During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats instituted some of the most restrictive and brutal lockdowns in in the world. Likewise, Australians saw regular police violence against their fellow Australians, a few Australians were forced into quarantine facilities against their will, vaccines were made mandatory for many Australians by governments and private employers, valid medical exemptions were difficult to obtain, regulators gagged medical professionals, dogs were shot dead due to COVID-19 restrictions, attempts were made to restrict media coverage of protests, a pregnant woman was arrested for “incitement” for a Facebook post, independent journalists were intimidated by police, playgrounds had bollards installed to stop children from playing, political opponents were crushed, mass surveillance was conducted, police helicopters and drones were used to enforce restrictions, curfews were instituted without any sound science behind them, families were unable to attend funerals, families were separated for years, Australians couldn’t leave the country, some Australians couldn’t get into the country, states closed their borders, and Victoria Police shot protesters with rubber bullets. These are only a few examples of Australia’s authoritarianism during COVID-19.
Aside from the authoritarianism, nine Australians died because of blood clotting due to the AstraZeneca vaccine. (Please note that the nine deaths due to the AstraZeneca vaccine were before vaccine mandates were introduced; no one was forced to take AstraZeneca.)
Given the abundance of evidence, it’s safe to say that many things went wrong in Australia during COVID-19. But why did so many things go wrong? Why do politicians and bureaucrats have such power over Australians? Why did the media not cover the authoritarianism with disapproval? Why did most Australians not only accept what happened, but, in many cases, embrace authoritarianism?
These are questions that must be asked, and this website attempts to answer them from a philosophical, political, and cultural point of view. Many Australians and people outside Australia were bemused by Australia’s COVID-19 authoritarianism.
In addition, this website repudiates many — but importantly, not all — mainstream media narratives. Whilst Australians were often left scratching their head because of the national and local media’s lacklustre coverage, international media outlets often left much to be desired. For example, the New York Times — the so-called “paper of record” — published an opinion piece by Van Badham, a self-professed communist, in which Badham denied Australia had become a “violent police state”, despite the media outlet for which she writes repeatedly reporting on police violence and intimidation during COVID-19. Badham makes a few decent points — e.g., the federal government failed to procure enough COVID-19 vaccines — but overall her opinion piece is extremely misleading.
Not to be outdone, America’s rightwing media personalities exaggerated Australia’s authoritarianism, comparing Australia’s politicians to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, men who slaughtered more than 25 million people — roughly the population of Australia — in the 20th century. Such over exaggerations failed to hold Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats to account, merely allowing Australia’s media to laugh at the bombastic claims. Whilst many rightwing figures had a point about Australia’s excessive COVID-19 restrictions and police violence, Australia was never in danger of becoming Nazi Germany or implementing USSR-style Gulags. The international media coverage of what happened in Australia was reasonably poor, with some exceptions.
Similarly, Australia’s national media and federal government failed to accurately outline the risks/benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, Jeannette Young, doing the most to stop Australians from getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. Young infamously made it illegal for Queenslanders not to wear masks in their cars when alone, under emergency powers. In most states and territories, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats — Chief Health Officers — were handed extraordinary emergency powers through existing legislation.
Not to be outdone by Australia’s failures, the media and politicians demonised Melbourne protestors — large gatherings, and hence protests, were at the time illegal in Victoria — insisting that most protestors were far-right/neo-Nazis, a narrative that lasted until nurses and teachers — mostly female and industries not exactly known for their white supremist views — held their own protests. The Melbourne protests kicked off when unionised tradesmen — traditionally aligned with the political left — protested outside the CFMEU headquarters and attacked both CFMEU spokesmen and the CFMEU headquarters. To this day, many Victorians believe protests were attended by mostly far-right/neo-Nazis and Trump supporters — yes, both groups were represented but were a tiny percentage of protesters — a narrative pushed by both the political left and right, who ignored the far-left presence at protests against Victoria’s new pandemic powers bill. Meanwhile, a BLM protest in Victoria — still illegal, but held under different restrictions — was supported by the media and Victoria Police.
The media rarely paused to consider why Victorians attended protests. Vaccine mandates? Small business owners who had their life’s work destroyed? The police brutality? The pettiness of closing down children’s playgrounds? Not being able to see family? Having surgeries cancelled? Regional Victoria being locked down without any cases? No, it must be neo-Nazis, Victorians were told. Conversely, any call for politicians and bureaucrats to be weary of lurching into Nazi-style camps were mocked and derided. Indeed, COVID-19 gave rise to the “allowable Nazi narrative” in Australia: The media could call protestors Nazis but lacked the foresight to caution officials over forcing Australians into quarantine facilities, citing the obvious comparisons to Nazi concentration camps. Thankfully quarantine facilities never came close to concentration camps, although the lack of concern over due process — being forced into a quarantine facility without being charged, without access to a lawyer, with no trail — was a gross oversight by Australia’s media. Inflamed rhetoric from politicians, the media, and bureaucrats was commonplace throughout COVID-19, none more ridiculous than then Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Michael Gunner, claiming those morally against mandatory vaccinations were “anti-vaxxers”.
Similar tactics — i.e., calling every man and his dog a Nazi, labelling people terms such as “anti vaxxer” — were used in Canada to demonise the truckers’ protest. What began as a tactic by so-called “progressives” to alienate, marginalise, and deplatform political rivals by labelling them as terms such as racist, sexist, etc. — mostly from the political right — has become a tactic used by the media and politicians to crush citizens’ dissent.
Throughout the pandemic, Australia’s media acted as a megaphone for governments, rarely pushing back. And when journalists finally began to ask hard questions, they were viciously attacked online. Unfortunately during COVID-19, Australia’s media failed to hold governments to account. The media insisted that separate groups be treated differently by governments & police, further dividing Australians along political lines. The stories of Australians suffering under some of the world’s most brutal lockdowns was rarely told, seldom sought by the media.
This website will detail both government and the media’s failings to treat Australians with respect, dignity, and fairness.
This website does not do the following:
- Discuss vaccine effectiveness or any science around vaccines.
- Convince readers if restrictions, lockdowns, and police violence were necessary or good for society.
- Suggest how the COVID-19 pandemic should have been handled by Australia.
Rather, the objective of this website is to document and discuss Australia’s authoritarian response to COVID-19.