The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, faces an angry backlash from within his Labor caucus when it meets on Tuesday over his stance on the pro-Palestine march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Members are planning to move a motion in caucus condemning the conditions in Gaza and endorsing the right to protest.
The march for Palestine went ahead on Sunday after the NSW supreme court overturned a decision by police to refuse a permit to march on the bridge on public safety grounds.
NSW police said initial estimates put the crowd at 90,000, while rally organisers Palestine Action Group estimated the figure was closer to 300,000.
Several Labor state MPs, including the energy minister, Penny Sharpe, and fellow frontbencher Jihad Dib joined the protest. Several other NSW Labor MPs, including Stephen Lawrence, Lynda Voltz and Sarah Kaine were at the front of the march, along with the former NSW premier Bob Carr.
Minns’ stance on protests has drawn sharp criticism from members of his own right faction as well as from the soft left, who are increasingly dismayed that Minns appears to be more attuned to the News Corp media and talkback radio than his own party.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
“There’s a sense that our policy positions are at the most conservative end of the spectrum. The audience of 2GB are never, ever going to vote for us,” a member of the right faction told Guardian Australia, on the condition anonymity.
“I would just like a bit more Labor in my life,” they said.
Until now, parliamentary MPs from the hard left faction who backed Minns into the leadership have been largely silent over his clampdown on protests and other law and order issues, such as changes to bail laws and children.
The divergent approaches within the factions are causing tensions within Minns’ team.
“They’ve been completely missing in action,” said one right faction member talking about the left.
Another right faction MP said: “They haven’t come out on any progressive issues. It’s been us – the right – and some of the soft left that have been raising it, and now the base is really unhappy.”
Mark Morey, the secretary of Unions NSW, said: “When there’s a strong public hunger to protest against violence and humanitarian crises, the government’s role should be to facilitate peaceful expression, not obstruct it.”
“Yesterday’s massive turnout shows that working people across Sydney are deeply concerned about Gaza, and political leaders should listen rather than look for ways to silence them,” he said.
“The premier’s attempt to block this peaceful demonstration was a concerning overreach that the supreme court rightly rejected.”
Speaking on Monday, Minns said he did not regret his opposition to the protest march and it was his job to “be on the side of public safety”.
“I accept that there’s a huge groundswell. It’s a difficult one for the government. We have to balance public safety and the public’s right to protest … alongside running a big city like Sydney. Ultimately, my job is to be on the side of public safety,” he said.
The characterisation of his role drew a sharp response from Lawrence.
“This protest was inevitable. The only way to protect public safety was to accept that and facilitate it,” the Labor upper house member said. “The idea of suppressing a mass protest in the name of public safety is just risible.”
Lawrence said the protest organisers had offered to delay it until 24 August, but this had been rejected by a political-level refusal to accept the offer, which forced the NSW police into last-minute organisation to manage the huge crowd.
Minns on Monday foreshadowed that the government may still appeal against the ruling by justice Belinda Rigg on Saturday morning, allowing the protest to proceed. He did not rule out legislation to restrict future protests on the bridge, although he said he would not rush any legislation.
“No one should believe that it’s open season on the bridge,” he said.
Minns pointed out that in the past two years, the police had facilitated a hundred protests with the Palestine Action Group, as well as scores of other demonstrations.
The Greens MLC Sue Higginson said Minns was facing strong internal dissent over his stance and should start listening.
“Labor premier Chris Minns is acting strangely and is not listening. He has lost authority over his own caucus and on matters too significant to ignore,” she said.
“There are no current plans to march across the Harbour Bridge again, the moment has happened, it was yesterday, and the question now really has to be: where was the premier? What was more important for the premier, that he could not attend the march for humanity? There may be good reasons he did not attend, but the people do deserve to know.
“The premier also needs to understand that he has absolutely no legal power to block protests, as the courts have confirmed, and nor should he.”
