Update: the podcast of the event described below is now available, click here.
Recently, a number of protests have taken place on the grounds of The University of Sydney against Commonwealth government education policies. See, for example, here (28 August) and here (14 October).
During the latter protest, police were filmed throwing a demonstrator heavily onto concrete (see here: https://twitter.com/honi_soit/status/1316224862889754624, while in this footage (https://twitter.com/honi_soit/status/1316223965568749568), my colleague Professor Simon Rice, the Kim Santow Chair of Law Reform and Social Justice at Sydney Law School, was pushed to the ground, arrested, and issued with a fine.“It was violent without causing any particular harm”, he told The Guardian. “Disproportionate force, completely unjustified.” See also here.
Ironically, Simon and I had just been discussing the tension between civil liberties and public health in the context of policing of earlier demonstrations.
Simon will be appearing as a member of a panel discussing these issues in a seminar entitled Protest in a Time of Pandemic, convened by the School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Sydney, together with, Sydney Law School, Sydney Institute of Criminology, and Sydney Health Law.
Other Panel members include: Felicity Graham, Taylah Gray, Georgia Carr, Professor Danielle Celermajer and the author.
This is a live online event: Fri 13 November 2020, 11.00-12:30AEDT. See here for details and to register.
This seminar explores whether there is a right to protest during a pandemic, the tension between freedom and the policing of lockdown and social distancing measures, and the forms that protest might take in a liberal society.
Sydney Health Law 
Leave a Reply