Australia uses helicopters and the ARMY to enforce its 'Zero Covid' lockdown

[Philip_B]

I am now in lockdown. I have thought for some time it would leak north.

I empathise with @Paidiske however I am not sure that Australians have the same rights as Americans. We do not enjoy the constitutional privileges of the 1st amendment. We would need to rely on the work of the greatest Roosevelt, Eleanor in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which means you would need to have enough cash to splash to get it to the High Court of Australia.

 

[Gene2memE]

And I do believe what Australia did was a violation of liberty. And I don't mean just the protest but their entire response. That's my personal opinion.

What liberties were violated by the Australian response to COVID-19/lockdown protests? Be specific.

 

[coffee4u]

I am now in lockdown. I have thought for some time it would leak north.

I empathise with @Paidiske however I am not sure that Australians have the same rights as Americans. We do not enjoy the constitutional privileges of the 1st amendment. We would need to rely on the work of the greatest Roosevelt, Eleanor in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which means you would need to have enough cash to splash to get it to the High Court of Australia.

Our health care system is about 10 times better and our cities are always in the top ten list of best cities of the world to live in. I don't think we always appreciate what we have.
But if you think the US is better you could always emigrate.

I just hope it doesn't leak north and west as so far we have had zero Covid out here.

 

[Tanj]

We would need to rely on the work of the greatest Roosevelt, Eleanor in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which means you would need to have enough cash to splash to get it to the High Court of Australia.

Get what to the High Court of Australia? a 1st amendment type thingy? The high court doesn't decide constitutional amendments in Australia, the people do via a referendum

 

[Philip_B]

There are undoubtedly many issues in reviewing the comparison. There is a significant and meaningful difference in the case loads in the respective populations. This may in part be due to the geographic isolation of Australia, and may in part relation to the implications and out working of differing approaches to the management of the Public Health issues involved in the pandemic. There is also a significant difference in the respective case morbidity rates, and that may impart reflect the dreadful impact the Covid19 outbreak had in nursing homes in Victoria following breaches in quarantine management. There may be other underlying factors accounting for these differences.

These number suggest you are 50 times more likely to die of Covid19 in the USA than in Australia. That being said, many Australians are now in lockdown and we may well be catching up to the USA, hopefully not.

 

[Paidiske]

I think Philip is saying a challenge to the lockdown laws on the basis of human rights would end up in the High Court. And from what I understand of the legal landscape in Australia, would likely fail.

The thing is that our state of emergency laws/powers exist for a reason. While I may quibble with the details of how they're being used, in this case, broadly I'm grateful that we haven't seen the mass deaths here that have happened overseas.

 

[Aldebaran]

News literally just in. A large area north of Sydney around Newcastle has now gone into immediate lockdown because a group of people had a party at a local beach (attended by kids from Greater Sydney). Covid is now in the community up there, most of the cases believed to have been directly associated with that group. And it has since spread further south with one of their cases directly linked to Newcastle.

So tens of thousands of people are in lockdown because of a few people in close contact without masks. That ain't speculation. What do you think of the chances of it spreading if there's a protest of a few thousand people, none of whom are wearing masks?

Punishing an entire area and blaming it on a small group of people is the same type of divide and conquer used by other governments--and even school teachers, and is a form of bullying. Don't feed into it.

 

[Paidiske]

Lockdown isn't punishment. That's part of the fundamental disconnect here, I think.

 

[Aldebaran]

Generally speaking, the right to protest peacefully is a thing here too. It can be suspended in a state of emergency, which is the current situation. Protesting peacefully shouldn't come at the cost of many lives, which is what's at stake here.

Here in America, thousands of people all across the country got to protest out in the streets and inside department stores all they wanted during the lockdown period we had, and if we're to believe the Media and government leaders (who base everything they say on science*), they didn't contribute to any significant degree to the spread of the Wuhan Virus.

 

[Philip_B]

Get what to the High Court of Australia? a 1st amendment type thingy? The high court doesn't decide constitutional amendments in Australia, the people do via a referendum

If you wanted the challenge the right to protest, it would likely to a drawn out process, starting in Petty Sessions, then Equity, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and finally the High Court of Australia.

I would like to believe that the High Court does not decide Constitutional Amendments, yet I am clearly aware that the High Court Ruled in relation to Section 44.1 giving an interpretation in a manner that was not possible to have been understood that way at the time the Constitution was drafted.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution grants the citizens of the USA a number of rights clearly, and in a way that the citizens of other nations (including Australia) often think we have, yet those right we might imagine we have do not have a constitutional rock which can be relied upon.

 

[Philip_B]

Lockdown isn't punishment. That's part of the fundamental disconnect here, I think.

Try not to say that to my wife!

 

[Paidiske]

This is actually a rather nicely nuanced piece on human rights in the pandemic, from an Australian point of view: Victoria COVID: Public servants draw fire from Ombudsman over human rights breaches in pandemic

 

[coffee4u]

Punishing an entire area and blaming it on a small group of people is the same type of divide and conquer used by other governments--and even school teachers, and is a form of bullying. Don't feed into it.

We don't view this as a 'small group' we view this as a large group.

 

[Philip_B]

This is actually a rather nicely nuanced piece on human rights in the pandemic, from an Australian point of view: Victoria COVID: Public servants draw fire from Ombudsman over human rights breaches in pandemic

That is a good read. None the less there is a lot of fill in the blanks.

First Amendment - US Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.​

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/udhr.pdf

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said:

When government fears the people, there is liberty.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.​

 

[Tanj]

The First Amendment to the US Constitution grants the citizens of the USA a number of rights clearly, and in a way that the citizens of other nations (including Australia) often think we have, yet those right we might imagine we have do not have a constitutional rock which can be relied upon.

Very glad of it too. The last thing we need is some enumeration of rights as they exist now set in stone for centuries to confound those that come after us.

 

[Tanj]

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said:

When government fears the people, there is liberty.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.​

I wonder how his slaves felt.

 

[Paidiske]

I'm not sure I agree, Tanj. I recently read Gillian Triggs' book, Speaking Up, (which I'd thoroughly recommend), and one of the key things I learned from it is that around the world, it's our own governments which are most likely to breach our human rights. I rather think I would like more robust protections around human rights than we currently have in Australia; not because of Covid, but because of other instances we see of governments ignoring or overriding human rights when it suits them.

 

[Aldebaran]

I'm not sure I agree, Tanj. I recently read Gillian Triggs' book, Speaking Up, (which I'd thoroughly recommend), and one of the key things I learned from it is that around the world, it's our own governments which are most likely to breach our human rights. I rather think I would like more robust protections around human rights than we currently have in Australia; not because of Covid, but because of other instances we see of governments ignoring or overriding human rights when it suits them.

Yes, exactly! And what happens when the government controls the schools? They stop teaching actual history and the Constitution, and start with indoctrination about how white kids are born into privilege while their black classmates are their victims, and that they aren't boys and girls, but rather a multitude of different "genders". It makes it so much easier to confuse people about what's actually true, and then it's even easier to bypass human rights because people grow up indoctrinated to believe whatever they're told by the government. It only takes one generation to accomplish this if nobody else speaks up against it (assuming they haven't been marginalized as "spreading disinformation" first.)

 

[Paidiske]

Yeah, that's a whole different planet to my concerns (about things like human treatment of refugees, various forms of discrimination, and, yes, freedom of religion).

 

[Tanj]

I'm not sure I agree, Tanj. I recently read Gillian Triggs' book, Speaking Up, (which I'd thoroughly recommend), and one of the key things I learned from it is that around the world, it's our own governments which are most likely to breach our human rights. I rather think I would like more robust protections around human rights than we currently have in Australia; not because of Covid, but because of other instances we see of governments ignoring or overriding human rights when it suits them.

Have you seen the "robust protection" Americans enjoy? Like that person that had paintball fired at them for the crime of filming heavily armed police walk down their street? Rights are no better protected by a constitution than they are by common law. The biggest issue with some kind of explicit enumeration of rights enshrined in a constitution is the ones that get left out. I'd rather a system that serves the public trust of 2021, not a bunch of disaffected hemp farmers from 1776.

Thanks for the book recommendation, will look at it... or rather will tell my wife about it who will then buy it and read it and then I will look at it.