38 ms·

How long can a democracy maintain emergency limits and still call itself free?

239 points by nanis 5y ago

nanis 5y ago
> People in South Australia 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. Let's see: * Forced to download an app by the state * Forced to jump when the state says "jump!" * Acceding to the concept that there is a state-sanctioned place where everyone is supposed to be (prison colony?) * Acceding to whatever punishment the police may decide to mete out for failing to confirm that one is where one is supposed to be even if one is already there That's the thing with slippery slopes. The farther you go down, the more impossible it becomes to climb back up.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Heh. Score one for not having a smart phone...
  - nanis 5y ago
    Presumably, the government can declare not owning a smart phone to be intent to violate the law and force people to purchase & pay for the requisite tracking device. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831800
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Dumb phones can also be geolocated.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      OK. But still, people with no phones can't be.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        Landlines are even easier to geolocate...
- js2 5y ago
  It’s a trade-off: > In return for trading away their liberty, Australians gained a huge safety dividend. COVID-19 has killed 194 of every 100,000 Americans, 77 of every 100,000 Israelis, and only four of every 100,000 Australians. That low death toll is a tremendous upside. What remains to be seen is whether Australia can maintain that performance without permanently ending core attributes of life in a liberal democracy, including freedom of movement, peaceable assembly, and basic privacy. We’re still in the middle of this. If we could have nice things, these restrictions wouldn’t need to be enforced. We’ll have to see what happens once the country is adequately vaccinated.
  - throwawayay02 5y ago
    I didn't know the goal of life was to live the longest, even if in prison. You might want to invest in cryogenic sleep.
    - grecy 5y ago
      A big goal of my life is to be alive, not dead. There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well.
      - serf 5y ago
        >There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well. the idea that the difference in death rate is due to some intrinsic policy or mandated behavior rather than something more simple like population density/metropolis commonality/average temperature/humidity, etc seems like a pretty big leap -- and that seems to be your point , no? is there already some big comprehensive list of social policies that provably worked to reduce death rate during the covid-19 pandemic across the board with environmental factors normalized out? I thought we were still in the middle of this experiment, but i'd love to see some data if it exists.
        5y ago
- eplanit 5y ago
  That's not a slope, but a cliff -- and they've gone over it. What has amazed me is how there are many Aussie's who agree with the rules and are happy to comply. It's amazing.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    And consequently their Covid numbers are very low.
    - techbio 5y ago
      When a measure becomes a target...
      - edmundsauto 5y ago
        Wisdom becomes a platitude when repeated without specific comments about relevance.
        techbio 5y ago
        It is relevant in the context of the message thread it replies to. If you do think my reply was unwise, I'd be happy to have your explanation for why you think that, but I am fairly certain that platitude is the wrong word here. Maybe you mean something like "played out", but then that would seem to be just your opinion.
        edmundsauto 5y ago
        Why do you think this measure is a target? It is possible for a measure to become a target and still remain useful - a few catchy words that describe some situations doesn't give any indication of an analysis of the process, or even define the difference between a measure and a target, or any indication that is what's happening here. Some measures become targets, sometimes. Sometimes those become less useful; other times they are both useful and not useful in different ways. Determining when something is useful is too nuanced and multi-dimensional to reduce it to a catchy phrase.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  What happens if you just don't do it but are where you're supposed to be?
  - NamTaf 5y ago
    You probably cop a fine
  - kov2rx 5y ago
    they’ll lock you up in the secret deep state dungeon and force you to watch Bubble Boy over and over
- 0xbadc0de5 5y ago
  Completely unrelated - an inexpensive Software Define Radio (SDR) and GPS simulator code (https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim) can quickly and reliably spoof cell phone GPS to any location you desire.
  - xmodem 5y ago
    Please do not do this. You will get SDR outlawed for everyone.
    - water8 5y ago
      That genie is already out of the bottle
- lifty 5y ago
  I keep mentioning this like a broken record. In most western democracies we have a disconnect from the will of the people and what legislation gets implemented, caused by representative democracy. We need a more direct way for people to influence policy. If the majority of people vote to implement something, the rest of the people will have an easier time accepting it if they know the process is fair and genuine.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Term limits. Politics should not be a viable career option.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      You would need to apply the limits to everyone involved in politics not just elected representatives. Otherwise the power will simply shift to the backroom boys, well shift further to them.
    - lifty 5y ago
      Term limits are not sufficient and it becomes difficult to get enough politicians with experience. We need a combination of direct democracy and liquid democracy so that people can vote directly on some big issue and quickly shift to a different representative when needed, for legislation that gets implemented through representation.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      This would likely have an intended consequence: unelected representatives would have their power increase. If elected officials are rotating in and out of Washington faster, they will rely more on the power brokers.
      - inter_netuser 5y ago
        you could also rotate them inside the government, it's what ive heard japan does, but not sure about the details. Essentially let's say you are responsible for helping run ministry of finance, and then you are rotated out to manage some rural agriculture thing, and so on.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Doesn't Taiwan use something similar? Except that, if memory serves, they don't require an app to be installed they just require the network operator to geo-fence the mobile phone and notify the user if they stray from home and the authorities if the user doesn't return home after being reminded. Seems unnecessary to use an app when the network can triangulate pretty well in densely populated areas.
  - unearth3d 5y ago
    Australia is consciously weaponing covid, everything now is performative inhumanity. Country becoming a Pentecostal theocracy (Dominionists aka christo-fascists), I genuinely fear for my neighboring country.
- sparrish 5y ago
  All this made possible because they disarmed the populace first. The second amendment is holding this back from happening in the US.
  - Theory5 5y ago
    No, it's not.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    How is your second amendment helping you deal with NSA, illegal no-fly lists, police brutality, etc? It doesn't, its just a power fantasy. There are plenty of 'disatmed' countriss with just as much or more liberty
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Yeah. People talk about second amendment solutions, and I wonder exactly what line needs to be crossed for that to come into play. My guess is nothing will ever be egregious enough. It's all BS.
      - zepto 5y ago
        Not knowing where the line is is itself a line.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Second Amendment gives the population a chance against the government. No guns the population has no chance and the government can do anything they want.
  - lagadu 5y ago
    Ah, the famous second amendment, meant to allow the people to prevent a hostile takeover of the government. Funny thing is, all the people who are most fervent about it are the people who think trump won the election and yet they lay down and took the loss, the exact thing that the amendment is supposed to prevent, like impotent little children. What a very effective amendment! /s
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  A Bentham panopticon without the expense of having to actually build one. How lovely. Stalin would be pleased.
- davesmylie 5y ago
  You are being deliberately (maliciously?) misleading and scare mongering here. This only applies to specific people in home quarantine and only for a short period of time - 14 days. i.e people that have returned to the country from overseas that would normally be in quarantine in a government facility for that same period. People now have the option of quarantining at home, and if they choose to do so, have to show that they are quarantining at home rather than saying they will, and then heading off into town and infecting others. (As many people have done). You are trying to portray this as something being forced on all citizens, indefinitely when that couldn't be further from reality.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nanis 5y ago
    > You are being deliberately (maliciously?) misleading and scare mongering here. ... > people that have returned to the country I do not know who's being deliberately misleading here. Please note[1]: > It will start this week for people returning from New South Wales and Victoria. > People wanting to return to South Australia and home quarantine will have to apply to SA Health. So this is clearly applicable to Australian citizens within Australia. Citizens of Australia are not allowed to move freely within Australia. Before an Australian citizen can travel from one part of Australia to another part of Australia, they have to ask the government to allow them to do so. They must accede to the points I listed. After that the government will expand the program to international travelers. Once a populace accepts that they are not allowed travel and that the government can arbitrarily place people under house arrest and subject to torture (and knowledge of random intrusions into your life can happen at any time - even during a long, relaxing shower or something is psychological torture), there isn't much that will stop people with the power from expanding their control. [1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-australias-home-quarantine-trial-work/100398878 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-austra...
    - closeparen 5y ago
      Sanitation is one of the most basic premises of civilization. Better question is how a government could claim any legitimacy while allowing infectious diseases to freely circulate.
- bitwize 5y ago
  That's some shit that Keith Raniere of NXIVM fame did to his "slaves" (and had them do to their subordinates). I love Australians but right now? Fuck Australia.
- abrazame 5y ago
  It's worth noting how little debate there was (or is) on any of this here in Australia, by the by. The government decides this is happening, and the media cheer them on. Any critical voice is instantly branded anti-science, told they don't care about lives, etc. The opposition parties, if anything, want more of it (irrespective of whether they're left or right in a given state). We're a reasonably small country, so often the media and the politicians know one another rather well (revolving doors, small social circles, etc), but it honestly doesn't feel like we have a free and critical media or opposition at all right now. PS: Watch this short clip for an idea of what news looks like in Australia at the moment: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1429786126815010820 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1429786126815010820
  - president 5y ago
    > Any critical voice is instantly branded anti-science This has been the fishiest thing for me during the entire pandemic. It seems the slightest questioning of the mainstream narrative results in censorship. Even pointing this out can result in censorship or people lashing out.
    - SamTwardowski 5y ago
      We are in the midst of a holiness spiral and you dare question the cargo cult science at the center of all of this? It's never safe to be a heretic in the midst of a holiness spiral.
    - gremloni 5y ago
      I honestly blame the right wing for making belief in outrageous conspiracies so commonplace that lower tier manipulations just slip through.
    - morpheos137 5y ago
      People prefer safety to abstract concepts like democracy or free speech.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > the media cheer them on These four points seem to be in contradiction with each other: 1. Most of Australia's media supports the lockdowns 2. Most of Australia's media is owned by Rupert Murdoch 3. Rupert Murdoch's media is right-wing 4. The right wing opposes the lockdowns Yet I hear combinations of those points all the time. What's happening here?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  What's the deal with Australia and these authoritharian laws? Last time they passed a law forcing companies to ship malware to their customers on behalf of law enforcement. Now this.
  - monkeycantype 5y ago
    1. There is a conservative government in power, and the Murdoch press for the time being wants them to stay in power so they shape the message and direct attention elsewhere. A labor government would be less successful introducing similar laws 2. Australians overall are less frightened of their government. Any Indigenous Australians on hn can attest that does not mean everybody is safe from state violence. Police still kill people, power is still abused, but comparing my life in the US and in Australia, most people experience the government as being more benign, and helpful than people in general experience in the US. It's not black and white, its just a few nudges along on a spectrum of grey. So most people are viewing the these laws as clumsy collective effort that they do not imagine will be abused. There are many things that can be said about the problems with this view, but the acceptance of these laws does come from a reactionary hard line position, but rather that people find it hard to imagine that they will be abused
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Not any more right?
      - monkeycantype 5y ago
        Oh you can find a long history of everything being abused. But by and large, the Australian born, non Indigenous population, only imagine it will ever be abused against other people
- iamthemonster 5y ago
  I think I'll happily take our freedom from the virus, where we can live and work unmasked. Our pubs and restaurants are packed with people having fun, not having to worry about whether they'll be one of the hundreds of thousands dead.
- MonkeyClub 5y ago
  > * Acceding to the concept that there is a state-sanctioned place where everyone is supposed to be (prison colony?) We're talking about Australia, after all.
josephcsible 5y ago
> The state of Victoria announced a curfew and suspended its Parliament for key parts of the pandemic. “To put this in context, federal and state parliaments sat during both world wars and the Spanish Flu, and curfews have never been imposed,” the scholar John Lee observed in an article for the Brookings Institution. The Spanish Flu was unquestionably more dangerous than COVID is. What changed in society that so many people are now willing to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety?
- djbebs 5y ago
  They were disarmed.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    There are similar restrictions being imposed without much pushback in many well armed countries around the world. I think it has more to do with everyone now getting so much of their information about the world from little handheld 24/7 psyop machines. There also wouldn't have been nearly so much acceptance of lockdowns if large swaths of people weren't able to continue earning a good living working entirely from home, something which really only became possible over the past 10 or 20 years. On a deeper level, I think many people in our modern civilization are in the grip of a paralyzing denial and fear of death, which makes it easier to corral them in one direction or another by just gesturing at the possibility of it.
    - commandlinefan 5y ago
      > in many well armed countries I assume you're referring the United States - it's worth noting that the well-armed states like Texas and Florida have rejected draconian restrictions while mostly disarmed states like California and New York might as well be Australia.
      - mwint 5y ago
        Add Idaho to the well-armed-and-free list. While we didn’t do quite as well as Florida on the non-draconian front, things were normal-ish here far before many other states. Though the correlation is heavily confounded, obviously. Red states by definition have a bunch of conservatives, who both despise lockdowns and are more likely to have guns. So it’s unclear how much firearms matter, strictly.
narrator 5y ago
I think the way things are headed, our governments have decided that freedom is obsolete. It is incompatible with preventing climate change. In the next couple of years, I predict a system will be brought in where all consumption will be need based regardless of income in order to prevent excess carbon emissions. This requires that there is no ownership of property and each person's consumption is carefully metered. "In the future you will own nothing and you will be happy", as the WEF has been saying. Adjustments can be made based on compliance (e.g social credit score). The first stage of this is lockdown until consumption is reduced to targeted levels via the ruse of insanely disproportionate coronavirus restrictions. After the vaccine passports are fully implemented, the system and its AI god can go to work rationing just enough to you to live. This is all pretty out in the open, they are just lying about how excited the world is to unconditionally embrace sustainability and equality of consumption as a guiding principle for all human activity. : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/klaus-schwab-christine-lagarde-covid-19-climate-change-inequality https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/klaus-schwab-christin...
- goodpoint 5y ago
  A hell of a strawman.
  - narrator 5y ago
    I used to keep all this stuff to myself. I considered it amusing speculation by some paranoid commentators, but now it's just rolling out relentlessly like clockwork. Klaus Schwab is going along saying COVID-19 is an enormous opportunity for us to "build back better.". Al Gore's "wrenching transformation of society" is finally here! The changes will happen and, due to social media control, there will be the perception that they are what all the citizens of the world wanted and demanded. We will be presented with the appearance that we are literally begging for our chains to be put on. There will be some good things that come out of it. The whole social hierarchy will be flattened. Since consumption will be strictly controlled no matter how much money you have, there will be very little social inequality and use of the planets resources will be based on not violating the laws and doing pro-social, pro-environment actions. For example, you will not be able to use transport unless there is an explicitly justified need. Foreign vacations will be eliminated. Luxury and recreational goods and foods will be a very rare indulgence, regardless of how much money you have. I'm just helping HN get ahead of the curve here. This stuff is steamrolling out so fast and effectively, especially in Australia that I can't think anyone can do anything to stop it. The funniest thing is watching North Korea's response to the pandemic. It's like they didn't have to change anything. They just rejected 3 million doses of donated vaccine! They also report 0 Coronavirus cases. It's like Kim is saying "hey guys, we're already at the finish line, we don't need that coronavirus panic to get there." https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/1/north-korea-reportedly-rejects-chinese-vaccine-dos/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/1/north-korea-...
calltrak 5y ago
We had a tyrannical problem with the police in the North of Ireland back in the day . What the police and politicians forget sometimes is,they have addresses too. How the Irish remedied their problem was to pop around to their house and shoot them dead or blow them up into a thousand peaces. Word soon got out. You can't really be a tough hard man tyrannical cop when your soup. Not saying its right but it did fix the problem. You could also send a letter to complain. Let me know how that works out for you.
- wallacoloo 5y ago
  This is the more impressive thing to me. It’s not just covid restrictions, but every quarter some bill gets passed that enrages massive groups who view it as illegitimate. But… it’s all just noise. People will vocally complain about it, mostly only to their peers, but with their actions, they just accept it. The title is interesting to me. How long can a system of law continue when large portions view new laws as illegitimate? In the near term, we all gain from stability and the vast majority lose out during any sort of upheaval. Still, I would expect more cracks where at least a few individuals get fed up become violent toward the imposers of the laws they view as illegitimate. That we see so little of that is honestly impressive to me.
- SnowProblem 5y ago
  1787: And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0... 2021: If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. - Joe Biden, https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-mocks-gun-right-advocates-who-say-assault-weapons-needed-fight-government-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-mocks-gun-right-advoca... Some people want you to forget this natural law.
  - 5y ago
WalterBright 5y ago
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I figure I may as well preempt the inevitable low effort comments pointing out he said that quote in defense of federal taxation. Yes, that's where that particular quote comes from but Franklin said the above quote a million different ways in various correspondence about all sorts of subjects.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Is right to murder an essential liberty?
  - wallacoloo 5y ago
    No, therefore I’m revoking your right to operate any motor vehicle within city limits. Christ. You can’t drop rhetoric like that and expect anyone to take it seriously or for it to lead anywhere productive. For one, it’s an outright broken metaphor. Murder implies intent; death caused by freedom of movement is incidental. Both the law and human psychology treat these differently. Is there some deeper conversation to be had about positive vs negative rights? Yes. But you’re never going to get there through bad faith rhetoric and broken metaphors.
    - erklik 5y ago
      > No, therefore I’m revoking your right to operate any motor vehicle within city limits. I largely agree with your statement that rhetoric isn't helpful. However, interestingly, Driving is a privilege (at least that's how it's framed in Australia) not a right, and you must pass tests to be allowed that privilege, and that privilege will be revoked if you misuse it.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      My point was that the quote is meaningless because "essential" is not defined. I'm not sure how this became specifically about driving vehicles. Many people use this quote to suggest any loss of freedom for security is unjust. But obviously we're all ok with restricting the right to straight up murder someone with your bare hands. Is it an essential freedom to not wear a mask? I think not. you may disagree. If is an essential freedom to leave your home? I'd say 99.999% of the time yes but exceptions do exist.
subsubzero 5y ago
I feel like many countries were pennywise and pound foolish with the pandemic. The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. Investing in vaccines/therapeutic treatments would have been a fraction of the cost and some countries just don't want to pay the tiny cost(compared to the alternative of complete lockdowns). You have the EU trying to pay the absolute minimum for vaccines(which contributed to their glacial rollout and extended lockdowns). And Australia with its minimal vaccine purchase. What is concerning is once a government thinks it can wield the power of extreme lockdowns it will never surrender said power. "We are doing this with your safety in mind, do not complain or deviate from our orders". Given a variant of covid seems to be popping up every 6-8 months would South Australia keep their population in perpetual lockdown, and forced use of that horrible app? Scary times we are living in now.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >I feel like many countries were pennywise and pound foolish with the pandemic. The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. A year and a half ago there were tons of people who agreed with you. Those people were told their opinions were unwelcome.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  >The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. Indeed when you look at it this way it doesn't make sense at all. Consider the possibility of vaccine passports leading to CBDCs, negative interest rates and perhaps even social credit scores. All of these are now possible thanks to the germ of the pandemic. Actors involved have been advocating for these solutions for more than a decade. For me, this makes more sense.
- nanis 5y ago
  > The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous There are people who did not leave their domiciles between March '20 and June '21. These people still got money deposited in their bank accounts, had invisible people deliver their food, and throw away their trash, and maintain the buildings they live in. All they saw were people on TV telling them how justified they were in their stance. They have no clue what impact anything has beyond their front-door.
opwieurposiu 5y ago
The Australian police beat and pepper sprayed a 12 year old girl they claim was not wearing a mask. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9755781/Covid-Western-Sydney-girl-12-pepper-sprayed-police-arrest-family-failing-wear-mask.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9755781/Covid-Weste...
- angry_octet 5y ago
  The Daily Mail UK is such an authoritative source on events in Australia.
  - stickyricky 5y ago
    Try watching the video...
    - angry_octet 5y ago
      The people are anti-vaxxers engaging in an anti-masking protest. Police arrive to arrest them, they resist, they are pepper sprayed. Pepper spray isn't a precise weapon, it spreads, so it isn't a surprise that others nearby get some. I really don't see any bad conduct by Police on the video. This is what the Police say: "About 4.20pm on Friday 2 July 2021, officers from Blacktown Police Area Command were conducting high-visibility patrols of a shopping centre at Prospect Hwy, Seven Hills, when they saw a woman in breach of the current Public Health Orders by not wearing a mask while indoors. Police asked the 20-year-old woman for identification; however, she refused. As police moved to arrest the woman, a 37-year-old woman approached and allegedly became aggressive towards police. Officers deployed OC spray to effect the arrest; the younger woman then allegedly kicked a senior constable to the legs and a probationary constable to the abdomen. Both women were taken to Blacktown Police Station where the younger woman was charged with not wear fitted face covering in retail/business premises, not comply with stay at home direction, two counts of assault officer in execution of duty, and resist officer in execution of duty. She was refused bail and appeared before Parramatta Local Court on 3 July 2021 and was granted conditional bail, to reappear before Blacktown Local Court on 12 July 2021. The older woman was charged with resist officer in execution of duty and granted conditional bail to appear before Blacktown Local Court 8 July 2021."
dd444fgdfg 5y ago
As an aussie, this is humiliating. Why is it the "free" countries of the world are letting this happen? The US is a tyrannical police state in trillions of dollars of debt, and in Australia they can just create whatever evidence they need. At least they don't tend to shoot us that often, yet.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Freedom and human rights are fair-weather friends.
dd444fgdfg 5y ago
Surely there has to come a point, in a free society like Australia, where the police say "no, we're not enforcing this". The US shows that this is unlikely though.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  In the US there seems to be a divide between rural law enforcement, usually a sheriff's department, and urban police forces when it comes to this type of thing. Perhaps because sheriffs are elected and police chiefs are typically appointed?
- zo1 5y ago
  A lot more free than say Germany in the 1930s? Personally, I think we underestimate the sheer size, scope and momentum behind the machine that is the state.
  - dd444fgdfg 5y ago
    ah, good that we've got a benchmark, we're good then
    - zo1 5y ago
      It's not a benchmark. It's a point to show that at some point individuals can't stop the giant machinery of the state even though individuals disagree. Some police tried in Germany, I'm sure, a lot of them died most likely and still look what managed to happen.
- grecy 5y ago
  Watching the protests in Sydney and Melbourne, it appears the Police are extreme eager to bring violence and force, and all too happy to enforce more and more.
  - LIV2 5y ago
    Sydney police are glad they can finally bash some heads in instead of checking train tickets
jleyank 5y ago
Well, WW II went on for 6 years and society seemed to recover from that. One could argue that the “wars of the 20th century” lasted in hot or cold form for 75 years and things seem functional. I think people have lost perspective along with willingness to help others. Most people have drivers licenses and health cards and face all sorts of restrictions which were deemed reasonable in 2019. And cell phone users constantly broadcast their location, interests and often their intentions without concern. Why masks?
- chii 5y ago
  > Why masks? a lot of anti-masking is due to the influence or propaganda via the right-wing media (such as fox news, or other murdoch media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_C...). I want to believe that this may be a form of infiltration and covert activity from foreign powers attempting to influence the west - after all democracy's weakest link are the people. But i can't be sure it is foreign, and not self-inflicted.
epgui 5y ago
This is pretty dumb. It is understood that governments encroaching on civil liberties is, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean it should never happen. It is understood that that limits on freedom of movement are, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean they should never be put in place. People seem to have "learned" these lessons from History... but "learned" is too generous a word: lessons from History (government controls are bad when they're not in everyone's best interest) are being transposed to contexts that don't apply (you may have heard that there's an infectious disease going around).
- benrbray 5y ago
  > It is understood that that limits on freedom of movement are, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean they should never be put in place. Yeah. The last year and a half has been a foray into the "gray areas" of our freedom that anti-maskers like to pretend doesn't exist. But if you take the argument about free travel to its logical end, we should have open borders between all nations and unrestricted migration. Of course, most of them are not on board with that idea, because one way or another we've agreed that restricting free travel serves the public interest. Covid is another instance where some countries have reached the same consensus.
  - chii 5y ago
    > we should have open borders between all nations and unrestricted migration we should definitely have that. This will single-handedly allow equality of opportunity to be realized. The problem is that most first world countries' people would be worse off under this scheme (with people from under-developed countries being better off).
    - spiralx 5y ago
      > This will single-handedly allow equality of opportunity to be realized. In the long-term and not entirely. I wonder what the effect in the short- to medium-term would be on poorer countries who presumably would see a lot more emigration of demographics who have the wealth and/or skills to move somewhere with more opportunity, the "brain drain" effect of the money spent on educating someone and the loss of future tax earnings from their employment is a problem that exists now after all. And again in the short- to medium-term how would unrestricted immigration play out? Immigrants are a net economic benefit to their new countries but does that hold for all amounts of immigration within a given time? It seems to me 500,000 immigrants in a single year is not equivalent to 50,000 immigrants each year over a decade even if in the long run the result is the same. > The problem is that most first world countries' people would be worse off under this scheme (with people from under-developed countries being better off). That's a very zero-sum way of looking at it. Globalisation and free trade have overall made the poorest countries a lot better off while also making the richer ones better off, shouldn't open borders do the same in the long-run? I'm not sure it would be good for countries though, which itself would have knock-on effects... TL;DR open borders and free migration are great, but I can see a shit-load of short-term pain were it to happen!
mehwoot 5y ago
What a lazy article. There's no conflict between a democracy and these sort of limits since none of it has prevented us from either voting or engaging in discussion of the restrictions. We will have the opportunity to vote both federally and at the state level on the leaders who have implemented these measures.
- smsm42 5y ago
  If you mean democracy as "direct democracy" which requires only a voting procedure (which btw is not the system used in the US) then yes, sure. I suspect most people, when they say "democracy", mean something slightly different - a political system which guarantees every citizen certain rights and freedoms, beyond the ability to vote. In democracy-as-voting certainly the amount of freedom may differ substantially - people could vote to oppress a minority, to ban free speech, even to murder people that dissent from the majority on any issue... it's all compatible with democracy-as-voting. It's certainly not compatible with democracy as political system we're used to in certain countries (usually called "Western model" though there are democratic countries now all over the globe, thankfully). I think that's what the article is about.
  - mehwoot 5y ago
    people could vote to oppress a minority, to ban free speech, even to murder people Voting to ban free speech wouldn't really be a democracy for long in any real sense. If you can't talk about the candidates openly you can't really say people are actually making an informed choice. I feel that a lot of what comes with the "Western Model" of democracy is there because if you don't hold those norms, things can slip into non democracy pretty easily. If you can ban free speech, impose curfews, legislate to murder people or oppress minorities- the political system will not be stable, and so long term it actually won't be a democracy. But any sane person can see that's not the case here. It truly is an exceptional circumstance, and there is no legitimate long term threat to Australia's democracy from collectively agreeing to impose a curfew in order to deal with a health crisis. The author is trying to conflate the two so you feel the uneasiness that you would if the government had a curfew to suppress unrest. But they're not the same.
codethief 5y ago
I'm not really surprised, illiberal tendencies have existed in Australia for a while, see e.g. the increasingly strict and rights-violating border checks: https://micky.com.au/aussie-ex-pat-will-never-return-after-digital-strip-search-reveals-sex-tapes/ https://micky.com.au/aussie-ex-pat-will-never-return-after-d...
angry_octet 5y ago
Conor might be the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, but if this is indicative of his level of writing he shouldn't be appearing in it. Instead he's writing about a subject he knows nothing about, save an afternoon's googling. Completely oblivious to the State/Federal power dynamics, some purile talk about freedoms, completely swallows the conservative spin about why Australia is so far behind in vaccination. When you read something in the Atlantic about another country, from a correspondant in the US, just know that it is a dog licking its balls level of analysis.
morpheos137 5y ago
When are people going to just accept that Covid is not going away and just get on with their lives? We have already given up almost two years to this chicken little stuff? Guess what? Everybody dies someday. If you are not elderly over weight or diabetic or unlucky then your risk of dying of covid is small. Get on with life get vaccinated if you want to and stop asking (no, coercing) others to cater to your paranoia.
- tayo42 5y ago
  the issue is unvaccinated people are hogging up healthcare resources. and the vaccine isn't being used on children yet. Really i wish we just stopped giving hospital spots to unvaccinated covid patients. I think then we would go back to "normal". For what ever reason decision makers keep trying be empathetic to people who can't be bothered to care about them selves
  - gizmo 5y ago
    What’s next? No hospital care for the obese or smokers? Do you realize how extreme your proposal is?
    - tayo42 5y ago
      Why does there need to be a what's next? It's pretty clear what the point is and the problem being addressed. No need to fall for a slippery slope here. You can get lung cancer, it could be from smoking, but it could also be from living in a city or next to a highway. if your in a hospital with covid its pretty much only because your unvaccinated at this point.
      - cheeseomlit 5y ago
        If you're obese and develop a heart disease that's a direct result of personal choices. By your own logic they should be denied service as well.
        5y ago
rodgerd 5y ago
I'm sorry, Americans, that you are culturally incapable of accepting other parts of the world may make trade-offs that are in favour of not having the mass-killings of our citizens. We don't think it's worth spree shooters murdering children by the school full to keep gun enthusiasts happy, and we're not keen on your example of a death toll greater than your famous civil war so we don't hurt your feelings by showing there's no good reason for it.
- tayo42 5y ago
  > I'm sorry, Americans, its fringe americans, internet commenters and corrupt politicians. There's a majority that agree with these kinds of ideas.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nl 5y ago
There is too much emphasis in this discussion on a plan to track a very small number of people who would normally be locked in hotel quarantine and not enough on this: As it turned out, the bet paid off. Had it behaved rationally and adequately valued liberty, a rich nation like Australia would have spent lavishly—before knowing which vaccines would turn out to be most effective—to secure an adequate supply of many options for its people. It could afford to eat the cost of any extra doses and donate them to poorer countries. Australia then could have marshaled its military and civil society to vaccinate the nation as quickly as possible, lifted restrictions more fully than Europe and the United States did, and argued that the combination of fewer deaths and the more rapid return to normalcy made their approach a net win. Instead, Australia invested inadequately in vaccines and, once it acquired doses, was too slow to get them into arms. “Of the 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that have been released to the government by manufacturer CSL, only about 8 million have gone into the arms of Australians” The federal government is incompetent and lazy and thought because they had dodged one bullet they were bullet proof.
ropable 5y ago
Reading the article makes me wonder how many close family members and friends the author might be willing to lose before deciding that a temporary requirement to wear masks out in public places is a reasonable step.
- grecy 5y ago
  For anyone that doesn't follow this line of reasoning, see this TV ad from the Australian Transport Accident Commission about road deaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2tOye9DKdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2tOye9DKdQ it's worth 1 minute of your time.
  - cfn 5y ago
    That is the most manipulative ad I have ever seen, straight out of some brainwashing manual. Any goverment should stay clear from using propaganda. This comes down to means and ends and the elitist thought that "we" know better than "them" where "them" are the unwashed masses. The citizens must be treated like responsible human beings and given the information and clear instructions on what is expected of them, not an emotion charged movie clip.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure at this point Australia is very far away from "temporary requirement to wear masks out in public places". And incidentally, the past couple of years shook the last bits of trust I had in the "establishment", and I mead media as much as politicians and administration. Saying that masks are useful was strongly discouraged in early 2020. Saying that the virus _might_ have passsed through a lab was actively censored on facebook. War on terror "exceptions" are still in place, and we've even left Afghanistan. Yeah, the risk of losing family members is beginning to look like the reasonable option here. No joke or hyperbole. Also, we have (plenty of) vaccines. Australia is sitting right now on a stockpile of millions. Vaccines reduce the risk of death to a pre-covid flu. This makes social appeals to obey moot - people already have a way to protect themselves. If for some reason the haven't (vaccine hesitancy for example), that's on each individual. No longer a social obligation to protect the vulnerable, like it was a year ago.
ohthehugemanate 5y ago
I'm surprised the article is about 1.5 year old COVID restrictions, and not 20 year old "war on terror" ones. The US has had standing "temporary" policies of imprisonment or assassination without trial, torture, and mass invasion of privacy for almost 20 years now. There are limitations on the rights to equal protection, to assistance of counsel in criminal prosecutions, and to open access to court hearings, which are simply accepted as status quo. Personally I would not argue that the US is not "free"... but if you want to talk about emergency limits of democracy encroaching upon that definition, IMO the War on Terror is a stronger argument.
- smsm42 5y ago
  War On Drugs is even worse, longer, still ongoing and still eroding civil liberties all the time. And it most brutally affects poor people, with all obvious consequences to that. Americans have largely accepted it - which paved way to "war on terror" also. "War on drugs" paved way to "war on terror", which paved way to "war on virus", which is now paving way to... I'm scared to think what. I'm sure we won't like it, but the same people would tell us it's absolutely necessary to temporarily sacrifice our freedoms... after all, we are in this together! We'll somehow never see those freedoms back.
  - ezoe 5y ago
    On War On Drugs, US has handy dogs which bark randomly or handy drug test kits which detect illegal drugs from thin air and tap water so the government can gain arbitrary probable cause to arrest anyone. So what do we expect from War on Virus? Bake test kits and concentration camp?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  These are good points. I would say the War on Drugs is the greatest moral wrong of our times (domestically). The War on Terror is a similar move. Let's work together to end both!
tastysandwich 5y ago
I live in Victoria. My wife and I are both fully vaccinated (AZ & Pfizer, respectively). Yet we are not allowed to sit at a park. We live in a small rural town, which for some reason is classified as "metro" for the purposes of lockdowns (never had a case here, mind you). When we go for a walk in the morning, with no people as far as the eye can see, we are by law required to wear masks. And the police are actively enforcing this and fining people for not wearing a mask in similar situations. My entire family (mum, dad, sister, in-laws) is also fully vaccinated, but we're not allowed to visit them either. I'm not sure why, but there is a fairly large (though diminishing at this point) group of people who will back to the hilt every single abrogation of freedoms perpetrated by this Government. You can find them at reddit.com/r/australia. They will dismiss and trivialise your concerns. "Get over it, it's just a mask lol! It's not too much to ask!" I suspect most of them live in the inner-city, where there's plenty to see within their 5km radius, and they have had steady work throughout the pandemic. For some people, it all adds up, and it is too much to ask. My brother-in-law has been out of work for most of this pandemic. We found out a year into the pandemic that while my sister-in-law has been going to work, he's been drinking bottles of gin every day. He took up bike riding and got _seriously_ into it. Then they announced the 5km limit, and his nice peaceful ride between this town & the next turned into boring loops. He relapsed on drinking shortly after. Recently, the state Government closed playgrounds, based on the erroneous belief that they were a source of transmission. To date they have produced zero evidence of a single case transmitted at a playground. Once again, concerns about this were trivialised. I saw on Reddit a bunch of people saying stuff like "I bought a little playground online and set it up in the backyard and my kids love it!" or "I gave them chalk and they're having a blast!", just trivialising any concerns people had about the closures. My wife is a teacher at a fairly rough school. It's all remote. A lot of her students come from troubled homes, and their behaviour reflects that. She works with a few of the boys to come up with "plans", stuff as simple as "when I feel really angry, I'll go for a BMX ride". Sounds silly but it really helps them blow off steam. Well all the bike parks are closed now. Should we blame these boys when they start smashing things instead? Many of her students are completely disconnecting from school. She rings their parents, and the parents either don't give a shit, or say stuff like "my child won't even get out of bed, I don't know what to do." There is a legitimate mental health crisis going on right now. My sister-in-law is a psychologist specialising in troubled kids. She says the self-harm and suicide is through the roof. And by the way, it doesn't help that she has to treat these kids remotely ("telehealth". She works from the clinic, but all the appointments are remote). Of all things needing face-to-face contact, you think this would be it! There's going to be a reckoning. I can feel it in the wind. A lot of the hardcore lockdown supporters are very loud, very vocal, and it can be intimidating to voice contrary opinions around them. But I see it when I walk the streets. I see it in family and friends. Public opinion has shifted, and people are very, very, fed up. We are quiet. But come election day, we will be heard.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Is the Atlantic full of absurdly out of touch propaganda or is it just the ones that get linked and upvoted here? I feel like they're reporting from a parallel ddimension, but I had this vague impression of them being a quality publication. Did they change or was I wrong?
- sothengo 5y ago
  Conor Friedersdorf is a self-declared libertarian (i.e. to the right of the fairly centre-left Atlantic). Usually his takes are fairly pragmatic given the libertarian title though he does begin to get a bit nutty the further things get from his front door.
andi999 5y ago
How does it work in practice in Aus, how do you get food during home quarantine. Here it is mushy, gov says ask a friend or a neighbour, but don't communicate if there is a reliable fallback.
LatteLazy 5y ago
On the other hand, Australia has spent a lot less time in lockdowns, a lot more with bars and restaurants, schools, churches etc open and had far fewer deaths per capita. Sounds pretty free and democratic to me.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
People on this Hacker News are totally supportive of this. Anything to stop Corona.
steve76 5y ago
How long can a democracy maintain emergency limits and still call itself free? Up to the point when laws and government stop being about limiting the violence, never adding to it. Instead they become a way for leadership and the powerful to do whatever they want, unrestrained from those laws. A chopped tree does not mean a sharp ax. An enslaved people does not mean the master can crack the whip. Their power derives from weak people. Once the people are strong, their power goes away. marxists say the only correct speech panders to power, and speech which unleashes the covid pandemic is allowed. marxists can't speak perfectly. They can't tell others how to speak perfectly. Russia's authoritarians and the jihadist leaders have no restraints. Give it enough time, barbarity returns and they tear each other apart. The ones unburdened without the facade of civilization have the advantage. They would be better off dropping the charade and openly saying it's no holds battle royale on the Serengeti. Liberal democracies with their protected classes through mob rule are arbitrary. Popularity fails against contradictions, impossibilities, and dissolution. You are more focused on giving bin Laden a vote and appeasement through celebrity than you are in doing your job. You end up attacking your own for money and power. Are leaders restrained by laws to limit violence? Is life there for people to live it, instead of people being some piece of inventory to be chewed up and spit out? If not, don't do it. Go away.
f3rnando 5y ago
It's all about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation

239 points by nanis 5y ago

> People in South Australia 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. Let's see: * Forced to download an app by the state * Forced to jump when the state says "jump!" * Acceding to the concept that there is a state-sanctioned place where everyone is supposed to be (prison colony?) * Acceding to whatever punishment the police may decide to mete out for failing to confirm that one is where one is supposed to be even if one is already there That's the thing with slippery slopes. The farther you go down, the more impossible it becomes to climb back up.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Heh. Score one for not having a smart phone...
- nanis 5y ago
  Presumably, the government can declare not owning a smart phone to be intent to violate the law and force people to purchase & pay for the requisite tracking device. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831800
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Dumb phones can also be geolocated.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    OK. But still, people with no phones can't be.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Landlines are even easier to geolocate...
js2 5y ago
It’s a trade-off: > In return for trading away their liberty, Australians gained a huge safety dividend. COVID-19 has killed 194 of every 100,000 Americans, 77 of every 100,000 Israelis, and only four of every 100,000 Australians. That low death toll is a tremendous upside. What remains to be seen is whether Australia can maintain that performance without permanently ending core attributes of life in a liberal democracy, including freedom of movement, peaceable assembly, and basic privacy. We’re still in the middle of this. If we could have nice things, these restrictions wouldn’t need to be enforced. We’ll have to see what happens once the country is adequately vaccinated.
- throwawayay02 5y ago
  I didn't know the goal of life was to live the longest, even if in prison. You might want to invest in cryogenic sleep.
  - grecy 5y ago
    A big goal of my life is to be alive, not dead. There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well.
    - serf 5y ago
      >There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well. the idea that the difference in death rate is due to some intrinsic policy or mandated behavior rather than something more simple like population density/metropolis commonality/average temperature/humidity, etc seems like a pretty big leap -- and that seems to be your point , no? is there already some big comprehensive list of social policies that provably worked to reduce death rate during the covid-19 pandemic across the board with environmental factors normalized out? I thought we were still in the middle of this experiment, but i'd love to see some data if it exists.
      - 5y ago
eplanit 5y ago
That's not a slope, but a cliff -- and they've gone over it. What has amazed me is how there are many Aussie's who agree with the rules and are happy to comply. It's amazing.
- azinman2 5y ago
  And consequently their Covid numbers are very low.
  - techbio 5y ago
    When a measure becomes a target...
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      Wisdom becomes a platitude when repeated without specific comments about relevance.
      - techbio 5y ago
        It is relevant in the context of the message thread it replies to. If you do think my reply was unwise, I'd be happy to have your explanation for why you think that, but I am fairly certain that platitude is the wrong word here. Maybe you mean something like "played out", but then that would seem to be just your opinion.
        edmundsauto 5y ago
        Why do you think this measure is a target? It is possible for a measure to become a target and still remain useful - a few catchy words that describe some situations doesn't give any indication of an analysis of the process, or even define the difference between a measure and a target, or any indication that is what's happening here. Some measures become targets, sometimes. Sometimes those become less useful; other times they are both useful and not useful in different ways. Determining when something is useful is too nuanced and multi-dimensional to reduce it to a catchy phrase.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
What happens if you just don't do it but are where you're supposed to be?
- NamTaf 5y ago
  You probably cop a fine
- kov2rx 5y ago
  they’ll lock you up in the secret deep state dungeon and force you to watch Bubble Boy over and over
0xbadc0de5 5y ago
Completely unrelated - an inexpensive Software Define Radio (SDR) and GPS simulator code (https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim) can quickly and reliably spoof cell phone GPS to any location you desire.
- xmodem 5y ago
  Please do not do this. You will get SDR outlawed for everyone.
  - water8 5y ago
    That genie is already out of the bottle
lifty 5y ago
I keep mentioning this like a broken record. In most western democracies we have a disconnect from the will of the people and what legislation gets implemented, caused by representative democracy. We need a more direct way for people to influence policy. If the majority of people vote to implement something, the rest of the people will have an easier time accepting it if they know the process is fair and genuine.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Term limits. Politics should not be a viable career option.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    You would need to apply the limits to everyone involved in politics not just elected representatives. Otherwise the power will simply shift to the backroom boys, well shift further to them.
  - lifty 5y ago
    Term limits are not sufficient and it becomes difficult to get enough politicians with experience. We need a combination of direct democracy and liquid democracy so that people can vote directly on some big issue and quickly shift to a different representative when needed, for legislation that gets implemented through representation.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    This would likely have an intended consequence: unelected representatives would have their power increase. If elected officials are rotating in and out of Washington faster, they will rely more on the power brokers.
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      you could also rotate them inside the government, it's what ive heard japan does, but not sure about the details. Essentially let's say you are responsible for helping run ministry of finance, and then you are rotated out to manage some rural agriculture thing, and so on.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Doesn't Taiwan use something similar? Except that, if memory serves, they don't require an app to be installed they just require the network operator to geo-fence the mobile phone and notify the user if they stray from home and the authorities if the user doesn't return home after being reminded. Seems unnecessary to use an app when the network can triangulate pretty well in densely populated areas.
- unearth3d 5y ago
  Australia is consciously weaponing covid, everything now is performative inhumanity. Country becoming a Pentecostal theocracy (Dominionists aka christo-fascists), I genuinely fear for my neighboring country.
sparrish 5y ago
All this made possible because they disarmed the populace first. The second amendment is holding this back from happening in the US.
- Theory5 5y ago
  No, it's not.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  How is your second amendment helping you deal with NSA, illegal no-fly lists, police brutality, etc? It doesn't, its just a power fantasy. There are plenty of 'disatmed' countriss with just as much or more liberty
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Yeah. People talk about second amendment solutions, and I wonder exactly what line needs to be crossed for that to come into play. My guess is nothing will ever be egregious enough. It's all BS.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Not knowing where the line is is itself a line.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Second Amendment gives the population a chance against the government. No guns the population has no chance and the government can do anything they want.
- lagadu 5y ago
  Ah, the famous second amendment, meant to allow the people to prevent a hostile takeover of the government. Funny thing is, all the people who are most fervent about it are the people who think trump won the election and yet they lay down and took the loss, the exact thing that the amendment is supposed to prevent, like impotent little children. What a very effective amendment! /s
Turing_Machine 5y ago
A Bentham panopticon without the expense of having to actually build one. How lovely. Stalin would be pleased.
davesmylie 5y ago
You are being deliberately (maliciously?) misleading and scare mongering here. This only applies to specific people in home quarantine and only for a short period of time - 14 days. i.e people that have returned to the country from overseas that would normally be in quarantine in a government facility for that same period. People now have the option of quarantining at home, and if they choose to do so, have to show that they are quarantining at home rather than saying they will, and then heading off into town and infecting others. (As many people have done). You are trying to portray this as something being forced on all citizens, indefinitely when that couldn't be further from reality.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nanis 5y ago
  > You are being deliberately (maliciously?) misleading and scare mongering here. ... > people that have returned to the country I do not know who's being deliberately misleading here. Please note[1]: > It will start this week for people returning from New South Wales and Victoria. > People wanting to return to South Australia and home quarantine will have to apply to SA Health. So this is clearly applicable to Australian citizens within Australia. Citizens of Australia are not allowed to move freely within Australia. Before an Australian citizen can travel from one part of Australia to another part of Australia, they have to ask the government to allow them to do so. They must accede to the points I listed. After that the government will expand the program to international travelers. Once a populace accepts that they are not allowed travel and that the government can arbitrarily place people under house arrest and subject to torture (and knowledge of random intrusions into your life can happen at any time - even during a long, relaxing shower or something is psychological torture), there isn't much that will stop people with the power from expanding their control. [1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-australias-home-quarantine-trial-work/100398878 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-austra...
  - closeparen 5y ago
    Sanitation is one of the most basic premises of civilization. Better question is how a government could claim any legitimacy while allowing infectious diseases to freely circulate.
bitwize 5y ago
That's some shit that Keith Raniere of NXIVM fame did to his "slaves" (and had them do to their subordinates). I love Australians but right now? Fuck Australia.
abrazame 5y ago
It's worth noting how little debate there was (or is) on any of this here in Australia, by the by. The government decides this is happening, and the media cheer them on. Any critical voice is instantly branded anti-science, told they don't care about lives, etc. The opposition parties, if anything, want more of it (irrespective of whether they're left or right in a given state). We're a reasonably small country, so often the media and the politicians know one another rather well (revolving doors, small social circles, etc), but it honestly doesn't feel like we have a free and critical media or opposition at all right now. PS: Watch this short clip for an idea of what news looks like in Australia at the moment: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1429786126815010820 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1429786126815010820
- president 5y ago
  > Any critical voice is instantly branded anti-science This has been the fishiest thing for me during the entire pandemic. It seems the slightest questioning of the mainstream narrative results in censorship. Even pointing this out can result in censorship or people lashing out.
  - SamTwardowski 5y ago
    We are in the midst of a holiness spiral and you dare question the cargo cult science at the center of all of this? It's never safe to be a heretic in the midst of a holiness spiral.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    I honestly blame the right wing for making belief in outrageous conspiracies so commonplace that lower tier manipulations just slip through.
  - morpheos137 5y ago
    People prefer safety to abstract concepts like democracy or free speech.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > the media cheer them on These four points seem to be in contradiction with each other: 1. Most of Australia's media supports the lockdowns 2. Most of Australia's media is owned by Rupert Murdoch 3. Rupert Murdoch's media is right-wing 4. The right wing opposes the lockdowns Yet I hear combinations of those points all the time. What's happening here?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
What's the deal with Australia and these authoritharian laws? Last time they passed a law forcing companies to ship malware to their customers on behalf of law enforcement. Now this.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  1. There is a conservative government in power, and the Murdoch press for the time being wants them to stay in power so they shape the message and direct attention elsewhere. A labor government would be less successful introducing similar laws 2. Australians overall are less frightened of their government. Any Indigenous Australians on hn can attest that does not mean everybody is safe from state violence. Police still kill people, power is still abused, but comparing my life in the US and in Australia, most people experience the government as being more benign, and helpful than people in general experience in the US. It's not black and white, its just a few nudges along on a spectrum of grey. So most people are viewing the these laws as clumsy collective effort that they do not imagine will be abused. There are many things that can be said about the problems with this view, but the acceptance of these laws does come from a reactionary hard line position, but rather that people find it hard to imagine that they will be abused
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Not any more right?
    - monkeycantype 5y ago
      Oh you can find a long history of everything being abused. But by and large, the Australian born, non Indigenous population, only imagine it will ever be abused against other people
iamthemonster 5y ago
I think I'll happily take our freedom from the virus, where we can live and work unmasked. Our pubs and restaurants are packed with people having fun, not having to worry about whether they'll be one of the hundreds of thousands dead.
MonkeyClub 5y ago
> * Acceding to the concept that there is a state-sanctioned place where everyone is supposed to be (prison colony?) We're talking about Australia, after all.

josephcsible 5y ago

> The state of Victoria announced a curfew and suspended its Parliament for key parts of the pandemic. “To put this in context, federal and state parliaments sat during both world wars and the Spanish Flu, and curfews have never been imposed,” the scholar John Lee observed in an article for the Brookings Institution. The Spanish Flu was unquestionably more dangerous than COVID is. What changed in society that so many people are now willing to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety?

djbebs 5y ago
They were disarmed.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  There are similar restrictions being imposed without much pushback in many well armed countries around the world. I think it has more to do with everyone now getting so much of their information about the world from little handheld 24/7 psyop machines. There also wouldn't have been nearly so much acceptance of lockdowns if large swaths of people weren't able to continue earning a good living working entirely from home, something which really only became possible over the past 10 or 20 years. On a deeper level, I think many people in our modern civilization are in the grip of a paralyzing denial and fear of death, which makes it easier to corral them in one direction or another by just gesturing at the possibility of it.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > in many well armed countries I assume you're referring the United States - it's worth noting that the well-armed states like Texas and Florida have rejected draconian restrictions while mostly disarmed states like California and New York might as well be Australia.
    - mwint 5y ago
      Add Idaho to the well-armed-and-free list. While we didn’t do quite as well as Florida on the non-draconian front, things were normal-ish here far before many other states. Though the correlation is heavily confounded, obviously. Red states by definition have a bunch of conservatives, who both despise lockdowns and are more likely to have guns. So it’s unclear how much firearms matter, strictly.

narrator 5y ago

I think the way things are headed, our governments have decided that freedom is obsolete. It is incompatible with preventing climate change. In the next couple of years, I predict a system will be brought in where all consumption will be need based regardless of income in order to prevent excess carbon emissions. This requires that there is no ownership of property and each person's consumption is carefully metered. "In the future you will own nothing and you will be happy", as the WEF has been saying. Adjustments can be made based on compliance (e.g social credit score). The first stage of this is lockdown until consumption is reduced to targeted levels via the ruse of insanely disproportionate coronavirus restrictions. After the vaccine passports are fully implemented, the system and its AI god can go to work rationing just enough to you to live. This is all pretty out in the open, they are just lying about how excited the world is to unconditionally embrace sustainability and equality of consumption as a guiding principle for all human activity. : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/klaus-schwab-christine-lagarde-covid-19-climate-change-inequality https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/klaus-schwab-christin...

goodpoint 5y ago
A hell of a strawman.
- narrator 5y ago
  I used to keep all this stuff to myself. I considered it amusing speculation by some paranoid commentators, but now it's just rolling out relentlessly like clockwork. Klaus Schwab is going along saying COVID-19 is an enormous opportunity for us to "build back better.". Al Gore's "wrenching transformation of society" is finally here! The changes will happen and, due to social media control, there will be the perception that they are what all the citizens of the world wanted and demanded. We will be presented with the appearance that we are literally begging for our chains to be put on. There will be some good things that come out of it. The whole social hierarchy will be flattened. Since consumption will be strictly controlled no matter how much money you have, there will be very little social inequality and use of the planets resources will be based on not violating the laws and doing pro-social, pro-environment actions. For example, you will not be able to use transport unless there is an explicitly justified need. Foreign vacations will be eliminated. Luxury and recreational goods and foods will be a very rare indulgence, regardless of how much money you have. I'm just helping HN get ahead of the curve here. This stuff is steamrolling out so fast and effectively, especially in Australia that I can't think anyone can do anything to stop it. The funniest thing is watching North Korea's response to the pandemic. It's like they didn't have to change anything. They just rejected 3 million doses of donated vaccine! They also report 0 Coronavirus cases. It's like Kim is saying "hey guys, we're already at the finish line, we don't need that coronavirus panic to get there." https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/1/north-korea-reportedly-rejects-chinese-vaccine-dos/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/1/north-korea-...

calltrak 5y ago

We had a tyrannical problem with the police in the North of Ireland back in the day . What the police and politicians forget sometimes is,they have addresses too. How the Irish remedied their problem was to pop around to their house and shoot them dead or blow them up into a thousand peaces. Word soon got out. You can't really be a tough hard man tyrannical cop when your soup. Not saying its right but it did fix the problem. You could also send a letter to complain. Let me know how that works out for you.

wallacoloo 5y ago
This is the more impressive thing to me. It’s not just covid restrictions, but every quarter some bill gets passed that enrages massive groups who view it as illegitimate. But… it’s all just noise. People will vocally complain about it, mostly only to their peers, but with their actions, they just accept it. The title is interesting to me. How long can a system of law continue when large portions view new laws as illegitimate? In the near term, we all gain from stability and the vast majority lose out during any sort of upheaval. Still, I would expect more cracks where at least a few individuals get fed up become violent toward the imposers of the laws they view as illegitimate. That we see so little of that is honestly impressive to me.
SnowProblem 5y ago
1787: And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0... 2021: If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. - Joe Biden, https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-mocks-gun-right-advocates-who-say-assault-weapons-needed-fight-government-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-mocks-gun-right-advoca... Some people want you to forget this natural law.
- 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
I figure I may as well preempt the inevitable low effort comments pointing out he said that quote in defense of federal taxation. Yes, that's where that particular quote comes from but Franklin said the above quote a million different ways in various correspondence about all sorts of subjects.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Is right to murder an essential liberty?
- wallacoloo 5y ago
  No, therefore I’m revoking your right to operate any motor vehicle within city limits. Christ. You can’t drop rhetoric like that and expect anyone to take it seriously or for it to lead anywhere productive. For one, it’s an outright broken metaphor. Murder implies intent; death caused by freedom of movement is incidental. Both the law and human psychology treat these differently. Is there some deeper conversation to be had about positive vs negative rights? Yes. But you’re never going to get there through bad faith rhetoric and broken metaphors.
  - erklik 5y ago
    > No, therefore I’m revoking your right to operate any motor vehicle within city limits. I largely agree with your statement that rhetoric isn't helpful. However, interestingly, Driving is a privilege (at least that's how it's framed in Australia) not a right, and you must pass tests to be allowed that privilege, and that privilege will be revoked if you misuse it.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    My point was that the quote is meaningless because "essential" is not defined. I'm not sure how this became specifically about driving vehicles. Many people use this quote to suggest any loss of freedom for security is unjust. But obviously we're all ok with restricting the right to straight up murder someone with your bare hands. Is it an essential freedom to not wear a mask? I think not. you may disagree. If is an essential freedom to leave your home? I'd say 99.999% of the time yes but exceptions do exist.

subsubzero 5y ago

I feel like many countries were pennywise and pound foolish with the pandemic. The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. Investing in vaccines/therapeutic treatments would have been a fraction of the cost and some countries just don't want to pay the tiny cost(compared to the alternative of complete lockdowns). You have the EU trying to pay the absolute minimum for vaccines(which contributed to their glacial rollout and extended lockdowns). And Australia with its minimal vaccine purchase. What is concerning is once a government thinks it can wield the power of extreme lockdowns it will never surrender said power. "We are doing this with your safety in mind, do not complain or deviate from our orders". Given a variant of covid seems to be popping up every 6-8 months would South Australia keep their population in perpetual lockdown, and forced use of that horrible app? Scary times we are living in now.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>I feel like many countries were pennywise and pound foolish with the pandemic. The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. A year and a half ago there were tons of people who agreed with you. Those people were told their opinions were unwelcome.
aww_dang 5y ago
>The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous, trillions lost from business being stopped, emotional scars that will last decades if not a lifetime for a majority involved. Indeed when you look at it this way it doesn't make sense at all. Consider the possibility of vaccine passports leading to CBDCs, negative interest rates and perhaps even social credit scores. All of these are now possible thanks to the germ of the pandemic. Actors involved have been advocating for these solutions for more than a decade. For me, this makes more sense.
nanis 5y ago
> The cost to shut down a society and keep everyone locked down is tremendous There are people who did not leave their domiciles between March '20 and June '21. These people still got money deposited in their bank accounts, had invisible people deliver their food, and throw away their trash, and maintain the buildings they live in. All they saw were people on TV telling them how justified they were in their stance. They have no clue what impact anything has beyond their front-door.

opwieurposiu 5y ago

The Australian police beat and pepper sprayed a 12 year old girl they claim was not wearing a mask. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9755781/Covid-Western-Sydney-girl-12-pepper-sprayed-police-arrest-family-failing-wear-mask.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9755781/Covid-Weste...

angry_octet 5y ago
The Daily Mail UK is such an authoritative source on events in Australia.
- stickyricky 5y ago
  Try watching the video...
  - angry_octet 5y ago
    The people are anti-vaxxers engaging in an anti-masking protest. Police arrive to arrest them, they resist, they are pepper sprayed. Pepper spray isn't a precise weapon, it spreads, so it isn't a surprise that others nearby get some. I really don't see any bad conduct by Police on the video. This is what the Police say: "About 4.20pm on Friday 2 July 2021, officers from Blacktown Police Area Command were conducting high-visibility patrols of a shopping centre at Prospect Hwy, Seven Hills, when they saw a woman in breach of the current Public Health Orders by not wearing a mask while indoors. Police asked the 20-year-old woman for identification; however, she refused. As police moved to arrest the woman, a 37-year-old woman approached and allegedly became aggressive towards police. Officers deployed OC spray to effect the arrest; the younger woman then allegedly kicked a senior constable to the legs and a probationary constable to the abdomen. Both women were taken to Blacktown Police Station where the younger woman was charged with not wear fitted face covering in retail/business premises, not comply with stay at home direction, two counts of assault officer in execution of duty, and resist officer in execution of duty. She was refused bail and appeared before Parramatta Local Court on 3 July 2021 and was granted conditional bail, to reappear before Blacktown Local Court on 12 July 2021. The older woman was charged with resist officer in execution of duty and granted conditional bail to appear before Blacktown Local Court 8 July 2021."

dd444fgdfg 5y ago

As an aussie, this is humiliating. Why is it the "free" countries of the world are letting this happen? The US is a tyrannical police state in trillions of dollars of debt, and in Australia they can just create whatever evidence they need. At least they don't tend to shoot us that often, yet.

exporectomy 5y ago
Freedom and human rights are fair-weather friends.

dd444fgdfg 5y ago

Surely there has to come a point, in a free society like Australia, where the police say "no, we're not enforcing this". The US shows that this is unlikely though.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
In the US there seems to be a divide between rural law enforcement, usually a sheriff's department, and urban police forces when it comes to this type of thing. Perhaps because sheriffs are elected and police chiefs are typically appointed?
zo1 5y ago
A lot more free than say Germany in the 1930s? Personally, I think we underestimate the sheer size, scope and momentum behind the machine that is the state.
- dd444fgdfg 5y ago
  ah, good that we've got a benchmark, we're good then
  - zo1 5y ago
    It's not a benchmark. It's a point to show that at some point individuals can't stop the giant machinery of the state even though individuals disagree. Some police tried in Germany, I'm sure, a lot of them died most likely and still look what managed to happen.
grecy 5y ago
Watching the protests in Sydney and Melbourne, it appears the Police are extreme eager to bring violence and force, and all too happy to enforce more and more.
- LIV2 5y ago
  Sydney police are glad they can finally bash some heads in instead of checking train tickets

jleyank 5y ago

Well, WW II went on for 6 years and society seemed to recover from that. One could argue that the “wars of the 20th century” lasted in hot or cold form for 75 years and things seem functional. I think people have lost perspective along with willingness to help others. Most people have drivers licenses and health cards and face all sorts of restrictions which were deemed reasonable in 2019. And cell phone users constantly broadcast their location, interests and often their intentions without concern. Why masks?

chii 5y ago
> Why masks? a lot of anti-masking is due to the influence or propaganda via the right-wing media (such as fox news, or other murdoch media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_C...). I want to believe that this may be a form of infiltration and covert activity from foreign powers attempting to influence the west - after all democracy's weakest link are the people. But i can't be sure it is foreign, and not self-inflicted.

epgui 5y ago

This is pretty dumb. It is understood that governments encroaching on civil liberties is, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean it should never happen. It is understood that that limits on freedom of movement are, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean they should never be put in place. People seem to have "learned" these lessons from History... but "learned" is too generous a word: lessons from History (government controls are bad when they're not in everyone's best interest) are being transposed to contexts that don't apply (you may have heard that there's an infectious disease going around).

benrbray 5y ago
> It is understood that that limits on freedom of movement are, generally speaking, a bad thing. This doesn't mean they should never be put in place. Yeah. The last year and a half has been a foray into the "gray areas" of our freedom that anti-maskers like to pretend doesn't exist. But if you take the argument about free travel to its logical end, we should have open borders between all nations and unrestricted migration. Of course, most of them are not on board with that idea, because one way or another we've agreed that restricting free travel serves the public interest. Covid is another instance where some countries have reached the same consensus.
- chii 5y ago
  > we should have open borders between all nations and unrestricted migration we should definitely have that. This will single-handedly allow equality of opportunity to be realized. The problem is that most first world countries' people would be worse off under this scheme (with people from under-developed countries being better off).
  - spiralx 5y ago
    > This will single-handedly allow equality of opportunity to be realized. In the long-term and not entirely. I wonder what the effect in the short- to medium-term would be on poorer countries who presumably would see a lot more emigration of demographics who have the wealth and/or skills to move somewhere with more opportunity, the "brain drain" effect of the money spent on educating someone and the loss of future tax earnings from their employment is a problem that exists now after all. And again in the short- to medium-term how would unrestricted immigration play out? Immigrants are a net economic benefit to their new countries but does that hold for all amounts of immigration within a given time? It seems to me 500,000 immigrants in a single year is not equivalent to 50,000 immigrants each year over a decade even if in the long run the result is the same. > The problem is that most first world countries' people would be worse off under this scheme (with people from under-developed countries being better off). That's a very zero-sum way of looking at it. Globalisation and free trade have overall made the poorest countries a lot better off while also making the richer ones better off, shouldn't open borders do the same in the long-run? I'm not sure it would be good for countries though, which itself would have knock-on effects... TL;DR open borders and free migration are great, but I can see a shit-load of short-term pain were it to happen!

mehwoot 5y ago

What a lazy article. There's no conflict between a democracy and these sort of limits since none of it has prevented us from either voting or engaging in discussion of the restrictions. We will have the opportunity to vote both federally and at the state level on the leaders who have implemented these measures.

smsm42 5y ago
If you mean democracy as "direct democracy" which requires only a voting procedure (which btw is not the system used in the US) then yes, sure. I suspect most people, when they say "democracy", mean something slightly different - a political system which guarantees every citizen certain rights and freedoms, beyond the ability to vote. In democracy-as-voting certainly the amount of freedom may differ substantially - people could vote to oppress a minority, to ban free speech, even to murder people that dissent from the majority on any issue... it's all compatible with democracy-as-voting. It's certainly not compatible with democracy as political system we're used to in certain countries (usually called "Western model" though there are democratic countries now all over the globe, thankfully). I think that's what the article is about.
- mehwoot 5y ago
  people could vote to oppress a minority, to ban free speech, even to murder people Voting to ban free speech wouldn't really be a democracy for long in any real sense. If you can't talk about the candidates openly you can't really say people are actually making an informed choice. I feel that a lot of what comes with the "Western Model" of democracy is there because if you don't hold those norms, things can slip into non democracy pretty easily. If you can ban free speech, impose curfews, legislate to murder people or oppress minorities- the political system will not be stable, and so long term it actually won't be a democracy. But any sane person can see that's not the case here. It truly is an exceptional circumstance, and there is no legitimate long term threat to Australia's democracy from collectively agreeing to impose a curfew in order to deal with a health crisis. The author is trying to conflate the two so you feel the uneasiness that you would if the government had a curfew to suppress unrest. But they're not the same.

codethief 5y ago

I'm not really surprised, illiberal tendencies have existed in Australia for a while, see e.g. the increasingly strict and rights-violating border checks: https://micky.com.au/aussie-ex-pat-will-never-return-after-digital-strip-search-reveals-sex-tapes/ https://micky.com.au/aussie-ex-pat-will-never-return-after-d...

angry_octet 5y ago

Conor might be the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, but if this is indicative of his level of writing he shouldn't be appearing in it. Instead he's writing about a subject he knows nothing about, save an afternoon's googling. Completely oblivious to the State/Federal power dynamics, some purile talk about freedoms, completely swallows the conservative spin about why Australia is so far behind in vaccination. When you read something in the Atlantic about another country, from a correspondant in the US, just know that it is a dog licking its balls level of analysis.

morpheos137 5y ago

When are people going to just accept that Covid is not going away and just get on with their lives? We have already given up almost two years to this chicken little stuff? Guess what? Everybody dies someday. If you are not elderly over weight or diabetic or unlucky then your risk of dying of covid is small. Get on with life get vaccinated if you want to and stop asking (no, coercing) others to cater to your paranoia.

tayo42 5y ago
the issue is unvaccinated people are hogging up healthcare resources. and the vaccine isn't being used on children yet. Really i wish we just stopped giving hospital spots to unvaccinated covid patients. I think then we would go back to "normal". For what ever reason decision makers keep trying be empathetic to people who can't be bothered to care about them selves
- gizmo 5y ago
  What’s next? No hospital care for the obese or smokers? Do you realize how extreme your proposal is?
  - tayo42 5y ago
    Why does there need to be a what's next? It's pretty clear what the point is and the problem being addressed. No need to fall for a slippery slope here. You can get lung cancer, it could be from smoking, but it could also be from living in a city or next to a highway. if your in a hospital with covid its pretty much only because your unvaccinated at this point.
    - cheeseomlit 5y ago
      If you're obese and develop a heart disease that's a direct result of personal choices. By your own logic they should be denied service as well.
      - 5y ago

rodgerd 5y ago

I'm sorry, Americans, that you are culturally incapable of accepting other parts of the world may make trade-offs that are in favour of not having the mass-killings of our citizens. We don't think it's worth spree shooters murdering children by the school full to keep gun enthusiasts happy, and we're not keen on your example of a death toll greater than your famous civil war so we don't hurt your feelings by showing there's no good reason for it.

tayo42 5y ago
> I'm sorry, Americans, its fringe americans, internet commenters and corrupt politicians. There's a majority that agree with these kinds of ideas.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nl 5y ago

There is too much emphasis in this discussion on a plan to track a very small number of people who would normally be locked in hotel quarantine and not enough on this: As it turned out, the bet paid off. Had it behaved rationally and adequately valued liberty, a rich nation like Australia would have spent lavishly—before knowing which vaccines would turn out to be most effective—to secure an adequate supply of many options for its people. It could afford to eat the cost of any extra doses and donate them to poorer countries. Australia then could have marshaled its military and civil society to vaccinate the nation as quickly as possible, lifted restrictions more fully than Europe and the United States did, and argued that the combination of fewer deaths and the more rapid return to normalcy made their approach a net win. Instead, Australia invested inadequately in vaccines and, once it acquired doses, was too slow to get them into arms. “Of the 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that have been released to the government by manufacturer CSL, only about 8 million have gone into the arms of Australians” The federal government is incompetent and lazy and thought because they had dodged one bullet they were bullet proof.

ropable 5y ago

Reading the article makes me wonder how many close family members and friends the author might be willing to lose before deciding that a temporary requirement to wear masks out in public places is a reasonable step.

grecy 5y ago
For anyone that doesn't follow this line of reasoning, see this TV ad from the Australian Transport Accident Commission about road deaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2tOye9DKdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2tOye9DKdQ it's worth 1 minute of your time.
- cfn 5y ago
  That is the most manipulative ad I have ever seen, straight out of some brainwashing manual. Any goverment should stay clear from using propaganda. This comes down to means and ends and the elitist thought that "we" know better than "them" where "them" are the unwashed masses. The citizens must be treated like responsible human beings and given the information and clear instructions on what is expected of them, not an emotion charged movie clip.
radu_floricica 5y ago
I'm pretty sure at this point Australia is very far away from "temporary requirement to wear masks out in public places". And incidentally, the past couple of years shook the last bits of trust I had in the "establishment", and I mead media as much as politicians and administration. Saying that masks are useful was strongly discouraged in early 2020. Saying that the virus _might_ have passsed through a lab was actively censored on facebook. War on terror "exceptions" are still in place, and we've even left Afghanistan. Yeah, the risk of losing family members is beginning to look like the reasonable option here. No joke or hyperbole. Also, we have (plenty of) vaccines. Australia is sitting right now on a stockpile of millions. Vaccines reduce the risk of death to a pre-covid flu. This makes social appeals to obey moot - people already have a way to protect themselves. If for some reason the haven't (vaccine hesitancy for example), that's on each individual. No longer a social obligation to protect the vulnerable, like it was a year ago.

ohthehugemanate 5y ago

I'm surprised the article is about 1.5 year old COVID restrictions, and not 20 year old "war on terror" ones. The US has had standing "temporary" policies of imprisonment or assassination without trial, torture, and mass invasion of privacy for almost 20 years now. There are limitations on the rights to equal protection, to assistance of counsel in criminal prosecutions, and to open access to court hearings, which are simply accepted as status quo. Personally I would not argue that the US is not "free"... but if you want to talk about emergency limits of democracy encroaching upon that definition, IMO the War on Terror is a stronger argument.

smsm42 5y ago
War On Drugs is even worse, longer, still ongoing and still eroding civil liberties all the time. And it most brutally affects poor people, with all obvious consequences to that. Americans have largely accepted it - which paved way to "war on terror" also. "War on drugs" paved way to "war on terror", which paved way to "war on virus", which is now paving way to... I'm scared to think what. I'm sure we won't like it, but the same people would tell us it's absolutely necessary to temporarily sacrifice our freedoms... after all, we are in this together! We'll somehow never see those freedoms back.
- ezoe 5y ago
  On War On Drugs, US has handy dogs which bark randomly or handy drug test kits which detect illegal drugs from thin air and tap water so the government can gain arbitrary probable cause to arrest anyone. So what do we expect from War on Virus? Bake test kits and concentration camp?
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
These are good points. I would say the War on Drugs is the greatest moral wrong of our times (domestically). The War on Terror is a similar move. Let's work together to end both!

tastysandwich 5y ago

I live in Victoria. My wife and I are both fully vaccinated (AZ & Pfizer, respectively). Yet we are not allowed to sit at a park. We live in a small rural town, which for some reason is classified as "metro" for the purposes of lockdowns (never had a case here, mind you). When we go for a walk in the morning, with no people as far as the eye can see, we are by law required to wear masks. And the police are actively enforcing this and fining people for not wearing a mask in similar situations. My entire family (mum, dad, sister, in-laws) is also fully vaccinated, but we're not allowed to visit them either. I'm not sure why, but there is a fairly large (though diminishing at this point) group of people who will back to the hilt every single abrogation of freedoms perpetrated by this Government. You can find them at reddit.com/r/australia. They will dismiss and trivialise your concerns. "Get over it, it's just a mask lol! It's not too much to ask!" I suspect most of them live in the inner-city, where there's plenty to see within their 5km radius, and they have had steady work throughout the pandemic. For some people, it all adds up, and it is too much to ask. My brother-in-law has been out of work for most of this pandemic. We found out a year into the pandemic that while my sister-in-law has been going to work, he's been drinking bottles of gin every day. He took up bike riding and got _seriously_ into it. Then they announced the 5km limit, and his nice peaceful ride between this town & the next turned into boring loops. He relapsed on drinking shortly after. Recently, the state Government closed playgrounds, based on the erroneous belief that they were a source of transmission. To date they have produced zero evidence of a single case transmitted at a playground. Once again, concerns about this were trivialised. I saw on Reddit a bunch of people saying stuff like "I bought a little playground online and set it up in the backyard and my kids love it!" or "I gave them chalk and they're having a blast!", just trivialising any concerns people had about the closures. My wife is a teacher at a fairly rough school. It's all remote. A lot of her students come from troubled homes, and their behaviour reflects that. She works with a few of the boys to come up with "plans", stuff as simple as "when I feel really angry, I'll go for a BMX ride". Sounds silly but it really helps them blow off steam. Well all the bike parks are closed now. Should we blame these boys when they start smashing things instead? Many of her students are completely disconnecting from school. She rings their parents, and the parents either don't give a shit, or say stuff like "my child won't even get out of bed, I don't know what to do." There is a legitimate mental health crisis going on right now. My sister-in-law is a psychologist specialising in troubled kids. She says the self-harm and suicide is through the roof. And by the way, it doesn't help that she has to treat these kids remotely ("telehealth". She works from the clinic, but all the appointments are remote). Of all things needing face-to-face contact, you think this would be it! There's going to be a reckoning. I can feel it in the wind. A lot of the hardcore lockdown supporters are very loud, very vocal, and it can be intimidating to voice contrary opinions around them. But I see it when I walk the streets. I see it in family and friends. Public opinion has shifted, and people are very, very, fed up. We are quiet. But come election day, we will be heard.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Is the Atlantic full of absurdly out of touch propaganda or is it just the ones that get linked and upvoted here? I feel like they're reporting from a parallel ddimension, but I had this vague impression of them being a quality publication. Did they change or was I wrong?

sothengo 5y ago
Conor Friedersdorf is a self-declared libertarian (i.e. to the right of the fairly centre-left Atlantic). Usually his takes are fairly pragmatic given the libertarian title though he does begin to get a bit nutty the further things get from his front door.

andi999 5y ago

How does it work in practice in Aus, how do you get food during home quarantine. Here it is mushy, gov says ask a friend or a neighbour, but don't communicate if there is a reliable fallback.

LatteLazy 5y ago

On the other hand, Australia has spent a lot less time in lockdowns, a lot more with bars and restaurants, schools, churches etc open and had far fewer deaths per capita. Sounds pretty free and democratic to me.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

People on this Hacker News are totally supportive of this. Anything to stop Corona.

steve76 5y ago

How long can a democracy maintain emergency limits and still call itself free? Up to the point when laws and government stop being about limiting the violence, never adding to it. Instead they become a way for leadership and the powerful to do whatever they want, unrestrained from those laws. A chopped tree does not mean a sharp ax. An enslaved people does not mean the master can crack the whip. Their power derives from weak people. Once the people are strong, their power goes away. marxists say the only correct speech panders to power, and speech which unleashes the covid pandemic is allowed. marxists can't speak perfectly. They can't tell others how to speak perfectly. Russia's authoritarians and the jihadist leaders have no restraints. Give it enough time, barbarity returns and they tear each other apart. The ones unburdened without the facade of civilization have the advantage. They would be better off dropping the charade and openly saying it's no holds battle royale on the Serengeti. Liberal democracies with their protected classes through mob rule are arbitrary. Popularity fails against contradictions, impossibilities, and dissolution. You are more focused on giving bin Laden a vote and appeasement through celebrity than you are in doing your job. You end up attacking your own for money and power. Are leaders restrained by laws to limit violence? Is life there for people to live it, instead of people being some piece of inventory to be chewed up and spit out? If not, don't do it. Go away.

f3rnando 5y ago

It's all about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation