{"id":519887,"date":"2026-03-05T08:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519887\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T08:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:18:10","slug":"pro-palestine-protest-organisers-a-pack-of-communists-intent-on-confrontation-with-police-minns-tells-budget-estimates-new-south-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519887\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Palestine protest organisers \u2018a pack of communists\u2019 intent on confrontation with police, Minns tells budget estimates | New South Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New South Wales<\/a> premier, Chris Minns, has labelled pro-Palestine protest organisers \u201ca pack of communists\u201d as he continues to blame them for violent clashes with police last month, amid ongoing dissent among Labor MPs about the government\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

Minns faced questions at NSW budget estimates on Thursday about what he told members of the government about attending pro-Palestine rallies, after four Labor backbenchers attended a protest against the visit by the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, at Sydney\u2019s Town Hall on 9 February.<\/p>\n

All four have supported an independent review into police actions at the rally, which saw multiple protesters charged with public order offences and prompted an investigation into alleged police brutality by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc). Several protesters have indicated they will launch civil cases against police<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Minns said he did not know whether advice had been issued to MPs about rallies organised by the Palestine Action Group (PAG), including a march on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year which Labor ministers Penny Sharpe and Jihad Dib also attended, but said protests organised by the group \u201chave resulted in violent behaviour, terrorist symbols, hate speech on Sydney streets\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI genuinely believe that a lot of people have attended those marches with none of those intentions in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dilemma is that those protests are organised by a pack of communists that are just intent on having a confrontation with police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the comments, one Labor backbencher who attended the Herzog protest, Stephen Lawrence MLC, defended protesters as \u201call generally united by concern about the erasure of the Palestinians and the almost inevitable impact of civil liberties here of close support for Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lawrence, who said he believed there were \u201csome socialists and communists in PAG and in the Palestinian movement in Sydney\u201d, told Guardian Australia there also \u201cLabor people, unionists, Greens, even some pretty conservative people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIndeed this kind of political coalition has been at the heart of most of the big social movements of the past, the anti-Vietnam war, anti-apartheid, supporting East Timorese independence, big industrial movements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding to the comments, Josh Lees, an organiser with the Palestine Action Group, said it was public knowledge that he was a member of the newly registered NSW Socialists but said PAG\u2019s members had diverse political viewpoints.<\/p>\n

He compared the premier to US Cold War-era senator Joseph McCarthy, who led the \u201cRed Scare\u201d-era campaign against suspected communists.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Minns] already tries to censor authors and academics and plans to ban phrases critical of Israel; next he will be blacklisting books and movies which oppose genocide,\u201d Lees said.<\/p>\n

Minns has expressed reservations<\/a> about Palestinian Australian academic Abdel-Fattah\u2019s participation in the Newcastle writers festival, but the government has not called for events to be cancelled. Teachers and legal experts have voiced concern<\/a> new hate speech guidelines in NSW schools could silence discussion about Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the police who attacked protesters and worshippers on 9 February, not the other way around, which is confirmed by the mountain of video and eyewitness evidence,\u201d Lees said.<\/p>\n

The premier declined to comment. The NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, has maintained that violent clashes began when protesters attempted to march to NSW parliament in defiance of a public assembly restriction declaration.<\/p>\n

Lawrence has previously said confrontations between police and protesters at the Herzog protest were \u201calmost inevitable\u201d<\/a> following laws limiting protests enacted following the Bondi massacre. They include a public assembly restriction declaration, the subject of an ongoing supreme court challenge, as well as controversial \u201cmajor events\u201d powers which were unsuccessfully challenged in the hours before the protest.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Minns rejected the suggestion he bore personal responsibility for the clashes, reiterating his defence that police were left in an \u201cimpossible situation\u201d by protesters.<\/p>\n

The premier continues to face scrutiny for an incident at the anti-Herzog protest in which a group of Muslims praying were aggressively moved on by police<\/a>. Minns has refused to apologise for the incident and on Wednesday admitted to a \u201cstrained\u201d relationship with the Muslim community after cancelling the annual premier\u2019s Iftar dinner for the second time in three years.<\/p>\n

The Liberal mayor of Liverpool, Ned Mannoun, told the News Corp papers Minns had a \u201cfetish\u201d for attacking the Muslim community after the premier described vigils by a small number of Sydney mosques to mourn the death of Iran\u2019s supreme leader this Ayatallah Ali Khamenei as \u201catrocious\u201d.<\/p>\n

At Thursday\u2019s estimates hearing, Minns cited \u201cthe human rights abuses, the horror that [Khamenei] inflicted on Muslims within Iran\u201d as justification for his comments.<\/p>\n

Asked why he had cancelled the Iftar dinner, the premier said: \u201cBecause [Muslim community leaders] suggested I shouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has labelled pro-Palestine protest organisers \u201ca pack of communists\u201d as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-519887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519887","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=519887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}