Jacinta Allan has blamed a “very small number” of counter-protesters for violent scenes in Melbourne’s CBD, insisting the city is safe and police have the powers they need to maintain order.
The Victorian premier’s comments come after two officers were hospitalised as police spent hours trying to seperate an anti-immigration rally, organised by March for Australia, from a counter anti-racism protest, dubbed “United Against Racism: Migrants and Refugees Are Welcome”, in the CBD on Sunday.
Victoria police Supt Wayne Cheesman on Sunday said the counter-protesters were “desperately” trying to reach the anti-immigration rally and confront those assembled, with officers using flash bangs, pepper spray and rubber bullets to keep the groups apart.
The counter-protesters, he said, pelted officers with large rocks, glass bottles and spoiled fruit as they tried to break through police barricades. He said organisers of the anti-immigration rally were “peaceful, engaging and they did what they were told”.
Police on Monday confirmed a female officer suffered “a serious hand injury” and a male senior constable a gash to his leg. They have been discharged from hospital and will be off work “for the next weeks”, a police spokesperson said.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Allan on Monday condemned the counter-protesters, describing them as “choosing to protest for the sake of protesting”.
“I want to thank Victoria police for the way they kept the community safe and dealt swiftly with this group of protesters who were choosing to use violence. It was unacceptable,” she told reporters.
Allan maintained the CBD was safe and it was wrong to “conflate the behaviour of a very small number of people yesterday” with other “peaceful” protests held in the Melbourne over the past two years, presumably referring to pro-Palestine demonstrations.
“What we saw yesterday was a different pattern of behaviour,” Allan said. “It was a very, very different set of people coming to the city with the view of engaging in violence … they came with missiles to hurl at police. Those people will be dealt with by the law.”
The premier maintained police have the “resources” and “powers” to deal with the protesters, citing their ability move people on, should they be compromising community safety, and to designate areas to conduct searches without the need for a reason.
She said the government would be introducing laws to parliament by the end of the year to ban masks and other “extremist behaviour” at protests and disputed there was a need for a protest permit system, similar to that which operates in New South Wales.
“We’ve also seen from Sydney, those arrangements have not seen an end or a stopping of people engaging in protest activity,” Allan said.
A 30-year-old Brunswick woman was charged with one count of resisting police and was bailed to appear at Melbourne magistrates court on 15 May 2026.
Police will use an abundance of CCTV and body-worn camera footage to identify those responsible for the violence.
A visibly frustrated Supt Cheesman on Sunday said “Melbourne has had a gutful.”
Holding up a large rock, which he said had been thrown at police, Cheesman said: “It appalls me, really. This could kill someone, that’s the bottom line.”
He said “bottles filled with shards of glass” were also thrown at police, while bins and flags were “put on fire”.
“Enough is enough,” Cheesman said.
Counter-protesters disputed they fuelled the violence.
The United Against Racism rally was endorsed by a coalition of about 40 groups, including the Victorian Socialists, pro-Palestine groups, and Extinction Rebellion.
A spokesperson for the group, rally organiser Anneke Demanuele, is from the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, a group started a decade ago to counter the far-right Reclaim Australia movement.
She disputed that those who attended the rally were violent, accusing police of being responsible for the “vast majority” of violence on Sunday.
Demanuele would not comment on what directions, if any, organisers gave to protestors about violence, nor whether the organisers debriefed about the violence after the rally.
The aim of the rally was to show a “mass movement” of “collective strength” that would “demoralise the far right”, Demanuele said.
Demanuele said that she also feared police could kill someone with their use of weapons, including stinger balls, which are designed to be rolled into crowds and deploy rubber projectiles into their lower legs, and 40mm baton rounds, which are similar to rubber bullets and fired from weapons resembling grenade launchers.
A statement released on Sunday attributed to another rally organiser named Yasmin said “police deployed violence which has injured activists, with nearly five hospitalised”.
Police said they were unaware of any hospitalisations.
“It is not peaceful to organise a rally calling for Black and brown people to not be allowed in this country,” the rally organiser’s statement said.
“Police denied thousands the right to protest, while facilitating the racist, hateful demonstration March for Australia, exercising white sovereignty to defend a white Australia ideology.”
Victoria police union secretary, Wayne Gatt, likened scenes on Sunday to Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
“What we saw, it’s just filthy and it’s disgusting,” Gatt told Sunrise on Monday.
Similar protests were held across the nation, but no others had the violence experienced in Melbourne.
