{"id":45531,"date":"2025-08-05T14:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T14:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/45531\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T14:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T14:39:12","slug":"chris-minns-stares-down-backbench-revolt-over-handling-of-sydney-harbour-bridge-protest-new-south-wales-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/45531\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Minns stares down backbench revolt over handling of Sydney Harbour Bridge protest | New South Wales politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has stared down a revolt among his backbench<\/a> over his handling of the weekend march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with caucus agreeing to a more moderate motion acknowledging the protests.<\/p>\n

Members of the right and some of the left faction had sought to move a motion condemning the destruction of Gaza and the \u201cIsraeli government\u2019s endorsement of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory\u201d.<\/p>\n

It condemned all crimes against against humanity, including genocide, the murder of civilians and hostage taking.<\/p>\n

The motion also called for a recognition of the right to protest and called on the Minns government to begin work on options for a human rights bill, similar to Victoria.<\/p>\n

But the motion was effectively removed from consideration by caucus and a far more modest motion, which recognised the scale of the protests, was passed.<\/p>\n

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About a dozen caucus members voiced their unhappiness at the premier\u2019s willingness to block the march and prioritise public safety over the right to protest.<\/p>\n

In the first two years of his government, Minns has enjoyed very solid support from his party and, through his top-down style, has avoided outbreaks of dissent from his backbench.<\/p>\n

But the huge public turnout emboldened backbenchers to express their concern about Minns\u2019 stance to block the protests.<\/p>\n

Police estimated 90,000 people took part, while organisers estimated it was closer to 300,000.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the NSW opposition put forward a private member\u2019s bill in parliament on Tuesday morning to amend the summary offences act, which deals with approving protests.<\/p>\n

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The bill proposed to limit each cause to three protests a year, with organisers potentially liable to pay for the costs of policing if more protests were held, unless a court ruled it could go ahead.<\/p>\n

The opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said that every dollar spent on managing public safety at protests meant police resources were being drained from domestic violence and fighting organised crime.<\/p>\n

The government declined to support the opposition bill.<\/p>\n

Prior to the march, 72 organisations, including all major NSW trade unions, civil rights organisations and community groups signed a letter by the Australian Democracy Network calling for the premier to ensure police facilitated the march going ahead, and criticising what they called the premier\u2019s anti-protest agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has stared down a revolt among his backbench over his handling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-45531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}