Protesters clash outside Brisbane church over postal survey

Protesters clash outside Brisbane church over postal survey
Image: Screenshot: @RMorrison9 / Twitter.

Yes and No campaigners clashed outside a church in Brisbane overnight following the High Court’s decision to allow the postal survey to go ahead.

One woman was arrested for obstructing the police while another person received minor injuries outside St Michael’s Dorrington Catholic Church on Banks Street in Ashgrove.

“I suffered an injury because people drove their cars nearly at full speed into the yes campaigners here today,” Jessica Payne told Nine’s Today this morning.

“It was extremely scary, extremely irresponsible, and police actually tried to help the people in the cars get through the crowd of protesters.”

Payne was injured in the clash and described the crowd as “extremely violent”.

Yes campaigners had gathered outside the Church to protest a forum titled ‘Safe Schools — education or social engineering?’.

The National Union of Students organised the protest which was described as a “homophobic forum”.

Nine’s video from the clash shows protesters forming around a four-wheel drive as it moved through the crowd, with one man shouting “run me over” while others chanted “we will win”.

Peter Dutton slammed the incident, saying, “Conduct yourself in a reasonable way. Have a respectful discussion.”

Labor MP Anthony Albanese said the protest came as no surprise and that the postal survey was always going to cause friction.

“That was one of the concerns we had about a plebiscite or a postal vote – that there would be division in the community.”

Albanese said such incidents further neither the Yes or No campaigns.

“You can have different points of view without engaging in that sort of behaviour.”

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4 responses to “Protesters clash outside Brisbane church over postal survey”

  1. Socialist Alliance, no surprise, it’s always about them, not the cause, unless its supporting Kim Jong Un or the Venezualan junta

  2. Can someone tell this bunch of rabble to pull their heads in. Not helping anyone but the No campaign.

  3. Thank you to the student unionists and socialist evangelists for hardening the hearts of even more people against Marriage Equality. The NO campaign might as well stop now since these alleged YES campaign-supporters are doing a better job of making people want to vote NO than any church ever could.

  4. This doesn’t help, people. We don’t invite the No campaign to our meetings, why attend theirs? This wasn’t even a No campaign matter, it was a Safe Schools thing and the Yes campaign is currently running an ad trying to point out the bleeding obvious – Safe Schools and the marriage equality campaign are UNFUCKINGRELATED.

    Why contradict that message? Who are you actually helping? Because it’s not the Yes campaign when you apply the tiniest bit of analysis to the situation.