The changing Australian prototype of policing, pickets, and public order

Abstract

This article explores changing police strategies in the handling of industrial disorder. Historically, the policing of large‐scale industrial disputation in Australia was characterized by violent confrontations and little, if any, police accountability. Contemporary tactics generally invoke a low‐key peacekeeping approach and encourage a professional relationship between police and unions, although police maintain the latent capacity to use coercion. The policing of two modern industrial disputes —?the 1992 Tasmanian APPM dispute and the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute —?indicate more communicative, compromising and sophisticated responses from police and unions in achieving negotiated management of conflict situations. This article argues that these case studies demonstrate the desirability of low‐key, nonconfrontational and flexible policing strategies in cooperation with well‐organized and passive picketing. The understanding that has generally developed between police and the Australian union movement starkly contrasts with overseas police confrontations against the loose alliances of antiglobalization protests at Gothenburg and Genoa in 2001.