Andrew Bolt: How virus is eroding our freedoms too easily
The many new virus bans introduced by politicians are meant to keep us safe but they are only making life easier for the government. And in our COVID panic we have meekly surrendered our freedoms to those growing fond of their power, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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The last straw was the warning from Victoria police that I can’t even drive my arthritic dog to his leash-free park, less than a kilometre from my home.
The coronavirus, you know.
Pardon? Giving Ralf the short ride to his friends and a library of smells was going to kill people?
It’s nonsense, of course.
Even more than the ban on leaving Australia, this ban on giving your dog a lift showed a dangerous shift in Australia.
This was one of many new virus bans that are meant to make life easier for police and our politicians, who are in fact meant to make life easier for us.
Me giving Ralf a lift down the street and then a few hundred metres to the right endangers nobody at all.
The ban on pet lifts was just to make it easier for police to spot and catch anyone driving further than the 5km from home that’s now as far as any Melburnian is now allowed to travel.
At least this time the outrage was so great that Victoria’s chief health officer on Wednesday said he’d cancel that order.
But what about the others, like the absurd 8pm curfew in Melbourne. No one is more infectious at 8:01pm than they were at 7:59. But the curfew gives police a break. Fewer people to police.
Sorry, but that’s not how our once-free society was meant to function. I and fellow citizens are not meant to surrender liberties merely for the convenience of the police.
Same deal with this ban on leaving the country.
What other democracy bans their citizens from leaving? In this regard, Australia is now on par with North Korea.
It’s extraordinary. The Morrison Government now bans even people from flying to the overseas wedding of their daughter. Three quarters of applications to leave are refused.
This travel ban is irrational on any ground but one – our authorities can’t be bothered supervising the quarantine of travellers when they return.
Again, it’s a ban that suits the government and its security agencies, but not the citizens of this country.
Australians returning from overseas are already – sensibly – meant to go into hotel quarantine for two weeks, which they must pay for.
Just lift the travel bans and expand the number of quarantine hotels. God knows that airlines and hotels desperately need more business.
Still, the most heartless example of virus laws meant to suit governments rather than their citizens are the hard borders some states have imposed.
I have a colleague whose mother is battling a very serious disease and he is desperate to go comfort her, and shattered that he can’t.
You see, she lives in South Australia and he lives in Victoria. And South Australia has a hard border – virtually no exceptions to any travellers.
Seriously? That state can’t create quarantine hotels, even if just for cases like this?
Once again, here’s a law to take the load off the bureaucrats and police, and make the government look “tough on the virus”.
And the worst of it? You know that this hard border and this hard-heartedness is just for the benefit of the South Australian Government, because look how it can throw caution to the winds to welcome Chinese students, bringing Chinese gold.
This same government, blind to the tears of Australians, is arms-wide-open to the money of foreign students, and plans to let 300 fly in next month.
These students – many from China – will take a flight from Singapore, where the rate of new infections is higher than Australia’s, and about half that of Victoria.
No worries, said South Australia’s Health Minister on Tuesday. They’ll go into quarantine!
But why can’t travellers from Victoria have the same arrangement?
It seems South Australia’s government can lift its hard border if it’s convenient for itself – to let in foreign students bringing cash for its universities.
But it is too much bother to do the same for Victorians bringing only love for their grievously sick relatives.
Same thing with Victoria’s Premier cancelling democracy. It is convenient to Daniel Andrews to hold a daily press conference without a mask on, but it is not convenient to him to let parliament sit, socially distanced, and grill him.
So sittings of Victoria’s Legislative Assembly were banned as a health risk. Hey! That’s the people’s parliament, premier.
Not good enough. Our governments are there to serve us. We’re not there to serve our governments.
Let’s not meekly surrender freedoms to politicians grown only too fond of their new power.