Rita Panahi: Hypocrisy revealed as protesters get a free ride to break laws
Victorians have copped more than 6000 fines for breaching COVID-19 restrictions, but when it comes to Leftist activists the rules are relaxed to avoid violence, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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Victorians who have suffered through the country’s harshest coronavirus restrictions might be bemused by the suddenly laissez-faire attitude of the police and the Andrews Government to wilful breaking of the law.
People who have watched their livelihoods destroyed in the name of public health or copped heavy fines for defying restrictions are entitled to ask why there’s one rule for them and another for race-obsessed agitators.
Abiding by coronavirus restrictions has been described as a matter of life or death by Premier Daniel Andrews and his ministers but now it’s a matter of personal choice.
Victoria Police has even given an assurance to protesters they won’t be fined for breaking restrictions that normally result in a $1652 penalty notice.
The Andrews Government is currently encouraging employees to dob in their employers if they’re not allowed to work from home but Black Lives Matter protesters gathering in massive numbers, where social distancing is impossible, is perfectly fine.
In Victoria you can’t have a beer at the pub without sitting down for a meal, handing over your phone number and socially distancing from other patrons but you can gather in
big crowds to hold up traffic and scream abuse at police.
Grandparents are banned from watching their grandkids play sport but thousands congregating in the city on Saturday is deemed an acceptable risk the State Government is not willing to discourage with fines.
You can’t have more than 50 people at an outdoor funeral but you can have 30,000 or more converging in the city in support of an activist group that claims “black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise”.
If the people marching genuinely believe that then they’re hopelessly divorced from reality.
Australia devotes more than $30 billion a year on services for indigenous Australians. There are a plethora of programs available exclusively to those who identify as indigenous from free dental care to a range of financial assistance packages to preferential treatment via admission schemes for schools and universities.
All these programs are designed to “close the gap” and help indigenous Australians succeed.
How can that be interpreted as systematic racism designed to destroy the black population?
If Australians are going to march under the banner of the US Black Lives Matter movement then they better familiarise themselves with a group whose founders push a toxic, divisive brand of race politics.
A number of police officers have been murdered by BLM supporters including five officers shot dead and another nine injured in Dallas in July, 2016.
The latest race riots in the US have seen multiple police officers shot, run over and assaulted.
We live in dystopian times when a group that has inspired so much anti-police and anti-white violence is lauded by politicians, media and corporates alike.
All of whom turn a blind eye to the more extreme elements of the movement.
Of course, all black lives matter including the about 90 per cent of black homicide victims who are killed by other African-Americans.
It’s little wonder that despite the media meltdown most Americans support President Donald Trump’s move to deploy the military to restore order after a week of violent protests.
Some 58 per cent including one in two Democrats support the plan, according to a Morning Consult poll; and 40 per cent of self-identified “liberals” and 37 per cent of African-Americans also support military intervention in the protests.
One can only hope the Melbourne protest is peaceful and doesn’t descend into the type of vandalism and violence we’ve seen in London.
A BLM protest in Sydney on Tuesday included a sign featuring a burning police car and the words “a good cop’s a dead cop”.
Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius claimed the Melbourne protest won’t be a “licence to break the law” before waxing lyrical about people’s “anger and frustration of the events taking place overseas”.
“We absolutely understand the sentiment and the anger that lies behind that and we are very keen to support the community in giving a voice to their concerns,” he said.
Why is Victoria Police playing politics and selectively applying the law?
Victorians have copped more than 6000 fines for breaching COVID-19 restrictions, more than four times the number issued by New South Wales police but when it comes to Leftist activists the rules are relaxed to avoid violence.
“If you’ve got 10,000 people there it is impossible to start doing infringements without causing massive safety issues for police,” Victoria’s Police Minister Lisa Neville said.
Let’s not forget Premier Andrews was so immovable when it came to COVID-19 restrictions that we were the only state or territory that banned visiting your mum on Mother’s Day.
But now the State Government and police are happy to defy the advice of Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and tacitly approve a massive gathering by declaring no fines will be issued.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist