Entire NSW Labor left calls for controversial anti-protest laws to be scrapped ahead of party conference | New South Wales politics

Fifty-six Labor Party branches passed motions to the New South Wales state conference calling for the repeal or review of controversial anti-protest legislation; The entire left wing supports the proposal to repeal two of the laws.

Gambling reform was among the top issues in the final motions before the March election, brought to the conference by the branches in Aukus and Palestine, and this has played a key role in informing policy.

But some Labor members fear grassroots members will not be given the opportunity to debate protest laws after the issue was moved to second-to-last on the agenda this weekend.

At a press conference held by civil liberties groups on Friday, Labor Party member Asrah Sobh described it as an attempt to “stifle the voices of branch members”.

“The most submitted topic at the state conference was in the social justice and relations section, and that is the right to protest, the right to express ourselves in this democratic society,” Sobh said.

“Chris Minns doesn’t actually listen to his own rank which isn’t true… because [the party] is the ranking at the end of the day. “The party is not about one man at the top, and like all happy families, debate is an important part of the running of things.”

The prime minister has been approached for comment.

Minns will address party loyalists in a speech at Sydney City Hall on Saturday. He is expected to announce a plan to bring train production back to the Hunter region in a bid to appease unions.

“For over 100 years the world’s best trains have been proudly built by union workers in NSW,” he told delegates.

The government has not specified a start date for the $12 billion funding commitment over 15 years, and it was not included in last week’s state budget. It identified two potential sites for a government-owned, privately operated facility at Teralba and Broadmeadow. The worker said the project will provide 780 ongoing jobs in site construction and 550 in manufacturing.

But the announcement is likely to be overshadowed by a move by Labour’s left movement to repeal the 2022 anti-protest laws passed by the then Coalition government and supported by Labour. The laws include up to two years in prison for shutting down major facilities and have been used against climate protesters.

It also calls for the removal of laws restricting protests outside places of worship. The law was passed last year after an earlier iteration of the Minns government’s legislation was found to be unconstitutional.

“Although claimed to promote safety,” the motion’s preamble on the laws states, “they have not produced this result and have instead created conditions under which tension and violence at protests are more likely to occur.”

It is stated that “NSW witnessed disturbing scenes” at the rally against Israeli President Isaac Herzog on 9 February.

Legal Observers NSW, an independent group monitoring the protests. published a report Regarding Friday’s protest, he found there was “massive and systematic police tension” after reviewing 150 videos from the rally and collecting testimony from numerous witnesses.

There will be no debate on the state’s position following the “Australia and the World” committee report, which has been referred to the party’s national conference.

Labor Friends of Palestine and Labor Against the War wrote a letter to the party’s NSW general secretary, Dominic Ofner, seen by Guardian Australia, calling for the debate to continue. The group said the debate was “a clear priority for the party’s base” and that parts of the report contradicted motions put forward by branches.

The report includes a lengthy endorsement from Aukus, but “there is not a single branch motion” supporting that view, the groups wrote in their letter.

He also said that “the preamble suggests that there are ‘diverse perspectives’ in the motions addressing the Palestinian issue,” but this was “completely wrong” given that the 14 party units that introduced the motions were “unanimous” in their condemnation of the ongoing violence in Gaza and the West Bank and their “concerns about Israel’s disrespect for human rights and international law.”

Darcy Byrne, the mayor of Sydney’s Inner West council and the delegate representing Grayndler voters at the state Labor conference, wrote that the conference was a critical moment for action against the harm of poker machines.

“For too long, the private interests of the poker machine lobby have trumped the public interest in preventing addiction and harm,” he said. However, this is a crisis that can no longer be ignored for our party at this conference.”