Minns Defends Position on Harbour Bridge March As Government Reacts

Premier Chris Minns has defended his opposition to the Sydney Harbour Bridge protest as members across the government react to one of the biggest anti-war actions the city has seen.

Despite the rain, police estimate 90,000 people took to the Harbour Bridge on Sunday afternoon, but organisers say numbers were closer to 300,000.

Speaking to The Guardian on the condition of anonymity, one member from the right faction of the state’s Labor party said Minns seemed to care more about the opinions of News Corp media and talkback radio than the concerns of his own party.

“There’s a sense that our policy positions are at the most conservative end of the spectrum. The audience of 2GB are never, ever going to vote for us,” they said.

“I would just like a bit more Labor in my life.”

On Monday, the Premier said he didn’t regret his attempts to block the protest, and said it was a difficult decision for the government to make.

“Ultimately, my job is to be on the side of public safety and ensuring that people can live and work and protest and enjoy a city as big as Sydney. It’s not an easy thing to get right,” he said.

“We have to balance public safety [and] the public’s right to protest.”

Secretary of Unions NSW Mark Morey said the premier’s attempt to ban the protest was a “concerning overreach”.

“When there’s a strong public hunger to protest against violence and humanitarian crises, the government’s role should be to facilitate peaceful expression, not obstruct it.”

“Yesterday’s massive turnout shows that working people across Sydney are deeply concerned about Gaza, and political leaders should listen rather than look for ways to silence them,” he said.

Bridge action a “wake-up call for Australian politics”

Minns also said he wasn’t ruling out new legislation to safeguard against a potential precedent established by Saturday’s Supreme Court decision, but did clarify it wasn’t going to be something he rushed.

“We thought we were on firm ground with the police rejection of the form one last Saturday, but the Supreme Court knocked it over. So I don’t want to make the same mistake twice, other than to say, I have to examine all of this, I’m not ruling anything out,” he said.

“I think even most reasonable people would expect that, yes, you do have, from time to time, massive demonstrations, even if it’s on the bridge, but knocking it out every week is just not something that we can consider forever.”

Although Minns opposed the protest, a number of state MPs crossed the Bridge on Sunday, including Labor minsters Penny Sharpe and Jihad Dib. On Friday, 15 state politicians issued a statement voicing their support for the march, and called on Minns to allow the event to take place.

Federal Labor MP Ed Husic, a member of Labor Friends of Palestine, attended the march and told ABC Radio National that it was a “sort of wake-up call for Australian politics”.

“It was a tremendous example to peaceful assembly of people coming out in force to let governments know how deeply they feel and how much they want governments to act on the concerns that they have,” he said.

“When I looked in that crowd, yep, you had the people that you would expect that have been there from the start protesting, but there was a lot of middle Australia there, and I think that’s something that can’t be ignored.”