The Independent Police Complaints Authority’s (IPCA) recommendations to create new laws targeting protestors will be a dangerous restriction of the right to protest, says Pōneke Anti-fascist Coalition.

Protest is a fundamental right protected by international conventions and our own Bill of Rights. Any role for policing protests in advance of them happening will be a limit on rights. This is unacceptable and unnecessary in a free and democratic society.

Society as a whole has benefited from the work of many progressive movements over the years who have used peaceful protest as one of their tactics: from Parihaka to Climate Strikes, the nuclear-free movement and recent Hīkoi, our history is full of amazing positive protests demanding change.

Now the police are recommending that the only kind of peaceful protest that will be legal will be those that they approve, in the spaces they approve, and in the way they approve - and the IPCA is even recommending that police can change these approvals on the spot. If a protest deviates from this, the organisers can be held criminally responsible. This is a recipe for complete police control of political dissent.

This will stop people protesting. It will create a chilling effect on political expression. This is something we would expect from openly repressive regimes - and something we see happening across the world.

There is certainly plenty of room for better police training for dealing with protest activity that starts with a rights-based approach to ensuring people can fully exercise their human rights.

Working with police, the IPCA did not consult with civil society and so have created solutions for a problem that does not exist. There is no “lack of precision” in the current laws guiding peaceful protest. Protesters know they have the right to peaceful assembly and protest with some disruption to the general public. There is no need for new laws to criminalise protest.

We urge all in our communities to make it clear to this government that these recommendations are dangerous and unnecessary, and actively work against the sort of free and just society we aspire to.

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