Left, Blight, Left in Melbourne

We Melburnians have had a tough week – thanks to the decision of the Greens and their supporters to put a beast of a protest in the city to oppose the Land Forces expo at the Melbourne Convention Centre. The protest has reignited the idea that something must be done to curb their frequency and intensity. We accepted being the lockdown capital of the world – but protest capital? No, that’s a step too far.

No doubt, some people will use this to resurface the idea that, like NSW and South Australia, we too must introduce a permit system for protests. The problem with any kind of permit system is the same as placing restrictions on speech – who do you give the power to decide which protest is legitimate, and which is not? We already saw some of this during Covid, when the Labor government allowed a Black Lives Matter protest to go ahead in Melbourne but came down hard on anti-lockdown protesters.

To show how quickly people’s sympathy for protestors change based on the cause, I bring to you the headlines from the same masthead, The Guardian, first on the weapons expo protests…

And now from The Guardian of three years ago. The hypocrisy is breathtaking:

What these two examples show is that your support for a protest is already coded into your ideological bent – if you support a cause, you will come up with any rationale to justify it and vice versa.

The increasing number of protests in Melbourne is a symptom – not the cause — of the increasing politicisation of our everyday lives. Too many government-funded bodies are spending their resources on political issues that have little to do with their specific mission. But that is your money, taxpayer money, they are spending, and you have a right to demand that it is used appropriately.

If you are truly sick of political protests, then you have to start at the beginning by calling out inappropriate politics in your neighbourhoods and community. Let organisations around you – be it your local council, church, childcare, library or local Woolworths – know that you prefer they stick to their mission and purpose, instead of loudly talking on political issues that have nothing to do with the services they offer.

If we truly want to reclaim our streets, we must start by reclaiming our neighbourhoods and communities first.

Nick McGowan is a Liberal MP representing the North Eastern Region in Victoria’s Legislative Council