Andrew Bolt: If this madness is ‘safe’, give me danger

The idea of “safe” is now lethally dangerous. After firing into protesters, what fresh hell will Victorian authorities unleash to “keep us safe”?

I don’t recognise my country. On Saturday, police in Melbourne even shot pepper balls at 5000 protesters to “keep us safe” from people who were demanding freedom.

Australia, once famed as a nation of larrikins turns out instead to be a nation of militant hypochondriacs and largely willing prisoners, with escapees now shot.

What madness. Our leaders are burning down our society in order to “save” us.

To “keep us safe”, they’ve now forced 15 million Australians to stay in their homes, and imposed a curfew – almost useless, say epidemiologists – on Melbourne and on Sydney’s southwest.

To “keep us safe”, they’ve driven people off beaches and out of parks, where the risk of transmission is almost nil. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last week even scolded people gathered on a windswept beach at Rye to watch a sunset, 43km from any known exposure site.

To “keep us safe”, politicians forced the old and dying to spend their last months without seeing their grandchildren, and kept out Australians overseas desperate to come home.

Protesters are showered in pepper spray during Saturday’s wild demonstrations. Picture: Jason Edwards

Angry protesters take to the streets of Melbourne.

To “keep us safe”, governments have ruined businesses and racked up hundreds of billions of dollars of debt.

Worst of all, to “keep us safe”, they’ve banned children from seeing friends or going to school for months of the most formative time of their lives. They’ve even driven children out of Victoria’s playgrounds, despite this coronavirus not killing a single Australian child.

Their idea of “safe” is now lethally dangerous. In Sydney, Lifeline has never been busier in its 60 years. In Victoria, many more children have reported to hospitals with suicidal thoughts.

If this is “safe”, give me danger.

Right now I don’t feel “safe” at all from premiers – Andrews, Palaszczuk, McGowan – who’ve morphed from our servants into bullying masters.

The words of philosopher C.S. Lewis have never rung so true: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive … Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience”.

Andrews’ police are already firing pepper balls into freedom protesters. What fresh hell will he unleash to “keep us safe”, now that even locking down his whole state isn’t working, with new infections on Sunday rising to 65?

Victoria Police’s show of force.

What extreme measure will such premiers use in their holy crusade for “zero Covid”, when their real job is simpler – to just stop the dying, as much as reasonably possible?

In fact, that job is largely done, now that 30 per cent of Australian adults are fully vaccinated, including the vast majority of those most likely to be killed – overwhelmingly aged care residents.

Not one Australian outside NSW has died this year from catching this virus in the community.

True, NSW has had 71 deaths, but check who is dying. Five of this weekend’s six deaths could have been better prevented by better infection control at their hospital or aged care home, rather than by chasing people off beaches.

Two were very old men – in their 80s and 90s with other “significant” health issues – who got infected in their dementia ward, and a third was a woman in her 90s in a geriatric ward. Two were men – one in his 60s, the other in his 70s – who were not fully vaccinated and infected while they were in hospital. The sixth was a woman in her 80s who had not got herself vaccinated.

A woman and child pass a closed playground in Melbourne. Picture: William West

Yet politicians announced all these deaths as tragedies, as of people with their whole lives in front of them. Cut short in their prime as they went – who knows? – to a playground or beach.

What manic sentimentality is this? Yes, I’m very sorry for their families, but people that old and frail die every day. We used to have more elderly people die unremarked every year from the flu or pneumonia without stopping the nation and crucifying our children “to keep us safe”.

Overseas, many other countries now realise people would rather be safe from being treated like prisoners.

In Britain, soccer stands are again crowded with fans, despite 32,000 new infections and 104 deaths last Saturday – which in smaller Australia is like 12,000 infections and 40 deaths. In Britain, that’s considered a price worth paying for freedom, but here it’s panic and pepper balls.

I know, we haven’t yet vaccinated enough of us to be as free as Britain, but only the mad would think we can’t even watch a sunset.