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 :)
Appreciated!
Thank you!
So what about other states? Isn’t West Australia more conservative/free than others?
Just horrid.
Thank you for the update.
Prayers up.
Bump
Bump
Its all coming down at the Shine Of Remembrance right now...
https://facebook.com/100004608812201/videos/573364103817746/
Informative and very well-written! Thank you. I hope things soon return to some semblance of order, and the seismic waves stay calm!
Commies will be Commies wherever they are.
Thanks,
I’ve been to the
“Gold Coast” for the INDY.
.
San Diego also
Has Earthquakes and
Beautiful Beaches!
.
Good Luke Mate!
....Sir, thank you for the informative post. But, with all due respect, “thinking” people here in Texas KNOW we’ve been lied to; Alberta, Canada has 2972 doctors, nurses and health workers that signed a letter that, effectively, called their government liars.
So, when we see large crowds chasing your Aussie cops down the street for trying to keep them locked up in their houses, many of us say “hooray”.
Where I live everything is completely normal. The only place anybody wears a mask to is to medical offices. If you don’t, they won’t tend to you.
Thank you for your explanation.
When Alice Springs goes South ...
God, no.
Western Australia has a socialist Labor Premier too, Mark McGowan, who is almost as paranoid as Dan Andrews.
It’s just that WA is so far from the rest of the country that it’s been very easy for them to close their border very effectively and keep things out.
They haven’t had many cases and when they have because it’s been such a small outbreak they’ve been able to get back down to zero quickly but if he gets a single case, he shuts down instantly until that happens.
Queensland (Labor under Premier Anna Palaszczuk) and South Australia (conservative Liberal/National under Premier Steven Marshall) being attached to NSW and Victoria in various ways, have had smaller outbreaks, they’ve got under control quick - but they lock down hard until they get back to zero. Palaszczcuk is another paranoid but locking down her borders and small outbreaks have stopped her getting as bad as Andrews.
Tasmania (Liberal under Peter Gutwein) is very small and also has a large moat around it so it’s been very easy to secure its borders and only deal with small outbreaks.
The two state-like Territories - ACT (Labor under Chief Minister Andrew Barr) is surrounded by NSW and literally easily infected by it easily, but has probably mean more reasonable than the other Labor jurisdictions - they lock down fast, but they open up fast too. Northern Territory (Labor under Chief Minister Michael Gunner) - similar to Tasmania. Small population and serious isolation has meant they haven’t had to do much.
Northern
Thanks for explaining the sharp division between national and state law powers. I understand most of the contention is in Victoria. I do recall though, seeing film showing dozens of police literally chasing citizens down a street, down a beach, ganging up and tackling citzens in a shopping mall, just for the crime of shopping.
Surely you have seen those videoes too. Horrible and ominous, because if it’s allowed there, it may be promoted then allowed over here too. I get that you’re saying this is only happening in certain parts of the country.
Thanks for posting this.
I've seen some of those videos - probably not all of them. The ones I know about - it wasn't just for 'shopping'. Not even close.
The only case I've seen video of personally that I think absolutely went too far happened last Saturday when police pepper sprayed an elderly woman at a protest after she'd been knocked down. There was no way at that point, they could have reasonably considered her any sort of threat. I hope somebody goes to prison over that one.
Nice to have an in depth report on the ground. Thanks. That Andrew’s sounds like a piece of work.
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