This week The NSW Government (and convniently just before Parliament closes for several months), passed a law to stop behaviour that "causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event". Police will have "discretionary" powers (ie open slather) to arrest and/or fine people; all the while, the NSW Bar Association is reported as saying that the laws are "unnecessary and repugnant".
Protest groups, Civil libertarians and the NSW Bar Association have criticised the powers, which will allow police to issue $5,500 fines to anyone deemed to be "causing annoyance" during World Youth Day events, which run in Sydney from July 15 to 20.
The popular but ignorant argument against the law is based on the assumption that people in Australia a right to free speech and to protest, when in reality neither of these have ever been tested at common law. They may be assumed to exist but common law is all non-specific.
Equally, I argue that any law which also relies on non-specific, vague terms such as "annoyance" must be bad law. I suspect that many courts would struggle to define "annoyance"; I could not find a general, stand-alone legal definition for it. NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he did not think the term "annoyance" was too broad and there were no plans to review the powers.
This means in reality that there is a law with an undefined civil term, for which a breach results in a very steep civil penalty. Because of the police's "discretionary" powers, it is now entirely to down to nothing more than the opinion of what the individual police officer finds as an "annoyance" as you whether you cop a nice bill for 5.5K
Am I allowed to fine the NSW Government $5,500 because I find the law annoying?
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