NSW Protest Ban Extended for Genocidal Israeli President’s Visit

New South Wales police commissioner Mal Lanyon extended the protest ban that’s in place across Gadigal land in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney and parts of its CBD. The top cop’s reasoning was the expected protesting of next week’s official visit from Israeli president Isaac Herzog, due to “significant animosity” against it. But some pro-Palestinian advocates have vowed to break the ban regardless.

The framework for the protest ban was enacted on Christmas Eve in response to the 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre. Herzog has been officially invited by prime minister Anthony Albanese, in response to the Bondi Beach mass murder, as it targeted a Jewish religious event. And the outrage over his visit is due to the nation he presides over perpetrating the ongoing Gaza genocide.

Under the new law, a public assembly restriction declaration or PARD can be imposed following an event being declared an act of terrorism. A PARD remains in place for 90 days and the police commissioner considers whether to continue it every two weeks. The current prohibition covering the east, is much reduced from the original ban that also covered the northwest and southwest.

Rights-minded Sydneysiders have been shocked by the imposition of the ban, and that the laws were spurred by a nonexistent link posited between Bondi and the local pro-Palestine protest movement. Bondi was ISIS inspired, which has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. Yet that has not dissuaded forces long attempting to criminalise and suppress the anti-Gaza genocide movement.

But the mounting antiprotest laws haven’t reached their peak yet, as NSW premier Chris Minns announced on 29 January that Labor is currently considering implementing a new protest precinct policy, whereby public demonstrations will be confined to Djarrbarrgalli-The Domain and other areas not in the city centre, with social justice groups insisting that hidden protest is no protest at all.

Lanyon’s PARD

The six-week-old PARD that currently hangs over Sydney’s east is governed by the NSW police commissioner. When the blanket ban covered the entire CBD several large stationary rallies took place, as they are still permitted to continue under the law. But if police consider an assembly appears to have the potential to cause fear or risk safety, they can be moved on.

In response to questions on Tuesday, Lanyon said what he feared was a large-scale public demonstration filled with so much animosity over the visit of Herzog that it would cause a “risk to community safety”. Under the PARD, the top cop assesses risk to community safety and potential to cause fear, intimidation or harassment, in light of a recent terrorism event having taken place.

But the police commissioner making an assessment of whether members of the public should be allowed to march down the street to express their opposition to a politician does appear to be an unnecessary curbing of rights, as it tends to cast those that might march against Herzog as some kind of rabble, and it also raises questions as to why this visit from such a divisive figure is going ahead.

Herzog is the president of a nation perpetrating one of the most heinous crimes of modern times against the Palestinians. The extermination program in Gaza continues by cover of a Trump-brokered ceasefire. The UN Commission of Inquiry found that Herzog engaged in incitement to violence, when casting the entire population of Palestinians as being responsible for the October 7 attacks.

The local Jewish community had already invited the Israeli president to visit Sydney post-Bondi. However, the PM then officially extended the visit, while the state, in bringing Herzog out after the trauma that the Gaza genocide has caused much of the local community, is to further bring great shame to many constituents and unwarranted feelings of complicity in heinous crimes.

Protesting in the closet

Minns first hinted to the press that NSW Labor would be enacting yet another antiprotest regime on 26 January. Then three days later in response to a question from a reporter about whether he was considering making the Domain a protest precinct, the premier said, “We haven’t made a final decision, so I have to speak to my colleagues about how the city works in the future.”

“But as a general point, I’ve made it repeatedly now, the central part of Sydney CBD occupied week after week after week, does have an impact, and it can be a negative impact of other people wanting to enjoy the city, so I’m not going to make any announcements about that today, but we are keeping our mind open to the idea of where protests will take place in the city.”

Palestine Action Group spokesperson Josh Lees told reporters that to force everyone into a park off to the side of the city, “where no one will see or hear” a demonstration is “not the right to protest”.

However, this idea about confining the protest to some discrete place where no one will see it was first flagged by Australian antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, who, in December 2024, told SBS that she considers the pro-Palestinian marches make Jewish people feel unsafe. So, protests should be scheduled for particular times and places outside of frequented areas.

Segal recently made an appearance before the press standing next to Albanese, as the prime minister announced that he would be implementing the envoy’s combating antisemitism plan post-Bondi, so certainly, it might not have been too much of an ask for the NSW premier to consider confining public protests to the paddock out the back at her behest.

Breaking the ban

United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Professor Ben Saul has underscored that it is unwise for Albanese to have invited the Israeli president, as his country has been found to have illegally annexed Palestinian territory and denied Palestinian self-determination, while the president himself is alleged to have incited genocide against the entire Palestinian people.

The Zionist Federation of Australia, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council invited Herzog to Australia to visit the Jewish families of those slain by ISIS inspired killers in Bondi. This then led the PM to officially invite the president, despite the fact that genocidaires are generally considered morally bankrupt.

Herzog arrives on Monday, 9 February. So, there is a national day of action, with protests organised right across the continent. Palestine Action Group has organised a rally against the visit at Sydney Town Hall, which is inside the protest ban area. But those opposed to the visit of the head of a rogue state have vowed to break the ban and march through the city to NSW parliament.

“We are absolutely going ahead with the protest on Monday,” Josh Lees, a PAG spokesperson told ABC Breakfast this week, “It is not illegal to protest and it is not illegal to march. Unfortunately, our government seems hellbent on ripping up our democratic rights, in order to be able to parade around a war criminal, which is outrageous.”

Despite the protest ban having been progressed by the NSW Labor government, NSW Labor MLCs Stephen Lawrence and Sarah Kaine have vowed to join Monday’s protest and march with it, regardless of any ban being in place.

“We have every legal right to gather for a public assembly at Town Hall,” Lees further told the ABC. “We will continue to call on NSW police to facilitate a peaceful march from Town Hall to NSW parliament, because we also want to hold our government responsible, partly for complicity in the genocide, and we also want to point out our opposition to these… unconstitutional antiprotest laws.”