It’s a fairly complex situation. Most people just don’t realise all the encroaching police state laws even exist (I refer to the real ones Federally, not the temporary State-Government health orders that some people have tried to blow out of proportion).
We have very little media diversity. The few billionaires who own the few outlets enjoy the continuing tax cuts, random free grants, advertising spend, etc. from the conservative Government, so run what some critics have called a ‘protection racket for the Liberal National Party’. Almost nothing about any of the mass surveillance laws then really gets into the media, and if something is mentioned, it’s mostly presented in light of the Government’s line on it.
The times any of this does get into the news is if there is any opposition from the Opposition party (Labor), who theoretically could get the numbers to block laws in the Senate by one vote. If it looks like they might not allow the Government to sweep them through, the Government then does what we call ‘wedging’ the Labor party. This is where they say “Labor wants the terrorists to win” or “Labor is voting in the interests of paedophiles”, and the media amplifies that narrative.
Unfortunately it works because nobody knows what the laws are about (even though human rights groups, law groups, civil society groups, often even the Government’s own security legislation review committee have raised serious flaws, tried to get them out in the open but are ignored by the media).
The Government also makes a mockery of any due process - sometimes having a public consultation period but ignoring it when basically every submission is negative and it’s clear nobody actually wants the laws (it’s just a box ticking exercise - if people bring it up later, they will seriously claim “but we consulted the public and experts” even though they ignored all of them). Some of these laws they have pushed through both Houses of Parliament in one or two days, with basically no debate.
It’s a truly atrocious situation. There is an election coming up, but with most of the media enthusiastically running the protection racket and pushing basically just lies about politics, and only fairly actively politically informed people knowing what’s actually going on (that’s a small proportion of the population - the conservative party relies on that a lot), things may not improve.
As an Australian I respectfully disagree with you and agree with the article - most Australians just don't care. I've consistently mentioned this to my Australian friends, colleagues, family members for about 10 years now and it's always met with complacency. Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing.
> Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing.
I think that is because of media portraying these laws as a positive thing. Almost exactly the line you're talking about. I'm pretty sure I have heard politicians saying exactly: "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about"
Its a sad but true fact that 99% of Australians (probably rest of the western world) only gets their ongoing education (beyond high school/bachelors in a specific industry) from the mainstream media. And we have close enough to dictator level of media diversity pushing a single narrative. Its not wonder people dont care about their privacy being eroded.
As an Aussie as well, I think not knowing about something is often aligned with people also just not caring. This goes for most things technology really, most people don't care until it impacts them.
We all have only a finite amount of things we can care about in a day and for many Aussies, laws, especially laws around the use of technology aren't front of mind for the average Australian. But as time goes on and these laws actually start to impact us, then you will see people caring.
I know people who go so far the other way. They don't vote because they think it's all rigged. They don't follow politics so they think all the parties are the same.
It's moronic. I try to explain but I'm met with looks like _I'm_ the moron.
Greens and some Independents are the only ones who have voted against these bills, so if you have those, they should be higher preferences than the major parties.
If somebody doesn't vote, then they're basically giving a free pass to the incumbent - which if you're in a Liberal, National or LNP seat is literally making things worse in these respects.
Both/most parties are complicit in privacy invasions. I just assume whoever I vote for will invade my privacy. So I don't vote based on that. I vote based on the other remaining factors that they _do_ differ on.
How about explain why you disagree? Instead of saying shit like that? Also I never called anyone a moron outright.
There is more to a political party than their stance on a single issue. If you can't see that then you are a moron. And yes, I did just call you that, outright.
What you are describing is a fake democracy.
You are given the choice between two cheeks of the same arse. Don't be too quick to confuse stupidity with a difference of opinion.
What I am describing is realistic. No independent will ever win. If that's a fake or flawed democracy so be it - I can't help that, it's out of my control. What is in my control is whether I get to pick the lesser of the two evils. The cheek that's slightly bigger, juicier.
But you understand that no independent will ever win right? That isn't realistic.
It is technically preferential and sure, it could happen, but none of the independents have, or will ever have enough of a following to win a federal election.
Also, for the record. I don't choose either of the two evils as my number one pick when I vote. I always do choose the party I think is best for this country privacy wise. But sadly, they will never win a federal election.
Theoretically an independent could get enough support to form a party that could win. My point is that at least the system is structured that such an outcome could happen over time, or that the process of this happening forces major parties to adapt to the prevailing winds against their ideologies. In a strict two party system you get systematic pressure towards polarisation, rather than a more bumpy road to some sort of consensus that is apparently easily manipulated by media.
Do you have enough historical counter examples to show how people absolutely did end up worrying? To be fair, Australia is a long way from Europe for instance, but I'm pretty sure examples from nearer by might still be available
We can't blame the LNP for all of this. All of the surveillance related bills passed in the last 10 years have been bipartisan.
I'd also go as far as to say this is what Australians want. Many people believe these laws won't be used against regular citizens and will assist in law enforcement efforts.
They’re the main ones pushing all these laws in. I am disgusted at Labor for their part but the core responsibility is 100% with the current Government.
Just look at what’s happening now - in the last few days - Morrison and Joyce claimed they’re going to bring a bill to outlaw anonymous posting on social media sites - for the sole reason that some people were talking about a rumour that the just departed NSW deputy Premier was allegedly having an affair with Joyce’s daughter… That’s just an insane basis for legislation!
I didn't make that comment to have a political discussion, only to remark on the public's attitude to surveillance laws.
However, I would like to point out the legislation to force people to provide ID to use social media and dating sites has been in the works for some time.
One thing is that the way Australian political parties work is very different to US. In US although president Biden is a democrat not all the senators from his party approve what he wants, they have some independent positions. So there are people in Democrat party who will speak against some policies. That doesn't usually happen in Australia. If it was then opposition can at least try. The few times that has happened in on personal ideological grounds like same sex marriage etc.
We absolutely can blame the LNP, because they are the Goverment, they draft the laws, they introduce them as Government bills in the parliament, they put them on the notice paper, they determine the sitting schedule that allows them to be debated and passed, they have the majority on the House committees that scrutinise them and they direct the Governor-General to provide royal assent.
They also are the the Ministers that promulgate regulations under those bills and direct their Departments to implement them.
It wasn't a "bipartisan bill". The Opposition had zero input - they moved amendments that were rejected by the Government.
I've explained how the LNP is responsible for it - it was their bill, written by them and passed through a process they control.
Make no mistake, they had the numbers to pass it regardless of what the Opposition did on the floor. The Opposition's vote either way was merely symbolic - and frankly I find it hard to fault them for making the cynical political calculation that their future political chances could only be hindered by a pointless vote against it.
In regards to metadata retention, the shadow Comms Minister at the time outright said Labor had no plans to amend or repeal the legislation if elected.
I don't buy this "they're secretly anti-surveillance!" line. They are complicit.
It's also puzzling how you imply that amending these bills would fix them. As if one more check and balance would make them not a horrific disaster. In fact, Labor's "amendments" to "fix" the AA bill was adding mandatory judge approval for mass surveillance -- sounds fixed to me!
Labor are pro surveillance and have been for a very long time. They have voted for every single surveillance bill. Their MPs ignore feedback about surveillance from constituents.
Implying they should trash fundamental principles by voting for this stuff just to cling to power is pretty weak. They won't change anything, they support it.
The metadata retention bill that Labor vehemently supported has already been viciously abused. Originally touted as being a bill designed to combat terrorism and child abuse, it's now used to investigate things like littering(!!!). Federal police have been caught using it to stalk girlfriends repeatedly. Labor support this.
The ALP were in government for 6 years between 2007 and 2013. What bills like this did they pass when they were in charge?
I don't imply that "amending the bills would fix them". I am pointing out that the Government rejected all other input on these bills, so they cannot be meaningfully described as "bipartisan".
Implying they should trash fundamental principles by voting for this stuff just to cling to power is pretty weak.
I imply nothing of the sort.
"Cling to power"? What power?
I am stating that voting against a Government bill that has the numbers to pass anyway is a quixotic action, and in this case probably both a strategically poor option.
You know what's a fundamental principle? The principle that you get the laws that the Government you vote in wants to make. The Opposition can't save you from the Government you voted for.
What do you believe is the role of the opposition if not to oppose/raise awareness about contentious legislation?
By definition they represent the minority (or else they would be the government) so almost any action they take will be "quixotic".
To me the fundamental job of the opposition is to point out the failures of the government and paint alternative paths forward. The opposition can move the public sentiment and there are enough poll watchers in the government to respond to pressures.
They have done this so they're not portrayed as soft on terror by the (mainly Murdoch) media. Yes, they're complicit, but I doubt they would have instigated this level of law if they were in power (though it's not out of the question).
Only if they admitted to doing it… The Access and Disrupt bill isn’t actually to do with evidence gathering. The way I see it happening is one agency would come up with a cover reason to hack you under that bill, which you or even other parts of the Government like the public prosecutor wouldn’t ever know about (it’s secret and there’s no obligation to inform anybody).
As far as most people would be able to tell, the Federal Police would have just raided you on an anonymous tip, seized your computers and found material you never knew was there…
It’s still heinous misconduct, but they’ve legalised 80% of the process and the level of secrecy around these agencies is so ridiculously high and the accountability so low, so it’s a lot less of a stretch now than it was just months ago - if they really feel you deserve it…
How would you know it occurred? The approval system for this is secret. It would require that Signals actively come forward and say that they did this, when some other government body finds the material and charges you with a crime.
You would need to both know it happened, and be able to prove it happened, and the usual targets for something like this (journalists) can usually only suspect the former at most.
It's one of the most dystopian laws I've ever seen.
Yes, but not as easy a defense as in the US. Since Ridgeway v The Queen ('95).
However, entrapment as a legal defense is less an overall a defense and rather a reason to exclude a particular piece of evidence from the case. There will also likely be no punishment for those who attempted the entrapment, even if the evidence ends up being excluded.
Australia does have other mechanisms by which something similar may sometimes be used, such as conflict of interest (such as in the Lawyer X trials) are more appropriate defenses, where the US may simply use entrapment.
They are bipartisan, but that does not necessarily imply that Labor would have enacted the same laws if they were the government.
They are waving through these laws so that they cannot be portrayed as "weak on security/law-and-order" by a predominantly hostile (read: News Corp) press.
It is extremely disappointing to see Labor raise all sorts of concerns about similar legislation and then wave it through anyway when the Libs refuse to make any amendments.
Yes, well that’s why I want some good independents (even Greens would be better than what we have now) holding the balance of power. The two party system isn’t working.
I absolutely agree with you, although I'm a little more optimistic.
2PP has Labor winning the next election. Some key figures in the Liberal party (Frydenberg, Hunt) have some tough campaigns ahead of them after the massive bias against their home state that's been on display.
Then there's the whole friendlyjordies thing, which I've heard commentary about in circles where I would have never expected it.
I don't know if the usual election lies will cut it this time.
Why would Labor winning change anything? Labor have voted for every single piece of surveillance legislation tendered over the last decade. The AA Bill, metadata retention and more. They voted for it all. They are vehement supporters of surveillance state policies and have voted for it -- repeatedly.
At best it will be a LNP or Labor minority govt. Very hard for Labor to win. Even if they did this issue will get the least priority amongst all things that Australia faces, like economic recovery, climate change, China, anti corruption body etc.
> not the temporary State-Government health orders that some people have tried to blow out of proportion
They banned single mothers from taking their child to playgrounds after being locked in their homes for weeks and then fined them thousands for doing so. They got rid of this absurd rule when cases rose by 3x, further highlighting how absolutely ridiculous it was.
Certain state governments have clearly overstepped the mark and anyone defending them will not go down well in time. Thankfully you can't delete comments here.
You're intentionally misrepresenting the facts here. They closed playgrounds - they did nothing to target single mothers specifically. And the removal was made based on vaccination position, which was announced well in advance.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, however my experience is that people who intentionally misrepresent a scenario usually don't go down well in time either.
> they did nothing to target single mothers specifically
It was example of the outcome, not a declaration of the actual law.
The Victorian government now has more cases than ever before and is amusingly opening up, dropping nearly all restrictions/curfews, they've been dragged kicking and screaming though this whole thing and have prided themselves on being the strictest state government possible with a tough on covid approach. Despite that, having the toughest restrictions and the world record for lockdowns, they still end up with the most deaths and infections in the country. Clearly whatever they are doing isn't working, yet the rusted-on types will support them no matter what while ignoring the clear and plain facts about the massive differential between state policy outcomes in Australia.
I don't think it's that complex. I always thought it was inevitable that once everything we did happened via a computer, gathering it all together would be an irresistible attraction to man+dog. It was always going to accelerate, and it was always going to go into overshoot.
And while it's painted in forum's like this as all negative, the reality is it's not. In fact there have been some pretty big positives. Crime levels have been dropping, while prosecutions have gone up. Criminologists have put that down to better surveillance. Cameras everywhere have meant the odds of getting caught for a given offense have gone up, so more people have been getting caught on their first offence. Amusingly, it's just just the criminals who have been on the receiving end of this - it's the law enforcers too. They used to be able to hide their overreaches behind the solidarity of the blue line. Now misbehaviour is very likely caught on a camera that's not behind the line, and the results have been on the world's headlines.
I know the naturally privacy conscious feel like this is a personal invasion, I feel like that too on occasions. Their problem is that to date it's most likely been a net positive. Open societies with less criminality and corruption do better, and that seems to have been the net result so far. While like you I doubt many people have analysed in these terms, what they have done is evaluated how life is now vs before, and it seems OK. In simple terms, we can have more shiny things. Therefore the simply don't care some privacy guru seems a privacy apocalypse around the corner. So far the reverse has been true, and wot do these supposed experts know anyway?
Still, I feel decidedly uncomfortable with the Assistance and Access bill, and its friends. My problem is not that they allow enough information to be mined - it's that they don't allow enough. Specifically, while they allow the government agencies to gather information on its citizens, the bills go out of their way to ensure the citizens have no idea how much their government is spying on them, or who is being spied upon, or why, or at whose behest. Without a little sunlight to sterilise things, it's inevitable malfeasance will grow in the dark. We already have numerous examples of petty privacy theft - police spying on their ex's, taxi's chasing credit card owners and the like. It's just a question of time before one politician plunders another's emails and polling data, or one of these systems gets hacked and mined for identity data for years before anybody becomes the wiser.
The sad bit is, it is only after they have blatant examples staring them in the face that voters will conclude this overreach has downsides too. So we will have to suffer some real pain before there is a correction. The good news is the public education has already started. The Huawei bans are an example of that. It was only after Huawei won the contract to run the Danish telephone system, and later the Danish discovered their private data leaking across the world that politicians and intelligence agencies woke up to the fact the same data gathering capabilities they were exploiting could also be used against them.
They reacted by banning Huawei. One day they will figure out that isn't going to fix the problem. We've since learnt Juniper was hacked for years, apparently by the Chinese who could watch all data flowing through their gear. And that's just the foreign players. In Russia we have private criminal gangs gathering data on a scale well beyond their Law Enforcement Agencies, and using it to shake down institutions like banks. The only cure I can see for this is a transparency on a scale we haven't seen to date. We have to put the days of blindly trusting government bureaucratic caesars to determine what data is collected, who can see it and what it is used for behind us. That information is too dangerous to be kept in the dark - it must be open to all citizens to inspect.
To anyone not from Australia or not across this, currently federal law enforcement can hack online accounts, remove, add, or modify data. They still need a warrant but can hack accounts in advance of a warrant, provided they have "reasonable suspicion" that the person they are hacking is committing a crime. There is also no recourse if the warrant is denied and they have already hacked the accounts of the person in suspicion.
Having read The Gulag Archipelago, I am worried what will become of Australia in coming decades. While I am in opposition to how the current government operates, they're only part of the problem because the Identify and Disrupt bill flew through the senate in a day with support from both major parties. Not even taking into account that the suggested amendments to the bill to remove the broad clauses were ignored and the bill was passed anyway.
Be careful - they’ve redefined ‘warrant’. For some of the hacking, they no longer need a warrant from a judge, but can get a “warrant” from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (a body which concerns have been raised about it having been fairly heavily stacked with failed Liberal party candidates, Liberal party ex-staffers, etc. with no legal training or experience).
There is even some provision for being able to declare it’s an emergency and just getting an internal “emergency authorisation”. So a lot of it has become (by law) actually warrantless.
> Having read The Gulag Archipelago, I am worried what will become of Australia in coming decades.
You might be interested in reading "Psychopathology of totalitarianism" by Ariane Bilheran. While she's French I think it applies to most of the western countries.
It's 3 articles, so shorter than a book, maybe 30 min read in total :
> currently federal law enforcement can hack online accounts, remove, add, or modify data
Terrifying -- we are trusting officers who are incentivised to make convictions with the power to remove, add and modify data which could be used as evidence in determining the outcome of criminal cases.
Would love for someone to tell me that I am missing something here that makes this acceptable.
"Under Ministerial direction, an operator would be compelled to provide information, take certain actions, or potentially have ASD insert itself into the incident response and provide direct “assistance” to counter the threat."
I think a previous law allows them to demand that hardware or software developers (people or companies) modify their products to aid in intercepting communications. Theoretically, this could even be by request of foreign countries with targets in foreign countries.
An occupying hostile force could have a much easier time controlling the local population if they had all this data on everyone. I think that's the real risk.
The problem is that it is very easy to have a decent life here in Australia. We have never had to feel the full force of the repercussions of our voting or policies and as such there is an apathy towards the direction of government policies, at least within my age group - "I don't care they can have my meme's" or some variation of "I have nothing to hide" is the most common attitude.
Unfortunately, by the time the effects are felt by the vast majority of the population it will be too late - indeed with the recent Identify and Disrupt legislation, it would be completely legal for the government to take over the accounts of the leaders for any meaningful protests or awareness groups and use that trust to break the groups from the inside, or at the least crush momentum as it appears.
If anyone has any useful advice or tips to raise awareness please let me know.
>We have never had to feel the full force of the repercussions of our voting or policies
I would suggest that the restrictions on Australians being able to _leave_ the country has been a direct result of their poor voting choices. However tying the two together seems to approach conspiracy theory level of thinking.
I'm not sure if it's the same in Australia, but in NZ there's another saying that really kills me as it deflates any conversation, "if you don't like it you can leave"
Honestly, the drive to have a better country for all left a long time ago. Everyone seems to just want what's better for themselves and for the richer people that they want to one day be.
It has been 80 years since the ANZACs actually had to fight off forces like this. We've had a good run but unfortunately we need to get ready to gear up again... I just never thought it would be the tradies out protesting
I do find this response humourous from Americans. What's the plan, fighting off the most well equipped military in history with a few AR15s and shotguns? How do the American people having guns stop tyranny?
If you have good, progressive ideas and have time and energy, run for parliament. If Hanson, Katter, Christensen and all the other useless junk can get in, you have a chance. We do need a real progressive alternative in politics. Greens are good, but we need more.
If people are voting for the likes of Hanson, Katter, and Christensen over the other candidates, it's unlikely that a scientist or engineer would have much chance. You'd be standing either as an independent or Greens candidate.
As Douglas Adams famously said, "[...] one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them."
> Hanson, Katter, Christensen and all the other useless junk
Are further on the freedom spectrum than the typical liberal or labour party member. In cases like these they are allies!
It's important to realize that a large number of Australians will never vote for the greens or other progressives (for both fair and unfair reasons). We can work together on issues we agree on.
Australians are the richest in the world, mostly living a good and dare I say peaceful life. I wouldn't think of even 100k people cares about this issue.
That depends on what year you were born and whether you got into the property market or not (again, depending on what year).
There is a very large gap between the haves and have not's in terms of property wealth.
It's a strange situation here. A 25 year old on 150k p/a will have major difficulty getting into the property market because owner investors, who bought in a couple of decades ago (or even a decade ago!) are reaping major benefits with regards to lending and tax policy.
The so called 'good' life is not enjoyed by the majority, but by a certain cohort of property owners.
> A 25 year old on 150k p/a will have major difficulty getting into the property market
errrrr... Australia is a big place so this isn't as concrete as you've made it sound. There's quite a lot of affordable property, but sure, the handful of places (cities) where a 25 year old can manage to get 150k p/a pre-tax income might also be inaccessible for buying property for a few reasons, one of which are the situation involving investors. However, this kind of person I wouldn't really exclude from being able to live the 'good life' available to Australians, but I get that this is moreso an example of a benchmark esp. related to the demographic of this forum.
Seriously though, many young devs in Australia can live a pretty great life beyond "home ownership" haha. And the average Australia can find decently priced property, just maybe not exactly in the neighbourhood they like most. But I don't think that's the point of property ownership.
There is an Australia outside of Sydney and Melbourne but job opportunity in regions are very limited. Hopefully the remote work trend that accelerated with Covid lockdowns will make the situation better.
"Australian adults are the wealthiest in the world, a new report has found.
Aussies topped the global rankings for median wealth per adult, at $A315,000 per person, according to Credit Suisse’s annual Global Wealth Report."
Cries of "Tyranny!" and "Give me liberty or give me death" are imported concepts that don't resonate quite as well here in Australia. The pearl clutching "Save Australia" protests were good for a chuckle[1], but are also accompanied by people advocating we rise up and murder our police[2]? When Florida has 50x the per capita death rate than that of Australia, it's pretty clear that the US chose liberty AND death[3].
Lockdown is hard, police have overstepped here and there -- but my family is safe and healthy, and my parents are alive.
> Cries of "Tyranny!" and "Give me liberty or give me death" are imported concepts that don't resonate quite as well here in Australia.
Maybe literally with those sayings, but up until sometime in the 80s, "its a free country" was a common refrain, which was rooted in the culture and expectations of the people.
We only said that because it was cold war rhetoric, it came from 'free' relative to communist ones. Now the contrast is gone it's rendered meaningless.
Ah yeah right, I dunno if I’d made that connection before, seems obvious now.
Something else we used to say to each other at a school in the 90s was “BANG! - The Victorian Police Force”, if I recall correctly that was a running gag Full Frontal or Fast Forward did.
This is the same attitude I see in Canada. The gov't can pass laws and all they need to do is point to the US and say "well at least we aren't as bad as them!".
Which of course completely ignores that it's still a terrible idea for Canada.
The fact Australians can't leave or enter their own country, is pretty insane, even China (social score China) allows (with quarantine) their citizens to leave or enter the country. Australians let this happen to themselves, and now are screwed forever, sad to see.
Pretty sure the primary conversation isn't about now, but the future and more about what your kids inherit. I don't think the 50x metric will stand the test of time, but wish you all the best.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean but the Florida 50x metric not standing the test of time?
Even if you were to look at it on a national level, the US death rate per million is 2,142, the Australian death rate per million is... 56. That's a 38x rate.
Sorry, I wasn't disagreeing with your numbers. I mean that the procedures Australia implemented slowed the virus, but that inevitably Covid will go through the country and there will be a surge. Be it in breakthrough cases like Israel or the unvaccinated.
That's all good, it's why I asked what you meant. I think we've done a fantastic job of flattening the curve here compared to places like the US/UK. As long as we can continue to be on the right side of an ICU tipping point we should continue to ride this out.
How long will you do a great job flattening the curve. If t requires fifty years of this policy because covid is still endemic elsewhere will you be okay with people being born, living and dying under your current regime? If so why? If not why not?
Australia is a beautiful country but you are not going to be granted an exception to the exact same sequence of events as other countries with high vac rates that opened up.
It was a hard trade off but a good trade off. I'll be interested to see what the sentiment is going to be 12 months from now here with regards to that.
Speak for yourself! It's just another thing to add to the long list of inter generational thefts.
One estimate I saw here earlier in the pandemic suggested it takes 50 person months of lockdown to save one person month of life. Not sure if those numbers have been updated but when I am elderly I hope that I don't enforce that upon others.
Per my other comment, this is one of the tyrannical neighbors that wants to control you. Should he / she really have a say in what you are able to do? I find the idea horrifying.
Your liberties end where they affect someone else. It’s why we have laws. You’re free to not get vaccinated and house up in your home and never leave. But once you go into public, your sickness affects other people, and those people can die.
No they don't. You have the liberty to assemble peacefully even if they inconvenience or upset someone else. You have the liberty to have privacy against the government, who must make an actual substantiated accusation and get a warrant to invade your privacy even if you really did commit a crime. You have the right to face your accuser even if that will emotionally harm them
So no... Your rights of life and liberty are inalienable.
The words “tyranny” and “authoritarian” have become so overused since 2020 it’s almost comical. All over the English speaking world, not just Australia. Every little thing an authority does that someone doesn’t like is now called tyranny. Masks are tyranny. Vaccines are tyranny. Kicking a jerk out of your store is tyranny. The word has been watered down and exaggerated to the point of meaninglessness. After the boy cries wolf too often, if some kind of tyranny actually does happen, there won’t even be a strong word to describe it anymore.
You have never had a right to do whatever you want on someone else's private premises, and the number of Americans in America - land of the gated community - who forget this selectively is staggering.
I've just returned to Australia after 15 years living all around the world, and I find it all fascinating and I have a bit of perspective on this.
The Australian media have a very strong influence on people's lives - they daily create some uproar or other that people get addicted to, wound up about, and then forget. Two weeks ago it was the nuclear sub deal with USA (and dropping France), then it was some state leader resigning, then it was how Covid was badly handled, then it was... You get the idea.
Anyway, what the media doesn't do is report on things the government doesn't want them to, like all the new surveillance laws being passed. Or when they do, it's very much labelled as "in your best interest" and "think of the children" and all that. Even if there is a 10 second mention of how this might be stepping on our privacy, there are quickly a line of experts saying that is not the case and that is clearly wrong.
I watched a random segment about people protesting covid restrictions and they dropped the nugget "using encrypted communication apps on their phone to coordinate". My Dad immediately jumped to the conclusion that encrypted communications the police can't read is obviously a bad thing. So the Australian media works hand-in-hand with the government to keep everyone distracted, and to paint a very one-sided picture.
It was fascinating to watch the whole "Facebook and Google must pay Rupert Murdoch money every time anyone posts a link to one of his news sites" play out from abroad, then come here and see what Australians know about it. The Australian law literally says Google and FB have to give money to Rupert Murdoch, but Australians think it's about getting FB and Google to pay their fair share of taxes. I've talked to dozens of people who say things like "That money will help build schools and hospitals, Facebook can certainly afford it." (which is utterly untrue)
I find the majority here are severely misinformed, because the media inside the country is very controlled (And of course Australian don't know that, and get offended if I try to point that out or discuss it)
> My Dad immediately jumped to the conclusion that encrypted communications the police can't read is obviously a bad thing.
Then I think the problem here is your dad, not the media. Your dad's lack of clear thinking or otherwise is his responsibility.
You can't run around in square circles claiming that it's all the media's fault for your dad's supposed wrongthink. There are two possibilities:
1. Your dad is a dumb, unsophisticated, unthinking lump who has no ideas of his own and who is easy for the evil Media to manipulate.
2. This is his genuine opinion.
Either way, he gets to take responsibility for himself. And you get to respect him enough to engage with his point of view rather than invoking The Media as a pantomime villain.
I used my Dad more as an example of how "the average Australian" thinks and is processing all of this, not really to focus on him alone.
He was a High school Maths/Science teacher for 40 years, and I'd generally consider him to be very thoughtful, intelligent and good with reasoning.
He has been exposed solely to Australian media for essentially his entire life - he lives on an island that is very far away from the big wide world, and his thinking on topics like this reflects what I consider to be "The average Australian", which is why Australians seem "complacent" as the title says.
There is a third possibility. Sometimes people make mistakes due to a limited perspective. One might argue this is merely a variant of your second option, but in that case the media would be very much at fault.
I don't think it's particularly unique to Australia. I've seen the same thing happening in the UK as well.
I'm currently residing in Australia and it's the same conversation as the UK, no one takes liberty seriously. The inherent trust that the it only affects people that have "done something wrong", of course that's a very nebulous concept.
The US seems to be last place where a significant portion of the population value their liberty and where the worm tongue promises of the state are taken with a healthy bucket of sodium.
It's been an odd experience having a few Australian HN posters attempt to rationalize to me why their police are justified in shooting people who leave their homes with rubber bullets, and why it's normal to be required to take surveillance photos of themselves in their own residences. I guess strict authoritarianism must be accompanied with equally strict media propaganda.
> shooting people who leave their homes with rubber bullets,
Talk about misrepresenting facts to mislead.
People who were rioting were met with force. These protesters weren't being peaceful, they were attacking camera crews and reporters. They were assaulting police officers.
> it's normal to be required to take surveillance photos of themselves in their own residences
It's not.
If you're talking about the quarantine system that's under trial, yeah, I'm not particularly keen on that either. It's optional. You can choose to stay in hotel quarantine instead.
You know as much as I hated the rowdy George Floyd protestors in my city of Portland, I'm glad my government faces responsibility instead of blind acceptance by its constituents
The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police only the most hardened/radical protesters will turn up. Of course there will end up being a little bit of violence.
And to address the wider point of violence in protests is it not sometimes necessary? If you believe your government has become tyrannical and they are willing to use force against you then what other option do you have?
> The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police
You've got that arse-about.
They were met with regular uniformed police, like in the BLM protests that happened multiple times in the last 12-18 months.
The BLM protesters managed to remain peaceful, didn't assault reporters, bystanders, or police, and didn't damage property. They protested, and then dispersed on their own.
>The BLM protesters managed to remain peaceful, didn't assault reporters, bystanders, or police, and didn't damage property. They protested, and then dispersed on their own.
Ummm no that's just false. You can easily search the amount of damage caused by those "protests". There were billions of dollars in property damage.
I misunderstood the comment. I didn't realize there were BLM protests in Australia. Strange that there are people who think the Australian government is systemically racist but then are fine with authoritarian lockdowns coming from that same government though.
Wanting to end racism is a different thing to wanting to prevent the spread of a communicable disease. You can want both things simultaneously, they're not in conflict.
It's also not necessary the same governments, or just government at all.
The federal government abdicated their responsibility to manage quarantine and border security to the states. It's been the states that have been managing quarantine, largely through Hotels (except in the Northern Territory, where they've had the Howard Springs facility.
Why is this strange? Turns out there is a lot of people that see no problem with collective guilt by spreadsheet and scapegoating of those caught on the wrong side of said spreadsheet.
I have no idea what your point is with that comment. If you think the government in place is a result of centuries of systemically corrupt oppression and then you turn around place faith in that same systemically evil government you're either drowning in cognitive dissonance or you're just a hypocritical authoritarian that's ok with the "evil" as long as it puts your agenda in place.
The 3rd alternative is that you're not aware of what BLM means when they discuss systemic racism. It is not just guilt, it opines that the entirety of western civilization is corrupt due to it's creation by racist evil white men.
> They were met with regular uniformed police, like in the BLM protests that happened multiple times in the last 12-18 months.
There were uniformed police there as well but they were definitely met by public order response teams who are much more heavily armoured/equipped and travel around in vehicles with blacked out windows. [1] [2] [3]
That's why I said you've got it arse-about. You are getting the order of when things happened wrong.
You said:
> The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police only the most hardened/radical protesters will turn up.
This is not what happened. The initial response was, as is typical with all large scale protests - to have regular uniformed police monitoring it, and controlling traffic/the direction of the protest.
The specialist/better equipped teams like the Public Order Response Team are almost always on standby during a large protest/march. They're only deployed when things get heated or actually turn violent.
This is pretty much the same thing that happens in other western countries whenever there's a large protest.
> police are justified in shooting people who leave their homes with rubber bullets
This is not true at all. As an Australian who has been following protests closely and the police response, they are clearly only shooting rubber bullets at those who are:
- Throwing glass bottles at police
- Attacking "fake news" journalists
- Damaging buildings and monuments.
Black Lives Matter protests peacefully marched through the city last year and no rubber bullets were used.
> why it's normal to be required to take surveillance photos of themselves in their own residences
Unless you're in quarantine, this is not a requirement. Are you suggesting that we should not have a quarantine program? Or continue to use hotels, which are ill-equip for quarantining, and lead to the initial outbreaks here in Australia?
> I guess strict authoritarianism must be accompanied with equally strict media propaganda.
Media diversity has never been worse. I agree that things need to change.
That however, has nothing to do with CHO directives.
Police going door to door in NSW/VIC investigating protestors against lockdowns months after they have occurred. I assume you will support similar surveillance of BLM protestors?
The NSW one it's not clear from the context whether that person was at a protest.
The second one it's pretty clear they were.
I don't know which protests they were, but a number of anti-lockdown/vaccine protests were violent, which is likely the reason the police were investigating. That it's months later is almost certainly because police have been going through a shitload of leads.
The same thing is happening in the US where people suspected of participating in the January 6 riots are/were being investigated months after events.
Attempting to frame the lockdown protests as being remotely comparable to the US capitol attack is a ridiculous false equivalency.
The events aren't remotely comparable in terms of background, the events themselves, or what led to the events. If you can't see the difference between protests against state-wide lockdowns including curfews, restrictions on freedom of association, travel bans, etc and a group of people rioting to contest an election result all it shows is that you are so biased to the point that your opinion isn't worth considering in a serious discussion about events in Australia relating to the response to the pandemic.
There are potential defences of Australia's response (although they are increasingly seen as apologetic at best, or an outright defence of human rights abuses at worst) but saying the protests are in any way similar to the US capitol attack is not one of them.
Why is it normal for Americans to wear a monitoring bracelet on their ankle at home? See what I did there? Please don't spread deliberate misinformation.
People are too quick to blame the media. Whatever you want to say about Murdoch, he's not a huge fan of perpetual lockdowns and so forth, and he owns half our media.
The problem in Australia is not the media or the politicians, it's the actual electorate. Ordinary Australians pine for despotism. Unfortunately the general public are the last group outsiders think to blame, so there's this real mismatch between their theories of what's happening in Australia versus the on-the-ground reality.
I will attempt to rationalise the "surveillance photos of themselves in their own residences". It is vastly preferable to the hotel quarantine system. I was the "victim" of the hotel quarantine system, when I re-entered a Covid-free Queensland from in-the-middle-of-an-outbreak-New South Wales a few months ago.
Australia has been mostly unvaccinated until recently[1] due to a botched vaccine procurement process[0] by the federal government. After a quarantine leak in NSW[2], harsh interstate border controls were implemented by all other states, including quarantining of all interstate travellers from NSW in hotels. Cases leaked into Victoria and the ACT and started their own outbreaks[3,4], but the remaining states are still Covid-free.
The requirements described in [5] are a significant easing of freedoms for interstate travellers. I would personally have loved to have quarantined in my own home, and if I need to send a photo of myself occasionally, so be it. I think it is a justified exchange of privacy in exchange for, in the example of Queensland (population 5.185 million), only
558[6] local cases and 7 deaths over the entire pandemic.
[Home quarantining] participants will receive advice via the smartphone app as to their obligation at random times to provide the selfie back to the public health teams. Should that not be responded to in a period of time, follow up calls or visits are made so as to make sure that the person is where they should be,” Foley explained.
Seems less heinous than spreading a dangerous virus and killing hundreds or thousands of citizens? We’ve seen other countries try that approach (e.g. here in the USA) and it clearly harms society and has led to massive suffering and loss of life.
Considering this is being trialed as an alternative to being locked under guard in a hotel or cabin for two weeks, it’s actually less invasive too…
And this is the problem with slippery slopes. I find the facial recognition gps tracking apps to be horribly intrusive and not a good alternative to being locked up in a hotel, which is also awful. They always pull this crap, and society ends up accepting the lesser of two evils. Like the meme, always has been.
Centuries ago, people had to be locked up for 40 or 50 days on a small ship (the original “quarantine”) to prevent spreading disease before they’d be allowed in.
Modern technology reducing it to 14 days and a few photos in the comfort of your home seems an improvement, not a slippery slope.
That’s a horrible way to look at it. There are so many alternative ways to enforce a quarantine / lockdown without having to resort to such invasive things. If you use the justification of “harming society” and “massive suffering and loss of life” you can justify way more than just fighting COVID-19.
Slippery slope aside, why can’t the government merely enforce the curfew by telling citizens not to leave their homes instead of forcing them to take selfies at random intervals? If you don’t comply they send the police to your home. If you don’t comply out of protest, they’ll jail you for your safety, where you’re more likely to catch the disease they’re trying to keep you from catching. Pure insanity.
It's my impression that these quarantine facilities are not currently being used for persons infected with COVID in the US. The comparison seems a little disingenuous...
Anyone who has crossed state lines in the last two weeks is required to follow those quarantine measures. They have fewer than 10 deaths per state combined with very high vaccination rates. From the outside looking in, it seems wholly unjustified.
Excellent: you have achieved orders of magnitude fewer deaths than the annual cold and flu season. But at what cost? You have also surrendered your entire society to an enforcement apparatus that looks like it was taken straight out of a work of mid 20th century dystopian fiction.
I'm in SA. Handful of lockdowns days throughout the entirety of COVID so far. I wear a mask for a few seconds to order at the pub, and on flights, and that's about it. Still go to restaurants, not having to homeschool, I've travelled quite a lot in SA, WA and NT over the last 18 months. Don't know anyone personally who has had COVID. Barely seen any police anywhere in 18 months. Work (in tourism content) has been busier than ever. I can see why people outside of the East coast in Australia might be OK with borders/quarantine as they are to date.
My uncle's few days in a mask were in Sydney. No broken bones thus far. I've about a dozen relatives in Oz, including quite a few on the mainland; all seem to have had a much better pandemic experience than I have in the States.
The reason we have such low deaths is because of the measures in place. They are slowly changing as vaccination targets are met and life should be back to normalish by December.
Using the US dataset as an example of mortality when covid-19 is allowed to spread unrestricted in a population, 700,952 died. Only 193k were 85 and older, so the median covid death must be younger than that - in the lower end of the 74-85 age cohort where another 185k have died.
So you found one number in my argument that you dont like and that invalidates my entire point? Is that what you're saying? What number would you prefer instead of the 85? Does that change everything?
Just realized (I think) you edited in the later sentences after I replied.
Yea, it does invalidate your point, the average years of life lost from a Covid-19 death is fourteen not a few as you suggested. Many, many people lost more than a decade of productive, happy life to this virus in countries where it was allowed to spread. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/16/americans-l...
The whole calculation is wrong, but even if it was correct, I would still be amazed by the fact that you think $4m is too much to get one person live for a few more years.
This is only one year, we're gonna keep spending money on the covid response as long as there's lockdowns. We do not have unlimited money and there's better ways to increase lifespan for less than $4M per person per year
How will the Australian state's vaccination targets be met without maintaining the restrictions which are used to coerce people into getting vaccinated? Things might be somewhat relaxed by December just because it's summer in Australia, but I have a hard time seeing you go the way of "just live with it like the flu" like Denmark or Singapore over the long term.
Australia has a traditionally high rate of vaccination.
The biggest problems are a huge focus on the risks of AstraZeneca, and the overall lack of availability of Vaccines.
The vaccine rollout is progressing well, despite the rocky start and general fuckups by the federal government.
We're on track for 70% double-dosed by 24th of October, and 80% by 7th of November[1].
Those are the two major figures for rolling-back restrictions that were put in place. Individual states are varying on their own internal restrictions.
Singapore hit 85%, opened up, and immediately experienced an explosion in cases. Australia will either have to accept the same outcome or continue lockdowns and quarantines to suppress outbreaks indefinitely.
Coercion might not be required, but it is certainly being used (at least in victoria). With large numbers of low risk citizens being told they need to choose between getting the vaccine and their job.
> An extremely long list of “authorised workers” are now required to be vaccinated, including marriage celebrants, personal trainers, emergency service workers, public sector employees, religious workers, and many others. All authorised workers who do not comply with the vaccination requirement will not be permitted to attend their place of employment but will have to work from home or lose their jobs.
Things aren't going back to normal, when Australia opens up regardless of vaccination status thousands of people will die if they are lucky and tens of thousands if they are not.
The vaccines have been a huge disappointment with constant goal post moving the only way to keep people from noticing.
1) I think a self balancing counter mechanism to improve this (if surveillance efforts continues) is make a rule people have to be informed they were under surveillance or gov hacked 5 years after the fact. With explanation.
This time length shouldn't compromise most investigations. It would raise awareness to over reach, so if a small handful get this it's probably well focused but if ~5% of the country start getting letters, people realise the overreach, it will become discussed and create push back politically.
Shining light on things is often the best solution to government issues.
2) Secondly, I'm seeing strange commentary on this thread and other locations a heap about Australian repression and tyranny type comments. And while there are privacy issues and there has been police overreach in the protests/quarrantine, comments seem way off the mark. I'm not sure if it bots/paid players trying to drive agenda or really skewed views. Some of the language is very properganda like and I've seen many posts on other platforms showing things out date or context clearly aimed to drive emotion. So I'd say fact check and consider context before getting too worked up about Australian issues of late. It's still a great country and not the run for the hills situation some people seem to be pushing.
As an Australian, I can definitely say I'm not complacent. The rise of all this surveillance here certainly unnerves me, and has definitely helped hasten my want to emmigrate ASAP.
This is unfortunate. I immigrated to Australia 10 years ago, and when I arrived, I was shocked by the level of acceptance of surveillance and even the police rights to search.
I'm not an Australian citizen, but I make sure the Australians I know are aware that it isn't like this everywhere around the world.
If you don't like it, it's better to try to change it or bring awareness than just leave.
> I was shocked by the level of acceptance of surveillance and even the police rights to search
It's not even just the police - the goons on the doors of JB Hi-Fi will demand to root through your bags on your way out of the shop. Nobody even seems to question it.
Yup, that's why I stopped buying from any store that does that, which forced many of my purchases online.
It's why I like the story of how Fry's Electronics, which had a similar practice in the US, was taken for $65M by one of their executives. They were guarding every penny and treating every customer like a thief while one of their own walked out the back door with millions.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/frys-electronics-execu...
Honestly, at this stage it feels like a losing battle. I try and raise awareness amongst friends and people I can talk too, and no one seems to care. It's making leaving seem more and more a viable option.
Good point, though anywhere where a powers haven't been given to law enforcement agencies to modify data would be good. And even more so and people are happy to just let it happen.
I don't mean to offend you but this is very funny. Immigrants from 3rd world countries are often told "why don't you stay at home and fix your own country?" Well, I guess we've come full circle, it's bad everywhere.
No I agree with you, i take no offence. I see the irony here completely. Especially given Australia's absolutely draconian laws and treatment of asylum seekers.
I live in NZ and feel that commentors of our govts approach overstate the level of authoritarianism we're experiencing. Its not universal but it feels more like the majority of people recognize that lockdowns and other restrictions are for the greater good. If you are arrested you are not going to be "disapeared", you will be processed like anyone else breaking a law. While we might collectively trust the current elected govt, I dont automatically trust that a future govt won't abuse new laws hastily written to lawfully restrict peope though. Anyway, mostly just came here to say how comical it seems when we're compared with genuine dictatoriships ruled by autocrats where you can simply be dissapeared if you step out of line. We're far from that and its just media bating. There's a conflict between being able to protest by gathering and spreading covid... Agree in the long term laws restricting congregating need to be monitored and disestablished. Its no mystery that kiwis feel part of a team when the current govt has done pretty well with its propaganda, but Its the approach Id have taken too.
Things have been pretty sweet (except for the quarantine limits) in NZ until the last month or so. I spent all of last summer there and life was like normal.
Back home in Melbourne there's essentially been various levels of lockdown continuously for 18 months.
Currently there is a nighttime curfew in place, limits on how long you allowed outside (pretty much unenforceable though), compulsory mask wearing anywhere outside of the home, permits required to go to your place of work, no right to protest, no right to organise your fellow citizens to protest, etc. It's pretty scary to me that all that can be brought in and accepted by large parts of the population.
How long will it take to unwind all this? I imagine it will be at least another year or two before we properly return to normal.
You definitely highlight something many miss, which is that this really is a war waged on people by their fellow countrymen. It's nice to imagine a "them" that wants to repress people, but it's always actually your friends and neighbors. That's why countries have constitutions and charters of rights and freedoms, to protect against a tyranny of the majority. Currently we have chosen to ignore these, or found out they are not strong enough, and I hope in time we can imagine what it would be like if our opponents had broad powers and properly limit what government is able to impose on people.
At least in Australia and for myself personally, I am not worried about how we are being treated _now_, I am worried about the powers that have the capacity to be abused in the future without a legal standing for opposition.
In NZ and AU you are not restricted by the covid laws if you are in these situations. Other laws protect your right to comms and legal representation, nothing about the covid restrictions has anything to do with that stuff..? Could theoretically be twisted or further changed down the road to protect corrupt officials? Please elaborate.
I can understand that. However the US was recently almost taken over by a fascist President so I'm keeping up my guard as much I can against the spying and speaking out wherever and whenever I can
Some of the laws we have in Australia are quite crazy. They are getting abused now or have been implemented with such little judicial oversight that there is no need to abuse them.
> The growing surveillance powers in Australia have been in the spotlight recently following the passage of the Identify and Disrupt bill last month. This handed “extraordinary” new powers to the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, allowing them to access three new warrants to access the computers and networks of those suspected of conducting criminal activity, “disrupt” their data and take over their accounts covertly.
By the time complacency ends, it will be too late.
I don't think there's anything uniquely Australian about this.
Australia is "first" because it is being used as the testing ground for this stuff, but the same playbook will be used in other countries in the coming years, especially those in which Murdoch's (a pretty unapologetic authoritarian) influences extend.
I agree that Australia is being used as the canary in the coalmine for these authoritarian-leaning laws because the Australian people are, in general, entirely apathetic to politics that doesn't immediately affect them (Australians historically vote for the simple, and therefore unlikely in reality, immediate advantage - often in the form of tax cuts or inverse threats of tax hikes - at the expense of the future) - which therefore normalises these laws for the rest of the 5-eyes / western world.
I have my thought-fingers around an idea to offer some kind of privacy-as-a-service service, but it'd have to be incorporated outside of Australia and its ownership made opaque through the use of shell companies - thankfully (/s) Australia has no legislation against conducting business in the country with such untraceable ownership (I think it was the Panama Papers that revealed both Wilson[0][1] Security and SA Power Networks[2][3] had opaque international ownership structures and it was essentially unknown which individuals were actually responsible for their operations - Wilson Security has government contracts and SA Power Networks literally run the power grid in South Australia).
Australia doesn't have a terrorism problem, and yet is leading the charge in writing legislation to combat it. It smells long-rotten, but most of the Australian population have their noses buried in their socials.
Australia has a corporate tax collection problem that neither side of government want to touch with a ten-foot pole.
The small fish are easy to catch and therefore easy to score political points from. Legislation follows from this realization.
Australian soldiers committing war crimes in Afghanistan? Nobody bats an eyelid.
Can't go to Kmart because the government tries to fight the pandemic? Riots in the streets.
And you're surprised there's complacency to digital surveillance, when people are more outraged by slight personal discomfort than by murder. It's not even criticism, just an observation. People are very comfortable in their bubble and do not care about anything on the outside; you only get a reaction when the comfort bubble is disturbed.
Boiling the current lockdown regime to "can't shop in stores" is needlessly dismissive and reductionist.
The current policy in Australia is that foreign citizens are forbidden from leaving the country. This violates numerous international agreements on the freedom of movement for citizens, including ones Australia is signatory to. The only other countries preventing exit of foreign citizens are names like North Korea, China and others.
I think it's fair to say that a country should be able to control inbound immigration to some extent. But preventing outbound immigration to foreign citizens is despicable.
I know dozens of foreign citizens who have been stuck in Australia because they cannot leave without a permit, that isn't guaranteed even for compelling reasons. Numerous valid permits are being denied.
That's one element. Then there's blatant police state policies and abuses such as a curfew with absolutely zero health evidence backing, police throwing unarmed people to the ground unprovoked into a pool of their blood and refusing medical attention for them [1], pepper spraying elderly people for peacefully protesting and more.
> The current policy in Australia is that foreign citizens are forbidden from leaving the country. This violates numerous international agreements on the freedom of movement for citizens, including ones Australia is signatory to. The only other countries preventing exit of foreign citizens are names like North Korea, China and others.
> If you are an Australian citizen or a permanent resident you cannot leave Australia due to COVID-19 restrictions unless you have an exemption.
> Due to the current COVID-19 situation in Australia, including state and territory border restrictions, business closures and social distancing requirements, international visitors are encouraged to return home when possible to do so.
To summarise what you're saying: "the government did some things wrong while fighting COVID". Sure, I don't disagree.
That said, are bad government policies worse than the murder of civilians? I'll let you guess which one is more likely to make me go out and protest. Of course I'll ridicule people who call Australia an authoritarian state over the suboptimal handling of a public health problem. First of all because I know what an authoritarian state actually looks like, and second because having temporary movement restrictions is only a mild inconvenience for most people. Also, your government actually wants you out of your house working and spending money, and they would much rather not have lockdowns at all than lose votes over this. I never thought I'd see the day where I talk about an Australian politician in a non-critical way, but here we are.
> foreign citizens are forbidden from leaving the country
Only permanent residents are not allowed to leave without a permit, as per the home affairs page.
But to address your point, I can absolutely promise you that people did not go on protests for the sake of foreigners that couldn't leave Australia.
>The Australian government has quietly expanded its ban on Australian citizens leaving the country to include people who are ordinarily residents in another country, meaning that even people who live overseas may not be allowed to leave Australia.
Absolutely despicable, and contrary to UN freedom of movement human rights charters -- of which Australia is a signatory.
When your country steps on basic human rights as defined by the UN, you no longer have an excuse to not call what's happening "authoritarian".
Sorry, but preventing foreign citizens from leaving by force is authoritarian. That's North Korea tier. No other Western country prevents outbound travel for non-citizens.
As far as I know, any foreign citizen can leave. If they are a permanent resident, they can
either apply for a permit or drop their visa - it's generally much easier to leave than to come back. Your quote is slightly ambiguous but I assume it refers to Australian citizens who are residents of other countries. The article you linked only talks about Australian citizens as far as I can tell.
FWI I upvoted your original comment to compensate for the downvotes.
Permits are not guaranteed, and I know dozens of people on a personal level who have been denied these permits including for reasons such as permanent relocation with proof, seeing terminal relatives and other genuine reasons (not that you should need a "genuine reason" to receive a human right).
The quote specifically says people who are ordinarily resident in other countries. I don't think it matters whether they're an Australian citizen/PR or not. They literally live elsewhere.
Here's a more clear source [1]
Not that it even matters, because preventing anyone from leaving is a violation of UN Human Rights charters which Australia is a signatory to. They chose to ignore international agreements and trap people. It's authoritarianism. The only parallels exist in North Korea, China, or the USSR. North Korea will stop you leaving by force, as will Australia -- international treaties be damned. "Permits" aren't automatic, nor guaranteed. That's like saying North Koreans can leave at any time -- as long as the NK government permits it.
> Nobody bats an eyelid....Can't go to Kmart....Riots in the streets...slight personal discomfort
Hyperbole overload.
Here in Victoria, we're still in the world's longest lockdown. Curfews, strict rules, masks outside, closed local businesses, police ready to pounce on anyone waving a sign saying "end the lockdown".
To express any anti-lockdown opinion, is to be a traitor of public health. You're not a team player unless you submitting to the world's longest lockdown.
"This is literally a war", said the NSW Premier a few months ago in her description of the pandemic. I guess it's fitting a military man in uniform heads the vaccine rollout.
A small group of health workers, mostly women, sat silently socially distanced in a Victorian park recently, with masks on. They were protesting vaccine mandates. A bus load of cops pulled up and surrounded them. Can't even protest in a responsible covid-safe manner. It's illegal. You're an anti-vax menace to society if you express anything against whatever the government throws your way because "fighting the pandemic" as you put it.
"slight personal discomfort". You know nothing about the toll of the world's longest lockdown when you frame it as "Kmart inconvenience".
And what exactly should "batting an eyelid" look like for the average person on the subject of war crimes in Afghanistan? Would it please you if more than 250,000 marched though the city like they did in protest of committing Australian troops to the war on terror?
I have no idea what your eyelid battering minimum standards are for war crimes, but one would expect a common reaction would be to allow the courts to deal with the offenders. The average person can't email the judge and provide external influence in those matters. But hey, "nobody bats an eyelid" sounds more dramatic for a good story, I guess.
> Can't even protest in a responsible covid-safe manner
Breaking lockdown to protest lockdown kinda misses the point of a lockdown. I understand people's frustration but once you compare the number of covid-related deaths to other countries you can reasonably conclude that the overall effort of fighting the pandemic was successful. Were there some badly implemented measures from the local governments? Possibly. But the idea behind them was to preserve life, which seems to have happened. I don't know of any country that managed to somehow allow people free movement and keep covid-related deaths to a minimum, so it's a trade-off between the two.
> You know nothing about the toll of the world's longest lockdown
Well, I know that in any democratic society citizens have not only rights but also responsibilities. Lockdowns are a way in which the community temporarily sacrifices some freedom in order to protect vulnerable people, and I believe that this must be done in any civilized society. Yes, it will take a toll on people, and it's the right thing to do. We've known it since Socrates.
The reason I'm calling it a Kmart riot is because I can see the avalanche of social media comments by your average Joe, radicalised in his own bubble to believe that Australia is creating the fourth Reich because he has to wear a mask. Another very common lockdown complaint is "my kids are bored they want to go out". Yeah, sorry, I can't take this seriously. I'm sure there are some real dramas out there, I have empathy for people who experience hardship, but the majority (totality?) of the complaints I've heard are just laughable.
> Would it please you if more than 250,000 marched though the city like they did in protest of committing Australian troops to the war on terror?
Yes it would, but my minimum standards would be to have a social media response of at least the same magnitude as the one to the lockdowns. That's an easy way to gauge public opinion these days, just count the number of articles, likes and comments on Facebook and YouTube.
Bonus points for writing letters to MPs, government and journalists to inquire on the progress of the investigation, if there are enough resources allocated for it and what is being done to protect the witnesses, for example.
Edit: I'm not against war, sometimes it's absolutely necessary. Targeting civilians however is simply abominable and it's not clear to me how one can be at peace knowing unconvicted murderers are walking around in the community. If morality isn't an issue, at the very least we have the practical concern of whether they'll murder civilians again. Brushing this off seems not very prudent.
> Breaking lockdown to protest lockdown kinda misses the point of a lockdown.
Everyone has a line where breaking lockdown to protest lockdown becomes an option. For some that line is approximately 30 weeks in.
Some family units will cope better than others. The wealthy ones with large houses, spare rooms, backyard retreats do better. Families locked up in tight, affordable housing suffer more. And when education becomes a tedious long-term chore delivered via choppy laptop without quality social interaction, the need for ending lockdown weighs heavy.
> citizens have not only rights but also responsibilities
Many of the rules have been made on the run, with vast differences between states and countries. There is no universal playbook for lockdowns. People will disagree, strongly disagree, and sometimes protest.
In regards to "fourth Reich", some look at history and are concerned by scope-creep, or foot in the door power-grabbing opportunities by law-makers. Before the pandemic, there was much condemnation of policy-making, over-stepping, even corruption and flatout lies in and around Gov HQ and parties. Endless juicy material for commentators and critics, paints a picture of alarmingly untrustworthy political power sources and related corporate associates. One might be forgiven for questioning or resisting the box-ticking responsibility demanded of citizens by those distrusted so vigorously in normal times.
"Today we are announcing a 2 week snap lockdown", said literally hundreds of days ago. IMHO protesting lockdowns is safer from moral corruption than the nightly news would have you believe.
As you will see hints of here, and in full effect if you ever stray into the strayan parts of reddit, most of my fellow citizens at best simply give no fucks, and at worst are raving statists under the impression they're with the screws rather than the inmates.
To most Australians, "liberty" is a silly concept for yanks, much like halloween and black friday sales.
Well, we know that mass surveillance has been installed in the USA, we have detailed proof of it, and this hasn't change a thing. They are still under mass surveillance.
And people are still carrying trackers in their pocker. They put cameras in the front door bell, always online microphones with speech analysis in their living room, give all their life records, textual or in images, to giants companies that have demonstrated the ability to store and analyse that forever.
People don't use more free software. They look at you like you are mad if you don't want to install whatsapp. Even in HN we have people still wondering why we should use Firefox.
Why would we be judging Australians as "complacent" ? Humanity is complacent.
I've been told the boiling frog is a myth, but I'm pretty sure frogs are talking about boiling humans as a telling metaphore.
This literally is the divide between HN types and everyday individuals.
The latter pays little attention because they generally do not care whilst HN will debate and suggest endless fixes to the problem - which are always technically more difficult or cumbersome. This is why people buy Apple products on each iteration, religiously for some, because they want it to work, be pretty and the desire of everyone.
The UK has been well known for their love of CCTV and yet crimes still go unpunished and people don't get caught.
I wouldn't say ordinary people "do not care". To some extent, even ordinary people know that the mega tech empires concentrate too much power and data. Popular media hasn't completely failed to report on stuff like FB fiascos, privacy leaks and so on. Many more people are aware than HNers might imagine. But viable solutions are not there. As you point out, alternatives are workable only to the technically inclined, which means they might as well not exist. To be sure there are alternatives which swap one silo for another, but truly private options are too cumbersome to make inroads into mainstream, and they never will, if they continue to remain so fiddly. Of course the other side of this is legislation and regulations but even here the transnational nature of these corps allow them to work around even progressive national laws, and the latter are rare enough, with most politicians bought off one way or another.
While it's definitely true that humanity is complacent overall (clearly), there are some very important differences between the US and Australia.
Australia has actually moved on ending secure encryption for example. That's not yet the case in the US and it's questionable whether the authorities will be able to (they already would have, if they could have), overcoming the significant constitutional hurdles.
There is no need to end encryption in the USA, because the way they collect the data works around the problem entirely.
With secret subpoenas, gag orders and programs like PRISM, they get what they need directly from the source. Either from the services hosting the data, or the devices producing/receiving the data.
The data is never collected while in transit, when it's encrypted. They got the keys for the servers, and back-doors to our devices. They don't care about encryption at all.
I'm becoming more and more despondent by the day here.
I'll preface this with, I chose to be vaccinated - I believe the science, however...
I watch people allow the Government and Corporations infringe on peoples body autonomy through mandatory vaccination. If you don't received a vaccine by a certain date - you'll lose your right to work in essential industries (it's a lot broader than just aged care or health care).
If you protest(ed) this, you're labelled selfish, an anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist.
You're pepper sprayed or shot with rubber bullets - All enabled through health mandates - designed to protect your health (last I checked pepper spray will cause coughing and potential aerosol transmission).
We officially have the most locked down state in the world yet we have a higher vaccination rate than North America.
While our fully vaxxed rates lag behind the EU, our first dose coverage is marginally greater with an assumption that the fully vaxxed rate will catch up and potentially surpass.
We have minimal deaths, but at a great cost to our freedom.
When we do get our 'freedom' it'll be with surveillance and vaccine passports. Those who have decided not to be coerced into having a vaccine will not be allowed to participate in the economy and society at large.
I fear this has set a precedent in this Country and we will see this occur again and again.
I’m also taken aback at how easy it was for people to readily accept and encourage further restrictions, interventions, and punishments for non-compliance.
Haven't mandatory vaccinations been law for at least a decade now? Except it was for kids if they want to go to public school/day care[1]. I find it funny that most people did not bat an eye at this until it became mandatory for adults and now I see hyperbolic language about a creeping police state.
Oh yeah, and there's also this[2]:
> In an effort to boost vaccination rates in Australia, the Australian government has decided that starting on 1 January 2016, certain benefits (such as the universal "Family Allowance" welfare payments for parents of children) will no longer be available for conscientious objectors of vaccination; those with medical grounds for not vaccinating will continue to receive such benefits.
Again, it seems like it was fine to deny welfare benefits for those without vaccination. But when it becomes mandatory for the more privileged classes there's a sudden moral panic.
You have the right to not get the vaccine, but you do not have the right to put other people at risk. Private companies can and will employ/fire anyone for any reason. That's one of our freedoms (in the US), the freedom of not having to work with as**oles that want to put others at risk. True freedom if you ask me.
True freedom is getting fired for hesitation over experimental medicine. People with hesitation are assholes who want to put others at risk. It's so clear now.
Australians currently have to be granted an "exemption" to leave the country [1]. Moving to a new country permanently (with proof) qualifies, but just going on a holiday does not.
> Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.
It's a forgone conclusion that no country in the world will let you in without proof of COVID vaccination.
This has been the status quo for dozens and dozens of countries around the world with regards to for example Yellow Fever Vaccination, so it's nothing new at all. Many people just didn't know about it because they never tried to go to those countries before (West Africa is my personal experience)
> It's a forgone conclusion that no country in the world will let you in without proof of COVID vaccination.
There are countries that require all arrivals to quarantine regardless of vaccination status. I live in one of them (Taiwan).
The issue with COVID vaccination is that it's still possible to become infected and transmit the virus to others even if you're vaccinated, so requiring vaccination for arrivals is a good way for countries to reduce the risk of arrivals getting seriously ill and burdening their healthcare systems, but it doesn't at all prevent the virus (including possibly new variants) from being introduced into their populations.
The science shows that neutralizing antibody levels wane quickly after COVID vaccination, and with Delta, this appears to be what's causing large numbers of breakthroughs. For example, we had a case here recently where an ostensibly healthy airline pilot in her 40s caught a Delta breakthrough case just 2 months after she received her second Moderna jab.
A single jab of yellow fever vaccine on the other hand provides lifelong protection and we have decades of data showing its efficacy. Also of great importance to note: unlike SARS-CoV-2, yellow fever does not transmit directly from person to person.
> I'm just saying they will all require proof of vaccination for covid to be allowed in.
And again, I'm just saying that this doesn't stop the introduction of the virus into the population, which is ostensibly the primary reason for requiring vaccination.
And what constitutes "vaccination"? 2 jabs? 3? 4? How are you going to verify vaccination records when most people are just getting cards that can easily be forged? What about people who have been vaccinated with a vaccine not approved for use in your country?
SARS-CoV-2 is well on its way to becoming endemic. There's likely to be a temporary phase where quarantines and/or proof of vaccination are required but this isn't going to be permanent.
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that Australia is essentially the Western, English-speaking countries' testing ground for privacy and freedom-eroding legislation. If the laws are deemed a "success" by the ruling class, they are exported to the other Western countries.
Is there an equivalent to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation or American Civil Liberties Union for Australia that i can donate to to advocate against this?
As an Australian, is the best approach to encrypt all my storage and communications? Is that even possible when the potential threat is the government?
This is always the best approach. It's not like you need to make it perfect and unbreakable, just annoying enough to get in to relative to the value of doing so.
Complacent? I've read some comments by Australians on this very site which lead me to believe they're 100% welcoming their upcoming fascist totalitarian police state, because they've been led to believe this will bring "security".
Canada's only been marginally better. There's evidently a latent authoritarianism in the Anglosphere that has been activated by covid. The weird thing is that it literally seems to be in inverse proposition to how bad the epidemic actually is in a place. Australia, almost no cases, makes the GDR look like a libertarian paradise. US, way more heavily affected, mostly already moved on. And its certainly not causal. The Australian repression of its citizens had all been reactionary, its not like it's actually changed the net outcome.
Do you realize that if you reverse cause and effect in your statements it might show that more draconian vaccination policies are keeping these countries from being more heavily affected by COVID? I.e. isn't it just a valid to say that: "US, way more heavily affected because it mostly already moved on".
In Canada it's certainly true that the major province with the most lax policies and the lowest vaccination rates - Alberta - is seeing the most COVID infections and deaths.
They aren’t complacent. They are harassed, beaten and arrested if they object.
Absolutely disgusting what the government there is doing to our Australian brothers and sisters. And of course no media coverage to speak of in the states.
There have been emergency health measures in place in a couple of states but most states have very few restrictions. Australians pay much less for health care than most places and our health system is run very lean so we have to be cautious until we reach vaccination targets.
If they let it rip there would be even more people protesting that they couldn't get into hospital.
Everything is open where I live. Plenty of people out and about last weekend. Festivals, bbqs in parks, people at beaches and restaurants. My kids have lost more days of school to teacher training than covid restrictions in the last two years.
There have been a few incidents in other states but they don't define the whole country.
IMO if the states that are in the mud had taken proper precautions before they did, they wouldn't be in this mess and the cops wouldn't have had an opportunity to abuse their power like they definitely are in say, NSW.
Every single attempt at protesting against this tyranny has resulted in an overwhelming display of force by the police.
If people are even slightly non-compliant when approached they are violently thrown on the ground and sat on.
Not justifying excessive use of violence my the Victorian police. There have been incidents by individuals and must be properly dealt with.
If being thrown to the ground and sat on is a bad as it got for illegal protests during a public health stay at home order we still have some way to go before we reach full dystopia.
The yanks had 5 people die during their failed insurrection. There were another 20 dead in riots in the same year. They had cops firing on media.
The federal government's yearly bipartisan expansion of surveillance powers to catch up with our allies is seriously chilling shit that doesn't get reported in our media or pushed by the usual suspects on Facebook. But it concerns the hell out people in technical and legal areas and the problem will be with us long after emergency health orders are cancelled.
We have very little media diversity. The few billionaires who own the few outlets enjoy the continuing tax cuts, random free grants, advertising spend, etc. from the conservative Government, so run what some critics have called a ‘protection racket for the Liberal National Party’. Almost nothing about any of the mass surveillance laws then really gets into the media, and if something is mentioned, it’s mostly presented in light of the Government’s line on it.
The times any of this does get into the news is if there is any opposition from the Opposition party (Labor), who theoretically could get the numbers to block laws in the Senate by one vote. If it looks like they might not allow the Government to sweep them through, the Government then does what we call ‘wedging’ the Labor party. This is where they say “Labor wants the terrorists to win” or “Labor is voting in the interests of paedophiles”, and the media amplifies that narrative.
Unfortunately it works because nobody knows what the laws are about (even though human rights groups, law groups, civil society groups, often even the Government’s own security legislation review committee have raised serious flaws, tried to get them out in the open but are ignored by the media).
The Government also makes a mockery of any due process - sometimes having a public consultation period but ignoring it when basically every submission is negative and it’s clear nobody actually wants the laws (it’s just a box ticking exercise - if people bring it up later, they will seriously claim “but we consulted the public and experts” even though they ignored all of them). Some of these laws they have pushed through both Houses of Parliament in one or two days, with basically no debate.
It’s a truly atrocious situation. There is an election coming up, but with most of the media enthusiastically running the protection racket and pushing basically just lies about politics, and only fairly actively politically informed people knowing what’s actually going on (that’s a small proportion of the population - the conservative party relies on that a lot), things may not improve.