South Australia passes law to ban “disruptive” protests
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Nobody speaks for them now. I think much of the world yearns for a leader who will stand up for them. Somehow they are cowed - by what? What is the overwhelming movement that has silenced them and cowed all these free people?
Someone’s freedom to protest is not more important than someone else’s freedom to use that same space to get to work, live their life, etc. Protests have always needed to be booked in advance and are essentially always approved (with police protection included for neo nazis etc).
You seem to be describing the freedom of America (a right to a gun, but not a right to be free from the fear of getting shot) but it’s not like that everywhere, see even more extreme examples like the “guilty until proven innocent” case of libel in Australia.
I’m not saying either way is better or worse, just that this is the status quo really for Australia.
See (for example):
[1] https://rabbitholemag.com/australia-is-uniquely-bad-for-defa...
Worthy of note though is that otherwise
> In many respects, Australia compares well with other liberal democracies. Australia’s Freedom Score (95 out of 100) is on par with or better than countries like the UK (93/100), New Zealand (99/100), Canada (98/100), Germany (94/100), France (89/100), and the US (83/100). The country regularly ranks high on freedom indexes and democracy indexes and all sorts of human rights and civil liberties metrics. [1]
Australia is considered to have greater than 10% "more freedom" than the USofA by some third party rankings.
Comparison here for the curious. [1]
[1] https://kellywarnerlaw.com/chart-differences-between-united-...
Accordingly, Australia is declining, like many other countries, unfortunately.
Is there any particular reason why
> the V-Dem Institute at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden [...] With five Principal Investigators [...] etc. [1]
is currently the best empirical source?
I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc.
I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint.
> Accordingly, Australia is declining, like many other countries, unfortunately.
Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries)
Yes: a lot of academic research on the topic.
> I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of > global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | > comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc.
You can do that with V-Dem too.
> I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint.
These are the same people; V-Dem was built upon the foundation done at the Kelogg Institute. Since then, V-Dem covers over ten universities and over two thousand academics.
> Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described > as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries)
I just briefly looked at the chart about liberal democracy rights; a slight downward trend from the late 2000s. You'd need to do a thorough analysis for a definite conclusion, of course.
If Australia is declining "like many other countries" as the PP said, then it might not be called out specifically. You can go to their graphing tools like https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/VariableGraph/ (this one focuses on a particular measure and shows you how it changes over time in different countries), enter the measure you want (for this I looked at "liberal democracy index") and some group of countries. I entered Australia and the G7 countries, and while there does seem to be a peak maybe 10-20 years ago for them all, it could easily be some artifact. On this basis, I would hardly agree with PP that there is a declining trend in Australia.
Btw - once you've selected an indicator, you can click its name (white on dark grey) the box under the box under the graph and find information on it. In this case, it tells you it's an aggregate of liberal and polyarchy. Those in turn are also aggregates but it comes back to expert survey data. With survey data, you probably need to change the scale to original scale because otherwise the values in the graph won't correspond to the description in the text.
UK too, if you want to do something large-scale you negotiate with the police about when is going to work, and try to give them estimates of numbers etc. And at the small-scale end, you've never been allowed to (for instance) block a public path or block entrance to a business you disagreed with.
In the small town I grew up in, in the UK, I remember the police intervening when a local animal rights activist blocked access to a cafe which had put ostrich or emu egg on the menu. She was fine to stand there with a sign and say her piece, but she was not allowed to either block the cafe entrance or the path outside.
I don't like these developments, but the argument I see a lot at the moment that protest has always been and must be about disruption, seems off.
Perhaps effective protest is about disruption, but we're not going to legalise (for example) shutting down of an airport by a handful of people if they claim to have a cause, because we may as well give up on having an airport at that point.
Not that I agree with draconian new powers coming in to deal with those, but the scary parts of the new laws to me are the ones that allow police to do stuff like arrest the anti-monarchist protestors who were not planning on direct action. The ones that directly impact public speech.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/12/corona...
But the UK has had airports and such protests, without the oppressive laws. It's hardly even a time of much protest or dangerous protest - compare the 1960s or 1970s. People were hijacking planes.
Political freedom is not a threat; it's not only compatible with a functioning economy, it's the source of all the highest-functioning economies in human history.
I'm just arguing against the people who are basically saying that protest is a) supposed to be disruptive and b) should not be prosecuted when it is.
The worrying part of the new legislation in places like the UK is how it is being used to target people who are not shutting down critical infrastructure, who are not causing property damage etc etc.
Conversely, venomous creatures have killed approximately zero people in a hundred years.
Media consolidation. A massive percentage of the media in democracies has been bought up by organizations who benefit from the suppression of free speech. No leader who wants to keep getting elected dares go against the wishes of these oligarchs.
I can’t remember the last time I went to a news site or watched TV. Even when I do, they report on things that happen on Twitter (this was true pre-Musk, not sure now).
I get my entire dose of other-people’s-opinions on Twitter and Youtube, from people I specifically picked out myself - the opposite of consolidation.
For important things like the weather, financial news, and political votes, you’re better off getting the info straight from the source, which is usually available unbiased, free, 24/7, instantly, online.
People older than you who don’t have anything to do other than go vote on Election Day.
According to this [0] peak voting age is 45+. The oldest millennials are around 40 now, so in a decade or two, you can expect a steep decline in big media - these companies are still in business at all.
[0] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individu...
Disinformation and misinformation influence have had major increases. Is that coincidence?
- The term 'media' is often applied with a broader scope than "traditional news media".
- There are ads and suggestions on Twitter and Youtube. Do you specifically pick out those?
- The people that you talk to or follow online get their information from somewhere.
- You may be an exception. I'd wager you're less immune to mass media / the propaganda model than you think, but in any case the majority is (largely) responsible for election outcomes.
It used to be that a dozen or so talking heads told entire countries what was what. Today, the information landscape has exploded and splintered into millions of sources.
For the first time, it's practical for every individual human to go directly to primary sources for most of the important things. And while most don't, many do, and out the many who do, some have their own platforms.
Information dissemination is now more many-to-many than one-to-many. And while there is more bullshit than ever out there, there's also much more truth, and more angles of it being examined, and much less ability for small interests to control the whole. And that's fantastic.
> you're better off getting the info straight from the source
Unless you have incredible time, expertise, and access, I think that's a serious error. You can't do the research of a professional journalist - not only looking at the source, but calling (or emailing/texting) the principles and speaking to them, speaking directly to experts (without expertise you are easily misled by the primary source), researching all their claims.
There's a reason Wikipedia only allows secondary, not primary sources as citations. Primary sources are highly biased, very narrow in knowledge and perspective, and are not trying to inform you.
> Primary sources are highly biased, very narrow in knowledge and perspective, and are not trying to inform you.
The primary goal of most major news outlets isn't to inform either, it's to present propaganda. See, e.g., the Trusted News Initiative.
Journalists collaborating with the very state institutions over which they are meant to be a watchdog for the sake of future access is destroying the profession.
I agree!
> they need to take proactive steps to regain that trust, which had clearly been lost
Speak for yourself! It varies greatly with the journalist and publication, of course, but journalists earn my trust every day in their articles. The amount of direct, personal, on-the-ground research is really impressive.
> Journalists collaborating with the very state institutions over which they are meant to be a watchdog for the sake of future access is destroying the profession.
That's been complained about for a long time - it's nothing new and not 'destroying the profession'. But how do you maintain access to key information valuable to the public, while criticizing the people who provide it? It's a real challenge.
And yet journalism does amazing things.
> Blaming consumers of journalism for lack of trust, is a step away from victim-blaming.
If you can't take some disagreement, you are in the wrong place! Probably you shouldn't read journalism either.
I am speaking statistically. Trust in the media is at an all-time low: https://deadline.com/2021/10/news-media-trust-gallup-1234852.... I'm happy that you don't see that in your personal consumption, but I would urge you to take your own advice.
> But how do you maintain access to key information valuable to the public, while criticizing the people who provide it? It's a real challenge.
You do investigation. You hire private investigators. You find courageous individuals who will blow the whistle and have the courage to do so publically. You certainly do not continue to use "anonymous sources" when they have shows themselves completely worthless, while lying to your audience that you have vetted the information.
> If you can't take some disagreement, you are in the wrong place! Probably you shouldn't read journalism either.
Not at all. But your earlier comment implies that there could not be anything to GPs stance than ignorance. This showed your own ignorance as to the state of affairs re: trust in journalism, along with other institutions. Blaming rightly-earned distrust on ignorance... See my comment above.
Agreed! And it happens daily in at least the serious news media. Though I'm not sure where private investigators fit - the journalists are already professional investigators.
> "anonymous sources" ... have shows themselves completely worthless
Speaking of worthless, these claims seem pretty empty of value. Certainly many exceptionally valuable, true things have come from anonymous sources. Certainly there aren't always alternatives to them.
I was asking a different question; my fault for not being clear: My question was about the reactionary movement - what is it, how is it defined, what is its name (I use the term 'reactionary', but there is no name for it).
I completely agree, but I don't know how you'd go about doing such a thing.
Popular speech needs no protections, but any expression of unpopular speech quickly gets disappeared, with no government intervention needed at all.
Look at how Visa+Mastercard together completely shut out voices that popular rhetoric demands must be silenced.
It needs to get better, but to say it's so impossible is missing the incredible forest for a few trees. Look at how successful the far right is, spewing utter BS, for example.
That has not been my impression. Rather, the opposite. All over the western world, more and more authoritarian parties get more and more votes.
My point is, that's because of the lack of leaders who stands up for the values I described in the GP. The leaders on the 'left', really centrists, have adopted a 'middle way' (true to their centrist ideology), but between authoritarianism (really fascism, IMHO) and freedom.
They are bipartisan, they'll proudly tell you! They aren't standing up for those values, they've mostly abandoned them in order to not alienate the fascists. The fascist movement (lacking a better term) has displayed endless aggression, and others just let themselves be intimidated and back down.
What leader talks consistently about freedom, all people are created equal, democracy, 'liberte, egalite, fraternite', the American Dream, land of the free, etc.? What leader aggressively stands up for them and fights for them?
Its even got its own philosophical movement for the spiders in the center of the web. With a lack of social control over distributed tech artifacts as great filter and thus infinite justification for all these emergency atrocities already in effect or yet to come.
Science goes were the data goes. Neurosciences were privatized.
Not really. Post 9/11 brought new forms of surveillance which were declared to be legal en-masse. Invasive searches at borders became standard. Within a few years of cryptography becoming the norm, most "free" societies had written laws to ensure that you'd be imprisoned for not turning over your cryptographic keys, for instance.
But it goes back further: most people in history have been fine with other people's unfreedom. There's nothing new about that. Whether we think of legal or actual segregation in the US, or the treatment of Catholics or Muslims in the UK, or French attitudes towards Algerians, most of the time people have been perfectly fine without freedom.
As the old (communist, I think) song goes: freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Still, what is relatively new is the championing of equity over equality, and the voices of minorities over broad sweeping statements from representatives of the powerful. It is progress, even if it is slow, and bitterly fought.
Very few countries have ever guaranteed the right to free speech and freedom of assembly. The first amendement in the US constitution for instance is something unique in the world, and no other country have something remotely similar. In most of the EU, one can go to prison if they voice their opinion, and freedom of assembly IS NOT guaranteed, as states can dissolve groups and organizations, especially religious ones.
While I applaud your defense of the democracy in the US, which has long been in a severe decline, the rest is pure nonsense, either by ignorance or by intention.
Yeah sure, we all know how that ended the last time parties were advocating for this.
I'm not sure if it's this: Leaders have been advocating it for generations, on all sides of the aisle. Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, ... Reagan, Clinton, even Bush Jr. Every American leader extolled it, maybe all presidents. Until Trump, the GOP, and the global fascist movement, which have been the exception, and mostly only since 2016.
covid policies. the majority has always been sheep unable to see the larger picture or even care about political freedom. but covid policies successfully framed civil subservience as a moral virtue. if you question the policies you are a criminal at best or simply a crazy idiot.
Yes, let's not pretend the problem was people "questioning" policies. The problem was people actively disrespecting them.
This is the problem of freedom. Your freedom to be an imbecile takes away my freedom of living in an imbecile-free society.
Unfortunately for you, this "freedom of living in an imbecile-free society" does not grant you or the government to decide which opinions (as forms of speech) are "imbecile", and to limit their spread through censorship.
Why are you censoring me?
Curiously enough, that seem to goes hand-in-hand with the police throwing hand grenades and using RPG against protesters - this may be A-ok in Europe, but that wouldn't fly here.
Before that, there have been complaints about many legislative proposals in democracies that were directed against the possibility that such-and-such a policy might be used against the general public if an authoritarian government were elected. Nowadays, complaints against similar policies are provided as prima facie evidence that the government is authoritarian. I think the distinction between these two positions is interesting and worth paying greater attention to.
Anyone who is familiar with the history of democracies knows that there have always been laws against disruptive protests, whether couched in exactly those terms or otherwise. And they have always been used against disruptive protesters. One issue is that in a democracy you expect the law to reflect popular sentiment, and protesters are often protesting against the broader public. It's foolish to expect anything different. During the development of democracy, people said "there shouldn't be a law against this protest, but there is yet I will protest anyway and get arrested and people will find the penalty I will receive in their name unpalatable and it will shift public opinion perhaps moderately in my direction" whereas now they say "there shouldn't be a law against this protest, but there is, therefore we are an authoritarian hellhole".
If your goal is to change public opinion, then you must direct your actions to changing public opinion, not disrupting people. If you believe disrupting people will change public opinion, that's great but describe a realistic mechanism. Weight its tradeoff and risks. Plan it and strategise and choose a method because, given the laws that exist and the power centres that exist, it will be effective. Don't choose a method because some dead philosopher said you have a right to it. Aim to be effective.
There was no golden age of democracy. Democracy is just a struggle. It is a struggle to change public opinion and it is a struggle to bring public policy in line with public opinion.
I agree, to a degree. But things are much worse now, and many measures support that (some discussed in this thread). Also, democracy includes the protection of minority rights and the rule of law; it's not rule of human and a raw power struggle.
Democracy by its nature poorly represents minorities and protest is an important backchannel of information that some group isn't being appropriately represented, a reminder that society only functions with almost universal participation of the minorities as well.
The things protecting minorities are not protests or democracy, but education, with a sprinkle of "endoctrination" in socially positive values. In the USA you add on top of that what are in effect dictates from the holy founding fathers (like the bill of rights) which are worshipped like devine commandments. These things are not products of democracy but quite the opposite. Permanent rules developed by philosopher king founders to keep democracy in check
Countries that lack education or "philosopher kings" seem to devolve to democratic system of majority tyranny
https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Bi...
Is the ostensible reason sufficient? Isn't that just as oppressive?
Well, it's a balancing act.
The people who are being impacted by the "nuisance" might disagree about the protesters distinction between "protest" and "nuisance".
Everyone should be free to air their grievances; however the right to voice your grievance does not automatically trump someone else's right to ignore it.
Err, not really? When I was living in Australia I was aware of countless non-disruptive protests (usually outside various Parliament Houses, but sometimes through public areas like the main street). Gluing yourself to a road isn't a human right. If you want to protest, go do it on the footpath.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/17/senior-met-o...
From memory, they managed to at the very least arrest: a rape prevention squad, a royalist adjacent to protesters, a study group on non-violent protest that were in a building far away from any action, and republicans that had been in contact and notified the police in advance of their intention to protest. What a complete and utter bunch of muppets, yet they keep parroting the line “But the event was once in a lifetime!” which they more or less nicked from the politicians behind the bill.
I'm not sure anything is much of a protest. If Tony Blair can ignore a million on the street demanding the UK doesn't invade Iraq, what hope is there for any protest?
But beyond that, how much a nuisance do you support people being able to make, and for what causes? Can I shut down all major routes into and out of London with a relative handful of people, because I righteously believe that gov.uk shouldn't use google analytics? Or because I want to protest mind control chips in vaccines? And if I do, should I be able to walk away with no legal consequences?
I agree, the new laws in the UK are fucking awful, as is what happened to the anti-monarchy protestors a few weeks back, but equally democratic protest has to respect everyone else's right not to care and just get on with their day. If it genuinely is about getting ideas across, that is.
The cynic in me sees protest as a useful way to keep agitators busy while giving them a way to let it all out and make themselves feel good...
Protests in Australia are for weekends and footpaths, like bicycles.
this are really dark times
The cause should be irrelevant, we can't pick and chose how disruptive it can be based on how much we currently agree with it.
IMHO disruptive protests are ineffective anyway, in fact they often alienate people. Effective protests are ones with clear messages and lots of coverage. You don't need to be disruptive for that, though it can help.
The punishment should be the same whether it's about protesting or not.
Maybe it's different in Australia but that's what I noticed over here.
Yeah, I’ll have to disagree there. And the whiniest people goes to FDP members playing opposition party, in any case.
Now, I'd be happy to support your gluing yourself to footpaths and freeways, as long as I have the right to remove you for obstructing my way. The problem is my options are fairly limited if I'm stuck in traffic for three hours because you're "demonstrating".
A common argument in favour of these disruptive tactics is "yeah but the planet is DYING, this is an EMERGENCY!" OK, go do something about it - other than gluing yourself to the road. Go study science and engineering. Please. Because the more people working on the problem, the quicker we'll get solutions. Don't you CARE?
The inconvenience of protests is a feature not a bug. They're supposed to inconvenience you. It's called civil disobedience.
Beware seeing yourself as so intellectually and morally superior that other people can be used as tools for your own ends. That does not end well for anyone.
Of course protests are an important part of a healthy democracy.
Rather I'm pointing that out in the age of social media, a lot of these disruptive climate protests are narcissistic attention grabs. There's a desperate need for validation from peers and a sense that one is the "main character" so to speak.
That's an issue, and it's a new issue. It didn't exist until social media came along, not to the extent it does now.
I'm more than happy for people to protest. But if I'm stuck on a bridge while some 22 year-old rich kid who lives in his parents' Sunshine Coast mansion blocks the road, I should be allowed to counter-protest by throwing him in the river and continuing on my day.
Who said that they can't protest? They can protest too, they just can't stop other people going to hospital or work.
Civil disobedience generally involves breaking laws, it's part of the package right? You, hopefully en-masse but it can be an individual, break the laws you want to see changed and you hope that society sees this and a movement ignites to get things fixed. As such, it is already illegal and that's more or less the point.
I don't agree with piling on more prohibitions, but the worrying parts of the new laws in various places are not the ones that might have consequences for people taking direct action like blocking roads, but the ones which target protestors who are using speech and not taking those actions. For instance the anti-monarchy protestors who were due to attend the king's coronation with a sign and maybe a megaphone a few weeks back.
I was actually sympathetic to their demands. But on that day I just really wanted the police to go there and disband their protest with use of violence.
It didn't spur me into civil disobedience. It spurred me to desire a more authoritarian state. I just wanted the freedom of not being stuck inside a tunnel for 3 hours on a particularly hot summer day.
* Do we have the political will to make these changes?
* Will individuals be willing to change their lifestyles?
No amount of undergraduate degrees in materials science or ecology will change the answers to those questions. But protest might - I for one find it compelling.
This is just plain naive. It's not a matter of manpower.
If you're interested in finding out why more tech might not always be the solution. We're organizing a summer school in France on why this might be the case and what our role as people in ICT should be instead: https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/