Posted on 01/24/2022 9:42:15 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Edited on 01/25/2022 7:52:06 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Thank you for educating me.
Does Australia have citizens or inmates?
This covid tyranny by the state governments must be absolutely killing the tourist industry.
RE: But that isn’t most of the country and tagging Australia as a whole for this would be like judging all of America based on California.
OK, Of all Australian states ( including the territories ), which ones would you say has the most reasonable Covid policies?
They didn't disarm the country. Again, that's a myth that's spread in America - there's a kernel of truth to it, but it's exaggerated. There are more guns legally held in Australia now than there were prior to the 1996 buyback and gun law 'reforms'. A very small number of firearms (probably less than 30,000 out of over 3 million guns) were taken from people in late 1996, another 600,000 or so were voluntarily sold at fair market value to the government as part of a buyback intended to remove unused guns from the community - but most of those guns did remain legal and people could have chosen to keep them.
Yes, it was done across the country, but it was done by the federal government getting the state governments to agree to do it. The federal government provided the money for the buyback and asked the states to come up with nationally consistent rules, and the states did agree to reasonably consistent laws (not totally) but the states were the ones who constitutionally had to pass the laws. And twenty five years later, the laws are no longer as consistent as they were in the immediate aftermath.
There are plenty of restrictive gun laws in Australia - it's very difficult for an ordinary person to own semi-automatic long arms with a capacity of more than five rounds, for example. But only a very small proportion of Australian gunowners ever owned firearms like that to begin with, so the changes in the late 1990s didn't actually do much. There are also very strong laws on storage requirements, etc, and universal licencing and registration - but law abiding citizens can easily get a licence if they want to. We're not disarmed. But, culturally, a lot fewer Australians want to own firearms than Americans. I'm one of the exceptions to that - I don't have a big collection because I just have what I think I need - basically a couple of handguns and a couple of rifles (including a L1A1) and a decent shotgun. Owning any sort of large 'arsenal' starts to be difficult, but a small number of firearms is easy enough.
Fairly so, yes.
This covid tyranny by the state governments must be absolutely killing the tourist industry.
Yes, it is. Both internally and externally - internally, the state of Queensland is particular reliant on tourists from other states of Australia and their tourist industry has really suffered.
Almost everywhere in Australia has, at least, had some short term restrictions at times. But there's a huge difference between short term restrictions and long term restrictions.
Some states (like Tasmania and South Australia) have largely (but not totally) avoided having heavy long term restrictions but that's mostly been a matter of luck, in that they haven't had large outbreaks, so they haven't felt any huge pressure to have heavy long term restrictions. If they had had large outbreaks like NSW and Victoria, they might well have imposed heavier or longer term restrictions - we don't know.
For most of the pandemic, NSW and the Northern Territory avoided heavy restrictions, but in the last few months, that changed somewhat for various complex reasons.
Victoria and Western Australia have been responsible for 95% of restrictions in Australia. They are the two standout states in terms of unreasonable behaviours. WA has cut itself off from the rest of the country for over 600 days over the last two years. Victoria put its capital city in hard lockdown for 260 days.
Frankly, if it hadn't been for Victoria, I doubt anybody overseas would have even known what was going on in Australia. But what happened here in Victoria was so extreme and unreasonable, it rightly attracted international attention - the trouble is that international attention generally failed to make it clear that what was happening was happening in one small corner of Australia and not across the rest of the country. A myth was created that what was being seen was Australia in general, rather than the state with the most hard core socialist authoritarian and corrupt government in the nation. All of Australia was being tainted with that brush. And from then on, anything done anywhere else in the country, even the slightest restrictions, were misinterpreted overseas by the distorted lens that had been created.
This also caused problems within Australia. Frankly, at one point, I think the NSW government may have thought "Why the hell are we working so hard to keep this state free, when the whole world is calling us fascists anyway. Stuff it. If we're going to be screeched at for locking people down when we haven't, we may as well just lock down for a few weeks." The crap that was being spread internationally caused this country immense damage. It still is.
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