The New South Wales police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, has restricted public assemblies in Sydney for 14 days, under new powers that passed NSW parliament on Wednesday.
“The declaration will be reviewed and can be extended fortnightly for up to three months,” police said in a statement.
“Gatherings are permitted but police may issue move-on directions for people causing obstructions or behaving in an intimidatory or harassing manner, or people who might cause or be likely to cause fear in another person.”
Lanyon announced the decision shortly before midnight on Wednesday, which will apply in the south-west metropolitan, north-west metropolitan and central metropolitan policing areas of Sydney. This declaration can be extended up to three months, which civil liberties groups say is draconian and infringes on the right to assembly.
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The NSW premier, Chris Minns, rammed through tough new laws after the Bondi massacre, when a father-son duo allegedly attacked a Jewish Hanukah event in a terror attack and 15 people were killed.
The package included tougher gun restrictions, strengthened hate speech laws and a controversial crackdown on public gatherings.
The impact of contentious protest crackdown laws remains uncertain as a legal challenge to their validity brews.
Earlier, Indigenous groups raised concerns that, if the police commissioner makes the designation under his new powers and an extension is made, it could affect Invasion Day protests on 26 January.
Minns responded by saying such assemblies “can take place”, indicating a distinction would be drawn between static rallies and marches through the city.
He said rhetoric about protesting being banned was overblown.
“The rules and the laws are only in place under very strict conditions and that is for a terrorism designation … we’ve had very few terrorism designations over the last few years,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“Right now … it’s the worst terrorism event in this state’s history.”
Former supreme court judge Anthony Whealy said it was important the NSW government restored goodwill in society after the attack and that would not be achieved through divisive actions.
“If this law were in force now and the Jewish community want to protest themselves for what they saw as, for example, inadequate policing at the Hanukah event … they wouldn’t be able to,” he said on ABC Radio.
The government has said the laws, labelled “dangerous and divisive” by the federal Greens, are not designed to stop peaceful gatherings.
Minns said they were needed to stop hate speech running rampant, blaming pro-Palestine protests for breeding antisemitism that the organisers could not control.
It is something vehemently denied by organisers, who say people are protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza and the actions of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
“We want to make sure we’re in a position to keep the people of NSW safe and I don’t resile from the fact at all that, in these circumstances of heightened tensions, words can lead to actions,” Minns said.