Citizens invoke mass nonviolent protest when they are blocked from successfully communicating their messages to government, either because of a government's hostility to the message or because governments feel that such ideas are not supported by a sufficiently large section of the population. Mass protest serves either to pressure the government to change policy or to heighten awareness of the issue among the general population in order to effect policy changes.

This has been a regular characteristic of new social movement activity in Australia during the past 40 years. These movements include those against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early '70s (especially the Vietnam Moratorium movement in 1970 when 100,000 people marched in Melbourne alone), the campaign against the Franklin Dam in the ...