NSW Labor MP accuses Premier Chris Minns of ‘incredibly dangerous’ attitude to protests | New South Wales

New South Wales Labor MP Anthony D’Adam has accused the Prime Minister of taking an “incredibly dangerous position” on protests and said members of the government are afraid to speak out in support of Palestine.

Prime Minister Chris Minns sparked divisions within the Labor caucus after telling radio station 2GB on Tuesday that taxpayers would want NSW Police to tackle crime instead of patrolling weekly pro-Palestinian rallies, which he said would have cost five million dollars by 2024.

Guardian Australia spoke to five Labor MPs concerned about Minns’ comments that police should have the power to request a “public meeting” – which is required to lawfully organize a protest in NSW – based on the cost of patrolling the meeting.

D’Adam, who was sacked from his role as parliamentary secretary after criticizing NSW police tactics at a pro-Palestine demonstration earlier this year, condemned Minns’ comments.

“It is an incredibly dangerous position that the prime minister has taken,” D’Adam told the Guardian on Wednesday. “It’s actually a pretty big threat to our civil liberties if we give police the power to ban peaceful protest.”

D’Adam said Minns had “not tried to hide his position” on the Israel-Gaza war and claimed that this made MPs afraid to publicly express their support for Palestine.

“I know that the Prime Minister and his office have spoken to MPs behind the scenes when commenting publicly on these issues to dissuade them from expressing these views,” D’Adam said. Minns declined to comment.

Minns has ordered a review of police resources used in the weekly pro-Palestinian protests in Sydney.

Last week, the prime minister said a protest and candlelight vigil planned to show support for Gaza and Lebanon should not go ahead.

He has expressed significant support for Israel and the local Jewish community since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 last year.

Minns publicly rebuked Stephen Lawrence after the first-term Labor MP accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 and denying their right of return during a speech to parliament last year.

Lawrence, a former lawyer who helped overturn a ban on a Black Lives Matter march in Sydney during the pandemic, said on Wednesday that mass protests would take place in a “free society” whether they were “authorized” or not.

“The Mardi Gras of 1978 is a cautionary tale in terms of the danger and difficulty of translating an executive branch’s disapproval of a protest into action to actually stop it,” he said.

“There was an ‘unauthorized protest’ by a stigmatized minority on a road, which was significantly disrupted by police. Nobody wants that again.”

Another Labor MP, who asked not to be named, said they did not see how protests could be legally “shortened” based on cost.

They said government MPs were “absolutely” afraid to speak about Palestine.

Minns had spent a lot of time supporting people in NSW with links to Israel, but had not done the same for people with links to Gaza or Lebanon, the MP said.

“I have yet to see the Prime Minister speak in western Sydney to community members from Arab backgrounds who are equally affected,” they said. “He must be a prime minister for the entire community.”

Another MP said: “We live in a democracy and people have a fundamental right to protest.”

They said other MPs had said “behind closed doors” that their personal views on the Israel-Gaza war were “somewhat different” from what they had expressed publicly.

But the MP could not say whether this was because of the Prime Minister or out of fear of criticism from others, including the media.

Auburn MP Lynda Voltz said there is an implicit freedom of political expression in Labour’s constitution, which caucus members “hold very highly”.

She said she was not afraid to speak out about the situation in Gaza.

‘I’m ex-military. You have to ask yourself, when you are dealing with the tens of thousands of civilian deaths, how much respect Israel has for this,” she said.

On October 7, 2023, more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians, died. Of the 250 kidnapped by Hamas that day, half were released during a short-lived ceasefire in November, and half of the rest are believed dead.

According to local health authorities, more than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli military offensive, most of them civilians and many children.

The Prime Minister’s office was contacted for comment but referred Guardian Australia to comments Minns made at a press conference earlier on Wednesday.

At that news conference, Minns said he would wait for the outcome of the review.

“But my job, in addition to ensuring community harmony and public safety, is to ensure that the choices facing the government with taxpayers’ money are fully clear and available to the people of NSW.”