An update from Australia about the COVID situation here and recently circulating stories.

Over recent months, a huge amount of misinformation about Australia has been circulating on Freerepublic. In most cases, the person sharing it probably didn't know it was misinformation - they were sincerely and honestly passing on things they'd been told were true. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of misleading material is being shared and a false narrative is being created that Australia has turned into some sort of neo-fascist state. I've attempted to provide accurate information, and I know I'm not the only Australian doing so, but it's a deeply frustrating uphill battle.

Please note - I am not saying everything has been or is rosy in Australia. In my state of Victoria, the socialist state government has been significantly oppressive - because of the way Australia's constitution works, state governments have control over dealing with anything that is considered to do with public health, while the Commonwealth government has very little power in this area and cannot overrule the states. Peculiarites in Victoria's specific constitutional conventions (peculiarities, incidentally, that American conservatives would likely support without understanding how they'd be implemented here) means that under cover of a public health emergency, the state Premier, Daniel Andrews, has been able to act in a rather dictatorial fashion - there are powers that can be used to reign him in, in extremis, but he has, so far, been careful, not to actually trigger those - the threshold for such intervention is very high. There are real issues in parts of Australia. Unfortunately, though, when these things get exaggerated or things are made up, it becomes harder for us to actually get the real issues dealt with. We have to waste so much time on false information.

Examples of some of these false claims - "Australia is under martial law." This, simply, is not true. It hasn't happened. "There are mobile forced vaccination squads". Completely untrue. Nothing like that exists. "Police have shot and killed a protester in Melbourne." Not true - the man who was supposedly killed doen't remember exactly what happened to him, but believes he was drunk and tried to rob a liquor store, and was injured during his robbery attempt - not by police, but by somebody else. And he's definitely still alive. I could list a lot of false information that is being spread.

I could also list more of the real problems that have happened, but frankly, don't have the energy right now to properly describe them in a way that's likely to be easily understood by people outside of Australia.

Why is so much false information circulating. My theory - and I admit it's a bit conspiratorial - is that Australia is currently the victim of a propaganda campaign that is being waged by the government of Communist China. It's not at all conspiratorial that China doesn't like Australia much at the moment for various reasons. Among those reasons is Australia's close alliance with the United States. China would love to split Australia and America, and doing so by making Americans think Australia is something different than it is, would make sense to them. I should say, that I think the same is happening in reverse - Australians are routinely being fed biased misinformation about America - recent examples include the narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist murderer, for example. Again, I won't go into all of that - but I do think it is happening in both directions.

It also may have the advantage for China that if they can make it look like a liberal democracy is engaged in widespread human rights abuses when it isn't, it helps mask what goes on in China. And I have seen here on Freerepublic, quite a few people saying things like "Australia is worse than China."

Now, the reason I've been driven to post this message is because I'm really concerned about a lot of posts I've seen recently about a particular incident in the Northern Territory of Australia. Now, this incident is, at its core, real. The basic facts are true. But that doesn't stop it being used in a way that promotes propaganda. Leaving out context, and spinning the story towards a particular slant, makes a big difference.

There are specific reasons why what has happened in the NT has happened there. If these are understood, I think there's a very different complexion on what is going on. So I'm going to try and explain that context.

The basic facts - yes, indgenous people (Aboriginal Australians) from a number of small isolated communities in the Northern Territory who either have COVID or have been exposed to COVID have been moved to a facility just outside, Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory. They were not given a choice in this (well, at least, most of them weren't - there may be exceptions). Three boys absconded from this facility for a brief period before they were captured and arrested. That's all true.

But what is left out of that is the reasons these things happened. Now, it's perfectly legitimate to think that there are no reasons that could justify this - I don't agree. I think that's a pretty extreme position. But it's a valid one. If after reading what I'm about to explain, you still feel that way, fair enough - that's your right. But I do think the context makes a lot of difference.

I'll start by talking about the Northern Territory. The name matters in this case - Australia is made up of eight*, mostly self-governing jurisdictions. There are six states, which were the six original colonies that federated in 1901 to create a single nation - all these six states were already mostly independent, mostly sovereign nations before 1901 (they were still technically colonies of the United Kingdom, but the UK had devolved virtually everything except defence and foreign relations to local control - and even after federation, the UK kept control of those things). The two self-governing territories, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory have a slightly more limited form of self-government than the states - the NT has been offered statehood but didn't want it.

The reasons, NT is a territory not a state are relevant here. It's down to the fact that it's a very large area of land, with a relatively small population. We're talking about a quarter of a million people living in an area a little under twice the size of Texas. 150,000 of these people live in Darwin, and there's only about three towns besides Darwin that have more than 10,000 people. The population of the Northern Territory is about 30% Aboriginal Australian (I'm going to use the term indigenous from now on to refer to these people, as it's the currently preferred term - Aboriginal isn't offensive, but it's generally seen as a little old fashioned - technically speaking, not all indigenous Australians are Aboriginal, but nearly all of those in NT are).

Like a lot of countries, Australia's historical treatment of its indigenous people contains some negative features and that still has an impact on some things today.

But today, most policies are based on respect for these people and for their rights. And that is actually part of what is going on here, contrary to the spin.

It is now accepted that indigenous people should be able to continue to live on their ancestral lands if they choose to. In the past, there were policies of rounding people up based on race and sending them wherever governments wanted them to go, that disconnected people from their country. That has not been acceptable for a long time.

But one of the results of this is the Northern Territory, which has a much higher proportion of indigenous people than the rest of Australia is spotted with tiny indigenous communities that are really not viable in a normal sense. They are too small and isolated to be normally functional communities.

And these are the types of places that these people who've been moved to Howard Springs come from.

I'll be blunt. These places are slums. Governments built standard Australian three or four bedroom homes intended to house families of five people - but the indigenous people choose to have twenty people living in them. This is their choice. We do not stop them doing it.

Overcrowding and poor sanitation means these places are not places where any civilised society would leave sick people. It has been long understood - by the indigenous people themselves - that if they become sick, they will be moved to a place where they can be treated. While, in this specific case, because of quarantine rules, they don't always have a choice, it's routine to move people like this voluntarily. It's expected. The indigenous people would be outraged if we didn't do this under normal circumstances because it would basically mean leaving sick people in the desert to die. That's what used to happen. Indigenous health groups - made up of indigenous people - are supporting the actions of the NT government in doing this. If they objected, their objections would be taken into account - but they are not. They want this done. They would go nuts if we didn't do it, and would paint it as white Australia neglecting indigenous people - that would be a human rights violation.

So moving these people to where they can be treated is, in my view, absolutely defensible and reasonable. What's the alternative? Building a world class health facility in every little 200 person village in the desert for occasional use?

This is how rural Australia works - for whites as well as indigenous people. One of the most sacred institution is the Royal Flying Doctor Service that was specifically set up so people in isolated areas could be moved when they needed it.

Other relevant factors - partly because of history, indigenous Australians have a much higher level of a wide variety of medical problems than non-indigenous Australians. They are at particular risk of complications from infectious disease. These are medical facts. This makes it even more important that these people get help when they need it, but it also means that in a community where 30% of people are indigenous, governments do have to be particularly alert to the risk of contagious disease spreading.

The Northern Territory - the entire Territory - only has about 20 ICU beds. In normal times, this is all they need, but at the moment, it means that if they have any type of large COVID outbreak, their hospital system is likely to be rapidly overwhelmed. So far, they have avoided that - there's been less than 300 cases of COVID in the Territory over the entire pandemic. In this situation, their isolation is an advantage that most places don't have. This is one of those places that realistically does have a very good chance of keeping the spread very low. But it wouldn't take much for that to fail.

Now, they've moved infected people from isolated communities, hundreds of miles from any large city to a location on the edge of the only large city they have. Again, I think it's perfectly understandable that measures are taken to stop these people who are either infected themselves or who were living in the same house as infected people - because that's who has been moved - infected people or their primary close contacts) just being able to get out into a city of 150,000 people who they could infect. Yes, these three kids have currently tested negative. I hope they stay negative. Statistically though, that's unlikely. They may not get seriously ill, but it's very likely they've been exposed and will develop the disease while in quarantine.

They are being kept in good conditions. Howard Springs isn't a holiday resort, but it's certainly not a slum - nor is it any sort of concentration camp. Our Olympic athletes quarantined there after returning from Tokyo and Australia pretty much worships its athletes.

Now, you may have read all this and still think it's unjustified. You may feel any restriction on any thing any time is unwarranted for all I know. Fair enough if that is your position.

But personally I don't see it that way. My mother was one of Australia's more prominent Aboriginal rights activists back in the 1960s - she had to tone it down a little because it had the potential to damage my father's military career, but she was still pretty active. And I became so myself - I started being an advocate for their rights when I was about ten and have been consistently ever since. I've spent time in some of these communities. I'm involved in trying to get kids from these communities access to decent education (and just like health care, sometimes the only practical way of doing that involves taking them away to school - I went to boarding school myself... it's not that bad). I'm a strong advocate for helping indigenous people. If I thought these people's rights were being violated in a serious way, I'd say so. As it is, I would regard not doing what's being done currently as a greater violation. Maybe we could do better - maybe we could have hospitals in every tiny community, for example. Doesn't seem practical to me, but maybe it would be better than taking people hundreds of miles to protect them.

But even if that's the case - we don't have that system now and we can't magically create it. We have to do the best we can with what we have.

* it's actually a little more complicated than this - but the additional complexities are totally irrelevant here.

Thanks for the update. I sometimes watch sky news clips on YouTube and have noticed that what they were reporting bore little resemblance to some of the more extreme clickbait stories we have been reading here on FR. It is good to hear a first-hand account.

With that said, as others have stated, I am a bit repulsed by the “camps”. There may be some logic behind it as you explained but it still seems to be the slipperiest of slopes given what we have witnessed in the last two years.

With that being said, I don’t think anyone in America under this current regime or in blue states can throw many stones at our friends down under..... much of the Western world has gone full on mad.

Stay safe FRiend.

If it was ( past tense ) being done by police, then what is it IN EFFECT? You don’t want to use the word but it still is martial-law like.

It was actually an overextension of Victoria's supposed human rights laws. And that's one reason why calling it martial law is incredibly misleading. Martial law (it isn't called that, but the concept does exist) can only be declared by the Governor General at a federal level and there's a number of protections in place to limit the possibility of it being abused. Those protections do not exist with what happened in Victoria specifically. And calling it martial law makes it look like it's the Commonwealth government doing it and allows people like Daniel Andrew's to deflect attention from who is actually making the decisions. He's likely to be reelected next year because he's managed to convince enough ill informed voters that nothing is his fault, and everything is the Prime Minister's fault. And the bullshit like "martial law" is part of the reason, he's been able to do that.

And what redress do you have in your democracy to prevent the police from doing this unscientific and illogical act?

Not much. Because of state law - Victorian law - that says human rights can be suspended during a declared state of emergency. It's part of the 'bill of rights' that was adopted in this state fifteen years ago, which at the time, American conservatives including many here on Freerepublic told me I was some sort of fascist idiot for opposing. They didn't seem to be capable of understanding that such a document written by a socialist government in 2005 wasn't likely to bear all that much resemblance to what America's genius patriots came up with two centuries ago. Again, misinformation and misunderstandings like that made it harder for us to fight that.

2. You said “we did”. Which means it is in the past.

I like to know why not anymore.

Protests probably had a little effect but not that much. What mattered was vaccination numbers.

I tried to explain this on FR many times, but, again, a lot of people here wouldn't listen.

Opening up was explicitly based on specific vaccine targets being met. This was agreed many months ago as a compromise between the Federal government (which didn't support most lockdowns but had no power to stop them) and the more extreme state governments that were locking down constantly and had the power to do so. People here understood how it worked and that it created clear timelines to change things that were very likely (although I will agree not certain) to be adhered to. In the event, they have been adhered to as we expected. Was it a perfect way of doing things? No. It was just the best we could get with the system of government we have.

But Americans - including, again, many here on FR were telling us it wouldn't work. Well, it has. We know how the system works. We know how to make it work. And it gets bloody annoying when people who don't understand it at all tell us it's not going to work from their position of utter ignorance and paranoia about their own governments.

I'll take Australia's democracy over America's any day, At least when we have an election, we know who actually won and they are the person who takes office. I don't always get the government I want, but I've never had one that I thought might have stolen the election through fraud.

The video is crap - legitimate news surrounded by ridiculous spin

Pointing out the NAZI's told their prisoners the first day they were there for a medical checkup.

Yes, the Nazis did certain things. Australia isn't doing most of those things and it's ridiculous to make that comparison.

These people that test negative for covid are being "quarantined".

A small number of people who were living in the same house in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions as people with infections are being quarantined to see if they become infectious. Once the incubation period is over, they will be allowed to return home if they continue to test negative. If they test positive they will be treated, if needed, and tested until they return negative tests. Then they will be allowed to return home.

Those that escaped will likely face maximum fines.

Possible, but unlikely. They may not be fined at all and if they are, it is very unlikely to be the maximum.

The Aboriginal Australians are claiming this is a land grab. What happens when they can't pay their fine? Will they lose their lands?

A few people have made that claim. They are wrong. There's no mechanism by which their lands can be taken under these laws. There are other laws that could be used for that purpose if somebody actually wanted to do that, but those laws are not being used. Because that isn't what is happening. And, no, failure to pay a fine could not lead to loss of the type of title these people have.

A ‘penalty unit’ is $222 under Commonwealth law, multiplied by 300 (maximum units) equals $66,600

First of all, I don't get where you get this 300 multiplier from. You haven't provided any evidence for it. I doubt it's true, although you may have been lead to believe it.

Secondly, Commonwealth law is irrelevant in this case - Northern Territory is what applies. A penalty unit is currently $157 under Territory law. I only mention the difference because it just illustrates how you do not know what you are talking about.

you claimed the maximum fine for extremely poor people living in large communes was $5000.

Yes. Because it is. This is a fact.

As Americans we find the notion that the group makes these kinds of decisions for individuals very scary.

A lot of Australians do as well. But indigenous Australians tend to be an exception to that. Why? Probably because they never really had any real power to make decisions for themselves (they didn't really have full citizenship until 1967) and the only way they got any power to begin with was with collective action.

And that's the choice they overwhelmingly continue to make. Those that don't like that, tend to leave the indigenous communities and just live as ordinary Australians. But this stuff is dealing with the ones who have freely chosen to continue to live in those communities. I wouldn't make that choice. But what right do I have to tell them what choices they should make?

It seems to be the case that Australians really enjoy being micromanaged by the government. They like lockdowns, being fined $5000 for going outside without a mask, quarantine camps, extremely restrictive gun laws, having to check daily whether they’re even allowed outside, and so on. They will angrily defend everything their governments do to them. Living under a neverending torrent of government edicts for the rest of their lives is fine; what really scares them is the thought of living as free people.

Even the Australia cheerleading squad on here seem to have difficulty identifying much that they disagree with. They post vague statements about how maybe there were a few things here and there that weren’t too wonderful but overall it’s pretty good. So they are on board with the substance and results, what they’re really angry with is mischaracterizations:
* someone lied and said we were in a military lockdown, but you see it was squads of armed police doing it (with only a bit of help from the army). Why, yes, they have no recourse against the police either but it’s completely different!!
* Someone said Australia is like a dictatorship but, you see, it’s only the state governments that have become dictatorships (in unison) so it’s just completely untrue.
* Totalitarianism isn’t really totalitarianism if most people want it.
* Yes that lady was arrested for saying people should protest the government but, don’t you see, it was illegal to organize a protest so she was doing the wrong thing.
* If we decide that the non-compliant should be cast out from society then that’s just how it is and you people need to respect it!!
and so on.

There seems to be no degree of government intrusion that Australians won’t rationalize away as actually proving that Australia is a perfectly free and “democratic” country, and the focus on “democratic” is the key. Their country has no significant underpinning values of freedom and very little limitation on what their government(s) can do, and to the extent they had any in the past it was something of a gentleman’s agreement that has been entirely discarded in the last two years. You can see now they’re reduced to defending it on the basis that it’s “democratic”. They may be correct — but it’s less of a defense than an example of the dangers of “democracy” and its uselessness in protecting liberty. It might continue to be “democratic” but the place seems finished as a free country.

Y’know the thing that strikes me most about anglo western countries as opposed to the US isn’t so much the laws, its the viewpoint towards obedience. Americans frequently refuse to follow rules that strike them as stupid. The COVID stuff is an excellent example. There is a federal mandate to wear masks on buses. Depending on where youre at, people somewhat obey or don’t obey at all. I’m in an area that doesn’t obey at all. And no one says a word. Same thing with marijuana. Marijuana is illegal under federal law. Yet most of our states allow it for medical purposes and a large minority allow it for recreational purposes. In spite of federal law.

There is an American classic book that I think captures the underlying viewpoint. On Civil Disobedience by Henry Thoreau.

As for gun laws, a handgun or long arm can be purchased in all states. Its a pain in some of the very blue areas, but doable. In the very red states it is possible to purchase a firearm (private sale) or build one with no paperwork and carry it pretty much anywhere you want without any license. And its perfectly legal.

As for voting, there is no state where it’s compulsory. Some states automatically register people to vote (enrollment), but even those offer an opt out. I’m glad that Australia is mostly avoiding jail for noncompliance. They should still offer an opt out for conscientious objectors.

Read your own post.

Some of those folks had the choice to leave the reservation pre-Covid but they can’t do so now?

Is that what you are defending?

No, because it's not really an accurate description of what is happening in my view.

People who chose to live on their ancestral lands under agreements that they will be supported in doing so (because they wouldn't be able to live there without support) have been moved to a place they can get medical care as part of that support and those agreements. That's actually largely separate from the quarantine issue as it happens (if they'd been allowed to stay, they'd currently be required to quarantine at home and not leave).

The restrictions are temporary in nature and are intended to protect people in surrounding areas. As a very high proportion of those people are immunocompromised, I don't think that's unreasonable.

Plenty of people here ignore the rules as well, and generally seem to be getting away with it. I generally follow them but I was in the Navy for over twenty years and got used to following orders even when I don’t agree with them.

Guns can be purchased across Australia. I was in my local gunshop this morning. We do have restrictions, but a lot of Americans seem to think we’re far more restricted than we actually are.

I really dislike compulsory voting, but I prefer to spend the time I have on political issues on ones where I think I’m more likely to be successful. On the other hand, I like our preferential system and that that works very well as opposed to first past the post. Only two parties can realistically form governments in Australia (well, technically one party, and one permanent coalition of two conservative parties) but minor parties can get some representation and minority views get heard. In my state of Victoria, the sole representative of the Shooters Party has just been very helpful in stopping our socialist state government seizing even more power through new laws. I suspect he only got elected because of people who wouldn’t have voted for the major parties, but had to turn up.

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