The Editor’s Desk

In May 1992, the Goss cabinet approved legislation to give Queenslanders the formal right to public protest. The accompanying announcement said the change was a critical part of the Fitzgerald process. Labor premier Wayne Goss declared: “Governments who try to restrict the right of the people to freedom of expressions are governments scared of scrutiny. This government is not.”

In November 2022, Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reinterpreted that freedom, telling parliament: “People have the right to protest silently in public.” She followed that extraordinary statement by encouraging her Speaker Curtis Pitt to criminally prosecute a group of 14 Extinction Rebellion protesters who had interrupted proceedings of parliament for 3 minutes.

Those protesters – the first Queenslanders since before the Fitzgerald Inquiry to be criminally charged for disrupting state parliament appeared in court and released on the condition that they don’t enter Parliment. Among them is the 69-year-old wife of Professor Peter Coaldrake, the man the Premier tasked last year to lead a review of the culture of her government.

That fact is awkward. But the bigger issue here is what this saga tells us about how far this third-term Labor government has drifted from the North Star set out by the Fitzgerald inquiry and the subsequent reforms enacted by Ms Palaszczuk’s political hero, Mr Goss.

Now, as we have said here before, it is indeed illegal to “disturb the Assembly” and to be “disorderly while parliament is sitting”. Both are technically crimes punishable by up to three years in prison. Sending a clear message that this protest was the wrong thing to do is therefore appropriate. But the response should be proportionate. Nobody was hurt. There was no property damaged. And the entire disruption lasted for a total of 3 minutes. Charging the protesters with the criminal offence of disturbing the legislature is a punishment that clearly does not fit the crime. Considering our state’s political history, that this was done at the behest of a Labor Premier is troubling.

Konstantin Kisin, a podcaster, pundit and self-professed satirist, is a man who believes in free speech, so long as it reflects well on him.

He is also the cracklingly viral man of the moment. Invited to debate whether “woke culture has gone too far” at the Oxford Union, Kisin delivered a clever speech. It was not predictable. No lazy rhetorical drive-bys against snowflake statuesmashers, miserable vegans or blue-haired placard-wavers.

No, the speech was an invitation to the students that night. Kisin outlined the seriousness of climate change, with all its gloomy high stakes, and then asked them how they should solve it. By gluing themselves to paintings? Or by working, creating and building a better world?

“All wokeness has to offer,” he said, “is to brainwash bright young minds like you to believe that you are victims”.

Woke culture hasn’t gone too far, according to Kisin. Woke culture is just a dead end. Kisin’s side carried the motion by a margin of 89-60.