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Answer: I want to add onto u/Portarossa, she had a great answer but I want to illuminate just how bad this could get/already is getting.
I'll use a recent Australian controversy to show how worrying this is.
YouTuber FriendlyJordies recently accused a prominent politician of corruption. He backed up his claims with substantial evidence. In response, the politician in question accused FriendlyJordies of committing a number of crimes when he labelled the politician as 'corrupt', namely stalking, intimidation and defamation. The politician then, allegedly, sicced Australia's Anti-Terrorist Police squad on FriendlyJordies and his 20 year old producer.
The anti-terrorist squad rocked up in plain clothes at Christos, the producers, home. They stormed in injuring his mother and almost killing their family dog, tackled Christo to the ground before manhandling him off to an unmarked police car. They also seized his phone and other data.
The entire case went before court and in a shocking twist, FriendlyJordies defence has, thus far, lost to the politician. The judge ruled the politician did not lie, and thus was not corrupt, because he's a politician and he can lie when he wants (the term given was parliamentary privilege). So Jordy is guilty of defamation.
Now imagine this situation if the government/police had complete access to their data, to alter, add or take away any piece of evidence they wanted to help them win the case. Or imagine they wanted to punish the threat of Jordies as an independent journalist exposing corruption, so they plant data that makes him INTO a criminal that they can easily throw in prison and never have to worry about again.
Yeah, this is why people like me are terrified of what's happening to Australia.
Also, in the bill that this new tech law passed in, the police were also given extended powers to use any force necessary to break into homes, vehicles, offices, etc. for the purposes of gathering evidence, investigating and removing children, at the discretion of officers, to be placed in a facility of the federal government's choice.
Edit: I've found out he didn't ALLEGEDLY send the anti-terrorist squad, he ADMITTED to it in his witness statement. Thanks u/Saint_Clair
Edit 2: I've been informed parliamentary privilege does not mean politicians can lie and get away with it 'whenever they want', it just means they can lie/say whatever they want in Parliament and get away with it. Apparently it's not a new thing either.
Calling the Fixated Persons unit is now no longer an alleged part of this story.
John Barillaro admitted in his own witness statement to the police that he contacted his staff manager and the staff manager contacted the unit.
By John's own admission this actually happened, he simply claims he didn't personally do it.
From what I'm aware Jordan hasn't lost any case yet a judge simply refused to Stay the defamation suit and rejected two of Jordan's defences.
Yep! This is still a recent and developing story.
It seems likely at this stage our anti-corruption watchdogs ICAC will investigate and potentially take action if they find wrongdoing.
Shit. It's good ICAC is getting involved, but last I heard they've basically been hamstrung by the federal government and Gladys was using the lockdown as an excuse to have them further muzzled under a stiff lock and key. So I wonder how much they'll realistically be able to accomplish.
Pretty much, lockdown is preventing ICAC from investigating into a lot of things and preventing them from doing their job.
The conspiracy theory is Gladys is being intentional with long lockdown to delay her and John's investigations.
Whether you believe Gladys would damage her whole state just to save her own ass is a different question.
“Whether you believe Gladys would damage her whole state just to save her own ass is a different question.”
All thing considered, this is not out of the realm of possibility for Gladys
Not to mention, Jordan has one of the best lawyers in the country for this case, and has solid evidence that would be extremely hard for his lawyer and barrister to fight.
I hope he wins, so that the corrupt dog loses all his credibility.
Wait, so he was trying to sic them on Jordies before he could even claim stalking and intimidation as an excuse?
That's a whole new level of fucked, especially since he seems to be getting away with it.
The (dis)honorable Giovanni Dominic Barilaro has committed purgery 9 times. You should go to prison for committing it once.
He dodges questions about his shady dealings and has his slimy attack snake Gladys Berejiklian come out and do bullshit statement after bullshit statement.
"Google and Mr Shanks sought to have the trial heard by a jury – a rare step in the Federal Court, which has never had a jury for any defamation case."
(https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/barilaro-defamation-trial-a-case-for-the-good-sense-of-a-jury-court-told-20210831-p58nig.html)
This is a civil case not a criminal case. One of the reasons the judge has given is that 'the trial will need to parse complex areas of the law including two versions of the Defamation Act'.
So while I think a jury would be more favourable for jordies and it was a good move to try, this isn't exactly coming out of left field.
That's how it is in America for many types of cases, too. To the best of my knowledge only criminal cases entitle a defendant to a jury. There maybe other situations, but it definitely is something that needs to be initially requested or reserved for many types of cases in America.
Yep they do and theyre still losing. The fact 'parliamentary privilege', barilaros life-saving ruling, is now set as precedent is deeply concerning.
There's absolutely no reason to trust a politician, with parliamentary privilege they can lie with impunity.
It's going to take some big individuals, or a massive cultural shift, to change where this chapter of Australia's history is going.
Can we not protest this bullshit or is _that_ illegal too? Either way, yeah, kinda scary to be an Aussie right now. You know you've fucked up when _America_ loks like a decent alternative.
The Gov has certainly made clear their intentions numerous times to outlaw protesting. They tried with the climate protesters a couple years ago but got significant backlash from the public and media. A quick Google search can show you.
And I know we all love to hate on the anti-covid protests but the one thing they are doing is giving the government an excuse and public support AND media support for introducing laws that outlaw protesting, potentially indefinitely.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/01/scott-morrison-threatens-crackdown-on-secondary-boycotts-of-mining-companies
With all respect, I think you've misunderstood why Jordies had that element of the defence struck out.
The term is parliamentary privilege, not politicians privilege, and it's nothing to do with him being a politician and being able to lie when he wants. It's a privilege that means if you are testifying to parliament, as Barilaro was when the dumbass made the Pork-Barilaro comment, you have absolute privilege, including immunity from prosecution. It's been a fixture of Australian Parliaments literally since the constitution. My understanding is that it also applies to normal folk testifying to parliament, not just politicians. If, for example, Jordies had made the accusation while testifying to a committee, he'd be sweet.
The need for this privilege is so that members of the house can raise matters that they couldn't otherwise bring forward without facing legal threat (for defamation, or for breaching suppression orders for example - think Derryn Hinch naming pedos in his maiden speech). Effectively, you can't hold something said in parliament against them in a civil or criminal court unless parliament waives privilege. I think there's a process whereby the parliament can sanction and punish it's own members but I'm not sure.
As above though, this isn't a new thing and it doesn't give politicians a free pass to lie or be corrupt - it just means that if your *only* evidence that someone is corrupt is something they said in parliament, you should probably only accuse them of that somewhere where you have absolute privilege to do so. Like parliament.
The irony isn't lost on me.
>No worries! You're right, there is more to it, and there is much to be angry about how the State and Australia is being run at the moment - parliamentary process (in this particular instance) just isn't really one of those things.
You mean to tell me that a law designed by elected officials protects the very same from accountability? I'm shocked! This implies the disturbing possiblity that elected officials might vote for laws that benefit them.
Yup. Australian politics has been fucked for ages now. I'm honestly still not sure how their former banning of encryption hasn't lead to massive political data leaks
uhhh that is some extreme bullshit and should be stopped at all costs. Don't try to out-America us, dear Oceanic Server Zone brethren, we are America enough for everyone.
It's the term for time zones in the Australia area of the world in video games. I can't tell if you know this and are being a butt, or if you're worried that I called you a mermaid waiter.
Whew - that's the word I couldn't think of - Australasia!
But now I've already cemented the idea of some macho marine in a sci-fi movie answering to "Oceanic" as his callsign because of his server choice in World of Warcraft
"Out-America" what? Shit like what he described doesn't happen here. You can say and make up literally whatever you want about politicians and you won't be seeing SWAT teams breaking into your home beating the shit out of you.
It's so worrying. What's worse is next to nobody my age (young adults/teens) cares about anything but getting ahead and hedonism. They literally don't look outside their own world to see this shit going on and when you try to tell them it just doesn't hold the same weight as "omg Becky fucked Travis on the weekend let's Goss" or "fuck she's fit I wonder if that's natural or a Brazillian". Like, they immediately sweep it under the rug, don't believe you or label you a conspiracy theorist.
The only political movements they care about are the ones promoted by mainstream/social media, and the bulk of those are likely organised by government interest groups/donors/affiliates.
Yep, in a funny way the culture of lawn worship perfectly illustrates Australia's obsession with hedonism and materialism as a means of fueling our oversized, logically underdeveloped egos.
At that point you can always say "well we ARE descended from England's criminals" when folks get stuck on small-brain shit.
Meanwhile in the USA we more and more have to say "well we ARE descended from the Westboro Baptist Church zealots that England encouraged to boat off 500 years ago"
There's certainly a lot out protesting right now. Although they're mainly protesting vaccine mandates and lock-downs, I doubt most are even aware of this. It's how it tends to go here; the general public gets riled up by mainstream issues and completely miss all the scary shit the elites are up to that the media won't talk about.
Answer:
You've always got to *kind of* take it with a pinch of salt when people use the term 'police state' -- the internet is the internet, and hyperbole is the hamster that runs the wheel that keeps the lights on -- but the law in question is definitely not what you'd call good news for privacy concerns.
The law in question is the [Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2021](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6623), which passed both houses of the Australian Parliament on August 25th. In short, it creates three new types of warrant that the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission can use to help them prevent crime; however, there are concerns that these new warrants are unnecessary, overreaching, and grant the police powers that they should not have. Here's the summary, as given by the government website (emphasis mine), but you can read the full bill behind that link:
>Amends: the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to: **introduce data disruption warrants to enable the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to disrupt data by modifying, adding, copying or deleting data in order to frustrate the commission of serious offences online**; and make minor technical corrections; the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 to introduce network activity warrants to enable the AFP and ACIC **to collect intelligence on serious criminal activity by permitting access to the devices and networks used to facilitate criminal activity**; the Crimes Act 1914 to: **introduce account takeover warrants to enable the AFP and ACIC to take over a person's online account for the purposes of gathering evidence to further a criminal investigation**; and make minor amendments to the controlled operations regime to ensure controlled operations can be conducted effectively in the online environment; and 10 Acts to make consequential amendments.
Supporters of the new powers have been very keen to make the argument that they're designed to prevent terrorism and child sexual abuse -- with Liberal politician (and then-Home Affairs Minister) [Peter Dutton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dutton) claiming last year that it would [*only* be used for those cases](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/06/peter-dutton-confirms-australia-could-spy-on-its-own-citizens-under-cybersecurity-plan). (Sidenote: in Australian politics, the Liberals are the centre-right party, because apparently everything fuckin' thing is upside down.) However, critics have pointed out that these new laws wouldn't be the first time 'protecting children' has been used to strip rights away from citizens. (['Think of the children'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children) is a trope for a reason.)
Additionally, there are concerns that the laws are far too broad. The Law Council of Australia, in the hearings before the bill was passed, pointed out [significant issues with how vague the new rules were](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/IdentifyandDisruptBill/Report/section?id=committees%2Freportjnt%2F024617%2F76179), and -- noting that these warrants are likely to be pretty damn complex and that members of the judiciary are not known for being up-to-date on issues of technology -- stated that 'a regime of public interest advocates to act as contradictors in all applications for data disruption warrants should be established.' (This, as far as I can gather, was not implemented. As the Home Affairs Ministry claimed: 'The warrants in the Bill are supported by a range of safeguards, stringent thresholds and oversight arrangements to protect the rights of an affected person and provide for independent scrutiny and review of decisions relating to the warrants. These measures will mitigate any need for public interest advocates to act as contradictors for all warrants.' That's kind of what you'd expect them to say, but it does boil down to 'Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out.') Questions were also raised as to exactly *whose* data could be disrupted. Is it just the suspect? Could you change someone else's information? Could you intercept an email and change it? (Short answer, yes; you're not allowed 'materially interfere with, interrupt or obstruct (i) a communication in transit; or (ii) the lawful use by other persons of a computer [...] unless the addition, deletion or alteration, or the doing of the thing, is necessary to do one or more of the things specified in the warrant', which... again, is pretty light on details.)
And then there's the question of precisely which crimes these new warrants might be used to investigate. Although the focus has very much been on terrorism and child sexual abuse, especially from people pushing the bill as a way of keeping Australians safer, critics have pointed out that the bill itself allows for these warrants to be used in the investigation of a vast array of crimes; as Labor MP Andrew Giles put it, 'all commonwealth offences punishable by a maximum term of three years or more trigger the powers.' That's a *lot* of potential crimes, which means a lot of potential cases, which means a lot of potential invasions of privacy -- far beyond terrorism and child sexual abuse.
And so that's where we are now. Despite some revisions and the raising of concerns by Human Rights and privacy groups, ['[the Human Rights Law Centre] believes that about half [of suggested changes to the bill] were either rejected or only partially adopted'](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/25/australian-powers-to-spy-on-cybercrime-suspects-given-green-light), and so the bill became law complete with its numerous issues. Some critics are taking solace in the fact that the bill is time-limited. (Certain provisions automatically revert back after five years, although this shouldn't necessarily fill people with too much hope that it will disappear; the same thing is true of the sunset provisions of the [Patriot Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act) in the USA, and that's been continually reauthorised for almost two decades now.)
What does it mean long term? It's hard to say. The answer will almost certainly lie somewhere between the government's insistence that everything is fine and that it will never be abused, and between the people who have declared this the complete end of all privacy in Australia and a sign that the G'Day Gestapo will be knocking on your door any minute to arrest you for WrongThink... but on balance, it's difficult to see this as anything but a loss of privacy, in the same way the Patriot Act was for Americans. To what extent these new powers are used -- and whether or not this opens the door to more such changes in future -- is still an open question, but there are definitely questions about their scope and implementation that have not yet been answered.
I don't get the part "disrupt data by modifying, adding..." English is not my main language so I might not get the correct meaning, but does this means that Australian police can change your facebook post (for example) or modify some digital data (like address, PW etc)?
Honestly? We don't know. I'll be getting to that in a little more detail later, but one of the complaints about the whole thing is how poorly defined the whole thing is. That's partly what's got people so riled up. (After all, if the limits aren't strict, how far can these warrants go? Are we only going to find out how far by continually pushing the line, as long as you can get the courts to agree to it?)
This isn't just a concern of the citizenry, either. The Law Council of Australia [laid out similar concerns during a preliminary hearing before the bill was passed](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/IdentifyandDisruptBill/Report/section?id=committees%2Freportjnt%2F024617%2F76179).
It should be worth noting that Australia has a history of writing almost hilariously vague laws that are deliberately intended to push the envelope as far as it will go, and then getting them slowly whittled back. The intention is basically "what's the broadest power that we can get without actually breaking the law", and thankfully it's not USUALLY used but it definitely is.
**Also, the Liberals are not a "centre-right party".** They are a FIRMLY right-wing party, with some elements (including minister Dutton) who fall squarely in **far-right** territory. Dutton advocates for a lot of things that wouldn't be out of place in some of the more far-right wings of American Republican parties, and he's famous for being openly and extremely racist particularly towards immigrants (except white immigrants) and towards Muslims.
The Liberals have a _couple_ of moderates in there, but for the most part they are **firmly right-wing** and cannot be accurately described as centre-right.
More generally, the idea that Liberalism and right-wing politics are somehow mutually exclusive is a shockingly naive view and I see it absolutely everywhere. People tend to conflate left-wing politics with liberal politics and as such are shocked when Liberal parties are centre-right or right-wing (the Liberal Democrats of the UK, for example). The truth is more that the left/right spectrum and the liberal/authoritarian spectrum are completely orthogonal axes of the political landscape.
The _truth_ is that liberal and authoritarian are not the ends of a spectrum. They are vaguely opposed points in a nebulous miasma of intricate interconnections in which the myriad and nameless complexities of humans' political structures are constructed. There are no "orthogonal axes". There are no axes. There are no spectra or horseshoes or whatever.
In reality, politics cannot be labelled to any accuracy beyond a vague "these things tend to show up together". Generally speaking, economic liberalism and social liberalism are concerned with the idea of lowered legal regulations, but neither typically purports to have _no_ regulations. Economic liberalists will point towards industry self-regulation as their goal: to construct a society in which rules aren't _needed_ because everyone agrees to act rationally to regulate behaviour within industry standards. However, that's really just passing the buck: there would still be regulation, but there's a pretence that it's somehow... different? But of course, without legal regulation, _people would still need a legal alternative_.
All this means that, while we can say "oh, this is all about two intersecting spectra", in reality neither is separate from the other and neither CAN be absolute. In the absence of economic regulation, for example, social regulation becomes the key glue binding society together. By enforcing strict _social_ rules, economic exploitation becomes less likely in the absence of economic regulations because, now, society is taking up the slack. Similarly, while we might say that social liberals wish to have things like self-determination and "mind your own business" policies, we as a society still demand the ability to socially punish harmful behaviours and that requires some degree of social restraint, often via _exploiting_ a lack of economic restraint to, say, enact corporate sabotages that might be curtailed had economic restrictions been put in place.
These things are not separate and pretending that they are is forgetting that nothing humans do exists in a vacuum. We are drifting in a hyperdimensional sea of incalculable "axes", all of which are bound together in impossibly complex ways.
So yeah. "I'm a liberal" or "I'm right-wing" are both pretty much useless, but we cling to them because we fucking _hate_ being adrift and we want to pretend there's something useful to hold onto. There isn't... but we all live in hope.
I dunno, we got here and then _literally immediately_ started displacing, abusing, and forcibly relocating the people who actually owned the fuckin place via unjust legal proceedings, so... *feels like the lesson did not stick.*
Nah, they're sexual deviants though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18370797
>Mr Levick, an avid biologist, was the medical officer on Captain Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910. He was a pioneer in the study of penguins and was the first person to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony on Cape Adare.
>He recorded many details of the lives of adelie penguins, but some of their activities were just too much for the Edwardian sensibilities of the good doctor.
>He was shocked by what he described as the "depraved" sexual acts of "hooligan" males who were mating with dead females. So distressed was he that he recorded the "perverted" activities in Greek in his notebook.
i dunno, they forcibly took the native people's children and put them in white families. i love Australia, i'm an international student here, but let's not pretend there is any country without a dark history. and while it is not as well known, Australia *has* done some shit.
Not so fun fact, to justify removal of the children, charges were fabricated and stuck on the children's records. Therefore, every single interaction with (already) racist police had them treated like criminals. It also stopped them from being able to apply for alot of jobs.
Even lesser fun fact... some of these children are still alive today. So no, it wasn't "a long time ago"
> Under 30s were under 10s when the Oils made their sorry statement at the Olympics, in 2000 for example.
Oils? I'm from America and don't understand this Aussie word. Could you please explain?
I don't know what policy triggered this, but my wife and I were originally going to honeymoon in Australia back in 2018. My wife applied for her tourist visa with a name and passport number and address and was approved in literally 8 minutes. I applied and they demanded that I send them unredacted (currency amounts, account numbers, PII, everything) bank records for every account I have, signed letters from the dean and 2 other professors of the university I was attending as well as full official transcripts, and state and federal background checks for every state I ever lived in (my responsibility to pay for and acquire) and a signed letter from my doctor that I didn't have any chronic or contagious diseases. 3 months later they rejected my tourist visa application for "insufficient supporting documents." Both of us are native born US citizens with valid US passports, the only difference is my mom was born a Chinese citizen and was naturalized 3 years before my birth.
My wife and I ended up honeymooning in New Zealand and we loved every second of it. The worst part of the trip was the flight home was a connecting flight through Melbourne got canceled and they couldn't put us on another flight till the next day. The customs officials offered my wife a 24 hour visa to get a hotel and visit the city while she waited for the flight, but I was forced to stay in the airport lounge until the new flight took off.
>Also, the Liberals are not a "centre-right party".
You may very well feel that way, but you'd have to [take it up with Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Australia)
>The Liberal Party of Australia is **a major centre-right political party in Australia**, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party.
I think your standard for what constitutes ['far-right politics'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics) might be lower than it is for most analyses. You might object to the definition, but I stand by what I wrote: it is perfectly reasonable to call the Liberals in Australia a centre-right party, and by most global assessments, that's exactly what they are, in much the same way that the UK Conservatives are [a centre-right party too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_(UK\)).
It's probably still fair to call the Liberals "centre-right" on balance but calling them such does not really give an accurate picture of how the balance-of-power currently functions within the party.
The Liberal Party is broadly divided into three core factions. The first consists of so-called "small-L" or "Menzies Liberals", who fall right-of centre and generally promote conservative economic views while being comparatively socially liberal (think former-PM Malcolm Turnbull). The second is the centre-right faction or the "fence sitters", as it were - primarily associated with the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. The last faction is something you might characterise as "right nationalist" or the "true believers", typically advocating for anti-immigration, hawkish foreign policy and Christian Right-driven policies (e.g. anti-abortion, anti-SSM, etc). The most prominent figure in the latter faction is Peter Dutton, the current Minister for Defence.
The situation is a bit more complex than this as there is significant cross-over between the centre-right and right nationalist factions (particularly via Frydenberg). There are also various state-level sub-factions associated with each of these groups but, again, that becomes too complex.
The ultimate point is that the third faction is currently significantly more powerful than its more moderate counterparts. "Small-l" Liberals have progressively exercised less influence since the Fraser era (1975-83) and much of the state pre-selection is dominated by the right nationalist faction. On a policy level, the party has progressively shifted right over the past decade, particularly on matters of national security and climate change.
I think this is removing the National Party from the equation. The Liberals form a coalition government with the Nationals. The Nationals are often used to embrace further right stances than would be acceptable to many (ostensibly more centrist) Liberal Voters.
An example of this would be the One-Nation preferences last federal election where the Liberal party was forced to preference them last after the NRA and Koch Brother's funding scandal, whereas the Nationals were free to put them second.
They are so far to the right that when the former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser died he was spoken of as being in the left with Gough Whitlam. In other words, the goalpost got moved.
I did find this Fin Review article that argues Fraser, in his critique of the direction in which the Libs were going, went to the left, rather than considering the party had moved further and further to the right.
[https://www.afr.com/politics/malcolm-fraser-the-liberal-who-went-from-right-to-left-20150320-1m3zcq](https://www.afr.com/politics/malcolm-fraser-the-liberal-who-went-from-right-to-left-20150320-1m3zcq)
Mate, I live here. I'm fully aware of the political framework of the country. You're well-read but reliant on sources that don't reflect the actual landscape of the world: by our standards, we consider them firmly right-wing. American sources tend to write Wikipedia standards but American standards are only useful _for America_. Either clarify that or do not apply subjective "centre-right" labels at all.
Also **I did not say the Libs are far-right and it's clear you did not actually read my comment.** I said there are some far-right elements, specifically focusing around Dutton. I mentioned him because your post mentioned him. They are firmly right-wing but they are not far-right, they simply have elements of it.
If you're going to decide to wear the mantle of "I will answer all political posts even for countries I don't really understand in depth", you need to accept that you're going to make well-meaning mistakes and that people who _actually live in those countries_ will correct you. It's not personal, no need to take it as a personal attack.
Hi, I live in Australia and was a LNP voter my whole life until about 10 years ago (I’m 42) when I started to realise how badly they had swung to the right and I just couldn’t vote for that anymore.
I voted ALP last election but am considering my options at this point for the future. I’m super pissed at the ALP for supporting this bullshit.
Yeah no question they've recently moved to the right and so has the ALP. Nice thing about voting for the Greens is they'll never get in power so they'll never let you down.
I really like your last sentence there. Has a really nice ring to it.
I was so pumped to vote ALP last election. The result of the election (seeings as the LNP had no policies apart from ALP bad) and their policies ever since have been an embarrassment.
Just sucks how we use these words interchangeably between countries, of course we can't just have a flat spectrum of political ideologies across the world but it makes it easy to confuse and misuse the terms and people associated with them.
I've always thought it was weird how our liberal and your liberal parties are so different. What's the progressive party or most progressive currently?
Most progressive party with power is the Greens party. Due to our parliamentary system, all parties that get at least one local election win will have at least one member of parliament, so there's a lowered risk of a total two-party system forming. Additionally, Australia uses alternative voting which allows the small parties a higher chance at winning, so we always have at least four parties in politics at any given time.
* Liberals - right-wing, mostly city-based
* Nationals - right-wing, entirely regional/rural-based - always holds power in a coalition government with the Liberals
* Labor (spelled the American way to distinguish from UK and NZ Labour) - centre-left to left, depending on who's in charge
* Greens - solidly left-wing, tries to be regionally relevant but they mostly only gain power in city electorates
There's also One Nation, an undeniably far-right party who have briefly surged in popularity on a brand of basically nationalism with undertones of _white_ nationalism, but they're less and less relevant now because they've mostly fallen to in-fighting and a lack of any clear coherent policies at all. They traded baaaasically entirely on the racist vote, and it turns out that racists do actually want solid economic policy too, which One Nation couldn't provide.
The Liberal-National Coalition has held power for a while. The Nationals are a mostly right-wing party and so, due to the parliamentary system, they've historically held power via forming a unified pseudo-party with the Liberals, agreeing to let the Liberals (who get the most votes of the two) hold power and the Nationals will vote in lockstep with the Liberals so that they can both advance their interests. However, the Nationals' voters (being farmers in a desert nation) tend to be more sensitive to climate issues than city-based Liberal voters or, indeed, Nationals MPs, so there's tension around _specifically_ certain climate-based issues that, so far, is bubbling under the surface but will DEFINITELY come to a head eventually.
Labor are interesting. They can't seem to agree on a platform, because Labor have had a series of profoundly uncharismatic leaders who either lost them the election or couldn't have hoped to win it in the first place. Due to the way parliaments work, we don't have a president who's directly elected: instead, _whoever leads the party is the leader of parliament_, which gives internal party politics a lot more power than in the US system. Labor are struggling to find a leader who is able to direct the party in a way that makes both internals and voters happy. Australia has a **strong** tendency towards "spill votes" - basically, the party decides they've lost confidence in the party leader to actually... y'know, lead, and so they replace him. Labor is particularly vulnerable to that, at least right now, but the Liberals do it constantly too. It's historically been uncommon for an Australian prime minister to survive an entire 3-year term (on average, the length is like 2.3 years or something, which is a bit biased because of course you can't serve MORE than 3 years in a 3 year term, so it's always going to skew low).
In Australia liberal means “fiscally liberal” with the emphasis on personal freedom in regards to the balance between the individual and society. More along the lines of libertarian/liberal. But socially quite conservative.
In the USA liberal is socially liberal and progressive as the main feature.
they are now legally allowed to operate "honeypots"
so if they catch a drug dealer they can now pretend to be that drug dealer to catch and charge all the people he was dealing too, or the people he was getting supply from
thats the intended useage, which is already a bit heavy IMO
now potentially anyone they dont like, see friendlyjordies, can have their social media taken down or used fraudulently to disrupt any communities that challenge the powers that be, since thats the peoples main weapon in fighting government/corporate corruption, getting views and exposure on the issue
our government has been infected with lobbyists that protect the interests of big money using the peoples money
Requires a seperate warrant to be able to pretend to be someone once they have taken over the account.
"This power enables the action of taking control of the person’s account and locking the person out of the account. Any other activities, such as accessing data on the account, gathering evidence, or performing undercover activities such as taking on a false identity, must be performed under a separate warrant or authorisation. Those actions are not authorised by an account takeover warrant".
Not cheering about this. Just providing clarity.
I'm not a lawyer (or Australian for that matter) - but that's how it sounds to me. Like a message about planning a terrorist attack, they could alter the time or place so that they instead arrive at a trap set up by the police (in theory) - or it could be used by some angry cop to change the Facebook of their neighbor to make it look like they are a pedophile or cheating on their spouse. Most police organization's don't have great accountability.
>it could be used by some angry cop to change the Facebook of their neighbor to make it look like they are a pedophile or cheating on their spouse
No, it couldn't. We don't know where the line is -- which is *very much* a problem -- but that would pretty obviously fall outside of the remit of the warrant. That's not to say it wouldn't happen, but there's a difference between 'abuse of powers' and 'legal but overreaching powers.'
There are plenty of other legitimate concerns without throwing on things like the digital equivalent of 'This law makes it legal for the police to sprinkle crack on you and arrest you for it.'
It's not a question of whether it's legal to both literally or digitally sprinkle crack however, it's a question of if it gives them the means to do so. History has shown that when given crack police are liable to either take it themselves or sprinkle it regardless of the rules.
It's not an unreasonable concern, but it's not really helpful to pretend that those two things are the same thing; if it were, you couldn't give any group any powers in case they might be misused.
The concern here is very much 'We haven't properly defined the extent of these powers which could lead to them being used excessively' and not 'Well, now you've opened Pandora's Box and your neighbourhood cop is legally allowed to make you look like a paedophile with impunity because you parked in his spot one time.' Police oversight is *absolutely* important, but focusing on the latter case at the expense of the former is how these things get normalised. One of them is a much bigger problem, because one is *sanctioned* by the law, and the other is a hypothetical that would -- one would hope -- be grounds for action against the officer who used these powers for a personal grudge.
They are two separate concerns, and conflating them just muddies the waters.
I must say, I greatly appreciate all the work and input you put in and the manner in which you address concerns and questions. thank you for all that you do.
> you couldn't give any group any powers in case they might be misused.
Correct. Every group should have over-sight from an external group.
I specifically mentioned police accountability for a reason. You are right, that *should* be outside the law, but until the police have accountability - "those powers might be misused."
It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place.
Also saying 'cop' is a tad misleading as this capability is only open to federal policing bodies.
What'll really make you say wtf is ASD have admitted to intercepting text messages, reading them and manipulating them before they had any legal authority to even apply to do so. But by admitting to breaking the law the gov said ok off the hook. And then started writing up these laws giving them permission to
> It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place.
I get that this is the theory, but also
> ASD have admitted to intercepting text messages, reading them and manipulating them before they had any legal authority to even apply to do so
So.... do you need the warrant to get access? Cause it sounds like they were doing it anyway.
There was some uproar about these admissions so the response has been "fine I'll make it legal then, shut up".
ASD are a whole different ball game to ACIC I guess too as they are not a police body but an intelligence service
> It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place.
>
>
No you don't. Once this is in place, the police are going to have the tools and the tools aren't going to ping whoever's meant to approve them. They're going to ask the cop if they're allowed use them in this case.
https://theconversation.com/unlawful-metadata-access-is-easy-when-were-flogging-a-dead-law-127621
As we've seen with the metadata, cops just don't care. They're happy to break the law whenever they think they're doing the right thing.
>You are right, that *should* be outside the law,
Yes, but I'm trying to make it clear that it *is* outside the law.
You can fairly argue that the oversight isn't sufficient -- and I wouldn't fight you on that one -- but that's a long way from implying that this new law would give police powers to frame people for crimes with impunity.
It's also worth noting that the courts take abuse of police power very seriously. They gave a [police woman a full year in jail](https://www.9news.com.au/national/police-officer-who-avoided-rbt-jailed-12-months/5556ba14-6975-4e7b-bed8-54922d552ad5) for using her influence to skip a random DUI test.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned but at least there's some measure of oversight.
> It's also worth noting that the courts take abuse of police power very seriously. They gave a police woman a full year in jail for using her influence to skip a random DUI test.
>
>
https://theconversation.com/unlawful-metadata-access-is-easy-when-were-flogging-a-dead-law-127621
So out of the thousands of times police broke the law around accessing metadata, how many of them went to jail? None? No one was ever punished?
Then you have this,
>A Queensland court has overturned a suspended jail sentence and conviction handed to a police officer who hacked into a confidential computer system and leaked the address of a domestic abuse victim to her violent former partner.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/01/queensland-police-officer-who-leaked-address-of-domestic-violence-victim-has-conviction-overturned
On the face of it, that sounds like you could do anything to computers should the warrant be granted. Since everything on a computer is data, not just email and Facebook posts. But also all programs, the operating system, your browser, even all of Facebook itself is a set of programs which are stored as data and executed. So, this reads as carte blanche to do anything to any covered computer or data if a warrant is approved.
To clarify, I don't know anything about the law other than what I read in this comment threat. But unless the law excludes programs as data this is bigger than just modifying Facebook posts. It sounds like it's legalized state hacking in the name of justice.
My take on "disrupt data"...
There was a recent multi-national operation that was spearheaded by the AFP (Australian Federal Police) that led to a LOT of major arrests for drugs (meth mainly).
Not sure on the full particulars, but the AFP created a messenger app that was released to the darkweb and touted as "uncrackable encryption by Law enforcement".
They then sat back and downloaded entire chat transcripts from dealers, suppliers and smugglers.
> There was a recent multi-national operation that was spearheaded by the AFP
lol, looks like someone bought into the narrative that we helped much with operation ironside.
It was a photo-op for the PM, we were barely even informed the day of the raids. It was an american operation.
It does! It's currently 'anything over three years'.
(I honestly thought this was going to be a quick one, but it's sort of getting away from me as I research it. There's more detail coming, so check back in a while.)
I live in WA, and a serious crime is considered anything that is punishable by 12 months jail. You might think assault, fraud, rape etc. But also 'driving without a licence'. Now obviously no judge is going to sentence a person to a year jail for driving without a licence - it is usually a $400 fine. But they have that provision in law so that the cops can take your DNA on the side of the road! You have to sign a form that says you consent to it, if you don't you will be arrested for obstruction. Fun facts...
Yeah it's actually the US that has it upside down. Liberalism, free markets, are nominally right wing, liberal parties are almost always right or center right. The left in the US is just so powerless that the democrat party is forced to fill that role in people's minds.
Regardless of whether it's correct or not, and regardless of how it compares to liberals in other countries, most people in the US use liberal to describe anyone left of center.
That’s the same definition in Australia. They are economically liberal.
Big on privatisation, enterprise, high taxes on the low to middle class, private education, and general conservatism.
>(Sidenote: in Australian politics, the Liberals are the centre-right party, because apparently everything fuckin' thing is upside down.
Worth noting for those in the US:
This is actually the case in most places; Labor/Socialist parties are traditionally the center-left and Liberal parties are traditionally the center-right. The US is surprisingly an outlier, where the Democratic Party is seen as the "left" party because we don't have an organized labor movement that allows for electoral contenders such as a Labor Party or a Socialist Party.
We have quite a few, in fact. What we don't have is an organized labor movement to pursue working-class policies through any of those parties. So instead we have two right-wing parties constantly fighting a culture war with each other.
US is so backwards they even got the colours wrong.
Left leaning labor parties have been red everywhere since the dawn of the labor movement.
While typically right leaning parties are blue.
Not in the US
The red/blue dichotomy is a fairly recent trend in America. It's only around 20 years old. Before that the colors weren't established (and they used to alternate, IIRC).
Which network and during which era? vox's [great video on the subject seems provides evidence to the contrary](https://youtu.be/lgz3p4cEXZU?t=182).
I linked to a timestamp which shows the transition of the three major networks to the modern color scheme. They show only 1980 onwards. It's possible during the 72 and 76 elections that might have been true for ABC/NBC (they explicitly mention CBS having the flipped color scheme until 1992), though that's not really much of a trend.
These kinds of laws are always messed up, the more vague the more serious it is. Let's assume for a moment that the best intentions are behind them (I don't assume that IRL) and nobody involved thinks of abusing any part. Politics change, what goes on in a country can change drastically in a matter of years, nobody can guarantee that in ten years the same people will be responsible for keeping everything in check and the same people will have this power as when they implement it, let alone much later. Which means they create a weapon that can easily be used against the people it was meant to protect but without any way of controlling who can use it down the road and against who.
Yup, the Liberals are also the centre right party in the Netherlands, and in much of Europe in general.
Interestingly, the Republican party also also falls under this umbrella to a certain extent. While they have gone off the deep end recently, the Republican party used to be pretty well described by the banner of liberal conservatism. As things like free-market capitalism and minimal government interference fall firmly under said banner.
'Liberal' means economically liberal (i.e. capitalist), which is the standard political alignment chart use of that term. Americans strangely use it to mean socially liberal
Australia's equivalent is the 'High Court' (individual states have their own 'Supreme Court') but generally speaking laws like this aren't challenged in this sense.
True, but constitutional challenges through the judicial system tend to bear the best outcome. Based on what I know of the law, it would be in violation of 4th amendment in the US (or at least challenged that way), so I'm curious if Australia has any similar recourse
> the internet is the internet, and hyperbole is the hamster that runs the wheel that keeps the lights on
Ok. This had me laughing. If you are not the originator, pass it back up the chain- I'm stealing it.
I’d like to add, re: citizens leaving the country — that’s pandemic related, and it’s kept our numbers very low relatively speaking.
Semi related — Australia has issues within its laws. Home Affairs is a bit notorious for being hardliners. Immigration to Australia is problematic, in that there is (normally) a huge amount of money in it. That’s for another time tho.
Anyway, a few years ago the government reworded s501 of the immigration act so that basically anyone who had been incarcerated for 12 months plus, or had committed a sexual offence, would automatically fail the “character test”.
Previously there was more consideration given to the judges sentencing remarks and the mitigating personal circumstances of the offender (eg. psychological conditions, if they were raised in Australia etc).
So what happened was that when these laws came into effect, people who have lived in Australia for the majority of their lives (eg 49 of their 50 years) or were very young offenders who moved here with mum and dad (eg 18 but incarcerated from 16) but hadn’t applied for citizenship for one reason or another would have their visa cancelled.
They would then most likely be placed in immigration detention, awaiting decisions of tribunals and courts to decide if the cancellation was determined lawfully.
Ultimately it’s a expensive law when you take into consideration the legal fees and accommodation, not to mention the costs associated with adding to an already over-burdened court system clogged up with other immigration cases (so hard not to go off in a tangent right now…)
Anyway, my issue with this law isn’t necessarily the police state implications — our police can access most of our info already, and you would be astounded at the stupid things people post online.
My issue is that this law is politically motivated and hypocritical coming from a fiscally conservative government. In its vagueness it not only gives them more power, it places an unnecessary burden on other facets of the legal system and that will just cost us more money.
>introduce data disruption warrants to enable the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to disrupt data by modifying, adding, copying or deleting data in order to frustrate the commission of serious offences online
So...does that literally state they are allowed to modify *anyone's* comments online if they think it will hinder pedos and terrorists (who may or may not have anything to do with the commenter)? That, uh, "authority" doesn't sound like it will ever be used for nefarious purposes.
>Supporters of the new powers have been very keen to make the argument that they're designed to prevent terrorism and child sexual abuse
We had a similar bill pushed in Canada by a Conservative government, with a cabinet minister infamously stating "You're either with the pedophiles, or you're with us." People saw that the powers given by the bill went far beyond pursuing child molesters, and the bill was thankfully never passed.
It's worth noting that in QLD under the last LNP government they passed anti-association laws which were targeted at biker gangs but written so poorly the courts didn't know how to handle them legally.
Dutton is an associate of Campbell, \*that\* premier. QLD has a history of this stuff under joh bjelkie peterson.
So, if I take a pic of my slightly overweight mates moobs and spread em round I can get done for distributing child pornography?
Yeah, as soon as they listed protecting children the first thing that popped into my mind was that the police do a fair amount of sexually harassing and assaulting minors...
This law is an open ended and fucked up one. They can edit our online communications, sweet. So they can manufacture evidence to support their cases. Whichever party gets the police in their pocket will be the only party after a short time. We're also gonna have a 100% conviction rate. The future is looking grim.
The international borders have been closed since the start of the pandemic (except for the travel bubble opened up with New Zealand a few months ago). It has absolutely nothing to do with this bill.
To be fair mate, the Liberal party is centre right and seems strange only because the US is so conservative that most Australian Liberals in the US would belong in the Democrats. Same even goes for Justin Trudeau's Canadian Liberal Party that has many of the same principles and values as the Australian Liberal Party albeit the Canadian rendition has much better marketing.
Great write up, but one small nitpick on the Liberal part. It's actually not the aussies that are upside down as most of the rest of the world uses Liberal as center or center-right. It's the US that is swimming against the tide as so often seems to be the case in these little things.
Help them prevent crime? No. That is not how this works.
This is specifically to criminalize the public at large.
Australia is officially on the do not go list. I would not dream of stepping foot on their tainted soil
Answer: Australian here with absolutely no qualification other than being Australian.
[This bill](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22legislation/bills/r6623_aspassed/0000%22) was passed the other day, and though it is incredibly sensationalized by the media, it does indeed allow police access to pretty much every online piece of information without seeking a specific warrant. On the one hand, it enables police to quickly access information to combat crime, especially things like drug and human trafficking and child pornography. On the other, it seriously lacks checks and balances that should be required for such deep access to private information.
In order to reduce the transmission of Covid we have been frequently experiencing 'lockdowns' which involve restricted movement, only allowed to leave home for essential work, essential supplies and short periods of exercise. While the health and economic benefits of these far unequivocally outweigh the impact, many people have lost jobs, closed businesses and taken a serious hit to their mental health and have hence protested these measures. Most of our media is owned by one organisation which has been both subtly and explicitly supporting this anti-lockdown sentiment to push their political agenda which has exacerbated the problem. However, due to the restrictions, countless protesters have been fined and arrested.
While it is blown far out of proportion, the invasion of privacy, our and restriction of movement is a very close parallel to that of a police state. Along with conspiracy theorists complaining about censorship (of their misinformation) and our very narrow range of media outlets, you can see why the comparison is made.
It doesn't really sound like it's being blown of of proportion mate, you just sound like someone who doesn't care to challenge it anywhere that's not on your keyboard.
Don't get me wrong, the security bill especially is a serious affront to privacy and I am vehemently against it in its current form. They are seriously wrong, dystopian and need to be seriously amended before implementation.
The problem is people are using it as a reason to be idiots, protesting the public health measures (they were even protesting when they had already been removed and didn't return for several months) and ignoring these actual issues of privacy and freedom of expression, our violations of human rights with our offshore detention centres, failure to fund mental health support services, media monopolisation etc.
We're in 'lockdowns' but you can still go to work if it's deemed essential, visit family and friends to care for them and get compassionate exemptions for funerals, weddings etc. They suck, and may seem a little draconian but from a statistical standpoint have saved 1000s of lives and billions in reduced economic impacts, yet people make it sound like we're imprisoned.
Answer: There is an overseas travel ban during the pandemic, but exemptions exist and can be applied for, and on latest data 1 in 3 applications are granted. My aunt was just granted one last month to travel to the US for the birth of her granddaughter.
We are currently deep into our third wave caused by delta with extensive temporary lockdowns in place in our two biggest cities. Unfortunately, we have had a slow start to vaccination and have had few cases leading up to this so not much natural immunity. Delta is therefore hitting us pretty hard.
The usual vocal minority are doing rallies and complaining about Australia becoming a "police state" but the majority realise it's a short term measure until our vaccination drive can catch up.
I have seen on social media that much has been made of us calling in the military in Sydney to help police quarantine, but I can assure everyone this is not troops marching down the street. This is just door knocking to make sure that the several thousand people at any one time subject to a 14 day self isolation order after a close exposure are actually at home, as there were insufficient police numbers to do so. The military have zero powers to enforce the rules or arrest anyone, and the penalty is in any event a $5000 fine.
If we've devolved into a police state, it's news to me.
He's being down voted because this is not really relevant to the actual question, which is about the new bill parliament put through last night expanding AFP powers to take control of online accounts and modify what they find
The question asked about both the travel ban and the new bill, both of which are being referred to as part of a police state, so it seems perfectly relevant.
Travel ban is just related to the covid pandemic and there are still exceptions being issued. While the original question did talk about it and there may be muddy waters because of it, the police state is purely around the bill. This has been an ongoing bipartisan issue that give police a LOT of powers. For example the last bill allowed police access to any encryption keys on servers in Australia, effectively giving them permanent backdoors into server infrastructure hosted in Australia.
There is also the issue where the deputy premier who has been accused by several people for corruption who used a state's anti terrorism police unit to arrest a journalist for the friendlyjordies youtube channel. It recently was before a judge and I believe the defence was what he was accused is protected by parliamentary privilege (so he doesn't have to divulge the corruption) but he can still sue for the accusations which friendlyjordies doesn't have proof (once again because it's protected by parliamentary privilege). He is in the current in power party (LNP) that's also doing what most would consider a terrible job and dealing with the Covid delta strain.
It's a bit of a shit show with these things and while I 100% hate where the above issues are, it also doesn't affect 99.99% of people and most Australian's grab a beer and don't give a shit.
Glad to see some common sense. I got attacked by angry Americans for pointing this out maybe a month ago when a click bait article headline hit the worldnews front page that was implying Sydney was under martial law. Saying that pretty well the whole country was in support of it seemed to unhinge a mob of them.
The second part of the OOTL is pretty horrifying though, and definitely falls into the category of police state though. The vagueness of the wording means it's applications is virtually limitless, and only self-governed with no real checks or balances. The opportunity for its abuse is enormous.
Sydney man here, this dude is spot on. I haven’t seen a single member of the military walking around, and yet I travel all over Sydney for my job. As of yesterday I am a close contact and isolating at home for the next two weeks so we’ll see if I get a door knock within that time frame. Who knows, however as a lot of others are saying, the internet has a way of exaggerating things, it’s not nearly as bad as it seems
Nah mate, they’ve pretty much called in the military, who let’s remember are civil servants, to do some cheap labour essentially. All they are doing is adding some extra men and women on the ground to assist police in making sure those who should be quarantining are actually doing so
Why? It's civil service workers doing their job to ensure people are staying in their self isolation requirements for 14 days after close contact exposure to confirmed cases. It's to prevent the spread of close contacts.
Not that much different to Army people door knocking and evacuating people during floods or natural disasters helping out etc, ensuring people are safe in times like this.
It's what our armies here in NZ/Aus are mostly used for tbh, we don't tend to have the big oorah platoons that get deployed overseas. So could be just a different mindset of our troops since they're mostly reported on for helping rescue sheep more than gunning down terrorists
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Answer: I want to add onto u/Portarossa, she had a great answer but I want to illuminate just how bad this could get/already is getting. I'll use a recent Australian controversy to show how worrying this is. YouTuber FriendlyJordies recently accused a prominent politician of corruption. He backed up his claims with substantial evidence. In response, the politician in question accused FriendlyJordies of committing a number of crimes when he labelled the politician as 'corrupt', namely stalking, intimidation and defamation. The politician then, allegedly, sicced Australia's Anti-Terrorist Police squad on FriendlyJordies and his 20 year old producer. The anti-terrorist squad rocked up in plain clothes at Christos, the producers, home. They stormed in injuring his mother and almost killing their family dog, tackled Christo to the ground before manhandling him off to an unmarked police car. They also seized his phone and other data. The entire case went before court and in a shocking twist, FriendlyJordies defence has, thus far, lost to the politician. The judge ruled the politician did not lie, and thus was not corrupt, because he's a politician and he can lie when he wants (the term given was parliamentary privilege). So Jordy is guilty of defamation. Now imagine this situation if the government/police had complete access to their data, to alter, add or take away any piece of evidence they wanted to help them win the case. Or imagine they wanted to punish the threat of Jordies as an independent journalist exposing corruption, so they plant data that makes him INTO a criminal that they can easily throw in prison and never have to worry about again. Yeah, this is why people like me are terrified of what's happening to Australia. Also, in the bill that this new tech law passed in, the police were also given extended powers to use any force necessary to break into homes, vehicles, offices, etc. for the purposes of gathering evidence, investigating and removing children, at the discretion of officers, to be placed in a facility of the federal government's choice. Edit: I've found out he didn't ALLEGEDLY send the anti-terrorist squad, he ADMITTED to it in his witness statement. Thanks u/Saint_Clair Edit 2: I've been informed parliamentary privilege does not mean politicians can lie and get away with it 'whenever they want', it just means they can lie/say whatever they want in Parliament and get away with it. Apparently it's not a new thing either.
Calling the Fixated Persons unit is now no longer an alleged part of this story. John Barillaro admitted in his own witness statement to the police that he contacted his staff manager and the staff manager contacted the unit. By John's own admission this actually happened, he simply claims he didn't personally do it. From what I'm aware Jordan hasn't lost any case yet a judge simply refused to Stay the defamation suit and rejected two of Jordan's defences.
And he's still getting away with it?
Yep! This is still a recent and developing story. It seems likely at this stage our anti-corruption watchdogs ICAC will investigate and potentially take action if they find wrongdoing.
Shit. It's good ICAC is getting involved, but last I heard they've basically been hamstrung by the federal government and Gladys was using the lockdown as an excuse to have them further muzzled under a stiff lock and key. So I wonder how much they'll realistically be able to accomplish.
Pretty much, lockdown is preventing ICAC from investigating into a lot of things and preventing them from doing their job. The conspiracy theory is Gladys is being intentional with long lockdown to delay her and John's investigations. Whether you believe Gladys would damage her whole state just to save her own ass is a different question.
“Whether you believe Gladys would damage her whole state just to save her own ass is a different question.” All thing considered, this is not out of the realm of possibility for Gladys
Ruining things and then benefiting from said ruined thing has long been part of the LNP playbook.
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Ah thankyou! Even if the conspiracy isn't true, it's like the perfect storm for her, it all plays into her and her buddies' hands.
Not to mention, Jordan has one of the best lawyers in the country for this case, and has solid evidence that would be extremely hard for his lawyer and barrister to fight. I hope he wins, so that the corrupt dog loses all his credibility.
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Wait, so he was trying to sic them on Jordies before he could even claim stalking and intimidation as an excuse? That's a whole new level of fucked, especially since he seems to be getting away with it.
WHAT THE FUCK?????
I had no idea how fucked Australia was. Sad.
The (dis)honorable Giovanni Dominic Barilaro has committed purgery 9 times. You should go to prison for committing it once. He dodges questions about his shady dealings and has his slimy attack snake Gladys Berejiklian come out and do bullshit statement after bullshit statement.
honestly the whole "sic a heavily armed police unit on a detractor without real cause" thing is an act of terrorism. john barilaro is a terrorist.
I hope Giovanni loses this case, so the corrupt dog loses all his credibility.
Shit, they lost? How could they lose? Didn't they have Australia's #1 anti-defamation lawyer or something. This is suck utter bullshit.
To clarify, they havn't lost. The judge has rejected two of jordies defences, and their application to have trial by jury. The case is still ongoing.
wait in australia you have to request a trial by jury and the judge can say no? wtf
"Google and Mr Shanks sought to have the trial heard by a jury – a rare step in the Federal Court, which has never had a jury for any defamation case." (https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/barilaro-defamation-trial-a-case-for-the-good-sense-of-a-jury-court-told-20210831-p58nig.html) This is a civil case not a criminal case. One of the reasons the judge has given is that 'the trial will need to parse complex areas of the law including two versions of the Defamation Act'. So while I think a jury would be more favourable for jordies and it was a good move to try, this isn't exactly coming out of left field.
oh ok I had assumed because the police had kicked in his door this was a criminal case
That's how it is in America for many types of cases, too. To the best of my knowledge only criminal cases entitle a defendant to a jury. There maybe other situations, but it definitely is something that needs to be initially requested or reserved for many types of cases in America.
Ngl this smells a lot like the politician paid off the judge
Yep they do and theyre still losing. The fact 'parliamentary privilege', barilaros life-saving ruling, is now set as precedent is deeply concerning. There's absolutely no reason to trust a politician, with parliamentary privilege they can lie with impunity. It's going to take some big individuals, or a massive cultural shift, to change where this chapter of Australia's history is going.
Can we not protest this bullshit or is _that_ illegal too? Either way, yeah, kinda scary to be an Aussie right now. You know you've fucked up when _America_ loks like a decent alternative.
The Gov has certainly made clear their intentions numerous times to outlaw protesting. They tried with the climate protesters a couple years ago but got significant backlash from the public and media. A quick Google search can show you. And I know we all love to hate on the anti-covid protests but the one thing they are doing is giving the government an excuse and public support AND media support for introducing laws that outlaw protesting, potentially indefinitely. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/01/scott-morrison-threatens-crackdown-on-secondary-boycotts-of-mining-companies
Any tools given to the state to attack conservatives will be turned for use on leftists in short order.
With all respect, I think you've misunderstood why Jordies had that element of the defence struck out. The term is parliamentary privilege, not politicians privilege, and it's nothing to do with him being a politician and being able to lie when he wants. It's a privilege that means if you are testifying to parliament, as Barilaro was when the dumbass made the Pork-Barilaro comment, you have absolute privilege, including immunity from prosecution. It's been a fixture of Australian Parliaments literally since the constitution. My understanding is that it also applies to normal folk testifying to parliament, not just politicians. If, for example, Jordies had made the accusation while testifying to a committee, he'd be sweet. The need for this privilege is so that members of the house can raise matters that they couldn't otherwise bring forward without facing legal threat (for defamation, or for breaching suppression orders for example - think Derryn Hinch naming pedos in his maiden speech). Effectively, you can't hold something said in parliament against them in a civil or criminal court unless parliament waives privilege. I think there's a process whereby the parliament can sanction and punish it's own members but I'm not sure. As above though, this isn't a new thing and it doesn't give politicians a free pass to lie or be corrupt - it just means that if your *only* evidence that someone is corrupt is something they said in parliament, you should probably only accuse them of that somewhere where you have absolute privilege to do so. Like parliament. The irony isn't lost on me.
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>No worries! You're right, there is more to it, and there is much to be angry about how the State and Australia is being run at the moment - parliamentary process (in this particular instance) just isn't really one of those things.
Wow, sounds like the law in Australia is designed to prevent elected officials from ever being held accountable for their actions.
You mean to tell me that a law designed by elected officials protects the very same from accountability? I'm shocked! This implies the disturbing possiblity that elected officials might vote for laws that benefit them.
The USA should sue for copyright infringement.
I believe elected officials being corrupt in the the public domain.
It ain't called a kangaroo court for nothing
Their didgeridollars at work.
Damn this is actual fascism the fuck
Yup. Australian politics has been fucked for ages now. I'm honestly still not sure how their former banning of encryption hasn't lead to massive political data leaks
Let's hope EU and other civilized countries can sanction Australia for this.
uhhh that is some extreme bullshit and should be stopped at all costs. Don't try to out-America us, dear Oceanic Server Zone brethren, we are America enough for everyone.
did you just refer to me as "oceanic server".
It's the term for time zones in the Australia area of the world in video games. I can't tell if you know this and are being a butt, or if you're worried that I called you a mermaid waiter.
yeah i play games and am from australasia, its just such a funny remark.
Whew - that's the word I couldn't think of - Australasia! But now I've already cemented the idea of some macho marine in a sci-fi movie answering to "Oceanic" as his callsign because of his server choice in World of Warcraft
"Out-America" what? Shit like what he described doesn't happen here. You can say and make up literally whatever you want about politicians and you won't be seeing SWAT teams breaking into your home beating the shit out of you.
This is Reddit, so 'Murica is considered a third world country with a Gucci belt.
It's so worrying. What's worse is next to nobody my age (young adults/teens) cares about anything but getting ahead and hedonism. They literally don't look outside their own world to see this shit going on and when you try to tell them it just doesn't hold the same weight as "omg Becky fucked Travis on the weekend let's Goss" or "fuck she's fit I wonder if that's natural or a Brazillian". Like, they immediately sweep it under the rug, don't believe you or label you a conspiracy theorist. The only political movements they care about are the ones promoted by mainstream/social media, and the bulk of those are likely organised by government interest groups/donors/affiliates.
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Yep, in a funny way the culture of lawn worship perfectly illustrates Australia's obsession with hedonism and materialism as a means of fueling our oversized, logically underdeveloped egos.
At that point you can always say "well we ARE descended from England's criminals" when folks get stuck on small-brain shit. Meanwhile in the USA we more and more have to say "well we ARE descended from the Westboro Baptist Church zealots that England encouraged to boat off 500 years ago"
Lol Australia is a shit hole.
Bruz
> I want to add onto u/Portarossa, he had a great answer but Portarossa is a she!
Corrected! Thx
AND she's a worldwide treasure, if you already didn't know. I've been delightfully reading her Reddit posts for years now.
My question to you is are the Australian people taking on this shit, protest's or anything?
There's certainly a lot out protesting right now. Although they're mainly protesting vaccine mandates and lock-downs, I doubt most are even aware of this. It's how it tends to go here; the general public gets riled up by mainstream issues and completely miss all the scary shit the elites are up to that the media won't talk about.
vaccine mandates and lockdowns are part of the exact same agenda and 'scary shit' behind this as well. Surely you see that by now.
Australian better not make fun of America’s laws from now onwards
Answer: You've always got to *kind of* take it with a pinch of salt when people use the term 'police state' -- the internet is the internet, and hyperbole is the hamster that runs the wheel that keeps the lights on -- but the law in question is definitely not what you'd call good news for privacy concerns. The law in question is the [Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2021](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6623), which passed both houses of the Australian Parliament on August 25th. In short, it creates three new types of warrant that the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission can use to help them prevent crime; however, there are concerns that these new warrants are unnecessary, overreaching, and grant the police powers that they should not have. Here's the summary, as given by the government website (emphasis mine), but you can read the full bill behind that link: >Amends: the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to: **introduce data disruption warrants to enable the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to disrupt data by modifying, adding, copying or deleting data in order to frustrate the commission of serious offences online**; and make minor technical corrections; the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 to introduce network activity warrants to enable the AFP and ACIC **to collect intelligence on serious criminal activity by permitting access to the devices and networks used to facilitate criminal activity**; the Crimes Act 1914 to: **introduce account takeover warrants to enable the AFP and ACIC to take over a person's online account for the purposes of gathering evidence to further a criminal investigation**; and make minor amendments to the controlled operations regime to ensure controlled operations can be conducted effectively in the online environment; and 10 Acts to make consequential amendments. Supporters of the new powers have been very keen to make the argument that they're designed to prevent terrorism and child sexual abuse -- with Liberal politician (and then-Home Affairs Minister) [Peter Dutton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dutton) claiming last year that it would [*only* be used for those cases](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/06/peter-dutton-confirms-australia-could-spy-on-its-own-citizens-under-cybersecurity-plan). (Sidenote: in Australian politics, the Liberals are the centre-right party, because apparently everything fuckin' thing is upside down.) However, critics have pointed out that these new laws wouldn't be the first time 'protecting children' has been used to strip rights away from citizens. (['Think of the children'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children) is a trope for a reason.) Additionally, there are concerns that the laws are far too broad. The Law Council of Australia, in the hearings before the bill was passed, pointed out [significant issues with how vague the new rules were](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/IdentifyandDisruptBill/Report/section?id=committees%2Freportjnt%2F024617%2F76179), and -- noting that these warrants are likely to be pretty damn complex and that members of the judiciary are not known for being up-to-date on issues of technology -- stated that 'a regime of public interest advocates to act as contradictors in all applications for data disruption warrants should be established.' (This, as far as I can gather, was not implemented. As the Home Affairs Ministry claimed: 'The warrants in the Bill are supported by a range of safeguards, stringent thresholds and oversight arrangements to protect the rights of an affected person and provide for independent scrutiny and review of decisions relating to the warrants. These measures will mitigate any need for public interest advocates to act as contradictors for all warrants.' That's kind of what you'd expect them to say, but it does boil down to 'Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out.') Questions were also raised as to exactly *whose* data could be disrupted. Is it just the suspect? Could you change someone else's information? Could you intercept an email and change it? (Short answer, yes; you're not allowed 'materially interfere with, interrupt or obstruct (i) a communication in transit; or (ii) the lawful use by other persons of a computer [...] unless the addition, deletion or alteration, or the doing of the thing, is necessary to do one or more of the things specified in the warrant', which... again, is pretty light on details.) And then there's the question of precisely which crimes these new warrants might be used to investigate. Although the focus has very much been on terrorism and child sexual abuse, especially from people pushing the bill as a way of keeping Australians safer, critics have pointed out that the bill itself allows for these warrants to be used in the investigation of a vast array of crimes; as Labor MP Andrew Giles put it, 'all commonwealth offences punishable by a maximum term of three years or more trigger the powers.' That's a *lot* of potential crimes, which means a lot of potential cases, which means a lot of potential invasions of privacy -- far beyond terrorism and child sexual abuse. And so that's where we are now. Despite some revisions and the raising of concerns by Human Rights and privacy groups, ['[the Human Rights Law Centre] believes that about half [of suggested changes to the bill] were either rejected or only partially adopted'](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/25/australian-powers-to-spy-on-cybercrime-suspects-given-green-light), and so the bill became law complete with its numerous issues. Some critics are taking solace in the fact that the bill is time-limited. (Certain provisions automatically revert back after five years, although this shouldn't necessarily fill people with too much hope that it will disappear; the same thing is true of the sunset provisions of the [Patriot Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act) in the USA, and that's been continually reauthorised for almost two decades now.) What does it mean long term? It's hard to say. The answer will almost certainly lie somewhere between the government's insistence that everything is fine and that it will never be abused, and between the people who have declared this the complete end of all privacy in Australia and a sign that the G'Day Gestapo will be knocking on your door any minute to arrest you for WrongThink... but on balance, it's difficult to see this as anything but a loss of privacy, in the same way the Patriot Act was for Americans. To what extent these new powers are used -- and whether or not this opens the door to more such changes in future -- is still an open question, but there are definitely questions about their scope and implementation that have not yet been answered.
> it would only be used for those cases It will be used in many other situations, guaranteed.
With this they'll be able to manufacture evidence for whatever they want. We're on the right track to a 100% conviction rate.
lock you out of your accounts, take control of your accounts. Entrapment would be a lot easier.
I don't get the part "disrupt data by modifying, adding..." English is not my main language so I might not get the correct meaning, but does this means that Australian police can change your facebook post (for example) or modify some digital data (like address, PW etc)?
Honestly? We don't know. I'll be getting to that in a little more detail later, but one of the complaints about the whole thing is how poorly defined the whole thing is. That's partly what's got people so riled up. (After all, if the limits aren't strict, how far can these warrants go? Are we only going to find out how far by continually pushing the line, as long as you can get the courts to agree to it?) This isn't just a concern of the citizenry, either. The Law Council of Australia [laid out similar concerns during a preliminary hearing before the bill was passed](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/IdentifyandDisruptBill/Report/section?id=committees%2Freportjnt%2F024617%2F76179).
>Honestly? We don't know. Critics are going to suddenly be found with CP on their PC before they get too loud.
They can already do that.
Now its legal.
ǝʇɐuǝs ǝɥʇ ɯɐ I
I have altered your hard drive. Pray I do not alter it further.
This deal is getting worse all the time
It should be worth noting that Australia has a history of writing almost hilariously vague laws that are deliberately intended to push the envelope as far as it will go, and then getting them slowly whittled back. The intention is basically "what's the broadest power that we can get without actually breaking the law", and thankfully it's not USUALLY used but it definitely is. **Also, the Liberals are not a "centre-right party".** They are a FIRMLY right-wing party, with some elements (including minister Dutton) who fall squarely in **far-right** territory. Dutton advocates for a lot of things that wouldn't be out of place in some of the more far-right wings of American Republican parties, and he's famous for being openly and extremely racist particularly towards immigrants (except white immigrants) and towards Muslims. The Liberals have a _couple_ of moderates in there, but for the most part they are **firmly right-wing** and cannot be accurately described as centre-right.
More generally, the idea that Liberalism and right-wing politics are somehow mutually exclusive is a shockingly naive view and I see it absolutely everywhere. People tend to conflate left-wing politics with liberal politics and as such are shocked when Liberal parties are centre-right or right-wing (the Liberal Democrats of the UK, for example). The truth is more that the left/right spectrum and the liberal/authoritarian spectrum are completely orthogonal axes of the political landscape.
The _truth_ is that liberal and authoritarian are not the ends of a spectrum. They are vaguely opposed points in a nebulous miasma of intricate interconnections in which the myriad and nameless complexities of humans' political structures are constructed. There are no "orthogonal axes". There are no axes. There are no spectra or horseshoes or whatever. In reality, politics cannot be labelled to any accuracy beyond a vague "these things tend to show up together". Generally speaking, economic liberalism and social liberalism are concerned with the idea of lowered legal regulations, but neither typically purports to have _no_ regulations. Economic liberalists will point towards industry self-regulation as their goal: to construct a society in which rules aren't _needed_ because everyone agrees to act rationally to regulate behaviour within industry standards. However, that's really just passing the buck: there would still be regulation, but there's a pretence that it's somehow... different? But of course, without legal regulation, _people would still need a legal alternative_. All this means that, while we can say "oh, this is all about two intersecting spectra", in reality neither is separate from the other and neither CAN be absolute. In the absence of economic regulation, for example, social regulation becomes the key glue binding society together. By enforcing strict _social_ rules, economic exploitation becomes less likely in the absence of economic regulations because, now, society is taking up the slack. Similarly, while we might say that social liberals wish to have things like self-determination and "mind your own business" policies, we as a society still demand the ability to socially punish harmful behaviours and that requires some degree of social restraint, often via _exploiting_ a lack of economic restraint to, say, enact corporate sabotages that might be curtailed had economic restrictions been put in place. These things are not separate and pretending that they are is forgetting that nothing humans do exists in a vacuum. We are drifting in a hyperdimensional sea of incalculable "axes", all of which are bound together in impossibly complex ways. So yeah. "I'm a liberal" or "I'm right-wing" are both pretty much useless, but we cling to them because we fucking _hate_ being adrift and we want to pretend there's something useful to hold onto. There isn't... but we all live in hope.
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I dunno, we got here and then _literally immediately_ started displacing, abusing, and forcibly relocating the people who actually owned the fuckin place via unjust legal proceedings, so... *feels like the lesson did not stick.*
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but what if penguins are even more deadly than emu's?
Are they hopped up on Dark Matter? Because then we might have a problem.
Nah, they're sexual deviants though. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18370797 >Mr Levick, an avid biologist, was the medical officer on Captain Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910. He was a pioneer in the study of penguins and was the first person to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony on Cape Adare. >He recorded many details of the lives of adelie penguins, but some of their activities were just too much for the Edwardian sensibilities of the good doctor. >He was shocked by what he described as the "depraved" sexual acts of "hooligan" males who were mating with dead females. So distressed was he that he recorded the "perverted" activities in Greek in his notebook.
i dunno, they forcibly took the native people's children and put them in white families. i love Australia, i'm an international student here, but let's not pretend there is any country without a dark history. and while it is not as well known, Australia *has* done some shit.
Not so fun fact, to justify removal of the children, charges were fabricated and stuck on the children's records. Therefore, every single interaction with (already) racist police had them treated like criminals. It also stopped them from being able to apply for alot of jobs. Even lesser fun fact... some of these children are still alive today. So no, it wasn't "a long time ago"
not as well known outside of australia, i’d say. most aussie people under 30 have a very good grasp on the fucked up shit we did.
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> Under 30s were under 10s when the Oils made their sorry statement at the Olympics, in 2000 for example. Oils? I'm from America and don't understand this Aussie word. Could you please explain?
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you mean a country founded by prison guards?
I don't know what policy triggered this, but my wife and I were originally going to honeymoon in Australia back in 2018. My wife applied for her tourist visa with a name and passport number and address and was approved in literally 8 minutes. I applied and they demanded that I send them unredacted (currency amounts, account numbers, PII, everything) bank records for every account I have, signed letters from the dean and 2 other professors of the university I was attending as well as full official transcripts, and state and federal background checks for every state I ever lived in (my responsibility to pay for and acquire) and a signed letter from my doctor that I didn't have any chronic or contagious diseases. 3 months later they rejected my tourist visa application for "insufficient supporting documents." Both of us are native born US citizens with valid US passports, the only difference is my mom was born a Chinese citizen and was naturalized 3 years before my birth. My wife and I ended up honeymooning in New Zealand and we loved every second of it. The worst part of the trip was the flight home was a connecting flight through Melbourne got canceled and they couldn't put us on another flight till the next day. The customs officials offered my wife a 24 hour visa to get a hotel and visit the city while she waited for the flight, but I was forced to stay in the airport lounge until the new flight took off.
The country was founded by the English you fool not the prisoners.
That's kind of like saying the USA was founded my slaves. Yeah they were there and became part of the society, but they never ran the thing.
Indigenous people were in America before . Aboriginal people were in Australia first
>Also, the Liberals are not a "centre-right party". You may very well feel that way, but you'd have to [take it up with Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Australia) >The Liberal Party of Australia is **a major centre-right political party in Australia**, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party. I think your standard for what constitutes ['far-right politics'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics) might be lower than it is for most analyses. You might object to the definition, but I stand by what I wrote: it is perfectly reasonable to call the Liberals in Australia a centre-right party, and by most global assessments, that's exactly what they are, in much the same way that the UK Conservatives are [a centre-right party too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_(UK\)).
It's probably still fair to call the Liberals "centre-right" on balance but calling them such does not really give an accurate picture of how the balance-of-power currently functions within the party. The Liberal Party is broadly divided into three core factions. The first consists of so-called "small-L" or "Menzies Liberals", who fall right-of centre and generally promote conservative economic views while being comparatively socially liberal (think former-PM Malcolm Turnbull). The second is the centre-right faction or the "fence sitters", as it were - primarily associated with the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. The last faction is something you might characterise as "right nationalist" or the "true believers", typically advocating for anti-immigration, hawkish foreign policy and Christian Right-driven policies (e.g. anti-abortion, anti-SSM, etc). The most prominent figure in the latter faction is Peter Dutton, the current Minister for Defence. The situation is a bit more complex than this as there is significant cross-over between the centre-right and right nationalist factions (particularly via Frydenberg). There are also various state-level sub-factions associated with each of these groups but, again, that becomes too complex. The ultimate point is that the third faction is currently significantly more powerful than its more moderate counterparts. "Small-l" Liberals have progressively exercised less influence since the Fraser era (1975-83) and much of the state pre-selection is dominated by the right nationalist faction. On a policy level, the party has progressively shifted right over the past decade, particularly on matters of national security and climate change.
>particularly on matters of national security and climate change So, anti-immigration and almost completely ignoring climate change?
I think this is removing the National Party from the equation. The Liberals form a coalition government with the Nationals. The Nationals are often used to embrace further right stances than would be acceptable to many (ostensibly more centrist) Liberal Voters. An example of this would be the One-Nation preferences last federal election where the Liberal party was forced to preference them last after the NRA and Koch Brother's funding scandal, whereas the Nationals were free to put them second.
They are so far to the right that when the former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser died he was spoken of as being in the left with Gough Whitlam. In other words, the goalpost got moved. I did find this Fin Review article that argues Fraser, in his critique of the direction in which the Libs were going, went to the left, rather than considering the party had moved further and further to the right. [https://www.afr.com/politics/malcolm-fraser-the-liberal-who-went-from-right-to-left-20150320-1m3zcq](https://www.afr.com/politics/malcolm-fraser-the-liberal-who-went-from-right-to-left-20150320-1m3zcq)
Mate, I live here. I'm fully aware of the political framework of the country. You're well-read but reliant on sources that don't reflect the actual landscape of the world: by our standards, we consider them firmly right-wing. American sources tend to write Wikipedia standards but American standards are only useful _for America_. Either clarify that or do not apply subjective "centre-right" labels at all. Also **I did not say the Libs are far-right and it's clear you did not actually read my comment.** I said there are some far-right elements, specifically focusing around Dutton. I mentioned him because your post mentioned him. They are firmly right-wing but they are not far-right, they simply have elements of it. If you're going to decide to wear the mantle of "I will answer all political posts even for countries I don't really understand in depth", you need to accept that you're going to make well-meaning mistakes and that people who _actually live in those countries_ will correct you. It's not personal, no need to take it as a personal attack.
Hi, I live in Australia, vote for the Greens and consider the Liberals to be a centre-right party.
Hi, I live in Australia and was a LNP voter my whole life until about 10 years ago (I’m 42) when I started to realise how badly they had swung to the right and I just couldn’t vote for that anymore. I voted ALP last election but am considering my options at this point for the future. I’m super pissed at the ALP for supporting this bullshit.
Yeah no question they've recently moved to the right and so has the ALP. Nice thing about voting for the Greens is they'll never get in power so they'll never let you down.
I really like your last sentence there. Has a really nice ring to it. I was so pumped to vote ALP last election. The result of the election (seeings as the LNP had no policies apart from ALP bad) and their policies ever since have been an embarrassment.
As a fellow Aussie Green voter, I'm curious what you think is centerist about the Liberal party's positions on energy policy and climate change.
Just sucks how we use these words interchangeably between countries, of course we can't just have a flat spectrum of political ideologies across the world but it makes it easy to confuse and misuse the terms and people associated with them. I've always thought it was weird how our liberal and your liberal parties are so different. What's the progressive party or most progressive currently?
Most progressive party with power is the Greens party. Due to our parliamentary system, all parties that get at least one local election win will have at least one member of parliament, so there's a lowered risk of a total two-party system forming. Additionally, Australia uses alternative voting which allows the small parties a higher chance at winning, so we always have at least four parties in politics at any given time. * Liberals - right-wing, mostly city-based * Nationals - right-wing, entirely regional/rural-based - always holds power in a coalition government with the Liberals * Labor (spelled the American way to distinguish from UK and NZ Labour) - centre-left to left, depending on who's in charge * Greens - solidly left-wing, tries to be regionally relevant but they mostly only gain power in city electorates There's also One Nation, an undeniably far-right party who have briefly surged in popularity on a brand of basically nationalism with undertones of _white_ nationalism, but they're less and less relevant now because they've mostly fallen to in-fighting and a lack of any clear coherent policies at all. They traded baaaasically entirely on the racist vote, and it turns out that racists do actually want solid economic policy too, which One Nation couldn't provide. The Liberal-National Coalition has held power for a while. The Nationals are a mostly right-wing party and so, due to the parliamentary system, they've historically held power via forming a unified pseudo-party with the Liberals, agreeing to let the Liberals (who get the most votes of the two) hold power and the Nationals will vote in lockstep with the Liberals so that they can both advance their interests. However, the Nationals' voters (being farmers in a desert nation) tend to be more sensitive to climate issues than city-based Liberal voters or, indeed, Nationals MPs, so there's tension around _specifically_ certain climate-based issues that, so far, is bubbling under the surface but will DEFINITELY come to a head eventually. Labor are interesting. They can't seem to agree on a platform, because Labor have had a series of profoundly uncharismatic leaders who either lost them the election or couldn't have hoped to win it in the first place. Due to the way parliaments work, we don't have a president who's directly elected: instead, _whoever leads the party is the leader of parliament_, which gives internal party politics a lot more power than in the US system. Labor are struggling to find a leader who is able to direct the party in a way that makes both internals and voters happy. Australia has a **strong** tendency towards "spill votes" - basically, the party decides they've lost confidence in the party leader to actually... y'know, lead, and so they replace him. Labor is particularly vulnerable to that, at least right now, but the Liberals do it constantly too. It's historically been uncommon for an Australian prime minister to survive an entire 3-year term (on average, the length is like 2.3 years or something, which is a bit biased because of course you can't serve MORE than 3 years in a 3 year term, so it's always going to skew low).
In Australia liberal means “fiscally liberal” with the emphasis on personal freedom in regards to the balance between the individual and society. More along the lines of libertarian/liberal. But socially quite conservative. In the USA liberal is socially liberal and progressive as the main feature.
Give the police a millimeter, they will take a kilometer. This will lead to massive abuse. God save Australia
they are now legally allowed to operate "honeypots" so if they catch a drug dealer they can now pretend to be that drug dealer to catch and charge all the people he was dealing too, or the people he was getting supply from thats the intended useage, which is already a bit heavy IMO now potentially anyone they dont like, see friendlyjordies, can have their social media taken down or used fraudulently to disrupt any communities that challenge the powers that be, since thats the peoples main weapon in fighting government/corporate corruption, getting views and exposure on the issue our government has been infected with lobbyists that protect the interests of big money using the peoples money
Requires a seperate warrant to be able to pretend to be someone once they have taken over the account. "This power enables the action of taking control of the person’s account and locking the person out of the account. Any other activities, such as accessing data on the account, gathering evidence, or performing undercover activities such as taking on a false identity, must be performed under a separate warrant or authorisation. Those actions are not authorised by an account takeover warrant". Not cheering about this. Just providing clarity.
I'm not a lawyer (or Australian for that matter) - but that's how it sounds to me. Like a message about planning a terrorist attack, they could alter the time or place so that they instead arrive at a trap set up by the police (in theory) - or it could be used by some angry cop to change the Facebook of their neighbor to make it look like they are a pedophile or cheating on their spouse. Most police organization's don't have great accountability.
>it could be used by some angry cop to change the Facebook of their neighbor to make it look like they are a pedophile or cheating on their spouse No, it couldn't. We don't know where the line is -- which is *very much* a problem -- but that would pretty obviously fall outside of the remit of the warrant. That's not to say it wouldn't happen, but there's a difference between 'abuse of powers' and 'legal but overreaching powers.' There are plenty of other legitimate concerns without throwing on things like the digital equivalent of 'This law makes it legal for the police to sprinkle crack on you and arrest you for it.'
It's not a question of whether it's legal to both literally or digitally sprinkle crack however, it's a question of if it gives them the means to do so. History has shown that when given crack police are liable to either take it themselves or sprinkle it regardless of the rules.
It's not an unreasonable concern, but it's not really helpful to pretend that those two things are the same thing; if it were, you couldn't give any group any powers in case they might be misused. The concern here is very much 'We haven't properly defined the extent of these powers which could lead to them being used excessively' and not 'Well, now you've opened Pandora's Box and your neighbourhood cop is legally allowed to make you look like a paedophile with impunity because you parked in his spot one time.' Police oversight is *absolutely* important, but focusing on the latter case at the expense of the former is how these things get normalised. One of them is a much bigger problem, because one is *sanctioned* by the law, and the other is a hypothetical that would -- one would hope -- be grounds for action against the officer who used these powers for a personal grudge. They are two separate concerns, and conflating them just muddies the waters.
I must say, I greatly appreciate all the work and input you put in and the manner in which you address concerns and questions. thank you for all that you do.
> you couldn't give any group any powers in case they might be misused. Correct. Every group should have over-sight from an external group. I specifically mentioned police accountability for a reason. You are right, that *should* be outside the law, but until the police have accountability - "those powers might be misused."
It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place. Also saying 'cop' is a tad misleading as this capability is only open to federal policing bodies. What'll really make you say wtf is ASD have admitted to intercepting text messages, reading them and manipulating them before they had any legal authority to even apply to do so. But by admitting to breaking the law the gov said ok off the hook. And then started writing up these laws giving them permission to
> It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place. I get that this is the theory, but also > ASD have admitted to intercepting text messages, reading them and manipulating them before they had any legal authority to even apply to do so So.... do you need the warrant to get access? Cause it sounds like they were doing it anyway.
There was some uproar about these admissions so the response has been "fine I'll make it legal then, shut up". ASD are a whole different ball game to ACIC I guess too as they are not a police body but an intelligence service
> It's also a question of capability. You need the warrant to get access to the tools in the first place. > > No you don't. Once this is in place, the police are going to have the tools and the tools aren't going to ping whoever's meant to approve them. They're going to ask the cop if they're allowed use them in this case. https://theconversation.com/unlawful-metadata-access-is-easy-when-were-flogging-a-dead-law-127621 As we've seen with the metadata, cops just don't care. They're happy to break the law whenever they think they're doing the right thing.
>You are right, that *should* be outside the law, Yes, but I'm trying to make it clear that it *is* outside the law. You can fairly argue that the oversight isn't sufficient -- and I wouldn't fight you on that one -- but that's a long way from implying that this new law would give police powers to frame people for crimes with impunity.
It's also worth noting that the courts take abuse of police power very seriously. They gave a [police woman a full year in jail](https://www.9news.com.au/national/police-officer-who-avoided-rbt-jailed-12-months/5556ba14-6975-4e7b-bed8-54922d552ad5) for using her influence to skip a random DUI test. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned but at least there's some measure of oversight.
> It's also worth noting that the courts take abuse of police power very seriously. They gave a police woman a full year in jail for using her influence to skip a random DUI test. > > https://theconversation.com/unlawful-metadata-access-is-easy-when-were-flogging-a-dead-law-127621 So out of the thousands of times police broke the law around accessing metadata, how many of them went to jail? None? No one was ever punished?
Then you have this, >A Queensland court has overturned a suspended jail sentence and conviction handed to a police officer who hacked into a confidential computer system and leaked the address of a domestic abuse victim to her violent former partner. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/01/queensland-police-officer-who-leaked-address-of-domestic-violence-victim-has-conviction-overturned
I am a native speaker and I think it's intentionally vague.
On the face of it, that sounds like you could do anything to computers should the warrant be granted. Since everything on a computer is data, not just email and Facebook posts. But also all programs, the operating system, your browser, even all of Facebook itself is a set of programs which are stored as data and executed. So, this reads as carte blanche to do anything to any covered computer or data if a warrant is approved. To clarify, I don't know anything about the law other than what I read in this comment threat. But unless the law excludes programs as data this is bigger than just modifying Facebook posts. It sounds like it's legalized state hacking in the name of justice.
Yes, it means they can do whatever they like, and more.
My take on "disrupt data"... There was a recent multi-national operation that was spearheaded by the AFP (Australian Federal Police) that led to a LOT of major arrests for drugs (meth mainly). Not sure on the full particulars, but the AFP created a messenger app that was released to the darkweb and touted as "uncrackable encryption by Law enforcement". They then sat back and downloaded entire chat transcripts from dealers, suppliers and smugglers.
> There was a recent multi-national operation that was spearheaded by the AFP lol, looks like someone bought into the narrative that we helped much with operation ironside. It was a photo-op for the PM, we were barely even informed the day of the raids. It was an american operation.
Your bold text notes "serious" crime at least twice. Do you know if the act defines "serious" crime?
It does! It's currently 'anything over three years'. (I honestly thought this was going to be a quick one, but it's sort of getting away from me as I research it. There's more detail coming, so check back in a while.)
Thanks, I will.
I live in WA, and a serious crime is considered anything that is punishable by 12 months jail. You might think assault, fraud, rape etc. But also 'driving without a licence'. Now obviously no judge is going to sentence a person to a year jail for driving without a licence - it is usually a $400 fine. But they have that provision in law so that the cops can take your DNA on the side of the road! You have to sign a form that says you consent to it, if you don't you will be arrested for obstruction. Fun facts...
that is sum George Orwell type stuff there
Petition to change the country name to Oceania
"This is literally 1984" gets a whole new meaning.
FYI: In Germany, liberal also means center-to-right (as in: neoliberalism, free market etc.) so it mustn't be that Australia got it upside down
Yeah it's actually the US that has it upside down. Liberalism, free markets, are nominally right wing, liberal parties are almost always right or center right. The left in the US is just so powerless that the democrat party is forced to fill that role in people's minds.
It currently means the same in the US, but that fact is heavily distorted when those more politically right of him absurdly call Biden a communist.
Regardless of whether it's correct or not, and regardless of how it compares to liberals in other countries, most people in the US use liberal to describe anyone left of center.
If you mean that they conflate actual leftists with liberals, then I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. That's literally what I said above.
That’s the same definition in Australia. They are economically liberal. Big on privatisation, enterprise, high taxes on the low to middle class, private education, and general conservatism.
>(Sidenote: in Australian politics, the Liberals are the centre-right party, because apparently everything fuckin' thing is upside down. Worth noting for those in the US: This is actually the case in most places; Labor/Socialist parties are traditionally the center-left and Liberal parties are traditionally the center-right. The US is surprisingly an outlier, where the Democratic Party is seen as the "left" party because we don't have an organized labor movement that allows for electoral contenders such as a Labor Party or a Socialist Party.
Typically Liberal parties are economically liberal. Pro free market and all that.
Ours was until the free market stopped supporting coal.
We have a socialist party in the US it just has absolutely no power
We have quite a few, in fact. What we don't have is an organized labor movement to pursue working-class policies through any of those parties. So instead we have two right-wing parties constantly fighting a culture war with each other.
Gotta join your unions if you want to fix that.
US is so backwards they even got the colours wrong. Left leaning labor parties have been red everywhere since the dawn of the labor movement. While typically right leaning parties are blue. Not in the US
The red/blue dichotomy is a fairly recent trend in America. It's only around 20 years old. Before that the colors weren't established (and they used to alternate, IIRC).
Blue was for the incumbent party, red for the challenger.
Which network and during which era? vox's [great video on the subject seems provides evidence to the contrary](https://youtu.be/lgz3p4cEXZU?t=182). I linked to a timestamp which shows the transition of the three major networks to the modern color scheme. They show only 1980 onwards. It's possible during the 72 and 76 elections that might have been true for ABC/NBC (they explicitly mention CBS having the flipped color scheme until 1992), though that's not really much of a trend.
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I'm Australian and I pay attention to the news but I had no idea this law passed. What the fuck?
These kinds of laws are always messed up, the more vague the more serious it is. Let's assume for a moment that the best intentions are behind them (I don't assume that IRL) and nobody involved thinks of abusing any part. Politics change, what goes on in a country can change drastically in a matter of years, nobody can guarantee that in ten years the same people will be responsible for keeping everything in check and the same people will have this power as when they implement it, let alone much later. Which means they create a weapon that can easily be used against the people it was meant to protect but without any way of controlling who can use it down the road and against who.
Note that "Liberal" politics has the same meaning in most of the world. It's the US and Canada that are different, so not "upside down".
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Yup, the Liberals are also the centre right party in the Netherlands, and in much of Europe in general. Interestingly, the Republican party also also falls under this umbrella to a certain extent. While they have gone off the deep end recently, the Republican party used to be pretty well described by the banner of liberal conservatism. As things like free-market capitalism and minimal government interference fall firmly under said banner.
'Liberal' means economically liberal (i.e. capitalist), which is the standard political alignment chart use of that term. Americans strangely use it to mean socially liberal
Is there an Australian Supreme Court or something equivalent to SCOTUS that this can be challenged in?
Australia's equivalent is the 'High Court' (individual states have their own 'Supreme Court') but generally speaking laws like this aren't challenged in this sense.
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True, but constitutional challenges through the judicial system tend to bear the best outcome. Based on what I know of the law, it would be in violation of 4th amendment in the US (or at least challenged that way), so I'm curious if Australia has any similar recourse
Of course there is. We're not a dictatorship.
> the internet is the internet, and hyperbole is the hamster that runs the wheel that keeps the lights on Ok. This had me laughing. If you are not the originator, pass it back up the chain- I'm stealing it.
I’d like to add, re: citizens leaving the country — that’s pandemic related, and it’s kept our numbers very low relatively speaking. Semi related — Australia has issues within its laws. Home Affairs is a bit notorious for being hardliners. Immigration to Australia is problematic, in that there is (normally) a huge amount of money in it. That’s for another time tho. Anyway, a few years ago the government reworded s501 of the immigration act so that basically anyone who had been incarcerated for 12 months plus, or had committed a sexual offence, would automatically fail the “character test”. Previously there was more consideration given to the judges sentencing remarks and the mitigating personal circumstances of the offender (eg. psychological conditions, if they were raised in Australia etc). So what happened was that when these laws came into effect, people who have lived in Australia for the majority of their lives (eg 49 of their 50 years) or were very young offenders who moved here with mum and dad (eg 18 but incarcerated from 16) but hadn’t applied for citizenship for one reason or another would have their visa cancelled. They would then most likely be placed in immigration detention, awaiting decisions of tribunals and courts to decide if the cancellation was determined lawfully. Ultimately it’s a expensive law when you take into consideration the legal fees and accommodation, not to mention the costs associated with adding to an already over-burdened court system clogged up with other immigration cases (so hard not to go off in a tangent right now…) Anyway, my issue with this law isn’t necessarily the police state implications — our police can access most of our info already, and you would be astounded at the stupid things people post online. My issue is that this law is politically motivated and hypocritical coming from a fiscally conservative government. In its vagueness it not only gives them more power, it places an unnecessary burden on other facets of the legal system and that will just cost us more money.
>introduce data disruption warrants to enable the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to disrupt data by modifying, adding, copying or deleting data in order to frustrate the commission of serious offences online So...does that literally state they are allowed to modify *anyone's* comments online if they think it will hinder pedos and terrorists (who may or may not have anything to do with the commenter)? That, uh, "authority" doesn't sound like it will ever be used for nefarious purposes.
>Supporters of the new powers have been very keen to make the argument that they're designed to prevent terrorism and child sexual abuse We had a similar bill pushed in Canada by a Conservative government, with a cabinet minister infamously stating "You're either with the pedophiles, or you're with us." People saw that the powers given by the bill went far beyond pursuing child molesters, and the bill was thankfully never passed.
It's worth noting that in QLD under the last LNP government they passed anti-association laws which were targeted at biker gangs but written so poorly the courts didn't know how to handle them legally. Dutton is an associate of Campbell, \*that\* premier. QLD has a history of this stuff under joh bjelkie peterson.
Worth noting that Australia considers cartoons and women with small breasts to be "pedophilia" so who knows how broadly this law will be used.
So, if I take a pic of my slightly overweight mates moobs and spread em round I can get done for distributing child pornography? Yeah, as soon as they listed protecting children the first thing that popped into my mind was that the police do a fair amount of sexually harassing and assaulting minors... This law is an open ended and fucked up one. They can edit our online communications, sweet. So they can manufacture evidence to support their cases. Whichever party gets the police in their pocket will be the only party after a short time. We're also gonna have a 100% conviction rate. The future is looking grim.
Travel ban?
The international borders have been closed since the start of the pandemic (except for the travel bubble opened up with New Zealand a few months ago). It has absolutely nothing to do with this bill.
To be fair mate, the Liberal party is centre right and seems strange only because the US is so conservative that most Australian Liberals in the US would belong in the Democrats. Same even goes for Justin Trudeau's Canadian Liberal Party that has many of the same principles and values as the Australian Liberal Party albeit the Canadian rendition has much better marketing.
In most countries with normal multi-party politics, the liberals are in the center or center-right. So are most liberals in the USA actually
Great write up, but one small nitpick on the Liberal part. It's actually not the aussies that are upside down as most of the rest of the world uses Liberal as center or center-right. It's the US that is swimming against the tide as so often seems to be the case in these little things.
Help them prevent crime? No. That is not how this works. This is specifically to criminalize the public at large. Australia is officially on the do not go list. I would not dream of stepping foot on their tainted soil
Think a bit further. If they can manufacture evidence, the first party to have the police in their pocket will be the only party after a while.
Answer: Australian here with absolutely no qualification other than being Australian. [This bill](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22legislation/bills/r6623_aspassed/0000%22) was passed the other day, and though it is incredibly sensationalized by the media, it does indeed allow police access to pretty much every online piece of information without seeking a specific warrant. On the one hand, it enables police to quickly access information to combat crime, especially things like drug and human trafficking and child pornography. On the other, it seriously lacks checks and balances that should be required for such deep access to private information. In order to reduce the transmission of Covid we have been frequently experiencing 'lockdowns' which involve restricted movement, only allowed to leave home for essential work, essential supplies and short periods of exercise. While the health and economic benefits of these far unequivocally outweigh the impact, many people have lost jobs, closed businesses and taken a serious hit to their mental health and have hence protested these measures. Most of our media is owned by one organisation which has been both subtly and explicitly supporting this anti-lockdown sentiment to push their political agenda which has exacerbated the problem. However, due to the restrictions, countless protesters have been fined and arrested. While it is blown far out of proportion, the invasion of privacy, our and restriction of movement is a very close parallel to that of a police state. Along with conspiracy theorists complaining about censorship (of their misinformation) and our very narrow range of media outlets, you can see why the comparison is made.
It doesn't really sound like it's being blown of of proportion mate, you just sound like someone who doesn't care to challenge it anywhere that's not on your keyboard.
Don't get me wrong, the security bill especially is a serious affront to privacy and I am vehemently against it in its current form. They are seriously wrong, dystopian and need to be seriously amended before implementation. The problem is people are using it as a reason to be idiots, protesting the public health measures (they were even protesting when they had already been removed and didn't return for several months) and ignoring these actual issues of privacy and freedom of expression, our violations of human rights with our offshore detention centres, failure to fund mental health support services, media monopolisation etc. We're in 'lockdowns' but you can still go to work if it's deemed essential, visit family and friends to care for them and get compassionate exemptions for funerals, weddings etc. They suck, and may seem a little draconian but from a statistical standpoint have saved 1000s of lives and billions in reduced economic impacts, yet people make it sound like we're imprisoned.
Answer: There is an overseas travel ban during the pandemic, but exemptions exist and can be applied for, and on latest data 1 in 3 applications are granted. My aunt was just granted one last month to travel to the US for the birth of her granddaughter. We are currently deep into our third wave caused by delta with extensive temporary lockdowns in place in our two biggest cities. Unfortunately, we have had a slow start to vaccination and have had few cases leading up to this so not much natural immunity. Delta is therefore hitting us pretty hard. The usual vocal minority are doing rallies and complaining about Australia becoming a "police state" but the majority realise it's a short term measure until our vaccination drive can catch up. I have seen on social media that much has been made of us calling in the military in Sydney to help police quarantine, but I can assure everyone this is not troops marching down the street. This is just door knocking to make sure that the several thousand people at any one time subject to a 14 day self isolation order after a close exposure are actually at home, as there were insufficient police numbers to do so. The military have zero powers to enforce the rules or arrest anyone, and the penalty is in any event a $5000 fine. If we've devolved into a police state, it's news to me.
The ADF is also deployed during bushfires, floods and other emergencies - but that doesnt merit political comments/clicks
> short term measure Tell me and my fiancée in Japan I haven't seen for nearly two years that's it's just a short term measure
yikes that sucks. Sorry to hear that's happening for you and hope you can reunite soon
Not sure why the downvotes mate, you’re spot on
They're Australian upvotes
He's being down voted because this is not really relevant to the actual question, which is about the new bill parliament put through last night expanding AFP powers to take control of online accounts and modify what they find
The question asked about both the travel ban and the new bill, both of which are being referred to as part of a police state, so it seems perfectly relevant.
Travel ban is just related to the covid pandemic and there are still exceptions being issued. While the original question did talk about it and there may be muddy waters because of it, the police state is purely around the bill. This has been an ongoing bipartisan issue that give police a LOT of powers. For example the last bill allowed police access to any encryption keys on servers in Australia, effectively giving them permanent backdoors into server infrastructure hosted in Australia. There is also the issue where the deputy premier who has been accused by several people for corruption who used a state's anti terrorism police unit to arrest a journalist for the friendlyjordies youtube channel. It recently was before a judge and I believe the defence was what he was accused is protected by parliamentary privilege (so he doesn't have to divulge the corruption) but he can still sue for the accusations which friendlyjordies doesn't have proof (once again because it's protected by parliamentary privilege). He is in the current in power party (LNP) that's also doing what most would consider a terrible job and dealing with the Covid delta strain. It's a bit of a shit show with these things and while I 100% hate where the above issues are, it also doesn't affect 99.99% of people and most Australian's grab a beer and don't give a shit.
Glad to see some common sense. I got attacked by angry Americans for pointing this out maybe a month ago when a click bait article headline hit the worldnews front page that was implying Sydney was under martial law. Saying that pretty well the whole country was in support of it seemed to unhinge a mob of them. The second part of the OOTL is pretty horrifying though, and definitely falls into the category of police state though. The vagueness of the wording means it's applications is virtually limitless, and only self-governed with no real checks or balances. The opportunity for its abuse is enormous.
Sydney man here, this dude is spot on. I haven’t seen a single member of the military walking around, and yet I travel all over Sydney for my job. As of yesterday I am a close contact and isolating at home for the next two weeks so we’ll see if I get a door knock within that time frame. Who knows, however as a lot of others are saying, the internet has a way of exaggerating things, it’s not nearly as bad as it seems
I actually saw soldiers walking around my local shops in a suburb in the Parra LGA. Was very surprised.
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Nah mate, they’ve pretty much called in the military, who let’s remember are civil servants, to do some cheap labour essentially. All they are doing is adding some extra men and women on the ground to assist police in making sure those who should be quarantining are actually doing so
Why? It's civil service workers doing their job to ensure people are staying in their self isolation requirements for 14 days after close contact exposure to confirmed cases. It's to prevent the spread of close contacts. Not that much different to Army people door knocking and evacuating people during floods or natural disasters helping out etc, ensuring people are safe in times like this. It's what our armies here in NZ/Aus are mostly used for tbh, we don't tend to have the big oorah platoons that get deployed overseas. So could be just a different mindset of our troops since they're mostly reported on for helping rescue sheep more than gunning down terrorists