Australia: BLM and the pandemic

As with the United Kingdom, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests which have swept across the United States have overflowed to Australian society. The tangle of BLM issues with the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered bitter debate and some social dislocation.

The weekend of 6–7 June was a particular focal point. BLM protest organisers announced plans for significant gatherings in Australia’s major cities to draw attention to the deaths in custody of Aboriginal Australians arrested for various reasons. There have been at least 432 indigenous deaths in custody since a Royal Commission examined the issue in 1991. This has been a simmering matter for decades, erupting into protest action at various points in time, and almost predictably piggybacking onto the worldwide BLM activism presently underway.

When the plans for the early June protests were announced, most state and federal governing authorities banned the gatherings, given the strict regime of social distancing because of Covid-19 that has been in place in Australia for several months. Protest organisers indicated that they would ignore the bans, and on the eve of the protests the gatherings were permitted.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a devout charismatic Christian, acknowledged the right to protest in Australia, but pointed out that rights did not exist in a vacuum. ‘With liberties come great responsibility, I think, for individuals,’ he said in a statement to the media.

At the same time he pointed out how individuals and groups had foregone opportunities to gather out of respect for Covid-19 restrictions. ‘For all of those Australians who couldn’t attend the funeral of a family member or couldn’t see a loved one in a nursing home, or a veteran who couldn’t remember their fallen colleagues by attending a war memorial service on Anzac Day, I think all Australians owe all those other Australians a great duty of responsibility and I say to them: don’t go [to the protests].’

Nevertheless, protests by thousands proceeded on the first weekend of June. A BLM protest in Perth drew a crowd of 7,000. Former Australian tennis great and Wimbledon champion Margaret Court, Senior Pastor at the Victory Life Centre Church in Perth, was highly critical of double standards applied by authorities in allowing BLM protests to proceed with little regard for social distancing while enforcing distancing in other contexts. Speaking in support of Court, Australian Christian Lobby ACL Director for Western Australia, Peter Abetz, commented ‘pro-life groups in the Coalition for the Defence of Human Life cancelled the 12 May annual Life Rally at State Parliament, because we value human life and respect for law and order. If our rally of likely over 1,000 people had proceeded, police would have made arrests.’

Nevertheless, Christians are divided in their views on the BLM protests. In recent weeks some churches have shaped Sunday sermons around the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody. In the small town of Tatura in Victoria, Senior Pastor Jeremy Burr of Generations Church devoted the sermon of the church’s online service to an open conversation with his aboriginal friend, Pastor Aaron Wallace. At the massive Hillsong Church in Sydney, Senior Pastor Brian Houston invited indigenous Australian Christian Churches pastor, Will Dumas from Ganggalah Church, to speak about aboriginal issues. This was followed by an evening panel discussion which discussed global developments in the light of anti-racism protests and the pandemic.