Minns says police ‘put in an impossible situation’
Penry Buckley
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, is making the first of multiple appearances across the media this morning following the violent clashes between police and protesters yesterday evening.
He has told Channel Nine’s Today program that police were “put in an impossible situation last night”:
It’s worth remembering they did everything possible to avoid that confrontation, starting last week when they begged protest organisers to have it in Hyde Park, where it was safe and a march could take place.
I know that some of the scenes on media are short clips, but people have to understand the circumstances where protesters breached police lines and ran amuck in Sydney would have been devastating.
What we can say today what we couldn’t say yesterday is that we had 7,000 Jewish mourners in the same city at the same time, and police had to keep those two groups apart.
Asked about comments from NSW Labor backbencher Sarah Kaine that the police response were disproportionate, Minns says:
No. She’s wrong. I’m not going to throw police under the bus this morning. This is a situation that’s incredibly combustible. And the circumstances that weren’t shown on the news this morning or on TV last night because is what would have happened if protesters breached police lines …
It would have dangerous … as difficult as the scenes were to watch, it would have been infinitely worse if NSW police didn’t do their job last night.
Key events
Josh Butler
Roblox responds to government concerns following reports of child grooming
Roblox says it is looking forward to meeting Anika Wells to talk about their child safety measures, saying it is committed to keeping users safe.
As we reported earlier, the communications minister, Wells, has requested an urgent meeting with the gaming platform after reports of child grooming and vile content on the service.
A Roblox spokesperson shared a statement with us this morning, after the story was published.
We look forward to the opportunity to inform the minister of the steps we take to help keep our community safe. Roblox has robust safety policies and processes to help protect users that go beyond many other platforms, and advanced safeguards that monitor for harmful content and communications.
We have filters designed to block the sharing of personal information, our chat features don’t allow user-to-user image or video sharing, and we recently rolled out age checks globally to limit kids and teens to only chatting with others of similar age by default.
We also work closely with Australian law enforcement to support their investigations. While no system is perfect, our commitment to safety never ends, and we continue to strengthen protections to help keep users safe.
Penry Buckley
Minns claims video of NSW cops dragging praying men away took place amid ‘riotous behaviour’
Returning to the NSW premier, Chris Minns has been asked about videos circulating on social media of last night’s protest, including a video showing a number of men kneeling to pray before some were dragged away by police.
Asked about the incident, he told ABC Radio Sydney:
It’s incredibly important that the police’s decades-long association in relationship with the Islamic and Muslim community in New South Wales should take precedent over a clip of what happened last night. And context is important.
There is no way NSW police would have caused or intended to cause offence with the Arabic or the Islamic community under any circumstances.
The host, Craig Reucassel, said: “I think lifting up in the middle of prayer is going to cause offence.” Minns responded:
The context is incredibly important, and the context here was in the middle of what was a riotous behaviour. Now I’m not suggesting that those who are engaging in prayer were conducting that behaviour, but police are left with a difficult situation when they’ve asked people to clear the area.
Nationals party room ‘toxic’ after ‘juvenile theatrics’, says former member
Nationals MP turned independent Andrew Gee says he’s hearing that the Nationals party room is “toxic” and says some Nats feel as though they’re “trapped” in the party.
Speaking to ABC RN Breakfast earlier, Gee, who represents a regional NSW seat, doesn’t hold back in his criticisms of his former party in their conduct during the breakup.
He says that just because David Littleproud and others have said they’ve conducted themselves “professionally” doesn’t mean anyone else has seen it that way.
I’m hearing that it’s toxic in there quite frequently. Frankly, it’s appalling. And there are people in there that just wish they weren’t.
I can’t imagine sitting there and just watching this vainglorious lunacy unfold, these ridiculous, petty juvenile theatrics that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks?
I was listening to all of these National party descriptions that they’ve acted professionally and with maturity and on matters of high principle. I can tell you that is not what people out there in the real world are thinking about it. They know that it is a shambles because they’re coming up to me on the street and telling me that they’re appalled and disgusted by the whole show.
Gee encourages Nats unhappy in the party to come over to the crossbench and says, “a better life awaits you!”
Tim Wilson claims protests show ‘really disturbing priorities’ and asks why protesters are not targeting Iran
Wilson says Australians should be protesting against the Iranian regime, in response to yesterday’s march against the visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog.
He also criticises the use of the phrase ‘globalise the intifada’.
I think it shows some really disturbing priorities, you know, we’ve currently got about 30,000 people being murdered by the government of Iran for wanting to stand up and be self determining. I don’t see that group of people protesting for Iranians to be able to live their lives freely. Iran has engaged in state sponsored terrorism in Australia and is actively financing Hamas.
‘Middle finger voting’ says Wilson on polling
Liberal MP Tim Wilson says he believes there’s some ‘middle finger voting’ taking place, because there hasn’t been enough focus on the Australian community.
As the internal Liberal dramas continue, and their popularity sinks in the polls, Wilson implores his party to focus on policy (like his colleague Andrew Bragg on RN earlier).
Speaking to Sky News, Wilson says he backs the leader of the party.
I’ve said consistently, I back the leader, and that’s not going to change, because my focus is precisely on how we advance the best interests of the Australian people.
Things go up and down political cycles, but the what the Australian people and what the polls are showing to me is that there’s a bit of middle finger voting going on where Australians are looking at their parliament, and people are not focused on the Australian community.
Liberal party room to meet as leadership speculation continues
Dan Jervis-Bardy
The Liberal party room is due to meet at 9am on Tuesday as speculation that Angus Taylor will soon launch a leadership challenge to Sussan Ley continues to swirl around Canberra.
A leadership spill is considered unlikely at Tuesday’s meeting for a few reasons:
Firstly, the 23 Liberal senators aren’t expected to attend the meeting due to Senate estimates hearings. Liberal party conventions dictate that MPs must be present to vote in the leadership ballot.
The second reason is that Taylor is yet to resign from the shadow cabinet, which he would be required to do in order to challenge Ley.
Supporters of the shadow defence minister were on Monday, certain of a spill at some point this week after the latest Newspoll showed the Coalition’s primary vote had collapsed to 18% – nine percentage points below One Nation.
Senior moderates remain supportive of Ley and are refusing to do a deal with Taylor to engineer her exit, meaning the right-winger will need to woo centre-right and unaligned MPs to secure the leadership.
Stop playing games, says Bragg to Liberals
Jumping back to Andrew Bragg on RN Breakfast, the Liberal senator says his party needs to come up with alternative policy to the government rather than playing games.
The opposition has been plagued by rumours of a leadership spill for months which have crescendoed in recent days. The question now is more a when, rather than if, Angus Taylor will make a move.
Bragg, a moderate, says the public will continue to mark his party down if they don’t start coming up with credible policy. Asked if he supports Sussan Ley continuing as leader, he says:
Yes, I do, and we’ve been sent here by the taxpayers to work hard to hold the government to account and to develop alternative policies, not to play games.
‘I feel just absolutely shocked,’ says Greens MLC injured in protests
NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd says she was pushed and shoved by police, despite telling them she was a member of state parliament at the protests last night, and says she was “absolutely shocked” by the police’s actions.
Speaking to ABC RN Breakfast, Boyd says police surrounded the area meaning protesters couldn’t leave and says “but then they decided we couldn’t stay either and they just started assaulting people”.
Boyd says she only got home a few hours ago after being medically treated and posted a picture to social media wearing a neck brace.
My neck is okay. Other parts of my body are incredibly sort of battered and sore, but there’s nothing sort of permanent, I’m told, at this point.
Describing how she was injured, she says:
[An] Officer just pushes his fist into my chin. And then another one, as I’m recovering from that, another one pushes me in my shoulder. It is, I mean, I feel quite naive, but I didn’t know that this was what police could do in our state. I feel just absolutely shocked.
And then for there to be this peaceful prayer, it was prayer. How are these people a threat to anybody? They’re praying and to be just then, they grab them and they’re throwing them, they’re picking them up off of their prayer mats and throwing them to the ground.
Protests against Herzog a ‘disgrace’ says Bragg
Staying on RN Breakfast, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says the protests last night were a “disgrace”.
Bragg is highly critical of the marches, and is asked whether people have a right to protest when it might be offensive to another group. He says “of course” but adds that the Herzog visit follows a “religious massacre”.
I think it’s been in terrible taste to be protesting against something that the Jewish community has asked for after they have been severely affected by Australia’s worst religious massacre. They’ve asked for the of the Jewish state to come to provide comfort, and people have protested against that. I think it’s a disgrace.
Bragg is also asked about video footage of police and protesters clashing, which Tanya Plibersek earlier said was “very concerning” Bragg says the protesters should have stayed away.
They were told to stay home. I mean, they were told to stay home. I mean, I think most Australians think this is ridiculous. That it’s offensive to the Sydney Jewish community.
State MLC questions if repressive protest laws are making community safer
Stephen Lawrence – a NSW MLC and barrister – says he’s also concerned about the fact that civil liability has been “extinguished” under the Major Events Act Declaration.
Known as the public assembly restriction declaration, it gives police the full suite of their move-on powers under the Summary Offences Act for offences such as obstructing traffic.
Lawrence told RN Breakfast in practice, the events of Monday night should be “food for thought” for politicians.
Anyone that was the victim of a civil wrong, so negligence or any sort of other tortious act from the police last night won’t be able to sue the state. That’s a consequence of the Major Events Act Declaration.
But look, this is another event that will be food for thought, I’m sure, for politicians in terms of do you fundamentally achieve public safety by trying to repress protests, by trying to prevent street processions, by creating a legal regime where there’s no independent arbiter or are in fact those things potentially quite dangerous to community safety?
NSW MP says removal of ability to have peaceful protests has created ‘a pressure cooker’
NSW MLC and barrister, Stephen Lawrence was at yesterday’s protests but did not march, and says the state should have facilitated peaceful protest.
Speaking to RN Breakfast, Lawrence said he was concerned NSW was heading down a path towards “a repeat of the 1978 Mardi Gras.” You can read about the 78-ers here.
Lawrence says:
I think it rests on this very wrongful and pernicious idea that the Bondi terrorist atrocity was caused by lawful and peaceful protest, is we’ve removed that capacity to have those sorts of processions and protests authorised. This was a pretty much inevitable consequence of that.
I don’t like to be right about a thing like this, but it’s been repeatedly said in Parliament and in different places, we’re basically creating a pressure cooker and we saw that last night.
And look, I condemn any police brutality. Things will have to be determined in terms of what occurred last night.
Police ‘had to react’, NSW police official says
Nick Visser
A NSW police official says officers showed “restraint” at the protest before it turned violent.
Peter McKenna, the assistant commissioner of NSW police, said he was not going to judge the actions of police officers last night because he “saw what they were up against” while covering the protests at Sydney’s Town Hall.
He said before action was taken to disperse the crowd they showed restraint “for not minutes, not seconds, but I would say up to over an hour”.
McKenna vehemently defended the actions of officers amid concern about videos of violence and aggressive tactics, including pepper spraying. He told ABC Radio Sydney this morning:
Every police officer will have to justify their own actions, there’s no doubt about that.
But what I’ll say is what happened last night was one of the most precarious, volatile situations I have seen. … The level of aggression and violence by the crowd was palpable. …
Any type of powers were utilized because we kept trying to do it peacefully, until it became violent. As you said, the police had to react.
McKenna added that police had tried for hours to coordinate with protestors. When asked about a video that appears to show officers grabbing and pushing Muslim men praying outside Town Hall, McKenna said:
If their decisions were right wrong or otherwise, I’m not going to sit here and judge them this morning, because I saw what they were up against last night.
Plibersek says voices of Aboriginal women ‘not been heard sufficiently in this debate’
ABC News Breakfast host, Bridget Brennan asks Plibersek why Sophie Quinn, who was allegedly shot to death by her former partner Lake Cargelligo last month, was not given a national mourning day, or why politicians aren’t speaking widely about her life and legacy.
Quinn was seven months pregnant when she was killed. Her aunt and friend were also killed.
Plibersek says a lot of people would say that the voices of Aboriginal women and communities have “not been heard sufficiently in this debate.”
When we talk about the issues of family, domestic and sexual violence, the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been talked about less than they should’ve been … the statistics are shocking. An Aboriginal woman is seven times more likely to die in a domestic homicide. 27 times more likely to end up in hospital, 41 more times to end up in hospital if she’s in a rural or remote community. That’s not acceptable.
PM ‘devastated’ by scenes at protests in Sydney and Melbourne
Anthony Albanese says all views on Herzog’s visit should be expressed “peacefully”, and that the Israeli president’s visit is appropriate.
Speaking to Triple M Hobart, the prime minister is asked about the clashes between protesters and police during last night’s marches. Albanese says he was “devastating” and said that causes are “undermined” by these sorts of scenes:
I’m devastated by it. These are scenes that I think shouldn’t be taking place. So people should be able to express their views peacefully, but the police were very clear about the routes that were required if people wanted to march to go a particular route, and for to ensure that this was done peacefully. But the causes are not advanced by these sort of seems, indeed, they’re undermined.
Albanese says again the community don’t want to see “conflict” brought to Australia and that people should discuss issues peacefully and with respect.
Penry Buckley
Minns claims police opposed Town Hall protest for security of Jewish community event
Returning to the NSW premier, Chris Minns has said the reason police and the government opposed protesters marching from Town Hall to parliament last night was because of the area’s proximity to a Jewish community event at the ICC last night and the hotel where the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, was staying.
Minns is speaking to ABC Radio Sydney about the violent scenes at yesterday’s protest. He says:
NSW police were desperate for the protest not to take place there because [Town Hall] is the closest transport link to the ICC, right? …
The second point here, is that NSW parliament house was within blocks of where the president is staying for his official visit. And if NSW police were to take at face value the protest organiser’s word that they would go to parliament house then not breach police lines, and the rest of Sydney would have been safe, I think that would have been tactically irresponsible in the circumstances …
Now I realise this looks very easy in hindsight, and the circumstances and the decisions police make are really straightforward, but in the circumstances of a dynamic police situation, they had to make tactical calls to keep people safe.
Palestine Action Group calls for another protest tonight against ‘disgusting police state’
Nick Visser
The Palestine Action Group plans to hold another protest on Tuesday night after a violent, chaotic scene outside Sydney Town Hall on Monday evening saw dozens arrested after police deployed pepper spray into the crowd.
The group called for another event on Instagram, urging people to “be there tomorrow to stand up against Minns’ disgusting police state”:
To demand all charges against protesters be dropped, and to demand accountability and charges be laid against violent police.
The protest will take place outside NSW police’s Surry Hills police station, which lies outside the protest restriction zone.
Josh Lees, an organiser for Palestine Action Group, said last night’s events were the “worst” he’d seen after attending many pro-Palestine protests in recent years. He told ABC Radio Sydney:
We should have had the right to march. If police had just facilitated what we called for all along, a peaceful march from Town Hall to either the New South Wales Parliament or Hyde Park, as we were trying to negotiate with police on the night last night, then all of this could have been avoided.
Lees added he believed police “were absolutely off the chain”, saying they “just kept charging” and “pepper spraying everyone”.
Government plan to end violence against First Nations women and children detailed
The ten year plan from 2026-36 will come with $218m of funding over four years in the budget, which the government says will fund a national network of up to 40 Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to deliver community-led specialist support services.
Tanya Plibersek says the services will include:
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Crisis responses including mobile teams in remote areas to work with families after a violent incident,
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Planning support to help victims leave violence safely and receive continued support,
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Community support programs including playgroups for mums and children to connect with Elders, and
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Behaviour change and education programs for men and boys.
On ABC AM, Plibersek said:
[The plan] says that solutions that are locally designed, locally driven, locally staffed, locally delivered are going to make a greatest difference in the remote communities in particular.
First Nations experiences to be included in royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion
Tanya Plibersek has moved across to the other side of the ABC office in the press gallery, and is speaking to the AM program on the plan to end violence against First Nations women and children.
She says First Nations Australians will be able to make submissions to the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, and the minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy is encouraging the community to do that.
Plibersek says racism against First Nations people has been growing, and the terms of reference of the royal commission will allow those experiences to be considered.
The recent terrorist attack in Perth has led to enormous fear and anxiety, I know, amongst many Aboriginal people and in Aboriginal communities. But this comes on top of years now of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people telling us that racism against them is increasing …
The royal commission terms of reference already allow the commissioner to look at best practices and approaches to de-radicalisation and strengthening social cohesion.
