Following a week of mass protests across Australia, with a large one taking place in Sydney, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has stated that she intends to ensure that “absolutely” no further protests take place for reasons of health.

This past week has seen protests span worldwide with the Black Lives Matter focus front and centre following the death of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd killed by police. This incident reignited the movement which saw mass protests world wide.

Sydney played host to a two hour protest organised by The Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA), the Anticolonial Asian Alliace, and the USYD Autonomous Collective Against Racism – a protest that the NSW Premier took to court to have it deemed illegal out of concern for a rise in COVID-19 cases.

Now, after the protest has taken place, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has spoken out to 9 News that she plans to “absolutely” block future protests for the sake of health.

After talking about the current state of affairs in New South Wales when it comes to current COVID-19 restrictions and cases, 9 News asked if the Premier intends “to ensure that no further protests take place,” to which Berejiklian responded “absolutely.”

“As you saw, we were the only state government that actually took the protest to court to have it deemed illegal,” she stated. “Unfortunately, the court of appeal overturned the initial decision, but of course – not just in relation to that issue, in any issue.”

With the NSW government throwing an attempt to the Supreme Court to have the protest ruled as illegal, if they had proven successful, police in attendance would have been allowed to hand out social distancing fines left and right.

Shortly before the protest was scheduled to start, the Court Of Appeal denied the NSW government their appeal, and the protests continued on.

Berejiklian isn’t happen with the matters, saying they’ll have to collect data on how many new cases pop up due to this event.

“Health orders are there for a reason and it is only because we’ve stuck to them that we’ve done so well. If we’d all abandoned that and hadn’t stuck together we wouldn’t be in the position we are. I’m glad we’re where we are but I also know the level of frustration is growing,” she said in a final statement.

Check out 9 News interview with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian:

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