No, Australia did not ‘turn into a penal colony’ during the Pandemic.
There were serious problems in the two most left wing states in the country - just as there were in the most left wing states in the United States.
Victoria had a ridiculously long lockdown, and Western Australia completely sealed its internal borders - but they were anomalies, the rest of the country didn’t go that way.
Unfortunately, some people took advantage of the fact that Americans don’t know much about how Australia is governed (and there’s no reason they should) to present isolated and limited incidents as if they were the norm across the country. Constitutionally, in Australia, state governments have almost total control of public health which means the socialist governments in Victoria and Western Australia were able to overrule what the conservative Federal government wanted to happen within their states - and because of the way people were mislead, people wind up blaming the wrong level of government for the problem. There’s a lot of people who’d much rather blame the conservative side of politics, and shield the socialists from blame. It’s just a pity it seems to have worked so well, including on sites like this one, where honestly I would have expected more people to be skeptical of that type of narrative.
Australia had COVID quarantine camps, it was disgusting. Dont excuse it.