The New South Wales premier has denounced a serial protester after costing taxpayers more than $5 million in police costs by repeatedly organizing pro-Palestine rallies.
Josh Lees, a member of the Palestine Action Group and a host of other left-wing causes, has submitted requests to New South Wales police every week for the past year to march through Sydney’s central business district to protest the Israeli bombing of Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks. .
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said police presence at these protests had cost taxpayers $5.4 million this year alone.
Lees, 41, from Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west, is regularly seen at protests wearing a keffiyeh (a traditional male scarf and headdress) which has become a symbol of support for Palestine during the ongoing conflict. in the Middle East.
He is also an LGBTQ rights activist and writes for Red Flag, the newsletter of Socialist Alternative, a group that identifies as Australia’s largest Marxist organization.
Minns said this week that police should have the power to reject a protest request when they are done so repetitively.
“In my opinion, the police should be able to deny a marching request due to limited police resources,” he said.
‘I’m not talking about a union rally against the government over a pay deal, but rather someone applying every seven days for 51 weeks to march through the streets of Sydney.
Josh Lees, a member of the Palestine Action Group, has been calling on New South Wales Police to march through Sydney’s CBD every week in the year since the October 7 attack on Israel.
“This is costing millions of dollars, and I think taxpayers should be in a position to say that we would rather see that money spent on roadside breath testing, domestic violence investigations and knife crime, rather than the enormous resources that are intended for the city and the community.’
Mr Lees was also criticized by 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Wednesday morning, who described him as someone who “has a finger in as many protest pies as he can handle”.
“He’s one of the reasons taxpayers have shelled out more than $5 million this year for additional police officers,” he said.
“With overtime added, it’s closer to $10 million.”
Mr Fordham questioned what Mr Lees did for a living and said he could write on his CV that he was “a full-time headache”.
Mr Lees is seen with Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah from the Families for Palestine group.
Lees, 41, from Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west, is regularly seen at protests wearing a keffiyeh, which has become a symbol of support for Palestine amid the conflict in the Middle East.
Lees accepted that he was a “serial protester” after Minns described him as such.
“I’d rather be a serial protester than a serial killer, and right now we have Chris Minns endorsing serial killer Benjamin Netanyahu, who has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
‘I wish Minns were as concerned about stopping this genocide as he was about stopping people from protesting genocide and war.
“But this is not about me, and any attempt to do so is just another desperate distraction from the war crimes that Israel is carrying out, with the support of our government.”
Unconcerned about the cost he was causing to taxpayers, Lees promised that he and his movement would continue protesting “to stop the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.”
Mr Lees has a very wide range of concerns that he feels strongly enough to organize protests.
He was part of the Lockdown to Zero group, which campaigned for the NSW government to order lockdowns during the spread of Covid.
However, he was also part of a Black Lives Matter protest during the 2020 lockdowns that challenged the laws of the time that prevented such gatherings.
He was one of many protesters arrested for camping out at Martin Place in 2011 for the Occupy Sydney movement, which briefly demonstrated against economic inequality but also fizzled out.