Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

The 22-minute law took 14 hours to vanish down a rabbit hole littered with hyperbole and hypocrisy.

Because what I’m about to write isn’t going to win me many friends, let me say at the outset that the Malinauskas Government’s decision to rush through parliament an eye-watering hike in penalties for disruptive, obstructive or violent street protests is one of the dopier things it has done in its short and, until now, unruffled life.

Dopey, but ridiculously popular among those voters it needs to keep happy.

The Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Bill was dubbed the “22-minute Bill” because that’s how long it took the government to buddy up with the Liberal Opposition to shove the new protest penalties through the House of Assembly.

And the 14 hours? That’s how long it took to make it through the Legislative Council on Wednesday after a pointless, all-night, look-at-me filibuster by the Greens and SA-Best that ended at 7am.

Don’t feel too sorry for them. The Leg Co doesn’t normally start sitting until 2.15 pm Tuesdays to Thursdays, and then only a couple of weeks in a given month and only a few months a year all up. They’ve got plenty of time to catch up on lost sleep.

In the government’s benign language, the Bill increases “the potential penalty for public obstruction” from a $750 fine to a maximum of $50,000 or three months in prison.

It also chucks in the judicial equivalent of a free set of steak knives – police and emergency services can apply to the courts to recover the costs of handling wacko protests.

The legislation, the bright idea of the Liberals, was snapped up by Premier Peter Malinauskas after an Extinction Rebellion climate protest created traffic mayhem in and around the CBD.

And this is where we follow the White Rabbit down the fabled rabbit hole.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

The new penalties have brought together a jamboree of the Lefterati – not just the Greens, but SA Unions, climate, civil rights and university student groups and even, for some reason, the SA Council of Social Services.

They raged that the legislation is an attack not just on the right to protest but on free speech itself.

As InDaily reports, the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) says it is “highly likely” new laws will be subject to a High Court challenge on “the implied right of political communication”.

It is “highly likely” this will be a waste of time.

These penalties keep company with SA’s Public Assemblies Act 1972 – an Act that came into force after police ignored the Dunstan Government’s direction and violently quelled a Vietnam Moratorium protest at the corner of North Terrace and King William Street on September 18, 1970.

The Dunstan-appointed Bright Royal Commission into the protest itself and the disgraceful police response – 130 protesters were arrested and dragged into paddy wagons – pondered the “legally permitted limits to public demonstration”.

Bright’s 94-page report is hard to get hold of but worth the effort, because it gave birth to SA’s Public Assemblies Act, a peculiar thing that guarantees the freedom to demonstrate if you first ask permission from the cops.

As Premier Malinauskas points out, for 51 years this quirky little law has meant “any person participating in a public assembly enjoys immunity from criminal or civil liability, provided they do so in accordance with an approved proposal under the Act”.

He says the new penalties don’t touch Don Dunstan’s protest freedoms, but he and his Attorney General Kyam Maher both should know that this argument is disingenuous.

What if a protest that is an “approved proposal” goes off the rails?

The brand-new threat of a potential $50,000 fine, or three months in prison, the harshest in the nation, hardly fits the definition of “immunity from criminal or civil liability”.

But we haven’t yet fallen into the darkest reaches of the rabbit hole.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

Just three years ago, SA’s parliament passed a law that banned peaceful demonstrations.

It did so with the support of the Greens and SA-Best, with not a peep of protest from the unions, civil liberty groups or the broad diaspora of the Left. In fact, they cheered it on.

The Health Care (Safe Access) Amendment Act 2020 made it an offence to protest in a public place closer than 150 metres to a health centre that performs abortions.

It banned any form of protest – even prayers – that can be seen or heard by a person accessing or leaving a clinic and that is “reasonably likely to cause distress or anxiety” for them.

I’m not a fan at all of public abortion protests, even if they involve Christians standing piously saying the Rosary anywhere within cooee of a health clinic. We can pray for the unborn child, and their parents, silently at home.

In a well-reasoned speech backing her Bill, Greens MLC Tammy Franks argued that “silent prayer” should not be exempt from prohibited behaviours because it opens a “very frightening Pandora’s box”.

“By giving silent prayer a special dispensation from those prohibited behaviours, I think we open a very frightening Pandora’s box, if you like, that allows religion and religious practice to be contorted into something quite ugly if we are saying that it is okay to use silent prayer to threaten, intimidate or harass,” she said. “That is to me not what prayer is about.”

I’m guessing silently praying for something horrible to happen to Russian president Vladimir Putin is off the approved prayer list, then.

Tom Koutsantonis, the “Labor lion”, now Transport Minister, was one of the few to oppose the legislation on free speech grounds, warning that the precedent could flow through to other legislation that might restrict the right of unions to assemble and workers to protest.

He argued parliament could adopt other ways of protecting people from being “molested” by protesters.

“What you do not do is use statute in the parliament to take away democratic rights,” he said.

The Act carries a maximum penalty for breaches of $10,000 or 12 months in prison. It doesn’t ban “silent prayer”, but it doesn’t exempt it, either.

Is this legislation a crackdown on the right to protest and free speech? Clearly, yes it is, but its supporters argue it was needed for the common good.

Premier Malinauskas and Liberal leader David Speirs could make the same argument for their public obstruction penalties, couldn’t they?

Why is a protest on climate change worth defending, even if it may “threaten, intimidate or harass” the public, as the latest Extinction Rebellion frolic did?

Or are some protests, and is some free speech, more equal than others? It’s a strange place, the rabbit hole.

‘Well!’ thought Alice to herself, ‘after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home!

Matthew Abraham’s political column is published on Fridays. Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.