Activists hijacked a major projection at Melbourne’s White Night festival on Saturday, at a protest against the city’s proposed rough sleeping laws on Saturday night.
Across the top of the State Library of Victoria, “#NoHomelessBan” and “sleeping rough is not a crime” were broadcast by the protesters from a small projector powered by a generator. The all-night festival, an annual light and art event, shuts down most of the CBD and draws some 500,000 people each year.
The festival bottlenecked outside the library, with many queuing for an hour to enter the venue for another installation. As they waited, watching the official festival projection play out on the building’s exterior, about a hundred protesters were gathered in the forecourt chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets”.
The protest was attended by a collection of activist organisations and people who had been or were currently homeless.
The City of Melbourne’s proposed by-law amendments include banning any form of public camping and making it easier for the confiscation of unattended property. The council will also run a public relations campaign to discourage people giving money to the homeless.
“What are they trying to do? Run people that are experiencing homelessness through no fault of their own right out to the edge of Melbourne?” said Kelly Whitworth from the Homeless Persons Union. “It’s absolutely outrageous.”
The city’s homeless count has increased 74% in two years but homeless advocates fear that, if the ban goes through, other councils could follow suit.
“Melbourne city council should be putting pressure really strongly on the Victorian government [for solutions] instead of coming down on the victims of the unequal housing market,” Whitworth said.
There is currently a 28-day public consultation period on the by-laws and, if they go through, it is not expected to come into force until at least April. The council says the changes are not a ban on rough sleeping but will broaden restrictions around camping to “better balance” the needs of all people in sharing public space.
Simon Zlatkin, from the Homeless Persons Union, said his organisation was at White Night to send a message to the lord mayor, Robert Doyle: “[Melbourne council] are trying to ban homelessness … We can’t have that,” he said. “They have nowhere else to go, they have nowhere else to sleep.”
Zlatkin lives in a boarding house that will close in June, at which point he said he will likely end up back on the street. “It’s not a crime to be living on the street. We’re not doing anything wrong.”
Although the hijacked projection was unexpected, the protest itself was not a surprise for organisers. Speaking with the Guardian an hour before White Night opened, the festival’s first-time artistic director, David Atkins, said: “They’ve got a right to [protest] – no one’s got any issue with it. It will only become an issue if it becomes unruly or if there is property damage or danger to the patrons, otherwise it will proceed as they’re planning it to.”
A few blocks away, Visit Victoria had supported a Salvation Army initiative encouraging homeless people to come in off the street, with a selection of White Night musicians playing at an unadvertised all-night gig at the Salvo headquarters on Bourke Street. Atkins also pointed to a projection called Home Less by artist Chase Burns, which explores the dream of a homeless person.
Many people at the protest were not homeless but there in support. “It’s great that people want Melbourne to be an open city but it should be open for everybody,” said Cath Mcleish. Mcleish has recently returned to Melbourne after five years overseas and said it was “really noticeable” how many more people are sleeping rough. “People have hard times in their lives at different times in their lives and we have to look after them at those times.”
Bhavani, who only offered her first name, was homeless a number of times in primary school and again in high school. She has lived in Melbourne for a decade now and says homelessness has exploded in the last six months.
“It’s really important to me that other people get a better chance than I did but it seems like they’re getting a worse chance,” she said. “I was really lucky, I finished uni and I’m home now but being moved on and trying to go to school was really brutal.”
Organisers said the White Night event attracted between 550,000 and 600,000 people to the CBD for the exhibitions, street performances and lighting display.
• Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
