Krystle Mitchell learned very early on just how much a controlling state bureaucracy can blight lives. As a ward of the state, even something as routine as a sleepover or a school excursion was a bureacratic nightmare of paperwork and police checks.
Very early on, Mitchell’s social workers noted her “strong sense of right and wrong”. After surviving a state-run childhood, she went to university and joined the Victoria Police.
Joining Victoria Police was an incredibly proud achievement for me […] I was proud to serve the Victorian community for 16 years – and Victoria Police provided me with the longest structured safety net I had ever had in my life.
Then came “Dictator Dan” Andrews, Covid and the World’s Longest Lockdown. Mitchell found herself working for the same kind of bureaucratic finger-waggers and control-freaks she had endured through her childhood – only now, they were making an entire population wards of the state.
Like brutal adult controllers belting rebellious children, the Victoria Police behaved with open sadism. Teargas and rubber bullets at the Shrine of Remembrance, skulls literally cracked on the steps of the iconic Flinders Street Station, old ladies smashed into the road and pepper sprayed.
Where did this aggressive narrative and totalitarian response of Victoria Police come from, and how can we pursue greater impartiality of policing from politics in the future, to ensure this doesn’t happen again?
The open politicisation of the Victoria Police traces back to changes in the Victoria Police Act in 2013.
Currently, senior police are appointed to their roles by politicians and placed on short-term contracts. The adage ‘you don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ is true… The current Victoria Police Minister meets with the Chief Commissioner on a weekly basis to discuss how policing will affect politics. Our current system supports a senior police force operating from a position of ‘do what’s best for your government and your job security’.
Spectator Australia
As Krystle Mitchell has found out in the hardest imaginable way, there’s not much job security for anyone who stands against Dan Andrews’ state.
It’s been eight months since I spoke out against the disproportionate response and damage the government’s response to Covid has caused.
Eight months living on a quickly dwindling savings account I had spent a career diligently putting aside […]
It is hard not have doubts that you have been blacklisted when you are successful in an interview process, get the job offer, then have that job offer pulled after HR sees your Discernable interview.
Surely, as Mitchell says, employees with integrity and a willingness to stand on their principles ought to be valued more than gutless, careerist lickspittles? When some HR suit asks, “What would you do if you disagreed with something our company did?”, apparently, “I don’t think either of us has to worry about your organisation shooting rubber bullets at unarmed civilians” isn’t the right answer.
I don’t know what I expected when I spoke out. I didn’t have a plan B. Folly maybe, but my head was so clouded by the weight of what I was going to do, I wasn’t planning ahead, I just felt compelled to speak.
If I had truly considered the weight of my actions, if I had truly let myself feel the loss of my career and everything I had built and was building towards, I wouldn’t have gone through with it.
Spectator Australia
Which, I suspect, is precisely the lesson that Dictator Dan wants everyone on his payroll to learn.
“All within the State of Victoria, nothing outside the State of Victoria, nothing against the State of Victoria,” you could say.