Dozens of laws infringing on protesters' rights and the treatment of those taking to the streets has sparked a push for federal protections.
Greens senator David Shoebridge is pushing legislation to enshrine the right to protest after NSW police tried, but failed, to stop major hundreds of pro-Palestine supports marching across the Harbour Bridge.
State police were overreaching exceptions used to stop mass gatherings, such as public safety, to "make it effectively illegal to shut down a road in the centre of Sydney", Senator Shoebridge said.
"If you want a classic example, the crime of disruption traffic in NSW carries a very modest offence but the crime of disrupting traffic because you're at a protest can see you in jail for seven years," he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.
His bill would ensure states could protect public safety but not enact unreasonable or disproportionate restrictions, but it's unlikely to become law as it can't pass parliament without government support.
Former Greens staffer and candidate Hannah Thomas criticised NSW Police for pursuing charges over a protest she was involved in during which she suffered an eye injury when
The 35-year-old activist was charged with hindering or resisting police and two counts of refusing to comply with a move-on direction during an allegedly unauthorised protest in Sydney's southwest in June.
"That violence did not happen in vacuum, it was the direct and foreseeable result of the Labor government's draconian anti-protest laws," she said alongside the Greens senator.
"I have to live profound and devastating consequences of anti-protest laws every day, probably for the rest of my life. That includes the trauma besides, obviously, the debilitating visual impairment."
Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer David Mejia-Canales said about 31 anti-protest laws around the nation in the past two decades was "preposterous in a democracy".
"Protest has made Australia a fairer a more just and equal place, from First Nations land rights to votes for women to the eight hour work day, it is protest that has advanced Australia."
Australian Democracy Network executive director Saffron Zomer said the rate of protesters being imprisoned in Australia has increased tenfold since 2020.
"Governments are devoting more resources to regressive policing, including pre-emptive police visits, banning people from associating with groups and carrying out mass surveillance for protest movements," she said.
