Contributed by Adam Carlton

The Judge at a Supreme Court case in Sydney yesterday awarded $93,000 in damages over a case where woman was forcibly strip searched by police at a music festival, assaulted and battered. Raya Meredith stood up and fought back. She became the lead in a class action for 3,000 other who claim they have been treated the same way.

Legal firm Slater and Gordon and the Redfern Legal Centre. Now that the precedent has been set, the state’s police and government are likely to face a multi-million-dollar bill.

More importantly, aggressive strip searches at music festivals, and perhaps other places, without proper purpose, have been made much harder to carry out under the existing law.

Photo form The Australian: NSW Police on a strip search mission

Strip searching is only one of the techniques escalated in the last few years, as an application of a politically motivated crack down on the population. Escalation of anti-protest laws tell this better than anything else. NSW was also the centre of the attack of the ABC and GetUp raids in 2017, because of what they were saying. The state has witnessed the most pronounced and extreme law and order political campaigns in Australia. Sydney houses the most notorious riot squad, generally described as a bunch of thugs itching to hurt people.

None of this would happen without the political establishment pushing it and putting in place laws measures that put these actions into effect. Nor would it have been so extensive with the bipartisanship of the major political parties. Coalition and Labor have driven the drive for big brother policing while in government.

Central to this shift is the widening gap between the political elite and the electorate. A nervous political elite seeks to impose its control. This reality of the NSW political scene spreads across the nation. But for now, the epicentre is in this state, with the rest following behind. They are undermining the extent of the democracy that we have had for many years.

This is the future unless Australia puts a stop to it. A victory at the strip search case heard at the Supreme Court yesterday is a small and important step in this direction. Australia needs a lot more of it.