Nick Tucker
Government by council?
Queensland currently faces one of its most serious challenges to civil liberty in over three years. A local council is trying to make laws preventing free speech and peaceful assembly.
Brisbane city Council has decided that Queenslanders' right to speak out and give out printed material makes places like Queen Street Mall into a flea market, a flea market that competes with commercial interests and therefore must be stopped.
What makes this move so obnoxious is that it will subvert state legislation and any concept of human rights enshrined in national or state law. A city council, by sneaking ordinances in at the lowest level of the law, will render state legislation worthless. Should this be allowed to happen, any concept of a bill of rights at state or federal level is nonsense. Local councils will hold the rule of law in this country if they are shrewd in the way they phrase ordinances.
According to Caxton Street Legal Centre and a number of other legal professionals, the council's stance brings them into conflict with existing laws enshrined in the Peaceful Assemblies Act 1992. These laws guarantee a right to peaceful assembly and a right to speak publicly.
The council is seeking to impose its opinion on Queenslanders by enforcing ordinances that prohibit conflicting commercial activity, such as the sale of this paper, and introducing new ordinances that will make it impossible to exercise any right of assembly or free speech in Queen Street Mall. There is little doubt that if the council is successful, these laws will flow on to all so-called public places throughout Queensland as other local councils seize the opportunity to clamp down on "undesirable" activities.
Caxton Legal Service will mount a challenge to the Brisbane City Council via their own process, although the lord mayor has already made comments that the issue will be sorted out in court. The issue will probably end up on the state government's table if the council decides to press ahead with its ordinances. Wayne Goss will need to decide if he can afford to allow a local council to turn legislation sponsored by him into a show pony. The Queensland Labor government can choose to ratify the ordinances or to oppose them.
At a grassroots level, a number of Brisbane residents
have voted with their feet, choosing to attend the rallies organised each Friday night at the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane's centre. I can only hope that the same ground swell of public opinion will make itself felt at the next council meeting and then, as Lord Mayor Soorley has indicated, in the courts, as these local ordinances take the final acid test of a court of law.
[Nick Tucker is a solicitor at Caxton Legal Service.]