Have anti-protest laws changed the way young people demonstrate?

Australia Broadcast Center

08-08-2025

She's only 24, but Justice Stalman has been involved in activism for almost a decade.
"My first involvement in activism, I think I was about 16, and it was around the Adani coal mine in Queensland," says Ms Stalman who is from South Australia.
As we're chatting Ms Stalman assures me that "Justice" is written on her birth certificate, but she has spent much of her life seeking it elsewhere.
"In the beginning it was a lot of campaigning," she says.
"The first group that I was involved with was with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and we had a lot of focus on consulting with governments and doing campaigns that way.
"It was just young people trying to be heard and have meaningful conversations.
"But yeah, it didn't feel like that really led to a lot of change."
In 2023, Justice travelled to New South Wales to join activism group Rising Tide which was attempting to block coal ships from entering the Newcastle port.
Along with more than 100 other protesters she was arrested.
That was all part of the plan.
"It feels often that protesting — the legal way, the polite way — you're still not seen, or often ignored. And we see little change coming from that," she says.
"But when we move into things that are more disruptive that demand your attention you can't look away anymore."
Ms Stalman says she was not fined or convicted.
Protests have dominated the news lately.
Unsurprisingly, when more than 90,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge it created headlines across the globe.
Data suggests the annual number of protests across the globe tripled between 2006 and 2020 and one online global protest tracker says that this upward trend has continued through the 2020s.
David Mejia-Canales, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Centre, says this perceived increase is a symptom of visibility.
"Before we had smartphones and the internet you had to run into a protest to know that it was happening," he says.
"Whereas now there's a lot of really high-profile protests for things like protecting the environment, for ending wars, and these things have actually got to a level that people are talking about them just in everyday speech, in schools, in workplaces.
"So there's a perception that protest is, sort of, on the rise."
According to Mr Mejia-Canales, more eyeballs on protests has resulted in increased scrutiny.
"In the last, say, 20 years, maybe 22 years, we've seen about 30 anti-protest laws being introduced around the country," he says.
"So they make, say for example, blocking a road a crime.
"And not only do they make blocking a road a crime — and blocking a road is a pretty normal feature of protest — but they attach a really, really high penalty for something like that in NSW.
"Blocking a road without police permission could get you a jail sentence of two years or a fine of over $20,000."
Recently Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have all increased penalties for disruptive protests.
In 2023, changes to South Australia's Summary Offences Act meant anyone charged with obstructing a public place could be fined up to $50,000 — up from $750 — or be sentenced to three months' jail.
The changes to the law passed the lower house in 22 minutes.
"Which is not even enough time to do a load of washing, but in that time they really restricted everyone's rights to protest," Mr Mejia-Canales says.
He added that the speed at which these laws have been implemented has meant their legal definitions are vague.
"If you have a vague law, you don't really know whether you're breaking it or not," Mr Mejia-Canales says.
"When you really think about it, what does obstructing the road mean? Does it mean standing there? Does it mean stopping traffic? Does it mean stopping cars?
"The laws have to be specific so that you know when you're breaking them or not.
"That's so important, because if people don't [know if they're breaking the law] then it's very, very easy for them to get arrested, and that's what we're seeing in Australia."
Australia currently has the highest arrest rate in the world for climate and environment protests.
That's something young activists at South Australia's Grassroots Ecosystem, a monthly meeting of various community groups across the state, are acutely aware of.
"I think it's making people more scared to go out and protest because they're worried about their own future, job prospects and things like that," says Cormac Baker, 21, who first got involved in protesting during high school.
Lucinda Trenorden, 20, says she had discussions with friends about their apprehension to attend protests.
"I have so many peers who are really concerned about the environment," she says.
"But I'm so often hearing people say 'I'm really concerned about my job prospects, I don't want to get involved in climate protests, I don't want to risk anything'.
"We need to have our voices heard as young people where this is really going to impact our future.
"People are taking measures to not protest and not stand up for what they believe in because of strict protest laws that don't make a whole lot of sense."
For Tilly, 17, the introduction of anti-protest laws has just added more fuel to the fire.
"I've been taking riskier and riskier actions because I think it sends a message to the government and the police that they shouldn't be introducing these laws, that they're not OK, and that I'm going to keep protesting no matter what they do," she says.
Through his work at the Human Rights Law Centre, Mr Mejia-Canales says this sentiment is shared by protesters across the country.
"Actually saying 'well, if the fine is $20,000 then I'm going to go do something really big and block the Sydney Harbour Bridge' for example, and we've seen some of that too," he says.
"People should be able to speak up without having to risk going to jail. I think [the threat of jail] has been an unintended consequence of some of these really bad laws."
For Justice, the anti-protest laws represent yet another barrier to the changes she wants to see.
"It feels like talking to a brick wall," she says.
"I feel more apprehensive, in some ways.
"Of course I need to think about my future, but at the same time I think the cost of inaction is so much higher than any fine that you could be given.
Measuring how much protests do actually incite change can be difficult.
According to a study of world protests between 2006 and 2020, 42 per cent resulted in some demonstrable achievement, characterised as a direct or indirect response from opponents or society.
However, it says changes to broader issues like climate change can be intractable.
The feeling of nothing changing despite activists' best efforts is called "political despair".
Analysing protesters' responses to this feeling formed the basis of Lucy Bird's PhD.
"A lot of young people in particular [are] feeling despair about the fact that what we're seeing is really unjust, like we should be seeing changes but we're not," the post-doctoral researcher at Flinders University says.
"Of people who do care about things like climate change and racial inequality, roughly 60 per cent say that they feel despair about this issue."
Despite a feeling of stagnation and "despair", Dr Bird says activists' efforts didn't diminish.
"We assumed that it would mean that people would step away because you just can't handle it. It's not nice to feel despair," she says.
"But what we actually found is that even though people were feeling despair, they were continuing to act.
"You can have really conflicting ideas about nothing's changing. Nothing's working. But also having this belief that it can change.
Justice says she still often feels like her voice isn't being heard, but that's not going to stop her protesting in the future.
"Protest works. That's why we do it. Protest is why I can vote as a woman. Protest is why we have working rights," she says.
"I know that all the rights that I have now I have because people have protested in the past, which is also why I protest.
"I want people in the future to have rights that I don't have yet."