On Monday 9 February 2026, thousands gathered in Sydney to protest the ongoing devastation in Gaza, coinciding with the Australian Government’s invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog. NTEU members were among those in attendance. The rally formed part of a broader public debate about Australia’s foreign policy and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
During the protest, many experienced the use of pepper spray, physical force and aggressive crowd control tactics. Widely circulated footage, including incidents involving individuals engaged in prayer and peaceful assembly, has generated serious public concern and shaken confidence in the safety of participating in democratic expression and public assembly.
At moments such as this, it’s important to reaffirm that peaceful protest is a legitimate and protected democratic activity, that public authorities have a responsibility to facilitate it and to act proportionately, and that the NTEU NSW Division stands in solidarity with those who exercised their democratic right to assemble and express dissent.
These events must be understood within a broader national context.
For decades, Australia has maintained some of the most restrictive laws on the right to strike in the democratic world. Those laws limit workers’ ability to take collective industrial action and have been repeatedly criticised as inconsistent with international labour standards and the practices of comparable democracies. In more recent years, this pattern has extended into the sphere of protest, with the criminalisation of certain forms of political demonstration, including climate protest.
In December 2025, the NSW Government enacted amendments establishing a Public Assembly Restriction framework enabling police to prohibit Form 1 assemblies following a declared terrorist incident. This represents the latest step in a consistent and incremental expansion of protest-related powers in NSW.
What were once presented as exceptional measures are increasingly becoming normalised, and NSW is now being spoken about as an outlier, not only within Australia but among democratic jurisdictions more broadly. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism has publicly raised concerns about the NSW anti-protest framework and has sought to intervene in the constitutional challenge currently before the NSW Court of Appeal. That degree of international scrutiny is rare and warrants serious reflection.
Societal conflict and political disagreement are not resolved through crackdowns. In a democracy, contested issues must be debated openly and peacefully. Restricting where, when and how people can protest does not strengthen social cohesion or public safety. It risks deepening mistrust and narrowing democratic space.
The right to peaceful assembly is protected under Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Australia has binding obligations to guarantee and respect that right and to create an enabling environment in which people can gather and express dissent without fear of violence or arbitrary restriction.
These principles aren’t abstract; the union movement’s history is inseparable from protest. Every major advance won by working people – from the eight-hour day, work health and safety protections, collective bargaining rights, anti-discrimination laws and equal pay – has depended on our ability to organise collectively, assemble publicly and challenge decisions of governments and employers. The ability to win and defend workplace rights depends on the health of our democratic freedoms, and when the space for peaceful assembly narrows, so too does the capacity of workers and communities to participate meaningfully in public life.
In our own sector, we have seen how these pressures play out. Institutions of higher education have long been places where debate, dissent and peaceful protest are entrenched norms, but NTEU members have seen increasing challenges to academic freedom and growing tension around protest and political expression on campus. If the space for open discussion and assembly narrows within universities, it narrows across society more broadly.
What this means in practice is that the defence of democratic space cannot be left to chance. The NTEU NSW Division is a signatory to a cross-civil society letter to the NSW Premier seeking an immediate independent review of the policing of the 9 February protest and a broader inquiry into protest policing practices in NSW – one practical step among many that are needed. Preserving the right to gather and speak out will require continued engagement from unions and community organisations, and a willingness to defend democratic space even when the issues at hand are contested.
The erosion of democratic freedoms is rarely sudden; it’s cumulative. As a union movement, we can’t be passive in the face of that trend. Democratic rights are maintained in practice, not just in principle.
The NTEU NSW Division affirms our union’s unequivocal commitment to the right to peaceful protest and democratic dissent, and will continue to defend the democratic space on which working people depend.
