You know, even I was worried that I was descending into hyperbole when I described Victoria’s government as “tyrannical”. I needn’t have worried.
While Victoria’s COVID-19 infections and deaths are fast dropping (almost certainly despite, rather than because of, anything the government has done), the Andrews government has refused to loosen the screws in all but the most token fashion. Regional areas of the state have had a slight relaxation of restrictions, but Melbourne remains as tightly locked-down as before.
Worse, the Andrews government is set to pass the most astonishingly draconian legislation since at least the Bjelke-Peterson government in Queensland in the 1970s and possibly in the history of Federation. Andrews is almost certain to pass the laws with the indulgence of the same cross-benchers who agreed to extend the government’s emergency powers last month. The scope of the “COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020” is astonishing.
In most democracies the power to arrest is confined to police and those with specialist police training. The Daniel Andrews government plans to give powers that go beyond the powers of many police to a class of person to be known as “designated authorised officers” There will no limit to their numbers.
A “designated authorised officer” is anyone a senior public servant deems “appropriate for appointment based on the persons skills, attribute experience or otherwise”. Note the “otherwise”: this little clause allows public servants to basically deputise anyone they feel like.
And what powers will these almost-certainly government cronies have?
The first power of these “designated authorised officers“ is be able to detain (that can mean jail) a “high risk person”. A high-risk person is one that has been notified and diagnosed with COVID-19 and has not been given clearance from self-isolation. A “high risk person” can also be a “close contact“ of a person who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
But then the proposed legislation goes one dramatic step further and gives “designated authorised officers” power to detain a person who is “likely“ to refuse or fail to refuse a direction. So, these “designated authorised officers” are to have the power to detain people who have not done anything wrong, but are “likely” to do something wrong. As the bill is written they can arrest anyone on that pretext. We saw these sort of powers in pre-war Germany.
But the Gestapo-like powers of the freelance COVID Cops goes even further.
The courts are to be given power to not only remove children from their parents and put them into “out of home care” but to also place those children “in out of home care” for a longer cumulative period than would otherwise be permitted under current legislation. The total detention of the children can be as long as 30 months. Thankfully the power to detain children for up to 30 months is not in the hands of the “designated authorised officers“ but that’s where the process of detaining the children of those “likely” to offend starts. While our court system works, it is not cheap, so those “likely to offend” potentially may not see their children for 30 months.
Does anyone seriously doubt that pregnant Zoe Bruhler would not just have been handcuffed, but her kids dragged off for two and a half years?
Speaking of Zoe Bruhler, one reader objected that Victoria wasn’t a dictatorship, because people are allowed to criticise the government on social media. But, as Zoe Bruhler’s experience, not to mention James Bartolo, or Avi Yemini, or countless others have shown, people aren’t allowed to criticise the Victorian government on social media. Not unless they want the cops to kick down their door and smash their faces into the floor.
Remember, under the “Omnibus Bill”, this is just the start of the punishment planned for anyone “likely to offend”. So, in practise, any crony appointed by the same government who know nuzzink about the hotel quarantine fiasco can arrest anyone they like for WrongThink and see their kids hauled off into the netherworld of state “care”.
Remember this is Australia.
Well, not the Australia I thought I knew.
As I wrote for Insight: I have often wondered what it must be like to watch from the sidelines as a society descends into tyranny…Well, I’m seeing it, right now.
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