Protest laws challenged

THE High Court of Australia will today hear arguments in a challenge to Tasmanian laws restricting protests near abortion clinics.

Legislation passed by State Parliament in 2013 bans protests within 150m of premises where abortions are provided.

Queensland man John Graham Preston is challenging three charges of breaching the act and one of failing to obey the directions of a police officer during protests in Hobart in 2014 and 2015. A magistrate found all three charges proven and he was fined $3000.

Mr Preston claims the laws are an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and political communication.

Written submissions lodged on his behalf with the High Court claim the law’s intention of preventing people from feeling ashamed were “not a high constitutional purpose”.

In his submissions, Solicitor General Michael O’Farrell SC rejected suggestions that shaming women outside abortion clinics was a form of legitimate political expression.

He said the laws were clearly in the public interest.

“It seems reasonably clear that, in the appellant’s view, protesters … suggesting to women that they ‘should be ashamed of themselves’ or ‘ought to hang their heads in shame’ for attempting to access a legitimate medical health service is a circumstance about which the legislature may not legislate,” he said.

“The protesting provision pursues a number of related and legitimate objects; principal among them being to ensure that the privacy, dignity, and safety of physically and mentally vulnerable patients, and medical staff wishing to have unobstructed safe and un-harried access to premises providing terminations, fectively maintained.”

In October last year, the High Court struck down Tasmania’s anti-workplace protest laws as unconstitutional — describing them as overly broad, vague, confusing and exhibiting “Pythonesque absurdity”.

Billed by the Government as the toughest anti-protest laws in the country, the Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Act was passed through Parliament by the is ef- Hodgman Government in July 2014 in a bid to stop protests disrupting forestry operations — with fines of up to $250,000 and provision for five years’ imprisonment.

But the court ruled they breached the implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution.

The state has not had an abortion clinic for the last 10 months, although he Government has promised one will open this month.