Victoria’s Anti-Racist Protesters Condemn Police Violence Against Them

Victoria police commander Wayne Cheeseman was extremely ticked off when appearing before the press on Sunday, 20 October 2025. The senior cop poured small rocks onto the floor, while holding one large stone, which he alleged had been thrown at his officers by the “issue-motivated groups on the left” in the Naarm-Melbourne CBD. Yet, his claims are widely disputed by those he’s charged.

The No Room for Racism and Fascism counterrally was a coalition of social justice groups mobilising to oppose the racism of the antiimmigration March for Australia. As Cheeseman decried the antiracists in a clip posted by news.com.au, the footage cut half way through his diatribe to a visual of a line of black-clad and helmeted riot police charging down a city street at these same protesters.

Cheeseman added that he’s heard of peaceful protesters, but this was not who fronted up on the day, as rather the left had come to pick a fight with police. But the United Front, as the antiracist rally was also referred to, rejected his account, and in fact, footage posted online captures riot police lined up, facing off a static counterprotest, prior to attacking it, as three fired rounds ring out.

“I can tell you that the March for Australia group, they were peaceful. They were engaging. They listened to our instructions,” Cheesman further said on Sunday. “They did what they were told, and they protested by example.” These statements are controversial, as March for Australia involved a majority white Australian crowd decrying migrants who have different cultural values.

The assertions from the senior cop are further problematic as the 31 August March for Australia involved violent neo-Nazis alongside last Sunday’s crowd, who in condemning immigration, were also disparaging fellow citizens and residents of colour, while Australian police forces are understood to be hotbeds of white nationalism, which can reveal itself in the commission of policing duties.

Word on the ground

Palestinian organiser Tasnim Sammak posted an account of what happened last Sunday, as she hadn’t noted any reporting on what had occurred on the ground. Sammak recalls that the goal of the counterrally was to assemble close to the March for Australia demonstration, which was meeting at 12 pm in front of Victorian parliament, as it aimed to prevent “fascists from marching unopposed”.

March for Australia rallies took place nationwide on 19 October. These protesters have been at pains to insist they’re not racists as they only seek to stop migration. But this falls down when attendees overtly assert remigration or the sending back of migrants. Indeed, on attending the last Sydney protest on Gadigal land, Sydney Criminal Lawyers considered the racist box had indeed been ticked.

The counterprotesters in Naarm-Melbourne, as Sammak further recalls, marched up a city street but found they were blocked en route to parliament by a line of police, so they backed around and tried a Flinders Street route but were again blocked by a police line. However, the United Front, eventually, made it up close, at which point, “police arranged riot units into deployment positions”.

“Police launched stun grenades without warning into hundreds of demonstrators,” the Palestinian mother recalled. “Police escalated shootings of various weapons into the counterrally.” VicPol officers are understood to have fired rubber bullets and tossed flashbang grenades into the crowd, which the ABC reports was meant to “subdue them”, yet such an approach sounds counterintuitive.

Merri-bek Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton posted a photo of “a high velocity projectile” fired at antiracism protesters online, which was as big as the palm of her hand. Extinction Rebellion activist Brad Homewood remarked online on Tuesday that it had been 48 hours since the protests occurred and VicPol had revealed no evidence in support of Cheeseman’s assertions about the rocks.

Sammak further insists that after Victoria police fired upon the crowd close to parliament, the counterrally headed off back towards the State Library, with officers following them “shooting more stun grenades, brutalising casualties receiving medical treatment and supporters”. And this dispersal of the “issue-motivated groups on the left”, ultimately facilitated the antiimmigration march.

Nonlethal weapons can prove lethal

Cheesman also asserted that the community needs “to find an answer”, which suggests that he was also taking into consideration the 31 August March for Australia rally, which saw its participants, including the neo-Nazis of the National Socialist Network, brawling with counterprotesters in the CBD, prior to the NSN Nazis attacking Camp Sovereignty: a First Nations sacred site.

The VicPol commander’s simple assertion that the United Front had this time been the real culprits doesn’t accord, however, with eyewitness accounts and footage posted, which appear rather to convey that Victoria police has again been out testing its stock of nonlethal crowd control weapons, which can prove fatal. This arsenal was acquired as part of the 2016 Public Safety Package.

Footage coming out of the southern city shows riot police liberally applying pepper spray to people’s faces and tossing stun grenades into the crowd, which was not involved in rioting or looting. Similar opposing protests that took place on Gadigal land in Sydney last week and in August didn’t involve projectiles being fired on people, and NSW police don’t tend to apply OC spray like its suntan lotion.

More shocking than the scenes of violence that have erupted directly in relation to the March for Australia events, is the footage that captured the September 2024 Disrupt Land Forces protest, which saw heavily armed police facing off unarmed social justice activists. VicPol were then seen to fire rubber bullets and toss flashbang grenades at a static crowd lined up midway across a bridge.

The March 2023 Lethal in Disguise report reveals that since 2016, there has been an uptick in police forces globally using nonlethal or crowd control weapons. Between 2015 and the time of publication, 121,000 people globally were either injured or killed by these weapons. And this rise in use is being accompanied by increasing authoritarianism, political bias in application and a lack of accountability.

Reclaiming stolen land

The March for Australia rallies demand an end to immigration, but the crowd too calls for a sending of migrants from nonwhite backgrounds back to the countries from which they came. Following the 1901 federation of Australia, the initial legislation passed promoted the creation of a purely white Australian population, so the crowd can tangibly call for a return to this myth that never was.

Born out of the remnants of the COVID era Freedom movement, March for Australia is rising at a time when white supremacist Unite the Kingdom rallies are occurring in the UK, while in the United States, these forces were prominently established during the first Trump administration, while the second coming of Trump has meant a White House openly promoting white supremacy.

The majority white Australian movement that is March for Australia is focused on immigration and the preservation of white identity, and it tends to ignore the fact that Australia is a settler colonial nation created upon the stolen land of First Peoples. However, when the NSN attacked Camp Sovereignty on 31 August, it shattered the myth of a lost white Australia and its antiimmigration line.

The extreme white Australian participants in these movements have shifted their position since the white nationalist “Reclaim Australia” mobilisations of mid-last decade, as these days some openly espouse Nazism, and the Nationalist Socialist Network has moved from a fringe group protesting in the bush in 2021, to taking a starring role in a mass civil society protest movement right now.

Down in Naarm, the antiracists and antifascists having been ensuring, as Sammak said, that white supremacists do not march city streets unopposed. However, when neo-Nazis first started appearing on Melbourne streets in March and May 2023, counterprotesters bore witness to VicPol’s apparent bias on display, as officers formed lines to face off the antiracists and to protect the white extremists.

As for how the situation down south might pan out, and whether commander Cheeseman does find an answer to the dilemma in his city, these developments are yet to take place, but when these forces are set to come head-to-head again is known, as on Thursday this week, posts advertising the next March for Australia event to take place on 30 November started appearing online.