NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller receives QC advice that Victoria Police’s decision not to issue fines to 10,000 people who attended the June 6 Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne’s CBD may have been unlawful, according to leading workplace relations QC Stuart Wood.
Fuller sought the advice in order to prepare for court action to ban another BLM prtest due to be held in Sydney in the coming weeks.
See the story below published in The Australian late today.
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Police refusal to punish Melbourne protesters ‘unlawful’, QC finds
Only three organisers of the June 6 protest in Melbourne were fine $1652 for breaching coronavirus restrictions. Picture: AFP
Victoria Police’s decision not to issue fines to 10,000 people who attended the June 6 Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne’s CBD may have been unlawful, according to legal advice prepared by leading workplace relations QC Stuart Wood.
The details of the advice comes after NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller contrasted his state’s approach to policing Black Lives Matter protests with that of Victoria, warning on Monday that a rally planned for later this month could set NSW’s economic recovery from coronavirus
back “by a decade” if it resulted in new cases.
The decision, which was backed by the Andrews government, saw $1652 fines issued to three organisers, despite the clear breach of the Chief Health Officer’s directives, which at the time prohibited outdoor gatherings of more than 20 people.
Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services has identified six people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the fortnight after they attended the protest, two of whom were part of a family cluster of 30 cases linked to the outbreak of at least 287 cases in the North Melbourne and Flemington public housing towers in Melbourne’s inner northwest.
While the department says only one of the six was likely to have been infectious at the protest and there is “no evidence to suggest” any of them acquired the virus there, it has also refused to say whether a source of acquisition has been identified for the cases or explain why the possibility they caught it at the protest has been ruled out.
Mr Wood‘s legal advice, requested by the Institute of Public Affairs, examined the legality of Victoria Police’s decision to refuse to issue fines, caution, detain, or disperse protesters at the June 6 protest.
The QC found there to be a “sound prima facie case” that the decision not to enforce the CHO’s directions to limit gatherings to 20 was “unlawful” because then designate chief commissioner Shane Patton either exercised discretion he did not have under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act, or inappropriately exercised a limited general discretion he did have.
Demonstrators in Melbourne on June 6. Picture: AFP
“For Victoria Police to … make a general policy decision not to enforce the directions against a certain group of people at a certain time is to effectively refuse to give the assistance requested (to enforce public health directions under the act),” Mr Wood found.
“To simply decide not to enforce the directions against any protester had the practical consequence that (unlike every other Victorian everywhere else in the state), the directions did not apply to those people.”
IPA research fellow Morgan Begg called for the terms of reference of Victoria‘s judicial inquiry into the bungling of its hotel quarantine system to be broadened to include the police and Andrews government’s handling of the protest.
“The legal advice notes the potentially unlawful decision may even expose Victoria Police — and therefore the state’s taxpayers — to civil claims that will add to the enormous cost of the government’s inept pandemic response,” Mr Begg said.
“Thousands of protesters were allowed to take to the streets in an environment in which all other Victorians lived under the strict rules against public gatherings of more than 20 people.
“The state government’s response to the protest highlighted the mismanagement and arbitrary decision-making that has characterised the entire pandemic response.”
On the day of the protest there were 71 known active cases of coronavirus in Victoria, 14 of which had at that stage been linked to breaches in hotel quarantine, and the majority of which were in quarantined overseas travellers.
On Tuesday, Victoria‘s tally of known active cases reached 3147.
Rachel Baxendale
Victorian Political Reporter
