Challenge by NSW Police to block Opera House march is delayed

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A legal challenge by police against plans for a pro-Palestinian march to the Sydney opera house has been delayed until tomorrow. The Palestine action group intends to hold the event on Sunday, but police want to stop it claiming there are safety concerns based on the location and potential crowd numbers.

Transcript

00:00The delay in this case is because the proceedings are going to move from the

00:05Supreme Court up to the Court of Appeal and that seems to have been a move that

00:09was supported by all parties today. There was an agreement between all sides

00:13that that is the most appropriate course of action due to the complexity and the

00:18urgency involved in these proceedings. There's going to be a constitutional

00:22issue raised in this case which stems from the interaction or the clash of two

00:28different pieces of legislation. On the one hand in New South Wales there are legal

00:32protections afforded to participants of authorized public assemblies in one piece

00:37of legislation and in this case there's going to be submissions about how that

00:42interacts with specific laws that cover the Sydney Opera House area. We heard

00:47today from Nick Hanna who is one of the lawyers involved in this case and he

00:51says as part of the proceedings the police are going to argue that those

00:54protections afforded to protesters as part of the form one system, the rally

01:00permit system in New South Wales, are confined to a relatively narrow area of

01:05offences. What that means in relation to the upcoming protests that's scheduled to

01:09be at the Opera House is that the specific offences that relate to certain

01:14activities of the Opera House people won't be protected from those under the

01:19form one system and we we challenge that and we also say that it's

01:23unconstitutional and for that reason that both parties and ultimately Justice

01:27Harrison today have agreed that it's more appropriate to be dealt with by the

01:31Court of Appeal tomorrow. So in short between now and tomorrow morning when we

01:34come back here at 9 30 there are going to be many lawyers who will be very busy

01:38preparing submissions and arguments. Although this case is quite similar to

01:43what we've previously seen when New South Wales Police have taken the

01:46organisers of rallies to court to challenge their plans, it seems like this

01:51case in particular is going to get very technical and very complicated compared

01:55to the other cases we've seen.

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