What rights? Australia does not have a bill of rights. It has a very limited number of fundamental rights outlined in the Constitution but other than that you seem to be pretty much screwed, which explains why these draconian measures always seem to land in Australia first.
Rights exist by what people demand and exercise and do.
A "bill of rights" is a piece of paper. A piece of paper which is ruled upon by a court that was granted its power by the very same collection of papers.
For example, the right to keep and bear arms (obviously not for hunting but for war and security) has been infringed upon many times, but constitutional courts have decided that actually despite the bill of rights, some infringement is allowed. (EDIT: And this doesn't even address the problem of governments creating unconstitutional laws or executing unconstitutional actions which de facto strip your rights for some possibly significant time until it can be overturned by a court, but without much redress or punishment or deterrent)
In the end the people are the ultimate arbiters and deciders of what rights they are willing to give up and what powers they are willing to be governed under. This plays out the same way in USA and Australia and Afghanistan and Libya.
If society is violent, divided, and less trusting of one another, there is more willingness to turn to the state for protection.
Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.
> Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples. All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
> But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.
I didn't say they were.
> Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan?
Yes, yes, yes. Worthless rhetorical questions.
> Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples.
What claims?
> All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Europe is not a country. And there are more countries than your examples with differences in crime rates and gun ownership, so I suspect whatever point you are trying to prove with selective data points wouldn't actually hold up.
We have tons of examples of states where the government takes responsibility for protecting the people and are safer than the one example where a second amendment exists to keep people "safe". If you want to split hairs between western and eastern europe, yes, countries like the Ukraine is not as safe as the USA, but that in no way proves your point.
What examples? How do they demonstrate that? Clearly not all available examples were used!
And nowhere did I say that that is the only reason a society would be willing to turn to the state for protection, so spare me the false counter examples dressed up breathlessly to look like some incredible gotcha.
I gave the examples in my first comment, you didn’t refute them but claimed their were some bad countries in Europe, which I agreed with (Ukraine, Russia, etc…).
Even in a system with a bill of rights those laws are there as a last resort, to deal with complete failure states. They are the limits, not standard operating procedures.
There is always going to be capacity for doing better, society is always what we make of it, even without hard legal limits (not to suggest imposing limits of state power is bad).
We just had hundreds of thousands of people go to the beach yesterday ignoring lockdown orders, I was worried about my country having read things like Gulag Archipelago, but the general population have shown where their line is. Still we're now a police state and the general population doesn't seem to give a shit about that.
Dude that organised the last protest got 8 months prison. 75% of the population agrees with some of the totalitarian laws. Still a great country, but I'm looking at other places to live, Senior Engineer so it won't be hard to get sponsorship. Thinking about USA where people really understand the importance of their constitution, and the tech sector is the strongest in the world.
Appreciate the kind words about America, friend. Even with our constitution it's still be a fight. Unconstitutional laws are passed regularly here, until they're challenged in court. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they stay.
Better throw out the politicians together with the policies. Now that they've shown their true colours it would be foolhardy to expect them to restrain their authoritarian instincts come the next emergency - and if there is one thing easily come by these days it seems to be emergencies.
Kick 'm out, elect a new batch and keep their feet to the fire.
Both major parties are authoritarian. Australia has a good electoral system but people have to stop believing in major parties, or that it doesn't matter, and vote in droves for independents and minor parties (who, if unelected, give their votes to the party they prefer).
What kind of insanity have we collectively tolerated that “you can pay to be locked up in a ‘hotel’ tor two weeks” is seen as some kind of evidence that there is no compulsion?
That’s like saying people aren’t forced to vaccinate since you don’t “need” to work at that particular job and you don’t “need” to exercise in a gym or watch a movie in a theater.
Everything in history shows the slope is slippery. They will pass this on to everyone. It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
If you decided to travel during the quarantine, you already agreed to this. If you were already stuck out of country when the quarantines were added, then you have a point. However, it makes sense if they want to control transmission and either lack vaccines or have a bunch of people who don’t want to get vaccinated.
> It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
It can be a law for ten years. Doesn't make it less of a shitty law.
And I think the outrage is useful. It will mobilize people until it boils over into action, if enough people do it when it actually counts. This is when it actually counts. Everyone has spent all their Outrage Points on useless shit some actor or celebrity said about something no one will care about on their deathbed, but so few are saying anything about this totalitarian nightmare.
But the App that is the subject of the article serves to reduce the severity of that law and thus reduces government overreach. To be upset about the App, rather than the original quarantine law, is to be focusing attention in the wrong place.
Tell me what about this reduces government overreach and the severity of the law.
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
It's a reduction in government overreach that you have a "choice" between one of their quarantine "hotels" or in-home surveillance? Is the part that is the lesser government overreach, the part where if you fail to address one of their random pings they'll send officers to your house to conduct an in-person check?
The app isn't the problem in itself. The problem is the enslavement. This is a system of enslavement.
Up until now you had no choice, when returning to Australia you had to pay to stay in a 2 week quarantine hotel.
Creating an alternative solution for home quarantine gives people more options.
You could argue that there was a better way to implement home quarantine. You could argue that the 2 week quarantine is goverment overreach. You could even argue that this option helps the government keep the 2 week quarantine in place longer by tempering its severity.
I don't see those sorts of rational arguments. I see a bunch of people making an irrational or uninformed argument that this extends government overreach by making the 2 week quarantine rule more severe.
I don't think you can argue with this subset of americans on this. I tried when this came up on hacker news last week, and they were adamant this was worse that going into a hotel, and that australians citizens were sleep walking into a totalitarian state for allowing this to happen. (And also that they only had second amendment rights like the USA this would never be allowed to happen).
It was a bit of a wake up call actually - the level of conversation was starting to feel more like reddit than what I'd always (until now i guess) expected from hacker news.
Armed rebellion is not always needed to make changes. However just letting the state do what it wants without push back certainly is not going to change things.
The first being obvious enough in its abhorrence, and the second being a violation of human rights as defined by the UN. Unfortunately it seems like a large amount of Australians are eager for even more of this authoritarianism. By the time they learn their lesson it will be too late.
Australia is already a failed state. That happened the second they decided to imprison their populace and started talking about the "New world order." The state has failed its people, and the only thing left is for it to crumble.
There is nothing wrong with contact tracing during a pandemic. It's been used by many countries in the past including the US.
Let's go back a long way to 1854 during the cholera epidemic in London when Dr John Snow found that the Broad Street pump was its cause and he located it by contact tracing those who contacted cholera and worked backwards to the source. This case is famous for the very fact it shows that contact tracing and isolating saves lives (please ensure that you look at the map he used to trace the pump):https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_ou...
I can attest to this, contact tracing put a quick end to the COVID outbreak near where I live and I'm very thankful for the work those tracers did under very arduous circumstances.
In principle, contact tracing during a pandemic has nothing to do with the general increase in surveillance that's gripping the planet at the moment - it is an entirely separate matter.
The fact that we have sleezebag governments prepared to subvert a decent legitimate process is - again - a separate and serious problem for democracy.
It was the chief health officer of New South Wales, Dr. Kerry Chant.
Dr. Chant said: “We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the New World Order…yes it will be pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there.”
If governments all had a permanent monopoly on violence we would all be forever living under the eternal dynasty of God-Emperor Hammurabi CCCXXIVI in the all-kingdom stretching from the Euphrates to all the sun has ever touched.
Sometimes you have to break the rules to make long-term positive changes.
Australia is already on its way to being a failed state by now. Police and military patrol the streets to enforce rules, “papers please” tyranny is required to live, and soon they’ll demand complete surveillance and control in your own house.
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They are even now trying to limit how many people you can have over in your own home. It is a failed state. Wake up before you are enslaved.
If you think you need a vaccine for a disease with a median age of death that's 84 you've badly failed at basic risk analysis and you've been massaged by the machine.
The government is moving to vaccinate younger and younger kids even though the risk to them from covid is much much less than the risks from the vaccines.
In the UK the scientists specifically came out against vaccinating kids because the evidence is not there, but the UK govt is 'ignoring The Science' and moving ahead anyway.
Not only is the evidence not there, but there is new evidence as of a few days ago that it may actually be riskier for them to get the Pfizer jab than to get covid.
To be fair, the UK government is not ignoring the scientific consensus that children are more likely to be harmed than benefit from the vaccine, as it knows full well the consequences of its policy. Instead, the government is ignoring the ethics of coercing the young (who can't vote for them) into undergoing a medical procedure which mostly protects the old (who do vote for them).
> I would rather anti-vaxers leave the country than continue to hang around, yes
Those supposed 'anti-vaxers' are more or less guaranteed to be vaccinated for nearly all diseases just like I assume you (and others who insist on calling anyone who is not toeing the party line by that epithet) are.
Some people have natural immunity from having had SARS2.
Some people are being advised by their doctors not to take the current crop of vaccines.
Some people deem their risk from contracting SARS2 lower than the risk of side-effects from the current crop of vaccines.
Bodily autonomy is an essential part of a liberal democracy.
If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated? They run a higher risk of contracting SARS2, they have a higher risk of ending up in a hospital, they run a higher risk of needing intensive care and they have a higher risk of succumbing to the disease compared to vaccinated people in their own age and risk group. These are all risks to their own health, something you might find stupid and unreasonable but... it is their own choice. The only possible argument you might have in a country with socialised health care (like Oz) is that they may run up health care costs due to their refusal to take the vaccine. Those same people might respond that they do not want the vaccines because they fear potential side effects somewhere down the line. Given the limited amount of long-time experience with mRNA vaccines in humans this is not an unfounded risk, although most side effects seem to occur within 6 months of vaccination and as such should have already become visible.
Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? Do you remember how the sheep in that movie called anything which they deemed to be a threat a 'wolf', leading to a field full of sheep bleating 'wolf' in sheep-speak to each other and to the supposed wolf? Calling anyone who shows the slightest hesitancy towards these rather new vaccines 'anti-vaxxers' (the word seems to be mostly spelled with two 'x'-es) is comparable to how those sheep reacted.
Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
Approximately no one in Australia has 'natural immunity', because approximately no one here has had COVID.
Those people who are advised by their docotrs not to get vaccinated are few and far between, but it turns out the current vaccine push takes those figures into account.
The people who deem the risk of COVID lower than the vaccine are just straight up incorrect. They're either misled or just deliberately contrarian, and I don't care what they think.
All autonomy is important, except where that autonomy would endanger others in society.
> If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated?
If they also opt-out of taking up hospital care necessary for treating those people who didn't refuse a vaccine, honestly, I'd be okay with it. But we both know that won't happen. It'll end up like the US where there are people dying in the ER because there's no room due to COVID cases, and I do not want Australia to end up like the US.
> Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? [...] Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
All of this is very ironic, given that the group you are implying are the wolves are the ones taking livestock medication.
Do you drink, smoke, drive a car, are you overweight, do you participate in high-risk sports, eat a lot of processed food, red meat, fatty fish from polluted waters, drink sugared carbonated water, keep dangerous pets? If so, do you voluntarily opt out of any hospital care related to these activities or habits? The list can be made much longer.
On the subject of people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really? I assume you mean those people are taking Ivermectin [1], a popular antihelmintic which also happens to demonstrate antiviral activity, preparations containing it being used both in veterinary as well as human applications? Are those people eating horse dewormers or taking Ivermectin tablets (Stromectol [2] et al)? If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Stop labelling people who happen to disagree with 'your' opinion. Just accept that not everybody agrees with 'your' standpoint or before you know it you'll find 'your' opinion to be in the crosshairs of the authoritarians - and then what do you do?
[1] As to the efficacy of Ivermectin for SARS2 prophylaxis or treatment the verdict is still out. It is unfortunate that this subject has been politicised to such an extreme that it has become a black/white issue, 'either you are with us or against us'.
> people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really?
Yes. Really. And then apparently shitting their pants in the supermarket. Appalling, I know.
> If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Because a lot of them are not, they are taking livestock medication bought from agricultural stores, because their doctor won't prescribe them what they want. You and I both know this is the case, so please don't bother pretending it isn't.
And to be clear. the people who are taking literal horse dewormer as opposed to getting vaccinated are doing a stupid thing. It is the wrong answer to COVID, no matter which way you look at it. Even if Ivermectin -- formulated for humans, qua Stromectol -- is actually a useful treatment against COVID, there's another more useful prophylactic against COVID: A vaccine.
This isn't an opinion, it's a bald-faced fact. You don't need to be given Ivermectin to treat severe COVID if you never end up with severe COVID in the first place.
Should hospitals be administering Ivermectin clinically? I dunno, jury is still out and I'm not a doctor, but an alternative to the vaccine it is not.
Looks like you fell for it. In many countries blaming that covid still exists is an easy scapegoat. So many people are falling for this line of thinking because everyone needs to blame someome.
With two doses you can go out 3 times to every 1 time someone with no shots can.
Blame the foolish who think because they are 2 dose vaxxed that they can continue their lives as normal. You can't.. stay home.
The equation has changed. Basically everybody is going to get COVID sooner or later, the vaccine just makes it much less likely that you'll get seriously ill from it.
Do you believe covid is dangerous enough to justify turning Australia into a totalitarian regime where you need to show papers to go anywhere and have constant surveillance even in your own home? Did you know they’re even dangling how many people can visit your home as a carrot?
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Wake up now before it is too late. You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
That reminds me of an old web-based puzzle game, where you had to carry around CCTV cameras to make sure you are always being recorded.
At one point, the protagonist, in a moment of self-awareness, says something very profound that has stuck with me ever since: "If I am complicit in my own surveillance, does that mean I'm hiding from myself?"
> Do you consider people with immunity from past infections to be antivaxers?
In Australia, for all intents and purposes, yes.
Thanks to the terrible "totalitarian regime", less than one percent of our population has yet to catch COVID. We've had even less deaths! It's fuckin' awesome that we've managed to come out of this so well, almost entirely thanks to lockdown.
The route out of lockdown, without massively increasing the numbers of preventable deaths, is vaccination.
It's simpler and more expedient for me, and the government, to treat all Australians who refuse to get vaccinated (as opposed to being unable to get vaccinated, of course) as either idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality.
Either way, I appreciate that the carrot & sometimes the stick is necessary to force people to abide by the laws of their society. Just like it's not your choice to drink and drive, it's not really your choice not to get vaccinated while participating in Australian society. These are the norms that the majority of our country believe in.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, don't participate. Go find a community of like-minded rugged individualists somewhere. Move to Texas, maybe. (Sorry, Texans.)
> You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
Nah, I already harboured a great deal of spite for anti-vax idiots prior to COVID, didn't need any help from the government.
...
And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet.
The law of gravity isn't different in Australia, and neither is 2+2. People with immunity from past covid have excellent protection, maybe even better than that from vaccination. To treat them as "antivaxers"..."in Australia, for all intents and purposes" and to then later label these people as "idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality" is one hop and a skip away from dehumanizing them and justifying even worse.
You need to say what you are typing out loud because you are caught up in the feel-good tribalism of debating partisan issues online. When in reality, there are multiple legitimate reasons to not bend the knee including past infection.
It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection as mentioned by that source I gave you in the parent post.
But in any case, the very last sentence of your post is both refreshing AND alarming. You said:
"And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet."
Refreshing because at least you still seem to have some amount of reason left, but alarming because you don't seem to realize that by then, it's going to be too late. You'll end up enslaved because you fell for the "hate the antivaxers" ploy and picked it as your tribal narrative of choice so you could feel good while arguing with people online. Even though the science is unequivocal that immunity from past infection is excellent.
You may also be interested in this information that is emerging:
"US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid"
What now? You really think people reading this information are petulant children for choosing caution and simultaneously not wanting a totalitarian regime monitoring them and building systems of enslavement?
Realize that power consolidates. They will not need to remove these restrictions once you reach some threshold. Who will make them and how? By then more people will be trained to hate others and defend more. Realize that giving a government that kind of power is dangerous.
The entire first half of your comment is hilariously uninformed. You have absolutely no idea about the impacts of COVID on Australia and it bleeds out of everything you're saying. You arguing that past infections should mean something to me is the "out of touch with reality" bit.
> It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection
This is completely meaningless to Australia. Just 0.002% of the Australian population has had COVID. Past-infection protection is not an area of interest to me or the government of my country, because as a cohort, those people just don't really exist here... Mostly because of our wacky policies of trying to make sure our populace doesn't get infected by doing things like hotel quarantine.
As for the second bit, about children possibly having issues with the vaccine: It might be worth pointing out here that children in that study aren't a part of the current Australian government push for vaccination. The target is for over-16s only.
Should we wait before pushing for the under-16s to get vaccinated? Absolutely! Does that prove you right in absolutely any way? Nope!
You might as well start telling me that Australia shouldn't introduce gun control.
