They didn’t just whip out a Gatling gun or Zyklon B gas and let fly, though. So I’d say the Australian government cares, but not as much as they should.
Plenty of people believed firehosing “nigrah”s in Birmingham was a good thing, too, but they couldn’t sustain that indifferent approval after seeing the brutalization time and again on TV. The British government cared about appearances, but only after they breached good decorum by opening fire on the WOGs at Amritzar and other atrocities.
The Aussie government will soon go too far and lose public opinion as well. It’s how this works. That and overcrowding the jails.
The reason those tactics didn’t work is because we have (or had) a government and a population that has a moral and ethical sense and also founding principles that simply do not permit this kind of behavior towards the citizens. People knew it was wrong.
But go check out the comments on any Twitter feed or even article in the Aussie press. The majority of Australians seem to believe that it’s impossible to be too harsh with these people.
And I trust you saw the video of the police intentionally shoving a 70 year old woman to the ground on her face and stopping in their pursuit only long enough to pepper spray and mace as she struggled to turn herself over. One of them sprayed pepper spray directly in her face, aiming the way you’d spray a roach with roach killer, and another leaned over and gave her a spray of Mace. They then ran on, leaving her writhing there, and about 20 more police ran by before even one of them had the decency to stop and try to help her.
She was hospitalized with a broken hip, a fractured wrist, chemical burns to her eyes and face, lacerations and a concussion. The cops who did this are getting no punishment.
Australia surprises me, but not that much. It is considered one of the most non-religious countries in the world. Unfortunately, we’re losing our moral sense too (or maybe we’ve already lost it) and our grip on our fundamental principles.
When you think of it, is this much different from the way the Jan 6th protestors are being treated? Most of them are still locked up, no brutal police have been punished (including the one who killed a protester), and the media and public opinion are savage in their attacks on the protesters. If they could execute all of them tomorrow, they would do so.