Try applying some critical thinking before believing everything you read on the internet, particularly when it relates to politically charged topics such as the pandemic.
TLDR: the vast majority of shit you've read/watched about "police state" during the pandemic in Australia is just that: shit.
It would be akin to Australians being told that in America every happy meal comes with a free .45 pistol.
The difference is most Australians are smart enough to question things that sound outrageous, rather than just believing everything they see.
Is it? There’s a big difference between misunderstanding a picture location -where I admit I was wrong- and someone is willing to shoot because big pharma said so and still willing to do so if it would happen again, not knowing their mistake, this goes without mentioning the dozens of examples and proven evidence how it was dealt with there, from the quarantine camps [1], to people denied food because they are not vaccinated [2], or how police used drones and other tech invading people basic privacy and liberties [3], and I’m not even going with post-vaccine injuries.
I’m not talking about vaccination policies or itself was effective or not, I’m talking about basic human decency among each other, it’s ok if you do a mistake, admit it, and learn from it especially if you were “just following orders”, just like how I admit that pic was wrong, the least can be done is admitting a lot of covid shenanigans were wrong,it’s time to fix that, and hold some people accountable for ordering others to do such atrocities.
As an Australian, it was extremely obvious that image was fake the second it was seen simply because we had a policeman with a machine gun like that.
If you're going to claim Australia is a "police state" I'd urge you to consider just how foreign the idea of police ever pulling a gun is to anyone here.
For background, I grew up with my Dad in the police. I had literally never seen a gun in person until I went overseas.
As an actual West Australian who grew up on first nation land and had two sessions passing through a two week quarantine airlock as a result of work related out of country trips .. your links (brownstone & rebekahbarnett) are hilariously distorted over the top point of view opinions from what was a surprisingly small percentage of people who got very worked up about sensible precautions with overwhelming support.
As a result of having a two week isolation period in the pre vaccine times western australia spent most of the COVID years operating maskless with very few actual cases.
Once vaccines became available something like 98% of the state population had at least two shots (a very percent with three) with no spikes in death or disease (ie. no excessive side effects).
All of that made a good contrast against the rates of death and hospitalisation seen in (say) the USofA.
Of course there were some very vocal holdouts who foamed at the mouth about workplaces requiring proof of vacination and of course they have blogged at length about the inhumanity of the atrocities they have endured.
The irony here is palpable.
Try applying some critical thinking before believing everything you read on the internet, particularly when it relates to politically charged topics such as the pandemic.
TLDR: the vast majority of shit you've read/watched about "police state" during the pandemic in Australia is just that: shit.
It would be akin to Australians being told that in America every happy meal comes with a free .45 pistol.
The difference is most Australians are smart enough to question things that sound outrageous, rather than just believing everything they see.