Review of two articles, ‘Australians’ right to protest may be more fragile than you think‘, on the ABC’s longreads and ‘With more restrictive laws across the country, how can we protect the right to protest?‘ on Pearls and Irritations.
Two strategies emerge.
1. IF the new laws against protest are vulnerable to a legal challenge, they ought to be challenged. Such a move would not prevent us pursuing other options.
2. IN the long term, the strategic need for a radical political organisation with deep roots in organised labour, giving us capacity to impose bans, etc.
The challenge is to figure out a way to fight the immediate battles and build for the long term simultaneously. Both are crucial.
Organisations have their limits, for example, online chats have to be moderated, and a lot of hateful and racist rubbish has to be culled from them. That takes up organiser’s time and energy that could be better spent, i.e., by organising in their unions and workplaces.
We must shutdown the political evil in our midst, the heartlessness betrayed by Albanese’s remark about the women and children in Syrian hell holes. He said: ‘ they made their bed(s) and and now must lie in it’ …
Meanwhile people are cold and starving and being sniped at in Gaza and the West Bank. The hour is getting late.
The pearls and irritation article suggested two ways forward:
1. Court challenges to restrictions on protest.
2. A Human Rights Act with the right to protest enshrined for all
To stop the genocide in Gaza we need more than legal protest.
We need to stop the weapons flow to Israel. Protests have been unable to achieve that either from Australia or from the UK.
We need strong organisation and determined action. That has led to BDS and Palestine Action. Both have had some success, but they are not enough.
We need political organisation capable of organising blockades, shut-downs and strikes to stop this flow of weapons that fuels the genocide.
Repressive laws are almost never defeated by legal means. Even the success (so far) of the British case over the proscribing of Palestine Action is about the application of a law and the State’s over-reach, rather than over that particular law’s constitutional validity.
It would be short-sighted, however, to rule out all legal challenges. The oppressor should be challenged and harrassed on every front if resources allow. One small legal victory, even over the scope of this Act, might give us additional space to mobilise. And every action, even one in the courts, adds to the oppressor’s burden.
Ultimately, though, it is the mobilisations that count. The street mobilisations in Queensland in 1978-79 and again in 1985 may have failed in their immediate objectives but they de-normalised Bjelke Petersen’s authoritarianism, destabilised his government, transformed the State ALP into a viable party of reform (albeit one with limited ambitions), and gave Labor both the social licence and the shove it needed to introduce the Peaceful Assembly Act after it came to power. We won in the end, and that win derived overwhelmingly from the pressure we built on the streets. As the deep South struggles against repression, Queensland is still benefitting from that victory.
The takeaway message: the effects of mass direct action, especially when organised labour gets involved, is often diffuse and non-linear, but it is real. Mass defiance remains by far our best weapon. Let’s not rule out using the courts. Just don’t fall into the trap of relying on them.
However, the strategic problem remains. We are trying to stop the genocide not trying to win civil liberties for Queenslanders. Our organization is at full stretch. We have weapons factories on our doorstep making huge profits from the genocide. Not a single politician, not a single political party, has thrown their full weight behind us. We have to do it on our own. The hour is getting late.
Journalist Radwan Mortada wrote:
“When reality is harsher than fiction.
Yesterday, in the town of Tallouseh, the martyr Ahmad Termos (62) was on a family visit. He was sitting with his wife in her brother’s house. The sound of a drone overhead, then another. He had barely stepped inside to sit when his phone rang. Ahmad answered.
The voice on the line was cold and clear:
“Is this Ahmad Termos?”
“Yes”, he replied.
“This is the Israeli army, Ahmad. You either die with those around you… or alone.”
Without hesitation, he answered: “Alone.”
He hung up. His face changed. His brother-in-law, Salim, looked at him and asked, “What happened, Ahmad?”
Calmly and decisively, he said: “The Israelis. Get up and leave. They say either you die with me… or I die alone.”
He did not beg. He did not shout. He asked them to leave, to survive, to let him face his fate alone. They refused at first, insisting they would not leave him, that they would die with him. He steadied them, then convinced them to go.
For a moment, he forgot he wasn’t in his own home. Then he realized it. He did not want death to come in a house that was not his. He chose to take death away from them. He asked them to stay while he left. He said goodbye. He got into his car, started the engine, drove away from the house, then parked.
Seconds passed. The drone fired two missiles.
The car burned. Ahmad’s body was torn apart. He burned… but his story remains. He is one of the heroes of our time.
Two years earlier, Ahmad had buried his son Hassan as a martyr. About a year ago, he saw him in a dream, telling him they would meet in the month of February. He told his daughter-in-law. She joked: “So the war will still be going on in a year? Maybe even five years.” He replied that his son had specified this coming February.
Someone had filmed him repeating that he would be martyred in February. Today, people in his town are circulating that video, along with the phone recording, on WhatsApp.
No one knows what a person feels when they receive a call announcing the moment of their death. No one knows how life is weighed in seconds, then reduced to a choice: to die alone… or to die with those you love. What heart can bear a call that lets you choose the manner of your death and the pain of parting? What strength, what courage, what selflessness must one possess just to remain standing in such a moment?
Before Ahmad, another young man was driving with his wife beside him. He received the same call. He stopped the car. He helped his wife out. He moved her away. Then he drove on alone, toward the missile.
These are scenes that repeat themselves in the South [of Lebanon]. A phone call that separates life from death. Young men walking toward their deaths with steady steps.
I cannot help but ask: Where is our government in all this? Where is the state that claims diplomacy will protect our youth? What is it doing to stop this?
Every crime committed against these young people, day after day, reinforces one truth: the legitimacy of resistance as the only option, after all other paths have been closed.
How cruel this era is… and how clear its positions.
I hesitated before writing. I wondered whether words could matter in the face of such horror. I asked myself: is this surrender or a deeper plunge into grief we cannot ward off? Then I realized that our voices, our words, may be a form of steadfastness in the face of the Israeli killing machine.
How noble these martyrs are. Truly, dignity begins with the shattered remains of our dead.”
Ian Curr
23 February 2026
[With thanks from Jeff and Peta, and Marwa Osman]
References
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/right-to-protest-fragile-police-powers-gaza-herzog/106331356