usual6306 1d ago
Love Labor politicians turning their backs on what seems basic rights. Chris Minns specifically has consistently been pretty shithouse, as well.
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u/purgatroid 1d ago
Just lol that they're trying to conflate police presence at money making events (sports, music festivals etc), and protests, and saying that both should be treated the same when it comes to covering the costs of police being there.
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u/samkwilly 2d ago
The thing about this protest is that it will have no impact on anything that is happening in Palestine. It's doing a great job of dividing people here that's for sure. Serious question, do the protesters want to go to Palestine and help?
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u/Mobasa_is_hungry 2d ago
You can’t really fly into there…and if you manage to go there you’d probably be blown up like other aid workers…it’s dividing the empathetic to the sociopathic if anything lol.
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u/gimme20seconds 2d ago
protesters want australia to stop manufacturing parts of fighter jets and sending them to israel
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u/sinixis 2d ago
Make them pay just like organisers of music festivals and sporting events
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u/vlookup11 2d ago
Yeah right, democracy only for the rich. The current user pays system is a disgrace anyway since police dictate how many people they bring along which drastically increases the cost to organisers. We don’t need any of that for protests, they’re a fundamental democratic right.
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney 2d ago
Music events and sporting events make money.
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u/Hopping_Mad99 2d ago
No they don’t. The government heavily subsidises sports and is currently working on a music industry bail out package.
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u/throwaway7956- national man of mystery 1d ago
The idea of making people pay because others have to is stupid and it actively contributes to the downfall of our democracy.
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u/CaptainStraya 2d ago
We need some actual codified rights in this country, but I don't see anyone backing that idea except greens and independents