Lives matter too much to be put at risk by protesters

The right to protest peacefully is intrinsic to Australia’s democratic heritage, although important freedoms have been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep us safe from disease. We acknowledge that racial inequality is a serious problem on both sides of the Pacific. Under current circumstances, however, as the nation recovers from the coronavirus, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian made the right call in declaring illegal the Black Lives Matter protest planned for Sydney on Saturday.

The planned scale of the event had grown during the course of the week, as she said, which meant organisers could not guarantee safe social distancing. The expert medical panel advising national cabinet also is “extremely concerned”, for good reason, that the protests, which will proceed in other major cities, carry the risk of a “major resurgence” of coronavirus cases. Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy has reminded the public that a single person infected with the virus infects 35 others.

Beyond NSW, confusion is rife. In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews has urged the public to avoid the protest. Victoria Police plan to fine organisers but not participants for breaches of COVID-19 restrictions at the event.

In Queensland, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has urged people to stay home but stopped short of urging police to arrest those who turn up and disobey the law, saying: “That is a matter for police.” In South Australia, club and junior sport remain banned but Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has irked many by giving protest organisers an exemption from social distancing rules. As David Penberthy writes, premiers hiding behind the skirts of their police commissioners are abrogating their responsibilities. In Sydney, Liberal councillor Christine Forster summed up many people’s views: “If you can protest … then you should be allowed to go to the footy.”

The fence-sitting of most premiers makes a mockery of their insistence on social restrictions over recent months, especially the overzealous continuation of border closures by some. From the outset of the pandemic, health authorities have cautioned that indigenous people, who tend to suffer poorer health than non-indigenous people, were at higher risk from the coronavirus. That also has proven to be the case in the US, where African-Americans have died from COVID-19 at three times the rate of white Americans. In Australia, it would be tragic if Aborigines joining protests for a better deal for their people caught the deadly virus and infected vulnerable family and friends.

Aside from the vexed issues surrounding the protests, the killing of George Floyd as he gasped his last words — “I can’t breathe” — was an unconscionable act of racial violence and abuse of police power. It has rightly galvanised attention on racial inequality. It is a “national shame”, as Scott Morrison says, that at least 432 indigenous Australians have died in custody since the 1991 royal commission, with only two-thirds of its recommendations implemented. On Friday, Brisbane barrister Joshua Creamer reminded our readers that a common element of many Aboriginal deaths in custody cases was “the complete disregard shown for their lives — a sense of them being less worthy of humane treatment because they are Aboriginal”. And as opposition frontbencher Andrew Leigh said last year, a higher percentage of indigenous Australian adults are incarcerated than African-Americans in the US. That worrying point needs to be taken into account in Closing the Gap strategies for advancing practical reconciliation, a process strongly backed by this newspaper for decades.

Mr Floyd’s death unleashed a torrid week of violent riots across the US, which remains in far more dire straits from COVID-19 than Australia ever reached. US cities have descended into lawlessness in a way Australians would be horrified to see here. The problems gripping our closest ally, as Henry Ergas has written, are not the harbinger of US collapse. But they point to divides that have remained unhealed for decades. Because black and white lives matter, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt’s advice to Australians deserves to be taken seriously: “Exercise your compassion. Express yourself. But do it in a way which is safe, sound and respectful of our most vulnerable Australians.”