Campaign launched to ‘save Mardi Gras from disintegration’

A new campaign has been launched by members of the queer community to “save Mardi Gras” ahead of this year’s annual general meeting.

The group behind it, named Protect Mardi Gras, launched the campaign on Monday night with the goal of countering activists it says are pushing an exclusionary agenda.

Those involved in the campaign include Peter Murphy, who took part in the first Mardi Gras in 1978 and was bashed in a police cell; Peter Stahel, managing director of Essential Media, a strategic communications agency known for its political polling; and Katherine Wolfgramme, a transgender advocate and former board member of Wear It Purple and Qtopia, and a former board associate at Mardi Gras.

“We’re really trying to save Mardi Gras from disintegration because of the efforts being made by some people to exclude whole groups of LGBTQIA+ people from the parade,” said Murphy.

“It’s about inclusion and welcoming people and not using Mardi Gras as a tool of punishing different people.”

Police participation at centre of Mardi Gras debate

Murphy cited activist group Pride in Protest as seeking to push out certain groups from Mardi Gras, including police and corporate sponsors – something he opposes.

“The exclusion of people has really been driven by Pride in Protest and I can’t quite fathom the motive because it’s sort of an unrealistic assessment of the situation of the LGBTQIA+ community,” he said.

“The police aren’t our enemy at all but it’s in neon lights right now that [US President] Donald Trump, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, [Hungary Prime Minister] Viktor Orban, [former Brazilian president Jair] Bolsonaro and quite a lot of fanatical Christians are still driving a hate campaign against LGBTQIA+ people worldwide.”

To protect Mardi Gras, you need to be part of it

The issue of police participation in Mardi Gras came to a head in 2024 when the Sydney Mardi Gras board initially excluded officers from marching in the parade following the alleged domestic violence-related murders of Luke Davies and Jesse Baird, allegedly by then-NSW police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon.

The board later reversed that decision, allowing police to march – but not in uniform.

Police involvement reignited at AGM

The matter reignited at the recent December AGM, when members voted down multiple motions that sought to restrict police’s involvement in future parades.

The debate around the police’s involvement with Mardi Gras had been building for some time.

At the 2023 AGM, a separate motion by Pride in Protest succeeded in terminating the Mardi Gras police accord – a memorandum of understanding between Mardi Gras and NSW Police that aimed to ensure a safe environment at events.

Murphy acknowledged the LGBTQIA+ community’s fraught history with police but said exclusion was not the solution.

“There’s plenty of people who have had bad experiences at the hands of the police, therefore you can make a case … that the police are some kind of evil force, and there’s some truth in those experiences,” he said.

“But from my point of view, we worked for a very long time to get the police to admit that they made a really bad move against our community in the 1978 Mardi Gras and for many years after that.”

Pride in Protest’s actions at last AGM

Pride in Protest was one of the main drivers behind the push at December’s AGM to exclude police from the parade. The group also submitted motions to end certain corporate partnerships and called for Mardi Gras to support a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

Approached for comment, Pride in Protest told Gay Sydney News it had little interest in what it described as internal navel-gazing when more urgent global issues required action.

“The Mardi Gras AGM is months away, meanwhile we are watching children starve to death in a live-streamed genocide in Palestine,” the group said.

“Rather than playing around with this sort of navel gazing, we will be helping to build a queers for Palestine contingent for the March for Humanity across the [Sydney] Harbour Bridge this weekend.

“We call on the rest of our community to join Palestine Action Group this Sunday.”

Members vote against police exclusion

The group’s motion to exclude police from the parade indefinitely was defeated in December, along with a similar motion from the board and another from Daniel Mitsuru Delisle – then co-convener of Rainbow Labor NSW – which sought to restrict which police could march, prevent them from wearing official uniforms, and ban them from carrying weapons.

At the same meeting where the motions were debated, both Delisle and Pride in Protest member Damien Nguyen were elected to the Mardi Gras board.

Murphy said there needed to be a middle ground to strengthen the community – but so far, all he had seen were divisive actions from Pride in Protest.

“I think they frame Mardi Gras itself as some kind of radical political mass movement or even party type thing … instead of a grassroots celebration of ourselves,” he said.

“They always seem ready to reject or exclude someone” because they view Mardi Gras through a lens it was never meant to be seen through, he said.

Campaign calls for greater member involvement

Murphy said the goal of Protect Mardi Gras was to encourage more people to join Mardi Gras and become active in shaping its future.

“We want people to join, we want them to vote and if they don’t come to the AGM and vote, they should give a proxy to those people who will be at the AGM to make sure we vote for inclusion,” he said.

“Hopefully that will be enough to re-stabilise Mardi Gras and safeguard it for the future and future generations.”

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is expected to hold its next AGM at the end of the year, as it has for the past two years in December.

Editor’s note: Journalist Eliot Hastie pays $50 annually for Mardi Gras membership to access discounts at retail stores and bars but does not use the membership’s voting rights. Hastie knew Jesse Baird.