Posted on 09/21/2021 8:47:31 PM PDT by naturalman1975
I posted this as a mail to somebody who asked me what was going on here - and they suggested I post it here as well. This is just one person's view - others might well differ, certainly on some details. I've slightly modified it from the mail.
I've been here on FR about 17 years at this point. I've spent much of my life living in Australia, coming back to Victoria whenever I could - my time in the Royal Australian Navy took me all over the world and the country with postings in different states of Australia and some overseas as well. But this is the perspective of a long term Aussie and Victorian.
There's a lot of stuff going on here related to COVID. It’s a bit complicated.
First thing - it’s not the Australian government doing a lot of the things people are concerned about. That seems to be causing a lot of confusion overseas - our Federal Government, though certainly not perfect, had opposed most of the extreme reactions here by state governments - but under the Australian Constitution, matters of ‘public health’ are almost entirely in the hands of state governments, not the Federal government. The Federal government has very little ability to intervene in any matter involving public health. Likewise, while the Constitution prevents the Federal government from closing state borders, it doesn’t stop the state governments from closing their own borders.
Remember that - it's not Australia's Federal government which is broadly speaking conservative, lead by Prime Minister Scott Morrison who is doing this. Constitutionally all he can try and do is get the state governments to agree to a national plan, but they have all the power and quite a few of them are from the opposite side of politics. The Federal government does not 'outrank' the state governments - the states were almost sovereign before they decided to unify as a single country and they wrote a constitution that kept a lot of the power for themselves. And some of the Premiers are probably loving being able to be the ones really in charge of the whole country right now. It's not that the Federal government is powerless - but it only has power in its domains. It negotiates international treaties, it controls our defence force, it has primary control of most of the national budget.
But critically it doesn't have control of 'public health'. The states do.
What this means is that is happening in Australia has been very state specific.
I live in Victoria, which is the state with the biggest problems. We have a hard left socialist state Premier called Daniel Andrews and he’s the one making nearly all the decisions here. And he’s totally paranoid, on top of being an authoritarian. We’ve been locked down on and off for considerably over half of the last year and we’re likely to remain locked down for at least another six weeks before we even get close to back to normal. That’s down to his paranoia. You can’t leave your home except for certain specified reasons, there’s a curfew at night when you can’t leave at all (well, there are still a very small number of reasons), you can’t travel more than a short distance from your home even if you are allowed out. Most businesses are closed.
NSW which has a conservative government has also recently, over the last couple of months also imposed heavy restrictions (which go too far in my view) but they have only done it in the face of the worst COVID outbreak Australia has had and they are trying to get things back to normal as fast as possible - unlike Victoria. It’s a very different situation there - like I say, I think they’ve gone too far, but it’s nothing like Victoria.
The other states have occasionally had very short lockdowns that have actually succeeded each time in getting COVID numbers in that state back to zero. Personally I don’t think that’s unreasonable. They also close their borders to NSW and Victoria - which again, as we have nearly all the COVID in the country I don’t actually think is unreasonable.
There have been some protests against this, but not as many as some people seem to think there should have been. The main reason for that is - well, honestly, it’s hard to argue with the fact that we have been protected from COVID. We’ve only had just over 1000 deaths from COVID during this entire pandemic - people don’t want to throw that away by going to large scale protests that will lead to greater infection. The trouble is, in Victoria, especially we haven’t got a middle ground - some restrictions might have been reasonable but the degree is ridiculous but very few people think we shouldn’t have any restrictions at all. Most people would be happy to wear masks and social distance, and avoid large crowds.
In the last couple of days we have had large protests in Melbourne but they aren’t quite what some people seem to think - this is not a general uprising against the restrictions. As I said earlier, most industry in Victoria has been largely shut down for the last year and a half, but there was one big exception to that - the construction industry was allowed to continue, mostly because Daniel Andrews, a socialist Labor Premier, derives a lot of his political power from union support - so he was keeping them happy, while not caring about anybody else. In recent weeks though, construction sites have been the source of most new infections in this state, so finally he started putting restriction on them - some, I think were reasonable (no gathering inside in crowded rooms to have lunch), but he also mandated vaccines for them. And that triggered their first protest (where they actually attacked their union leaders rather than the government). He then ordered the construction industry be shut down for two weeks - and that’s lead to them starting widespread protests over the last two days. There are some other people with other concerns joining them but mostly this is a bunch of socialist trade unionists who are angry that the socialist state government is no longer giving them special treatment.
The media hasn't helped - most of it is left wing and supports Daniel Andrews because of that (though that might shift a bit now the unions are angry) and nor has social media - a lot of nonsense is being spread. Australia is not under martial law. We are not forcibly vaccinating school children. There aren’t police hitsquads chasing people down and sticking needles with vaccines into people - all claims I’ve seen repeated (possibly in good faith by people who believed them) on FR in recent weeks. When things get exaggerated or lies or told, it actually becomes harder for us to focus on the real problems here.
But there are real problems. Some state governments are going way too far at times, the Federal government is constitutionally limited in stopping them. State police forces are being asked to enforce a lot of dumb laws with massive fines and now we have more and more protests, some police decisions do seem heavy handed - but not all.
We really didn’t need an earthquake on top of it :)
Police are state level (Victoria Police, NSW Police, etc). We do have the Australian Federal Police which are a combination of a rough equivalent of the US FBI, but also have normal police responsibilities and uniformed officers to do that in the Australian Capital Territory.
The demonstrations are being dealt with by state police. If they happened in Canberra (which is in the Australian Capital Territory) the ACT Policing section of the AFP would deal with it, but otherwise the AFP would be very unlikely to be involved (I think there are some anti-terrorist situations they might get involved in - it’s been a while since I looked at the exact breakdown).
I do think there’s a big problem with the culture of Victoria Police - they’ve become very politicised under the Andrews government. I’m not sure about other states.
Thank you for the “boots on the ground” report. Stay safe!
Population density isn't as low as you might think. Sure, if you spread the entire population across the entire continent, it's very low but we don't do that.
More than a fifth of the population lives in Sydney, a fifth lives in Melbourne - add in Brisbane, and you've already got more than half the country in three cities. And that's where COVID is. The cities are pretty spread out so they are not massively high density either but they are not really low density either.
Now we better understand.
Australia and the USA have similar government-— The Federal and the States.
It would be like comparing New York to Florida when we see the problems in Melbourne to no problems say in Perth.
But in the USA we have the CDC, FDA, HHS, NIH, MEDICARE who are issuing overriding orders to the State Health Departments.
Does Australia also have Federal Medical Bureaucrats who issue orders overriding the State Health Departments????
No.
I mean we do have federal medical bureaucrats but they can't override the state Departments of Health. They have different responsibilities.
The main reason for that is - well, honestly, it’s hard to argue with the fact that we have been protected from COVID. We’ve only had just over 1000 deaths from COVID during this entire pandemic - people don’t want to throw that away by going to large scale protests that will lead to greater infection.
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Your shortsighted myopic leaders should look at other countries who adopted these draconian authoritative lockdown policies.
Yes lives are being saved for the time being. But at what cost. The billions of dollars in damages to personal and corporate business interests cannot be replaced. But more than that, when, not if but when lockdown standards are relaxed, Covid rates will rise. I repeat, they will rise. And 1000 deaths will escalate to 10,000 deaths. Weekly.
Australians are just postponing the inevitable.
Want proof? Look at the United States, Europe, Israel, every other developed nation who tried lockdowns.
Thank you for the response.
And especially thank you for the original report and for your clear responses to the many who have posted.
It is morning here in Florida. You have my permission to retire for the evening in Australia.
It’s midnight here and I’m just going off duty, so I can now sleep.
You are absolutely correct regarding states like California and New York. But as you see, we rant and rave against the radical idiocies of places like that just like we do against Australia.
Thanks for posting.
Thank you, naturalman1975! Much appreciated.
I live in a country where I am not particularly afraid of my government.
If I was I wouldn’t have spent most of my life serving my country.
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Interesting comment. I speak for me and millions of other Americans. We were not afraid of our government 10 years ago. Even when Obama was President. Now? We are afraid. If not afraid, then sad and disgusted for the country that we lost.
See tagline.
Despite what the other Texan above said, we are having problems. When the school year began in Aug., the number of cases immediately shot up much higher than our highest from last Jan. Many school districts closed for 5 days during the otherwise 3 day Labor Day weekend. Of course, when they opened back up, the cases shot up again. Rinse and repeat.
Some are still wearing masks. Despite what the FR flu bros stand on their mountains for, hospitals are full and shipping patients to who knows where. I know this personally.
Thanks for your thread. Glad to see things aren’t as bad as the msm claims.
ping
Whew, $750/wk! Where do I sign up? Double that with two adults in the household. That’d be steak and lobster every night even for the dog.
Perhaps when the sun engulfs the earth, yes. The last time I looked the entire world faced seasonal influenza every year. By definition, a pandemic is an epidemic that spreads to multiple continents. Influenza does that every year, and at this point COVID is almost certain to do the same thing, since it has joined the population of circulating viruses.
This virus isn’t going to end.
Consider those two weeks and extended vacation. Better that than bringing covid home to their families. They knew the rules so it was their choice to leave the country and to return.
That man losing his mind is a bit dramatic. Again, it was his choice to leave and return.
I said in Feb. 2020 if the entire world shut down for two weeks, we’d stop this thing. We didn’t and now look at it.
Thanks, this clears up a lot of misconceptions!
So they basically copied the US in a lot of ways as that is the way we're supposed to be. In fact, there were a handful of States with State Constitutions before there was a US Constitution which created the federal government. Like AUS, the fedgov is only supposed to do a few things.
Order of creation. People > States > United States
Order of power from greatest to least. People > States > Fedgov
God could be added to that in order of most to least power and order of who created what. God > People > States > Fedgov
Put another way, God is the creator of people who serve God. People are the creator of States that serve the people. States are the creator of Fed that serves the people's States.
Things have gotten reversed in many people's minds and the only way to reverse it is to do so in the same order. People must fix their States first. Since this can only happen in the red states, it will be near impossible to fix fedgov but if all the red states were fixed, which would require getting off the fedgov teat, most of which are grouped together up and down the center of the US, they could band together for more strength. Start with noncompliance, including not paying fed taxes, then possibly secede from the union and create their own.
Fat chance I know. It would require first of all, spreading the word. Same way it all started. This time it would be reminding people of forgotten things, God, Civics.
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