Thousands of protesters have taken to Melbourne streets on Saturday in protest of Victoria’s proposed pandemic laws and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Large crowds gathered at the State Library before heading toward Parliament House.
Watch footage of the protests in the player above
For the second weekend in a row, protesters chanted “kill the bill” and “sack Dan Andrews” while wielding signs including ‘save our children’ and ‘Vaxtoria’.
Victoria Police maintained a heavy presence in the city with officers flanking protesters throughout the streets and also standing in a line to protect parliament.
The protests against vaccine mandates and the Victorian government’s proposed pandemic bill follow on from last weekend’s protests where similar scenes where seen in the heart of the city.
Demonstrators swarmed the steps of Victoria’s parliament building to protest and displayed signs with anti-pandemic law slogans.
A woman addressed protesters just after 2pm, saying the Andrews government’s proposed bill is “unlawful” and “needs to be invalidated”.
Shortly after, a man took to the stage and said “thank you my fellow superspreaders”, which was met with applause.
“Tomorrow the hospitals will be full,” he said.
“This is only the beginning, this is the start of the people’s revolution. We are the counter revolution and we will continue to march.”
The rally is in response to new laws introduced to parliament that would allow a health minister to make public health orders for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021 aims to give the state’s premier the power to declare a pandemic and extend it in three-month blocks for as long as considered necessary.
Last month, Andrews said the government had flagged this would happen and that this framework goes further in terms of “scrutiny and transparency”.
“We said as the state of emergency and legislative arrangements fell due, we would introduce pandemic-specific laws,” he said.
“We would have a set of measures that were not written with a hypothetical in mind, but were the product of learning and the experiences that we’ve all been through of these last 20-plus months.
“That’s exactly the framework we have introduced into the parliament.”
The declaration will give the health minister “broad powers to make pandemic orders” on the chief health officer’s advice and will replace the current state of emergency, which expires on December 15.
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