Police chief's last-minute bid to close Herzog protest inquiry delayed watchdog investigation

On a February afternoon at Sydney's town hall, police and protesters collided in ways that would ripple through the city's accountability machinery for months. The protest against Herzog drew crowds, and the response drew blood—viral videos captured officers punching demonstrators, grabbing Muslim worshippers mid-prayer at sunset. Ten police officers were injured. So were numerous protesters, some of them in their seventies and eighties. Thirty people were charged in the aftermath. Four of those charges have since been dropped. More than twenty others are scheduled to face a joint hearing next July.

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, New South Wales's police watchdog, launched an investigation almost immediately. By September, the inquiry was set to begin public hearings—a deliberate choice to examine not just individual facts but the systemic decisions and command structures that shaped how police approached the protest. The watchdog had received over eight hundred complaints tied to the event. The public deserved to see how those complaints would be tested.

Then, less than two weeks before the hearings were scheduled to start on September 21, police commissioner Mal Lanyon's legal team made a move. They submitted arguments that the inquiry should be held behind closed doors. The opening address, the examination of witnesses—all of it should happen in private, they argued. They said the watchdog lacked the power to hear broad submissions in public and that holding open hearings partway through an investigation was unconventional and inappropriate.

The watchdog's chief commissioner, Peter Johnson SC, made his response public on Thursday. The timing, he wrote, was "more than regrettable." The last-minute intervention had forced delays, disrupted preparation, wasted public resources, and cost money. The investigation's start date shifted from September 21 to "a date to be fixed." A private hearing had to be scheduled just to argue about whether the hearings should be private.

Johnson rejected the police commissioner's position. The watchdog did have the power to decide when public examinations were appropriate, he ruled. And public examinations were necessary. Significant information about February 9 was already in the public domain—the viral footage, the images of police using force. Senior police officers had already advanced their own account of what happened. "Public comments made by senior police increase the need for independent scrutiny," Johnson wrote. The Islamic community in Western Sydney had raised significant concerns. Transparency was not optional.

The inquiry will now proceed with a hybrid approach. On October 19, counsel assisting the watchdog will deliver a public address. Five weeks of private hearings will follow, focused on factual matters. After that, senior officers will appear at public examinations to address systemic issues—the use of OC spray, the improper use of arrest powers, the deployment of force itself, the planning that preceded the protest, and what might be learned for future policing of demonstrations.

The operation, called Makalu, will examine the full architecture of what happened. Meanwhile, a separate civil case is moving through the courts. Palestinian Australian Eyad Shadid has sued, alleging he was assaulted, battered, and falsely imprisoned by police near the town hall. His claim includes allegations of misfeasance in public office and malicious prosecution.

Sue Higginson, the NSW Greens justice spokesperson, called the police commissioner's bid "an extraordinary attempt" to suppress public examination of serious misconduct allegations and to shield the political decisions and command structures that led to police violence. The police commissioner's office said it acknowledged the decision and awaited the findings. At a parliamentary inquiry in May, Johnson had described the relationship between the agencies as "difficult," noting that police had become "overly defensive" in response to information requests. The record complaint numbers told their own story. What the public hearings will reveal remains to be seen.