Why Albo’s Given Green Light to The Protesters

You can’t be a prime minister without also being a local MP. And while it’s inevitable that PMs can’t give their own electorates as much attention as would a first or second term MP, or even a minister, PMs who want to last never take for granted the people who first put them into the parliament.

Apart from anything else, occasionally attending to people’s personal worries like Medicare gripes keeps a PM grounded and aware of whether the bureaucracy is treating the public with the respect they’re entitled to. However tied up they were with affairs of state, PMs such as John Howard and Tony Abbott always tried to spend a couple of days a month in their electorate offices because they thought that was their duty as well as important to their long-term success.

Only not so our current PM – who has closed the door to his electorate office because he doesn’t have the backbone to deal with pro-Palestinian protesters that have been on the doorstep since December. Seriously, have you ever heard of such rot? It’s no wonder he wouldn’t immediately order the protesters off the roof at Parliament House, is it?

They were left up there with the anti-Semitic signs for almost two hours and only came down when they decided the TV cameras had seen enough.

Last year, in the PM’s customary Christmas sign-off in the House of Representatives, Albanese first alerted us to the trouble at his local office by way of a shout-out to his inconvenienced staff. He said then that his electorate office was shut because protesters had made it unsafe for the staff to work there – or indeed, for the PM to turn up to his own office in his own electorate. So, imagine my shock to find out that more than half a year on, that office is still a no-go zone for our PM and his staff.

This is staggering both in political and security terms.

I have never heard of this happening ever before, of a leader caving into the mob, because caving into the mob isn’t leadership. Even if he was warned by security not to walk up to his own front door to tell them enough is enough, where are the police? Blocking access to their MP is hardly fair for 109,000 voters in the seat; surely, they have rights too or do we just allow protesters in this country to block offices, roads, ports and streets with impunity?

What could be said about a country where it’s supposedly not safe for the Prime Minister to enter his own office? Either there’s been a complete breakdown of law and order and neighbourhoods are in the possession of violent mobs. Or, hardly less destructive of social cohesion in the long run, the government has decided that it would rather not enforce the law against particular categories of law-breakers. There are no prizes for coming up with the right explanation here: This is a government, indeed a Labor movement more generally, that’s neuralgic against taking any strong action whatsoever against law-breaking by “victim” groups, especially groups that might readily mobilise to vote against sitting Labor MPs. And it’s a prime minister who’s prepared to suffer the humiliation of being denied entry to his own office rather than give Greens more political ammunition to claim he is not doing enough on Gaza.

As Victorian Labor amply showed against freedom protesters during the pandemic, leftist governments are more than capable of deploying the police in utterly ruthless, even brutal ways to break up demonstrations they don’t like. It’s a very different story with protests they feel ambivalent about, or even secretly support, no matter how flagrant the law breaking might be. Just remember back to the illegal Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne where 100,000 plus people marched through the CBD mid-pandemic with no repercussions. Yet rubber bullets were later used against others wanting their freedoms back after a record six lockdowns.

Protesters picketing the PM’s office to deny access to staff and constituents are guilty of obstruction, and quite possibly trespass and creating a public nuisance too.

In a community under the rule of law, the police have a duty to make it possible for people to go about their lawful business. Weak and spineless hardly begins to describe any government that would prefer the police to shirk their responsibilities because exercising them might be politically awkward.