The NSW government recently passed legislation restricting rights to protest around places of worship. This follows abhorrent violent and threatening antisemitic acts. Jewish and all religious communities deserve to be respected and to live freely without fear. However, destructive acts relating to religious institutions were already covered by existing legislation prohibiting violence, intimidation and inciting hatred based on religion. Violence and terrorism are not protests but crimes.
The congregation where I ministered for the last four years, Pitt Street Uniting Church, has received intimidation and acts of violence, yet opposes such laws. For it has not only been attacked but also prominent in protest movements for queer rights, climate action and justice for refugees. It has erected banners, held protest gatherings outside the church and organised marches along Pitt Street. I myself, over decades, have protested outside church spaces on several human rights grounds.
I also worry that such legislation reinforces “religious exceptionalism” – where faith bodies are overprotected – and can thereby restrict reasonable as well as unacceptable dissent from within and beyond their midst. Among others, victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse have thus spoken out against such laws. Furthermore, many Sydney protest march routes pass by places of worship, including Pitt St UC. Protest can cause inconvenience but that is not the same as violence. Unfortunately, many politicians appear to conflate them.
Our community’s capacity to engage in protest is foundational to healthy democracy and to faith witness for justice. Peaceful protest has enabled social progress such as the eight-hour working day, civil rights and independence from colonialism. Yet, sadly, over the last decade the NSW government has introduced more and more restrictive laws against protest and upped penalties, with $22,000 fines for protests impacting railways rushed through last year. A government review recently backed laws that made obstructing a road punishable by two years’ imprisonment despite 20 civil society organisations and over 1,400 individuals calling for the laws to be scrapped.
We must address racist, and religious-linked, violence with targeted reform, rather than restricting democratic rights. Instead of the current top-down approach, I therefore encourage the government to rethink. Resourcing understanding, cross-community cooperation and cross-faith solidarity, as well as targeted reforms addressing far-right extremism, is a much better proactive way of creating the community bonds necessary to protect everyone from violence.
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The Rev. Dr Josephine Inkpin is an Anglican priest. A former General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council, she is co-chair of Equal Voices and a leader in inter-faith dialogue.
The comment submitted by ‘Diana’ above, which you’ve chosen to publish apparently unedited goes way beyond its own derogatory accusation of ‘woolly and fluffy’. Virtually everything that’s being alleged simply isn’t true. Of COURSE the eight-hour working day came as a result of activism – DECADES of relentless activism by fed-up, exploited workers the (Western) world over. To say it’s because of technology is laughable. If that were the case, then the explosion of technology in today’s world should see people only having to put in a day or two a week max at work, whereas in reality most ordinary workers are being exploited with longer and longer unpaid hours for less and less (real) pay, while those at the very top continue remunerating themselves to obscene levels. I don’t know what your correspondent has against the principle of ordinary people standing up for their rights, but serious, facts-based historians have indisputably documented that workers rights, women’s rights, civil rights – any kind of rights you care to name – came about pretty much wholly and solely because of the activism of the exploited many against the powerful few. I would have thought a publication called the South Sydney Herald would have been not just aware, but proud, of that history.
And to claim that the article avoids mentioning what your correspondent identifies as the “real issue” – attacks against Jewish synagogues – makes me shake my head, yet again, at the delusional extremes people’s selective filtering of information will take them to. The OPENING PARAGRAPH specifically addresses this very issue! Even the claim that the (indisputably heinous) synagogue attacks IS the ‘real issue’ is wrong in itself in the context of this article, which is about the government legislation restricting protest around ALL places of worship IN RESPONSE to the attacks, NOT the attacks themselves.
False, too, is the claim that Jewish synagogues are the only religious organisations suffering violent attacks in this country. The article’s author spelled out that the church where she ministered for four years, Pitt Street Uniting, suffered violent attacks during her tenure, and I’ve read of many incidents of violence being carried out at other places of worship in Australia, including a recent one where a Bishop in a Christian church was actually stabbed.
My main problem with this comment though is that your publication has chosen to publish what amounts to clear misinformation completely unchallenged. In our world where mis and disinformation has destroyed millions of people’s abilities to think rationally, or even to discern truth from fiction, then if you choose to publish the contributions of your readers unedited, in my opinion you are morally obliged to also publish disclaimers where people are clearly stating false and/or misleading information, as is happening with this comment. If this would take up too much time, then I consider you’re morally obliged to edit the submissions you receive to ensure only factual opinion is included. I contend this would reduce the above submission from the original 190 words to the following 10: “I’m not sure whether the laws are right or wrong.”
It isn’t really true to say that ‘Peaceful protest has enabled social progress such as the eight-hour working day, civil rights and independence from colonialism.’ The eight-how working day was introduced because of advances in technology in the 1800s, such that a typical employee (such as a miner or a factory worker) could be so productive that he or she could earn his own wage and a profit for the employer. Without technological advance, there would have been no eight-hour working day. Civil rights (such as legal equality in employment between men and women) came about because the greater physical strength that men have has become less and less relevant in the workplace.
This article avoids mentioning what the real issue is. It isn’t ‘religious protests’ but specifically attacks against Jewish synagogues. Not mosques, not Churches (at least, in Australia), not Sikh or Hindu temples. Just synagogues. And those attacks are being carried out by Muslims, the extreme left, organised crime and neo-Nazis.
I’m not sure whether the laws are right or wrong. But articles such as this really need to address the issues, rather than being woolly and fluffy.