Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven AM. When
Speaker 1: former Green's candidate Hannah Thomas was at a pro Palestine
Speaker 1: protest recently, she was allegedly punched in the face by
Speaker 1: a police officer, seriously injuring her eye. A police officer
Speaker 1: has since been charged with assault, and Miss Thomas is
Speaker 1: seeking compensation. But this incident is one of many in
Speaker 1: recent years where police have been accused of using excessive
Speaker 1: force against protesters, and it comes as officers are increasingly
Speaker 1: using weapons like pepper spray and rubber bullets. Today, journalist
Speaker 1: and author Ariel Bogel on the use of these so
Speaker 1: called non lethal weapons and how they're changing protests in Australia.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, October fourteenth, So, Ariel, at the moment, we're
Speaker 1: seeing weekly public protests, thousands of people gathering regularly in
Speaker 1: pro Palestine marches, as also climate protests. We saw anti
Speaker 1: immigration rallies. As all of this happens, though, we are
Speaker 1: also regularly hearing reports of people being injured, sometimes quite.
Speaker 2: Seriously, by police.
Speaker 1: So can you tell me some of the stories that
Speaker 1: you've been looking at of this happening.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've been.
Speaker 3: Tracking these same protests that you're talking about, and just
Speaker 3: noticing perhaps an optick in the appearance of what you
Speaker 3: call leslie or police tools. So these are things like
Speaker 3: OC spray, pepper spray in some cases, rubber bullets, things
Speaker 3: called flashbangs that kind of let off a loud sound
Speaker 3: like sort of miniature explosives for one of a better
Speaker 3: way to put it.
Speaker 4: The Avanti branch now also trying to stop this group
Speaker 4: which is on the Clarendon Street side from coming down
Speaker 4: along the Era. Jeez, that's pepper spray gets in the area.
Speaker 3: I started one wondering what impact this might be having
Speaker 3: on protesters or others observing them. And one person I
Speaker 3: spoke to was Alex Zuko. She's a photographer in Melbourne
Speaker 3: who was pepper sprayed while doing her job as a
Speaker 3: photojournalist at a protest in Melbourne towards the end of
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 2: It caused her to go blind for about an hour.
Speaker 2: She needed help.
Speaker 3: There was another photographer too was injured at the same protest.
Speaker 3: He told me he was hit in the ear with
Speaker 3: a rubber bullet and required medical attention for that.
Speaker 1: And tell me a bit more about these weapons, about
Speaker 1: the OC spray and the rubber bullets, these things that
Speaker 1: police seem to be using a protest.
Speaker 5: What I mean, can they cause long term damage?
Speaker 3: So when we use the term oc spray, we were
Speaker 3: referring to the kind of chemical compound used in the
Speaker 3: spray that causes that intense burning to the eye. And
Speaker 3: people told me it's like getting stabbed in the eye.
Speaker 3: You know, it's really excruciating if it gets into your eyeball.
Speaker 3: And people probably have heard of pepper spray, but they
Speaker 3: might have this idea it's like a small cannacuse of
Speaker 3: spray at someone's eye kind of miss. These days, the
Speaker 3: type that police have is it's more like a sticky foam,
Speaker 3: if you can imagine it. The issue is too like
Speaker 3: how to get it off. A lot of people who
Speaker 3: go to the protests now have techniques for doing this,
Speaker 3: but when you get home, you need to have a shower,
Speaker 3: get out of your hair, get out of your eyebrows,
Speaker 3: get out of your clothes. But it's not a simple
Speaker 3: thing to get this stuff off. And then of course
Speaker 3: there are things like rubber bullets or different forms of projectiles.
Speaker 2: We heard from somebody Kylie Martin.
Speaker 3: She says she was shot in the leg by police
Speaker 3: with a projectile she believes was a baton round. Just
Speaker 3: for clarity, a baton round. They can be fired from
Speaker 3: a weapon ressembling a kind of grenade launcher. So in
Speaker 3: a statement she said that police were just shooting into
Speaker 3: the crowded protesters and she claims to have had lasting
Speaker 3: pain and damage to her leg.
Speaker 2: And when we look at injuries.
Speaker 3: From these tools globally, we can see really serious instances
Speaker 3: of injury, brain damage, and even death. I think the
Speaker 3: term let's legal quote unquote is a bit of a misnoma. Certainly,
Speaker 3: these tools, especially projectiles, can be lethal depending on how
Speaker 3: they're used, so they're not something to be used lightly.
Speaker 3: So police have growing access to these types of tools,
Speaker 3: but there has been a bit of a lack of
Speaker 3: public discussion or examination I think of how these tools
Speaker 3: are being used and even what tools are out there.
Speaker 3: I think the average Australian might be quite shocked if
Speaker 3: they go to a protest and see police with some
Speaker 3: of these things.
Speaker 2: They might never have even heard of them.
Speaker 1: And so where are these tools developed and how do
Speaker 1: they make their way to Australian police forces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when you look at some of the manufacturers
Speaker 3: of sea spray, flash bangs, rubber bullets. They do often
Speaker 3: come out of companies that make other more traditionally legal weapons.
Speaker 3: They often have a side trade in these kind of
Speaker 3: less legal policing tools. So we got some new South
Speaker 3: Wales parliamentary documents that show some of the caps can
Speaker 3: spray launchers used by police are made by one of
Speaker 3: Germany's largest arms manufacturers, Ryan Metal. I'm not one hundred
Speaker 3: per sure what brand the Victoria police use at the moment.
Speaker 3: There have been a range of reports on that topic,
Speaker 3: but certainly some of the legal observers at some protests
Speaker 3: in late twenty twenty four, especially outside the Landforces Arms Expo,
Speaker 3: which sort of faced a quite significant protests over a
Speaker 3: number of days, observed the use of these flashbank kind
Speaker 3: of devices as well, and you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's pretty terrifying by all accounts.
Speaker 3: You know, I spoke to one police officer in the
Speaker 3: United States who trains officers on how to use these tools,
Speaker 3: and to his mind, they are a form of explosive
Speaker 3: So you really have to make sure officers are trained
Speaker 3: in their use and really consider the fact that if
Speaker 3: you throw such a thing into a crowd, it can
Speaker 3: cause panic, it can cause stampede and cause a range
Speaker 3: of injuries, and I guess there's just very little accountability
Speaker 3: or discussion about how police.
Speaker 2: Are using these tools.
Speaker 1: Coming up the people who are suing police over their
Speaker 1: use of force.
Speaker 5: I think that most Australians think.
Speaker 1: That we do or we should have the right peaceful protest,
Speaker 1: that being able to do that is an important and
Speaker 1: normal part of living in a democracy. But in recent
Speaker 1: years we have seen various state governments introduced laws that
Speaker 1: restrict that right to protest. So can you tell me
Speaker 1: more about that and about how that has in turn
Speaker 1: affected the way that policing works.
Speaker 3: I think Australia's attitude to protest I wouldn't say it
Speaker 3: has ever been like one hundred percent friendly. If you
Speaker 3: go and talk to protesters against the damning of the
Speaker 3: Franklin River and Tasmania, you know there was continuous face
Speaker 3: off with police over that. There have been protests, of course,
Speaker 3: against various conflicts, but reports coming out of places like
Speaker 3: the Human Rights Law Center have suggested there is a
Speaker 3: growing crackdown and they are found at least forty nine
Speaker 3: laws enacted by governments have constricted the right to protest
Speaker 3: over the past twenty years.
Speaker 2: If we look here in New South.
Speaker 3: Wales, where I am our state may be considered to
Speaker 3: have led the pack in that way. There's broad discretion
Speaker 3: now for police to penalize people who disrupt major roads
Speaker 3: or infrastructure. But there's a lot of discretion there for
Speaker 3: police to decide what is a major road, what is
Speaker 3: infrastructure when they can use these laws. Other states have
Speaker 3: rolled out a suite of similar legislation. What was suggested
Speaker 3: to me by a variety of lawyers and advocates is
Speaker 3: this is creating a permissive environment for use of force
Speaker 3: by police. We managed to get our hands on some
Speaker 3: of the statistics. There has been an uptick in use
Speaker 3: of force in general in New South Wales and also
Speaker 3: you know hundreds of documented cases of use of OC
Speaker 3: spray in Victoria. Again, when you're relying on police to
Speaker 3: report use of force, it's not always an accurate record,
Speaker 3: so it's a complicated space to get a really clear
Speaker 3: picture of. But it does seem like use of force
Speaker 3: in general is on the up.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the data that you have managed
Speaker 1: to gather about the increase in use of force against protesters.
Speaker 2: This is really part of a trend.
Speaker 3: I know at this point of at least four settled
Speaker 3: cases in Victoria. Since twenty twenty one, cases have been
Speaker 3: brought against Victoria police and they have been settled over
Speaker 3: the treatment of photographers and journalists, including the use of
Speaker 3: OC spray. We also found there were at least seven
Speaker 3: protesters alleging police violence who have active civil cases in
Speaker 3: the Victorian County Court. There are a range of allegations there,
Speaker 3: including a dislocated shoulder, burning painted testicles, caused by police
Speaker 3: including through the use of OC spray or foam, and
Speaker 3: what was claimed to be unnecessarily violent arrests and through FOI.
Speaker 3: We did get data that showed in New South Wales
Speaker 3: overall number of incidents where force has been used has.
Speaker 2: Risen from almost eighty.
Speaker 3: Twenty seventeen eighteen to more than nine thousand in the
Speaker 3: last financial year, but that data couldn't be broken down
Speaker 3: by protest scenarios.
Speaker 2: We could see too that OC spray was used almost.
Speaker 3: Nine hundred times in New South Wales in the past
Speaker 3: financial year, as well as more than two thousand takedowns,
Speaker 3: which is kind of where police might sweep the leg
Speaker 3: out of somebody to get them to the ground as
Speaker 3: part of an arrest, and we saw there too in
Speaker 3: those stats, fifty four percent of those who had experienced
Speaker 3: a takedown identified themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait islander.
Speaker 1: And there is the obvious question then of what you
Speaker 1: do if you believe you've been on the other end
Speaker 1: of that, if you've been assaulted by a police officer
Speaker 1: at a protest, where do you turn?
Speaker 5: What do you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely tough. Various states have different mechanisms for
Speaker 3: making complaints. But I spoke to a law professor, Simon Rice.
Speaker 3: He won a case against New South Wales police a
Speaker 3: few years ago for assault, battery and false imprisonment. He
Speaker 3: was thrown to the ground and arrested while observing a
Speaker 3: student protest at Sydney University back in twenty twenty. In
Speaker 3: his view, there was no really realistic way of complaining
Speaker 3: about police overstepping the mark. They in general investigate themselves
Speaker 3: if you complain directly. A lot of the oversight bodies
Speaker 3: really take on only kind of systemic instances of police
Speaker 3: misconduct or corruption. And again, as I mentioned, it's really
Speaker 3: hard to get those sheer numbers, you know, after a
Speaker 3: protest police often come out and announce how many people
Speaker 3: were arrested at an event, but there's not really a
Speaker 3: public record of how many times force was used, what
Speaker 3: was used, what tools were used.
Speaker 2: And whether it was appropriate.
Speaker 3: So that level of accountability is really difficult to obtain
Speaker 3: without taking legal action, and so we did speak to
Speaker 3: a number of protesters who feel their only.
Speaker 2: Option to get an outcome was to take it to court.
Speaker 3: There's actually, in fact a class action currently underway in
Speaker 3: Victoria about police use of OC spray back in twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen at the I Mark Climate protest, so the outcome
Speaker 3: there will be interesting because that will play out in public.
Speaker 3: We did, of course approach police in Victoria, New South
Speaker 3: Wales when working on this story. Victoria Police told us
Speaker 3: it makes no ologies for officers having to use force
Speaker 3: to separate and safely disperse crowds during protests. They said
Speaker 3: they don't attend protests with aim of using force, but
Speaker 3: is always in response to the actions of protesters.
Speaker 5: And what effect do you think all of this is
Speaker 5: having this use of force protests, both on the individual
Speaker 5: level on people who you know might go to protests
Speaker 5: or you know, decide not to and expose as well
Speaker 5: on the bigger level in terms of how you think
Speaker 5: the very idea of protesting or going or peaceful protesting
Speaker 5: is seen in Australia now.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly people.
Speaker 3: That have been affected by these tools. A lot of
Speaker 3: the people I spoke with, you know, it remained with them.
Speaker 3: You know, if you get oc sprayed directly in the eyes,
Speaker 3: that type of pain, you know, you don't forget it quickly.
Speaker 3: I think it might you know, affect people's willingness to
Speaker 3: share up and protest. It's part of this overall picture
Speaker 3: of antagonism in some parts the media.
Speaker 2: To protest.
Speaker 3: We do have an implied right to political communication in
Speaker 3: the Australian Constitution, which is a supporting protest for very
Speaker 3: little positive war about that fact. I think some people
Speaker 3: when they show up to protests might be surprised about
Speaker 3: the kind of use of force that they're facing, because
Speaker 3: again it's it's not well known that police have these
Speaker 3: kinds of tools in general.
Speaker 1: Well, Ariel, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the Abenezy government has backed down
Speaker 1: on its superannuation tax plan following sustained criticism from sections
Speaker 1: of the media industry and Politics Treasurer Dem Chalmers says
Speaker 1: superannuation balances of three to ten million dollars will now
Speaker 1: face a thirty percent tax on realized earnings, with a
Speaker 1: new forty percent rate for accounts above ten million, both
Speaker 1: indexed to inflation.
Speaker 2: It replaces the.
Speaker 1: Government's earlier plan for a flat thirty percent tax on
Speaker 1: earnings from all super accounts over three million dollars, including
Speaker 1: on unrealized games and with no indexation. And Quantus is
Speaker 1: facing potential heavy penalties after hackers leaked the personal data
Speaker 1: of up to five point seven million customers online. The
Speaker 1: airline was one of six global companies that were targeted
Speaker 1: by cybergroup Scattered Lapsus Hunters, which released the information following
Speaker 1: a ransom threat. The breach is believed to have originated
Speaker 1: from one of Quantus' outsourced offshore call centers, exposing full names,
Speaker 1: contact details, dates of birth, and even meal preferences. I'm
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.