NSW Premier Ignores Civilian Evidence Regarding Police Brutality at Herzog Protest 

New South Wales Greens MP Jenny Leong was removed from the lower house during Question Time on 25 March 2026, as she attempted to provide NSW premier Chris Minns with 117 community member accounts of the NSW police brutality that was unleashed upon the 9 February 2026 protest against the official visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog on Gadigal land at Sydney Town Hall.

The premier responded that he was “not going to commit to reading all of those” accounts, of which Leong has been collecting, and Minns and NSW police minister Yasmin Catley have been refusing to admit there was any issue with the unprecedented use of violence by the police on the constituency, and rather they’ve been insisting that complaints in the media have been “without full context”.

In the face of Minns’ refusal to consider constituent accounts about how they’d been manhandled by law enforcement on the night, Leong continued to call on the state’s top minister to listen to the people, and she was then kicked out of the chamber. And as she was leaving NSW parliament, she vowed over social media that she’d “find a way to expose the 117 harrowing accounts”.

Unlike the premier, Leong was present at the Herzog rally. The Greens member for Newtown was, at times, up the front facing off with NSW police and she was also assisting in negotiations with senior officers over whether the protesters could march on the city streets, despite a ban against such demonstrations being in place. And Leong is well aware of the damage that was done that night.

Minns added that he doesn’t agree with the premise that he should read the civilian accounts prior to the handing down of the report on the incident by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, which is the NSW police watchdog. The NSW premier further insists that the state should wait for the LECC findings, and as for the growing social division in the interim, well, we should all just suck it up.

Venting constituent grievances “a stunt”

“The premier’s refusal to even accept the accounts of more than 110 community members who saw the brutality of police on 9 February is yet more evidence of his contempt and disregard for the people he is supposed to represent,” Leong told Sydney Criminal Lawyers, following her turfing from the chamber.

“Weeks after police enacted unbridled violence on peaceful protestors, community members whose physical and mental wounds are still fresh have not had any meaningful acknowledgment or support from NSW Labor representatives – most of whom have doubled down on backing the cops and demonising antigenocide protestors,” the member for Newtown continued.

The NSW premier has been at odds with the NSW Palestinian solidarity movement since it sprung up in the immediate wake of 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the unbridled bloodlust of the Gaza genocide that continues to follow. Pro-Palestinians have been slandered and criminalised by our state’s leader, who makes no secret about his support and allegiance to the state of Israel.

Around 3,000 police officers faced off against 20,000 civilian protesters, who, as the premier recalled last week, had been chanting “let us march” before Sydney Town Hall on the night of 9 February this year. And the takeaway appears to be that with thousands of nonviolent civilians demanding to march along the streets to NSW parliament, what else were the authorities supposed to do?

As Leong was leaving, the premier decried the erosion of Question Time, due to certain MPs, who just want “the opportunity to slur the police and to slur the government”. Police minister Yasmin Catley then claimed Leong’s actions had been “a stunt”. Both Minns and Catley have repeatedly refused to apologise for the brutalisation and have instead praised the cops for their actions.

Little Tel Aviv

“I think it is a stunt,” the NSW premier said in agreeance with Catley’s assessment of Leong’s behaviour. But the Greens MP was raising a distinctly serious concern, as there were thousands of NSW constituents gathered to decry their government having officially rolled out the red carpet for the president of a nation continuing to perpetrate the most heinous atrocity since World War II.

“I make the point that the organisers refused a completely legitimate request from the NSW Police Force to have the protest in Hyde Park and a march from Hyde Park,” Minns added in terms of the logistics of the day. “We had 7,000 mourners in Darling Harbour, and the president of Israel, invited by the Commonwealth government, was in the city at the same time.”

Organisers of the protest, Palestine Action Group, have previously explained as the protest was on a Monday night, the usual place to hold a demonstration is before Sydney Town Hall. So, the protest’s positioning was no aberration. And they also point out that whilst Herzog was at an event at Darling Harbour, the pro-Palestine rally was seeking to march in the opposite direction of that.

Leong, other Greens MPs and Palestine Action Group organisers were attempting to negotiate with senior NSW police, so that the 20,000 nonviolent protesters could have marched as they desired. This was in spite of a public assembly restriction declaration (PARD), or a blanket ban on street protests, being in place, which covered the Sydney CBD where demonstrators sought to march.

The premier further pointed out that the Sydney Morning Herald’s live blog on the night of the protest had placed Leong, NSW MLC Sue Higginson and PAG spokesperson Josh Lees in amongst the crowd and negotiating with NSW police superintendent Paul Dunstan, at around 6.45 pm, as thousands of constituents were standing by chanting, “Let us march”.

And given this set of circumstances, the NSW authorities decided to set NSW police officers upon the crowd, without any of the usual restraints that are placed on police use of force, which enabled the cops to perpetrate the violence targeting some of the people who voted the state government into office.

Sweeping up the evidence

“After I was kicked out of Question Time for asking the premier to listen to community members, NSW police used shocking, excessive force to arrest people in their homes in connection with their participation in the 9 February rally,” Leong further explained on Monday.

NSW police last week conducted four early morning raids on the premises of four participants in the Herzog rally and arrested them in respect of their actions at the demonstration. These raids are being carried out by Strike Force Laine, a specific inquiry into the 9 February anti-Herzog protesters, despite the fact that ‘the premier’s suggested “out of context” footage’ shows police beating civilians.

The old saying that ‘If you see one cockroach, there are a dozen more around’ can be applied to protesters as well. So, while an estimated 20,000 demonstrators were at the Herzog rally, there are tens of thousands more civilians who stayed at home but continue to harbour the same sentiment as the pro-Palestinian crowd on the night.

The premier and police minister, however, are ignoring this point, and they’re rather dismissing the 20,000 pro-Palestinians protesters who turned up to the Herzog rally as not worth bothering about. An official UN investigation into Herzog found he helped to incite the genocide in Gaza, yet the accounts of police brutalising protesters who oppose genocide incitement aren’t worth listening to.

Those Herzog protesters now being swept up by Strike Force Laine, “a further 16” arrested since the demonstration, are being charged with offences, such as assault police and intimidate police. But this simply appears to be the old NSW police tactic, of charging any police excessive use of force or overreach against the civilian involved, which pins the blame for any violence on the victim.

“This is what those calling for ‘social cohesion’ have always actually wanted,” Leong further confirmed, in echoing the sentiment of so many local constituents, “the silencing of dissent from community members enraged by the unjust status quo, and the use of state violence to enforce this silence.”