AAWAA brings to you ‘Local Action’, a monthly report on the brave feminist actions by women across Australia. Local Action this week is on the Speakers’ Corner. Sue Clarke and Leah Whiston are the founders of Woman Up Queensland. They facilitate the monthly Speakers Corners in Brisbane. I sat down to discuss the Local Action that occurred at Speakers’ Corner on the 21st of July 2024.
Sue, can you please tell us a bit about Speakers’ Corner?
Speakers’ Corner is an opportunity, around once a month, for women and men to gather to speak, or support those who speak, about the impacts of gender identity ideology on women’s rights and children’s safeguards. We are trying to give people who believe gender identity ideology hinders true progressiveness for women’s sex-based rights the feeling that they are not alone.
Are all Speakers Corners like the one on Sunday 21st of July?
No, they aren’t, this was the most aggressive one we have been confronted with. Fortunately, up until now, we have been lucky to have good support from the police. We usually get a rabble of about 30 to 40 trans rights activists (TRAs) who come to the event. In May and June we had a good police presence; in June we had approximately 10 police forming a buffer between us and the TRAs. The police have always kept them at a safe distance from us so we could speak. The TRAs always make a lot of noise to drown us out. They don’t want us being heard by the public and, although the police kept them at a distance, we always had trouble being heard.
How did this all start?
I sent an NOI – Notice of Intention – to have a Speakers’ Corner in Brisbane at Reddacliffe Place on the 21st of July. I forwarded that to council on the 21st of June. It’s a Notice of Intention for us but for the TRAs it should be called a Notice of Intimidation. On the 24th of June I received an email from Council confirming that they had forwarded the NOI to Major Events in Queensland Police. The role of the police is to allocate police resources and to keep us safe. As much as the TRAs claim we are violent there is absolutely no evidence of this and that is because we are never violent. All the violence, the hate, comes from the TRAs.
On the 16th of July, I received a phone call from a police officer from Major Events. She told me that the ‘Pride Activists’, as the police call them, had lodged an NOI for the same location, day and time as our event, meaning we had to share Reddacliffe Place with a group of people who were openly hostile towards us. I told the police officer that this would mean that these people have been given permission to get right in our face and push us out from where we set up.
I was told by the same police officer in June that there is a loophole in the legislation that allows multiple groups to be in the same location, same day and same time, which is just insane. During the phone call of the 16th of July I asked the police officer if she would allow an NOI to be approved by Free Palestine if an Israeli group had previously lodged an NOI and it was accepted, and subsequently Free Palestine lodged when it is known the level of hostility between those groups? Of course I didn’t get a response. But the police can seek an order from the Magistrates’ Court to stop a hostile group situation like this one so the TRAs can’t use an NOI as an excuse to menace and harass us. But to date this option hasn’t been taken by the police. So, the TRAs’ NOI had been accepted and we had to share Reddacliffe Place with a group of men and their handmaidens knowing the potential of violence towards us.
The next day, Tuesday, I sent an urgent email to the police minister. I asked the minister to intervene. I said that apparently there is a loophole in the Peaceful Assembly Act 1992, which allows multiple groups to gather at the same location, day and time. I told the minister that what will happen is that the TRAs will be more hostile towards us as they will be able to get up close and push us out from where we set up. I said this will be a volatile situation.
I didn’t get a response to that email. We knew we were going to be at risk, but we were not going to back down because this is what the TRAs want; us being too afraid to proceed with these monthly events.
On Wednesday I got a phone call from another police officer from Major Events, and he told me that the council had sent two emails to me to advise us that Reddacliffe Place will be hosting a suitcase rummage which will take up the whole of Reddacliffe Place and so therefore we were unable to hold our event in that location. I told the police officer that I hadn’t received any emails from council, I thoroughly checked, and I didn’t receive them.
This police officer told me that Queens Gardens Park was available if we wished to change location, and I confirmed we would take it. The officer said to me “we are going to have to tell your ‘friends’ and give them the option of the same location.” He was being sarcastic when he called them our friends. This officer was of the belief that the TRAs had a valid NOI when he rang me.
The next day I decided to call Brisbane City Council to find out what was in the legislation that allowed multiple groups to gather at the same location, day and time because it just doesn’t make sense. It is common sense that you don’t give permission to another group when someone has already secured that location. What happens if you have 10 groups all lodging an NOI for the same location and time? A nightmare. When I asked the contact person at the Brisbane City Council what in the legislation allowed multiple groups to lodge an NOI for the same location, day and time and be accepted, he said they never allow multiple bookings. He said we had secured Reddacliffe Place and a second NOI was lodged for the same location, day and time, and it was rejected. I then said, why would I get a phone call from the police advising me that the second NOI had been approved and the person I was speaking with could not understand why the police would ring me to tell me we had to share Reddacliffe Place?
I then rang the police and asked to speak to the police officer on the Wednesday. I was told that he was in, but I would be transferred to the police officer I spoke to on the Monday. That Monday call was not a very pleasant one and I was disappointed I was being put through to her. On the Monday call she told me they are not the protest police and that BAU would take priority over our event, and she could not give me an assurance that the police would attend our event on the following Sunday.
My call was transferred, and I told the officer that I had just gotten off the phone from council and I was told that the TRAs had not had their NOI approved and that it was, in fact, rejected. I was put on hold for a short period and when she returned, she said that we didn’t have approval either. I said we did have approval and that I had an email from the council supporting this.
I asked her about the legislation, trying to get my head around why the council and the police treat an NOI so differently, and then out of the blue she raised her voice and said, “I will not tolerate you yelling abuse at me.” This really shocked me, and I said, “I have neither raised my voice nor abused you.” The thought going through my head is that she did that to make out to others sitting near her that I was being abusive. I then asked her if the call was being recorded and she said no. I don’t believe that it wasn’t. Why did the police call me on Monday to claim the TRAs had an approved NOI? I just felt that we had been lied to by the police, was she caught out in a lie? What other conclusion could I have. The call ended with a commitment that there would be police in attendance on the day. From that moment on I had a gut feeling something wasn’t right, and I felt uneasy about Sunday.
At our June event the police were good. The TRAs who had an authorised gathering got to our location early and took the spot where we set up. The police did ask the TRAs to move, but of course they refused, so we set up elsewhere in the park. So, in July we got there an hour earlier at 11.30am and secured our spot.
What happened on the day?
12 o’clock comes and no TRAs and no police. Shortly after we saw trans scouts coming to the park to see if we were there, seemed like they had sent their people out to try and find where we were. One of our group walked past Reddacliffe Place when she was walking down to our location so it seemed to us the police didn’t tell them about the change of location.
It felt like the Hunger Games! You can pick these people out so easily…they all look the same, coloured hair, dishevelled looking.
Yes! You can see the coloured hair and flags…
A woman came into the park, and she had a suitcase and she sat not far from us and I looked at Leah, that knowing look that you had spotted one of them. Then this woman approaches us and sits behind us, we knew who she was it was so obvious.
Then she approaches a couple of our group and asks how frequently the train to the airport runs. And I’m thinking, all she had to do is Google that information, the question was so disingenuous. And then a tall, thin man comes up to the same people in our group not long after and asks if this is where the anti-TERF protest is being held. David, one of our group, asked him ‘what is a TERF?’, and he didn’t know, it was quite funny. David pointed to the grass and said, ‘if you want to punch a TERF there is some turf there.’
It is funny that this person had asked you where the TERF protest was. Obviously, that is what they call it. But concerning that the protestor didn’t know what a TERF was!
At 12.20pm, still no TRA protest group and no police either. So, David and I decided to go down to police headquarters which was a couple of streets away. When we got there, we decided to record our conversation with the police, because we had lost trust after my phone call on Thursday. When we got to reception a plain clothed person was there and I said we have an event not far from here and we were told that the police would be in attendance, and they haven’t arrived. A uniformed officer who was sitting at reception called out, ‘what is the name of your group’, and I said ‘Woman Up Qld.’ He said, ‘police have been allocated but they are out doing other things and they will get to you when they can.’ I said we were at risk, and he responded with, ‘so is every other Queenslander,’ in a condescending manner. We left as this was just more evidence that we were going to be left to fend off the TRAs without support from the police.
When David and I were walking back to the park we could see one of their people wearing a fluorescent vest with ‘legal observer’ on the back, which is so funny as they are the ones with the criminal behaviour.
Absurd!
We get back to where we are going to set up. We didn’t put up any corflutes because the wind was so strong. We set up ready to speak. Leah always sets the tone for the day and gets up to speak; Leah always opens our events brilliantly. Leah spoke for maybe one or two minutes and then we heard people yelling. It was the TRAs coming in from behind us yelling ‘trans rights are human rights.’ This was clearly an ambush. You ask them what human rights they don’t have, and they never answer you because they are told they don’t have human rights and they don’t even know they have the same rights as every other human, or do they?
They stormed through where we were set up, yelling at us. Then I saw 2 police officers a way off in the park watching what was happening to us. Leah has the live stream, and she approached the police officers and asked if they are going to help us. One of them looked blankly at Leah and claimed that the TRAs have an NOI and they are entitled to speak. They didn’t have an NOI and they weren’t speaking, they were yelling, they were abusing us, and they had pushed us out of where we set up. The previous month we had 10 police officers, and they had to control the TRAs. Here we have 2 police officers who stood back watching us being assaulted. At the very least they could have approached the TRAs and asked them to settle down and move on, but nothing. They were clearly in breach of the Peaceful Assembly Act; to gather you MUST maintain public order and safety. These TRAs were not behaving in an orderly manner and you could clearly see the aggression on display, we were at risk…I told the police that we would be and I told the Minister for Police we would be and they did nothing to stop this and it was clear that would not help us on the day.
When I rang Major Events and told them that council did not have an NOI that should have been changed on the police database, but it wasn’t, so the police in attendance believed the TRAs had an NOI.
There was 48 minutes of mayhem, all of it captured on the live stream. You can see that here: https://www.youtube.com/live/_e_v_ychobs?si=s3Wte1xX0NrTJFUY
When did more police turn up?
More police eventually turned up so a discussion took place about if we would go ahead. We wanted to, as we were not going to be intimidated by this mob of lunatics. The police pointed to an area where we could continue, and they said they would form a line, so there would be a buffer zone. The TRAs, without an NOI, got to push us out and we had to find a new spot. The TRAs should have been moved on, even if they had an NOI they were clearly in breach of the conditions that the NOI is granted on. They should have been arrested for their behaviour; it was disgraceful. At one stage a young 17-year-old boy who identifies as a woman with long purple hair goes straight up to Leah in an aggressive manner and says, ‘you are more of a man than I am c#$t…’ They are just disgraceful human beings. Leah is an amazing speaker, and she has the most amazing comebacks to these people. Leah put him right in his place. If you watch the footage, you will see the interaction between Leah and this young boy.
So now they are trying to push us out from our second location, but we stood our ground and decided we were not going to move. The police were all over the place, some at the back of us, some at the side and by this time had lost complete control of the situation. They did move in to stop blue boy from getting at our equipment, but they weren’t going to touch him physically. It was very clear to us that the police in attendance had been told to be present but not to act, so they just let blue boy and his mates do whatever they wanted to do.
Didn’t two bystanders, men, try and intervene?
Two young men walking through the park saw what was going on and one rushed at blue boy and grabbed his trans flag, and the other stood in front of blue boy’s mate to stop him from rushing to blue boy’s aid. Blue boy was singing out to the police to intervene, so blue boy wanted the police to step in to help him. The mother of one or maybe both came over and was yelling out trying to stop them from grabbing the flag, she thought her son was going to be hurt. This was the only time the police stepped in and that was to stop blue boy from being hurt. Then when the flag is let go blue boy aggressively marches up to us and says ‘see this is what you do,’ blaming us for those two young men stepping in and grabbing his flag. Blue boy, in his fit of rage, punches one of our women in the head and it is on the live feed, you can see how hard he hit her as she flinches, he doesn’t even realise he has hit her, but that is still assault, his behaviour was so reckless. If he can hurt someone like this, imagine what he is capable of; blue boy is a very big man. Blue boy did knock Kaley off her feet, and this is on video as well and this was done on purpose.
But who knows what blue boy is doing to his body with the hormones. They are mentally ill; it is so obvious they are in a cult.
Three of us did speak on that day, but many who were going to speak didn’t. It was never going to quieten down enough to run the whole event so after 48 minutes we decided to pack up and go for a drink and debrief.
The following day I rang Major Events and spoke to the male police officer I had spoken with previously. He knew what had happened but was disinterested. Even the police were assaulted the day before. We have it on video where blue boy is bragging to his mum, someone was holding up their phone recording on his side and he says, “look mum I’ve assaulted a police officer and he is going to charge me” and he turns to the officer he has assaulted and the police officer says ‘no, I’m not going to charge you’. It was astounding to watch. I mentioned to the police officer from Major Events that the police were even assaulted, and he said that is part of the job, with a disinterested tone. I just gave up; the police were not interested and obviously they were not going to protect us anymore.
We didn’t know the name of blue boy so in the following days on social media I asked if anyone knew who he was. One of the men in our group found out information and gave me blue boy’s name.
A few days after that I got a message from someone I know, and they wanted to know if I had a name yet and I said yes. And they wanted to know his name and strangely I didn’t want to have anyone harass him like he harasses us. I didn’t realise I had empathy for him.
One of the things that really angered the TRAs on that day was Leah and I wearing Suffragette scarves. They told us we had no right to wear those colours. The reason, and I have been told this directly, is that they have taken up where the Suffragettes failed. Apparently, the suffragettes weren’t fighting for the vote for women, the Suffragettes were trying to ‘queer’ women. He said the reason women ‘are so frustrated’ is because many of us are men and because we don’t feel we can express our ‘manhood’ we are angry. Their logic is so incredibly twisted, and they rewrite history at every chance they can. They have even renamed the Suffragette flag the Gender Queer flag.
The following Thursday I received a phone call from a Senior Sergeant. She said she was also responding on behalf of the minister in relation to the email I sent him the previous week. It was a very positive call, we spoke about what happened and I was asked if we were all ok and I said yes, but two of our women were injured, one got a hit to the head and the other knocked to the ground. I was told that they will be increasing police numbers at our next event and that we will not have to deal with that sort of behaviour again from the TRAs. That call gave me hope.
I was very proud of all our group on that Sunday. We came under fire and dealt with irrational and intimidating behaviour by a group of very unhinged TRAs, and not one of us left the scene; we all stood our ground. It hasn’t deterred us; we will not give up.
Our next event is on Sunday the 25th of August at 12.30pm at Speakers’ Corner in King George Square.
The TRAs have sought to have an increased presence by advertising their counter protest when interviewed on 4ZZZ this week. Piper is the name of blue boy, said in this interview how much fun it was on the 21st of July. He admitted that the attack was premeditated and that they stormed the Speaker and took over where we had set up and that they got up so close to us that they were screaming in our faces.
What blue boy doesn’t realise is that he and 4ZZZ committed a cybercrime. People are not allowed to use a carriage service to menace and harass people. They are in breach of the Criminal Code 474.17, which is a Federal Act, but can be acted upon by the police in each state. I wrote to the Police yesterday and lodged a complaint under the Criminal Code. It will be interesting to see if 4ZZZ and blue boy are charged.
Please come and support us in Brisbane if you can, we know the only reason we have small numbers is because people are fearful, but you can wear a disguise.
You can support the brave women of Woman Up and their Speakers Corner by following them on X, Facebook and YouTube. The views expressed by the women interviewed in Local Action are their own and do not necessarily represent or reflect the positions of AAWAA.
