Silencing Dissent: My Letter to Penny Wong

Today I delivered a letter to Foreign Minister Penny Wong. I asked a simple question: Is it acceptable for her Department DFAT to falsely accuse peaceful and lawful protestors of trespassing, and then use the Australian Federal Police to remove them from public land?

I didn’t write that letter lightly.

I wrote it because it happened to me. Twice.

On 14 July and again on 25 July 2025, I sat quietly on a public footpath outside DFAT headquarters in Canberra. I wasn’t chanting, blocking traffic, or causing any disruption. I was just silently exercising my democratic right to protest.

On both occasions, DFAT's security approached and intimidated me. They claimed I was trespassing. On the first occasion, they called the cops who told me that DFAT had said I was “not welcome” and that I needed to move on or be arrested. To avoid arrest, I complied. On the second occasion, I'd done my homework and was better prepared. I gave DFAT a copy of a government map which clearly showed that I was not on it's property and that it had no right to remove me. The police didn’t show up. But the intimidation continued.

Let’s be clear: I was not breaking the law.

I was sitting on public land. And yet DFAT security acted as though my presence, silent and peaceful, was criminal. They accused me, under false pretences, of trespassing.

I’m a former senior public servant. I gave 31 years of service to the Commonwealth. I led Australia's first Threatened Species Strategy. I represented Australia in the United Nations, China and Japan. And as an Ambassador to over 100 million people in West Africa. I tried to live my public service values of courage, integrity, and putting people and country first.

But when I sat outside DFAT asking Australia to stand up for the human rights of Palestinians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs, I was treated with contempt. Like a threat that needed to be removed. And they did it unlawfully.

As an Aboriginal Australian, I also can’t also help but reflect on the hypocrisy. This is the same Government that championed the Voice to Parliament to give First Nations a say. But when a D’harawal man sat on public land to make his voice heard about a matter of human rights and international law, the response wasn’t to listen. It was to silence and intimidate.

That’s not democracy. That’s not decency. And it's not OK.

This is the misuse of institutional power. When governments treat peaceful protest as a PR problem to be erased rather than a legitimate form of civic engagement, democracy suffers. And so do all of us. Even Pauline Hanson would agree with me on the right to express our views peacefully in public.

What you can do

Read my letter to Penny Wong.

Write to your MP or Senator. Ask them whether they support this kind of behaviour from a federal department.

Share this post. Talk about it. Raise it in your workplace. Democracy isn’t something we defend once every three years at the ballot box.

Take peaceful action. Whether it’s a sign, a social media post, or showing up on a footpath. It all adds up. Contact me if you'd like me to share the exact location of where you can peacefully protest outside DFAT. I can also give you a copy of the Government map that shows that its public land where you have a right to be.

We can’t allow the Government and its Departments to shrink the space for dissent. If peaceful protest becomes a crime, we all lose something precious.

Thanks to Fiona Bowring who took this photo. Check out her awesome photography via her Instagram page here.