Violence at previous G20 meetings and Queensland’s history of suppressing protest suggest activists and police would be at loggerheads before world leaders arrive in Brisbane. But instead a strange peace has broken out

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

It was an invitation wrapped around a warning. Activists in talks with police over protests at the G20 meeting this week in Brisbane were offered a visit to the police academy to see crowd control “hardware” – sound cannons to ensure demonstrators follow routes set down for them.

Many protest organisers have described the police as “supportive” in negotiations leading up to the event, but the Brisbane community action network (Briscan) understood the invitation as a veiled threat.

“We took it as them indicating that they mean business,” Briscan organiser Greg Brown told Guardian Australia. “Come out and have a look at what we’re going to use against you if you deviate from our prescribed march routes.”

“There’s not many ways you can take that. It was pretty audacious really of them to make that offer.”

The president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties (QCCL), Michael Cope, was also unimpressed, saying it “didn’t seem a way of building trust and cooperation with the parties”.

Briscan activists, who condemn the G20 for causing environmental damage and social disparity, have been among the few to bridle at protest restrictions in talks with police. Other organisers, who have not sought to contest the written “protest plans” laid down by negotiators, compliment police on their cooperative stance.

They include Indigenous activists who were previously banned from marching in Queensland.

Wayne Wharton, from the Brisbane Aboriginal sovereign embassy (Base) remembers when the Bjelke-Petersen government declared a state of emergency to stop land rights protests during the Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

“Given in 1982 we couldn’t even march here, it’s a pretty astounding thought they’re going to let us march,” he said.

Indigenous activists from the Pacific and South America will join Base for eight days of G20 protests calling for decolonisation – which Wharton says amounts to “a fair dinkum co-existence which addresses the economic equilibrium between first nations people and the dominant society … recognising that first nations people have a direct right to economic benefit, because it’s on their land”.

Wharton says police for the G20 have been “very cooperative”.

“We haven’t had any problems, we’ve signed off on our march routes yesterday, we understand the powers.”

Under the current police interpretation of the G20 security act, as shown in protest plans, those powers include the right to forbid protesters from wearing masks, and carrying megaphones or banners larger than 1m x 2m. Police can exclude those deemed to be “disruptive” from Brisbane’s “declared area” – most of the inner city – without facing any legal challenge until the summit is over.

Police discretion with some of these powers was put to an unexpected test when the lockdown zone around the main G20 meeting venue first came into effect on 1 November. A solitary woman lining up paper boats in a row along the edge of Brisbane convention centre was warned by police to move on or face an “exclusion notice” from the area.

Scotia Monkivitch said she came up with the idea of boats as a symbolic protest against Australia’s asylum seeker policies and “a different way to create protest” for people reluctant to join street marches.

“What I’m finding, as a long-term activist, is that people are getting less and less engaged in the kind of general protest marches, so we need to find new ways of engaging people,” she said.

She said the “fragility of the boat” was a visual symbol that was particularly pertinent to Australia’s border policies.

Monkivitch’s group Walking Borders plans to lay boats along the boundaries of G20 venues and hotels as they become off-limits to the public.

The protest in its first outing caught the attention of security guards, but discussions with a police negotiator have since reassured her that Walking Borders’ brand of “art activism” can take place without arrests or exclusions from the city centre.

Monkivitch says the media focus on the possibility of protests becoming violent, as they did at G20 meetings in London and Toronto, has helped “demonise the idea of what an activist is and ramped up the idea that police are going to be pretty rampant”.

“In fact, the police to this point have been very positive and certainly polite in terms of engaging with us, and I don’t think that they’re wanting repercussions like [in] Canada,” she said.

The largest expected gathering is a 1,000-person rally to protest against the presence of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, organised by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO).

The welcome party for Putin and his delegation, organised by a group called Rustralia, is expected to attract several dozen expatriates and supporters.

Tony Abbott’s promise to “shirtfront” Putin over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 has set up the summit’s most anticipated political encounter. But AFUO and Rustralia organisers, who are aware of each other and are taking safety precautions on the advice of police, expect no tension on Brisbane streets.

Rustralia organiser Ksenia Timbay says precautions, including keeping the location secret until shortly before the event, were “not about that particular group [the Ukrainians]”. Rustralia was avoiding words such as “rally”, she said.

“We’re calling it a celebration. It’s all about welcoming the Russian delegation and raising friendship and partnership with our two countries,” Timbay said.

The Ukrainian-organised rally will tap into the opposite sentiment. “Putin’s not welcome,” the Ukrainian Community of Queensland president, Stephan Chomyn, said. “We just think it’s a slap in the face that we have him here in Australia, after everything that’s happened.” Chomyn said this included Russia’s unhelpful role in the investigation of the MH17 crash and its influence in the Ukraine conflict.

“We want the world to see that Aussies are standing up against him,” he said.

Both the Ukrainian and Russian groups praise the role of police: “So cooperative and so supportive”, Timbay says; “Terrific,” Chomyn says.

Amid the widespread goodwill towards police among protest groups, Briscan have been wearing out their welcome with police negotiators. The activists are among the few who have canvassed the G20 Security Act for ways to retain traditional civil rights.

They have explored whether peaceful protest is a “lawful excuse” to carry banned items such as masks, large banners or megaphones, arguing the latter help large crowds do what police have asked, which is to “self-regulate”.

The police view is they do not. They have told activists they will shut down marches if anyone carries such items. That police can legally do this, the QCCL argues, illustrates the folly and unfairness of laws intended to safeguard an event at which police, on their own projections, will outnumber protesters three to one.

“This has been our concern all along – when you read the act, that’s what [police] can do. If anybody is committing an offence, they can shut the whole demo down, and that’s just wrong,” Cope says.

Briscan asked police to sign a memorandum of understanding that, among other things, would have ruled out charging protesters under the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act, which adds up to 25 years to jail sentences.

Queensland police have refused, instead seeking to lay down ground rules through a pro forma “protest plan”.

Senior police have said protesters could get closer to the main venue than at any previous G20 meeting, but marches have been banned from two days before it begins.

They have undertaken to use horses to block access, not attack crowds; use dogs to “take down” individuals, not control crowds – that is now the province of the “long range acoustic device”, essentially a large, painfully loud fire alarm on wheels.

“Kettling”, the corralling of crowds in restricted areas, will be a last resort, police have said.

Protesters can apply under right to information laws for “unofficial” video or photos police take of them, but will need to identify the officers, who will wear numbers, not name badges, and, Briscan argues, will be able to retain or delete the footage at whim.