A Human Rights Conversation with Kerryn Phelps and Sarah Dale

6pm tomorrow Thursday 18 July, Pitt St Uniting Church, 264 Pitt St
Hosted by Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS)
Tickets $10/$20 purchase here

Kerryn Phelps is one of Australia’s best known medical doctors, a civil rights advocate and most recently, a politician. She is the first woman and first LGBT+ person to be elected president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA).

In 2018, Dr Phelps was elected to the House of Representatives as an Independent. During her time in Parliament she worked tirelessly towards getting children and their families off Nauru and led the passage of the Medevac Law.

Sarah Dale is the Principal Solicitor at the Refugee Advice & Casework Service. She heads up the legal practice, ensuring people seeking asylum have access to legal support and are given a fair hearing.
 

NSW Police and City of Sydney Council threatening civil liberties in the CBD



In a further crack-down on civil liberties, NSW Police have prevented our protest on Saturday marching through the Pitt St Mall. Demonstrations in the CBD have included the Pitt St Mall on their route for many years. 

The police have cited ‘safety’, including the presence of buskers, as the reason for their decision. But they have not explained why a march that moves through the mall in a matter of minutes is a greater problem than the frequent presence in the mall of static groups of very large numbers of people, often in concentrations much higher than the projected march.

On this occasion, in the face of significant costs associated with any court hearing to challenge the police decision, we’ve been left with no alternative but to accept an alternative route. But we’re currently approaching the NSW Council of Civil Liberties and other along with activist groups and we’ll be considering every option available to us to effectively contest this unacceptable and anti-democratic infringement of the right to protest in Sydney.

Read RAC's full statement here