TRANSCRIPT:
Police were out in force in Melbourne at the weekend as an anti-immigration rally gathered in the CBD, and a counter-protest also got underway.
But chaos broke out when the police put up barricades to force the two groups to stay apart.
"This is not a police state, we have the right to demonstrate."
Ultimately, two officers ended up in hospital after demonstrators allegedly threw rocks, glass bottles and spoiled fruit at police.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has condemned the violence, saying it cannot be tolerated.
"What happened in Melbourne yesterday was a violation of that obligation that everyone has in a democratic society that should you choose to protest, you must do so peacefully. What happened yesterday wasn't just unacceptable. It violated that principle, and they shouldn't have had that level of violence perpetrated on members of Victoria Police. That was just disgraceful."
A 30-year-old woman was arrested at the scene and has been charged with resisting police - but police say they are expecting to take more into custody.
Police say they're still looking for up to 20 people, and C-C-T-V and body-worn camera footage is being scoured to find those allegedly responsible for the violence.
Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt says it's fortunate that more people weren't injured.
"We're fortunate that it is only those relatively small numbers given the amount of members we had and the levels of violence that confronted them. It's an unsafe place for our members to be on a police line. When people are hurling railway ballast at you, one of those things hits you in the head. It's a bad day for you. You may not be lucky enough to go to hospital in an ambulance. That's a deep concern to us, of course."
The police have defended their use of flash bangs, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the angry crowd of counter-protesters who police say were attempting to break through the barricades.
Mr Gatt says that police were well within their rights to use force to clamp down on the violence.
"They're not going to sit back and watch police officers be injured and not use force, not do their job, and I think they're entitled to do that. In fact, the law says they're entitled to do that. Any member of the community is entitled to defend themselves. Police should be no different."
Victorian Opposition Leader Brad Battin has claimed the protest highlights what he has described as the "chaos" the city has been facing.
He's calling for a mandatory six-month sentence for anyone convicted of assaulting police.
But Jacinta Allan has attributed the ugly scenes to an escalation of bad behaviour by a minority of people who infiltrated the anti-racism protest group.
She says the Melbourne C-B-D remains a safe place for residents and travellers, arguing the vast majority of protests over the last two years have been peaceful in nature.
"The point about conflating protesters in general with safety in the C-B-D (is it) ignores the fact that we've had some significant-size protests in cities, in Melbourne, in Sydney, around the country that have been peaceful, that haven't seen this level of violence. What we saw yesterday was a very different pattern of behaviour, it was violent it was unacceptable. It's not tolerated. It certainly was not tolerated yesterday."
Ms Allan also says police have sufficient powers to prevent unrest, with the government keen to resist the state opposition's long-running push for protest permits.
Still, the Victorian government has endeavoured to ban face coverings at protests for close to a year now, despite legal experts from the Human Rights Law Centre arguing the law could criminalise those who wear masks for health, religious or cultural reasons.
"They dealt with it swiftly because they had the tools, they had the resources, and also importantly, they had the powers to deal with those protesters who chose to bring violence to the streets. And that is why we are going to expand those police powers with new laws to deal with people who are cloaking themselves under masks to perform violent acts under the cloak of a protest."
In New South Wales, sweeping anti-protest police powers were struck down by the Supreme Court last week after they were deemed to infringe on constitutional freedoms.
But Wayne Gatt says following this incident of violence, his officers want to be able to draw a line more effectively.
"There are plenty of demonstrations where good protest organisers talk with the police and say, Hey, we're going to protest on Sunday. We're going to this location. We're going to have a march. In fact, here's a map that's really helpful. We can facilitate that protest. And then there are those that won't engage with the police, that won't tell us what they're going to do, or indeed change those positions to frustrate our attempts to keep the peace at these events. Look, in those circumstances, police should have more powers to shut those events down quickly. In other states, those sorts of protests become clearly and quickly unlawful."
