Yesterday, we brought you David Shoebridge’s right to protest legislation which he introduced into the senate, with the aim of enshrining the democratic right to protest in Australia.

State governments have used anti-genocide protests as an excuse to crack down on protest rights all around the country.

Shoebridge said if that wasn’t stopped, Australians could lose one of the tenets of their democracy. Here is part of the speech he gave when introducing the bill:

A few short weeks ago I and, I think, all of my Greens colleagues across the country joined thousands of people— 300,000 of whom walked across the Harbour Bridge—in an historic march for a free Palestine and an end to genocide. In that moment, I saw solidarity and the possibility for a better world. I saw people of all ages, all abilities, all backgrounds uniting in the driving rain to stand up for conscience and to end the suffering of the people of Gaza.

But where I saw solidarity and possibility, where I saw hope, where I saw my beautiful hometown of Sydney come together for peace and for humanity, the New South Wales Labor Party just saw a problem. Like too many state and territory governments, New South Wales Labor sees protest not as a fundamental part of our democracy, not as a human right, not as the most powerful tool for driving progress in societies; they saw the protest as an irritant—as a political problem. They would far rather we had not marched.

They would have liked Sydneysiders to stay at home, watch their Netflix and passively let governments fail to oppose a genocide. They would rather our voices had not been heard. They want to keep power in the walls of parliament and in the offices of police commissioners they appoint, and they desperately want to stop power being exercised in our streets and in our workplaces, as we come together as people with good conscience who care about the future