Caleb Bond: To force people to check into every shop and cafe forever would be pushing that  goodwill a little too far

If permanent electronic tracking in the name of public health is really the “new normal” then count me out, writes Caleb Bond. Do you agree?

It is concerning to hear people refer to the “new normal”. What “new normal”? That assumes all the restrictive hell we’ve had to endure for nearly a year is normal. It’s anything but normal.

Being told to lock your doors and not go outside for days? Having officious, high vis-wearing COVID marshals tell you to stand 1.5m from your friend lest you give them a disease not present in South Australia that definitely would not have spread while you sat next to each other on the bus?

Not being allowed to dance at a nightclub, or let children sing at a concert because their spittle will infect us all?

Being turned away from a restaurant because they’ve hit their government-imposed lim­it of diners?

If that’s what now counts for normal, then count me out.

Add to that list having to check in to every single place you visit, which SA’s chief public health officer, Nicola Spurrier, thinks would be worth keeping in perpetuity.

It would apparently help alert people to all manner of viruses and diseases they may have come in contact with.

We should have known that the minute we handed this sort of power to certain levels of government that they’d try to lord it over us forever.

South Australian chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said she believed QR code check-ins would be an important tool in future pandemics. Picture: Kelly Barnes/Getty Images

I’m more than happy to comply with the rules right now and perhaps for another six months. Coronavirus is still a threat, and I’ll do anything that will allow contact tracers to squash it without the need for widespread restrictions or lockdowns.

But to ask people to keep checking in forever is a bridge too far when it comes to government control.

They may as well bring the conspiracy theories to life and put microchips in the vaccine to monitor us if that’s the plan. No government should be able to monitor every place we visit without a damn good reason.

Some bloke rocking up to a restaurant with gastro or chickenpox is not one of them.

It’s not about whether you have anything to hide or not – privacy is just a basic freedom.

Most people have curtains on their windows not because they’re up to nefarious activities but because they want to be able to go about their lives without prying eyes. It is fundamental to any free society.

The current rules state that data must only kept for 28 days and can only be accessed for the purposes of contact tracing.

But who’s to say that couldn’t change one day and be misused. How do we know that data is watertight and could never be hacked?

All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not a strange concept to not want to be monitored by the government.

You can choose to hand over every personal detail and every movement you make to a mob such as Facebook. That is entirely voluntary.

The current QR code system is compulsory under law and there are hefty fines for not checking in. This was always the risk in handing power to the public service. They’re not accountable to voters and they work purely in their own fields of interest.

Shoppers scan into a shop on Rundel Mall. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Mariuz

Mandating QR code check-ins at every place forever probably makes sense if you think in terms of public health and nothing else. But so would banning outdoor dining, because you’re more likely to inhale carbon monoxide from passing cars.

Public servants are employed to give politicians advice. Politicians are employed to make moral decisions. There’s a very good reason that we don’t just entrust all the powers of government to unelected bureaucrats.

We need a promise that when the COVID vaccine has been rolled out around the nation things will return to normal. The real normal.

No more snap border closures, no more capacity bans and no more government tracking.

Australians have been extremely compliant and followed coronavirus rules in good faith, even when they’ve been nonsensical or heartless.

To force people to check into every shop and cafe forever would be pushing that goodwill a little too far.

Spare a thought, too, for people who don’t have smartphones and have to sign in by hand everywhere they go.

Beware anyone who spruiks the “new normal”.