Banning Political Slogans: The Absurd New Way to Stamp Out Pro-Palestinian Support

The nation was stunned when at a small protest march on Wednesday, 11 March 2026, Queensland police arrested a man for explaining the phrase “from the river to the sea” to a rally in Magan-djin-Brisbane, and also took a woman into custody for wearing a singlet displaying the slogan. Meanwhile, Sydneysiders gathered before state parliament on Tuesday, 17 March 2026 to protest a similar ban proposed for New South Wales.

Queensland police were able to arrest a 33-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman, as the Crisafulli government had passed a law banning two political slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada” the week prior, and the new measures had only just taken effect a few hours prior to the student rally, which was flanked by riot police.

The idea to ban certain slogans, or more specifically pro-Palestinian phrases, initially came from NSW premier Chris Minns late last year, in the immediate wake of the 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre. The fact that the mass murder on Gadigal land in Sydney’s east was inspired by ISIS, which is a group opposed to the Palestinian cause, didn’t seem to matter or register in the upper echelons.

But banning political phrases is not such a straightforward idea. Such bans tend to conflict with the implied right to political communication in the Australian Constitution. Phrases are open to different interpretations and can take on various meanings. And while “from the river to the sea” is a popular pro-Palestinian liberatory phrase, it is also a slogan employed by hard-right Israeli Zionists.

The Queensland Liberal Nationals government’s move to become the first jurisdiction in Australia to ban slogans also appears to be highly theatrical, as the ongoing issues around the use of certain phrases at pro-Palestinian protests have long been centred upon Sydney and Naarm-Melbourne, rather than the northern jurisdiction.

And to paraphrase one social media user on learning of the Queensland proposal to ban these phrases, ‘the Crisafulli government is moving to ban political phrases that had never been used before in this state’.

Queensland prohibitions

The measures relating to the official ban on slogans were contained in the Fighting Antisemitism and Keeping Guns out of the Hands of Terrorists and Criminals Amendment Bill 2026, which was passed by Queensland parliament on 27 February. This legislation mimics the omnibus bills passed by both the NSW and federal governments over the holiday period in the wake of the Bondi massacre.

The section specifically sets out the two “prohibited expressions”: “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada”.

The offence of recital, distribution, publication or display of prohibited expressions is contained in section 52DA of the Criminal Code 1899 (Qld). The law has been breached when a phrase is cited in public in a manner that “might reasonably be expected to cause a member of the public to feel menaced, harassed or offended”. That is unless the doer of the action has a “reasonable excuse”.

The maximum penalties that 33-year-old Liam Parry, who was arrested for using the river phrase in Brisbane last week, is now facing are 2 years imprisonment or a fine of up to $25,035.

In terms of the reasonable excuses that can be raised after using one of these two phrases in public, these include the use a phrase for “genuine artistic, religious, educational, historical, legal or law enforcement” purposes, or that it was in the public interest, or otherwise, that the user of the phrase was intending to show opposition to the ideology represented by it.

In breaking the law, it doesn’t matter what the person using a prohibited slogan meant by it, and neither whether a member of the public was present to hear or observe the citing of the expression.

Parry, who will soon be appearing in Brisbane Magistrates Court in respect of this crime, has claimed that he had used the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ for educative purposes, as he’d been explaining to the student rally the actual meaning of the expression, when used in a liberatory Palestinian sense. And the law stipulates the evidentiary burden is on Parry to prove this to the court.

Constitutional questions

As University of Sydney constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey set out in Constitutional Clarion, this was the second draft of the slogan banning offence in Queensland, and this new version of the law is much more open to constitutional challenge.

The main issue is that unlike the original draft, the new law targets “particular content rather than being content-neutral”. Twomey notes that the High Court has stressed before that “if a law targets particular idea or political content, rather than being directed at matters such as the place, manner or timing of the communication, then a compelling justification is required to uphold the law”.

The High Court justices have placed a “higher level of scrutiny to laws that burden one side of a political debate over another, because this is seen as distorting the free flow of political communication”, Twomey further set out.

Banning slogans on ISIS pretext

The basis for banning slogans in New South Wales, and hence, leading to the bans in Queensland, appears to be a link drawn by the NSW premier between two years of regular pro-Palestine protests on Gadigal and in Sydney in opposition to the Gaza genocide, as he considered organisers had “unleashed forces” that he has dubiously claimed helped spark the ISIS inspired Bondi attack.

Minns was the individual who initially singled out the two phrases “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” and suggested they be banned from public life in NSW.

The slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been a popular chant for those protesting the Israeli-perpetrated Gaza genocide over the last two years. The problem with the phrase appears to be that it singles out the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with the complaint being that it erases the nation of Israel which lies within this territory.

However, what is lesser known in the Australian public debate around this phrase is that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own political party, Likud, has a version of the phrase from the river to the sea as part of its original 1977 political party platform.

And following the Bondi Beach massacre, Minns considered it so vital that these phrases should be banned from the NSW public sphere that he convened an emergency sitting of the NSW Legislative Assembly Committee on Law and Safety to conduct the Measures to Prohibit Slogans that Incite Hatred inquiry over the 2025/26 parliamentary summer break.

The inquiry predominately focused upon the phrase “globalise the intifada”, and it recommended in late January 2026, that NSW parliament pass legislation prohibiting the use of this phrase in this state.

Yet ‘globalise the intifada’ was not a popular phrase amongst the Sydney pro-Palestinian movement. Instead, following the Bondi Beach massacre, the New York Times ran the headline Bondi Beach is What ‘Globalise the Intifada’ Looks Like, which appears to have led NSW Labor ministers to determine to ban this phrase, despite no one in their constituency really using it on a regular basis.

The state popularises slogan and bans it

Since the suggestion that ‘globalise the intifada’ will be banned in NSW, its use has picked up, and that is why Stop the War on Palestine and others rallied outside NSW parliament on 17 March to oppose the ban. There have also been several recent high-profile incidents involving the use of this phrase. And those protesting the ban also oppose the authoritarian creep involved in the law.

Twomey pointed out early on that the offence of publicly inciting hatred on grounds of race in section 93ZAA of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), which was passed into law in 2025, should already cover use the of this phrase, as it criminalises utterances that cause a reasonable person to fear harassment, intimidation or violence, or for their own safety.

The NSW parliamentary inquiry, however, found that whilst the section 93ZAA offence covers racial hatred, it doesn’t capture religious prejudice, and the suggestion is that ‘globalise the intifada’ is an antisemitic phrase, even though it opposes a nation Israel, which is a Jewish state. Indeed, whilst the Arabic word ‘intifada’ has numerous meanings, the inquiry settled upon “uprising” against Israel.

But whether the Minns government will actually move to create the offence that Crisafulli has passed in Queensland seems a little uncertain, after NSW MLC Sue Higginson quizzed NSW attorney general Michael Daley during 11 March budget estimates, as to whether he thinks that “‘globalise the intifada’ should be criminal hate speech”.

Instead of outright championing the summer-long proposal to outlaw this phrase, Daley explained that he accepts that it “can be upsetting and could cause fear” amongst the local Jewish community, “given what the intifada has meant in Israel for them over the decades”.

“If you accept that that’s the case but you still choose to say that phrase anyway, you’re doing it either because you don’t accept that the Jewish person’s being genuine in their fear of that saying or you’re deciding that you do realise that it does cause that fear and comfortability, but you’re choosing to say it anyway,” the NSW attorney generl set out. 

Then Daley further added, that he just wishes that “we could find a different expression.” Yet the problem with this logic in the political climate of NSW in the present, is that another phrase challenging Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people, will more than likely again be the subject of attempts to outlaw it, once its political sentiment is publicly conflated with antisemitism.