Imagine, for a perverse, twisted moment, that you’re the author of the world’s longest and most brutal Covid-related lockdown.
You’ve watched with satisfaction as your ranks of Robocop stormtroopers smash their way into private citizens’ homes, unannounced and without warrants, to arrest them for thoughtcrime.
You’ve felt a warm glow as they roll up in their futuristic battle wagons to beat and kick dissenters senseless, thrilled as they sneak up to slam people face first into the floor of train stations, squealed excitedly as they flatten and pepper-spray elderly ladies, clapped with glee as they fire rubber bullets (don’t whinge, they’re not lethal – yet) into the crowds of protesters.
You’ve battered your subjects into submission with absurd fines, sucked the joy out of their lives, denied them all freedom of movement, destroyed their businesses and their physical and mental health, saddled them with debt so great it will take generations of their descendants to pay down.
Time, surely, to sit back and put your feet up, congratulate yourself on a demolition job well done.
As if, as the kids say. That’s what your everyday, run-of-the-mill dictator might do, but the truly ambitious ones are not so easily satisfied. They focus on the limits to their power, and work to eliminate them. Hence Victoria’s Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021, designed to kick in the day after the current state of emergency ends on December 15.
The preposterous sanctions proposed for breaching a public health order – $90,000 and two years’ jail for an individual, almost half a million dollars for a business – have been widely criticised, but these are but a distraction from the more sinister aspects of the legislation, which runs to 113 pages, with a further 73 pages of an explanatory memorandum; and for my sins, I’ve read them.
Unless the government’s legal sycophants are especially speedy (not a noted characteristic of lawyers or public servants), it looks like they have been concocting this scheme for some considerable time, ready to drop it on a weary public the day after a few desultory “freedoms” were granted. And as they plugged all the frustrating gaps in the Premier’s powers, adding vicious bells and whistles, not one of them appears to have questioned the morality of the exercise
We can leave it to more public-spirited lawyers to analyse the Bill in detail, but a few highlights leap out even to the untutored eye.
The power to declare a pandemic shifts from health officials to the Premier, who, conveniently, “may make a pandemic declaration whether or not … the relevant disease is present in Victoria”. That should be handy; no need for that infuriating wait for an actual case of infection to justify the next lockdown and suspension of parliament.
Fortunately, the initial pandemic declaration can only be for four weeks; unfortunately, it can then be extended, at the Premier’s discretion, for a maximum of three months. Oh, but hang on, “maximum” doesn’t appear to bear its usual meaning, for “there is no limit on the number of times a pandemic declaration may be extended by the Premier”, each time for a further three months.
This could sound a bit scary, were it not for the wisdom of the lawmakers, who have built in a number of safeguards, checks and balances.
The new section 165AQ, for instance, makes provision for the tabling in parliament of a pandemic order and associated documents. “This is another important measure to ensure pandemic orders are made available to parliament,” the Bill says, “to ensure they can be scrutinised”.
But look, what have we here? Two paragraphs later, the real strength of the “important measure” is revealed: failure to comply with this requirement, the Bill notes, “does not affect the validity of the pandemic order”. Scrutinise that, parliamentarians.
An order can be applied to any person “identified by one or more of the following – (a) their presence in a pandemic management area or in a particular location in a pandemic management area; (b) their participation in or presence at an event; (c) an activity that they have undertaken or are undertaking; (d) their characteristics, attributes or circumstances”.
That covers things pretty well. I fear (d) means trouble for the sarcastic, for people with small ears, for the bewildered, but insert your own target group.
And when they come to lock you up, detention “commences when the person is first taken into the physical custody of an authorised officer”, or of “a person assisting an authorised officer”.
Prudently, the people permitted to assist in your detention are only those who fit the narrow legal category of “any person”.
Sounds like there’s an opportunity to summon the Comancheros to take a breather from their meth labs and help administer some street justice. Safe as houses.
Thank God there’s a restriction on how long you can be detained. It “must not exceed the period that the minister believes is reasonably necessary”. Another careful, objective protection in a document of peerless legal precision.
But enough of that. The Bill will become law soon enough, when the time-serving crossbenchers in Victoria’s upper house – unworthy, single-issue idiots who can’t believe their luck in securing the wealth and dubious prestige of a seat in parliament – exchange their votes for another CBD injecting room, a safe space for companion animals and a fresh term on the public teat.
Elsewhere, is there light at the end of the tunnel? Perhaps, but it’s not very bright. I’ve read that long ago there used to be other states and territories – some, according to legend, even had proper cities – but their names are lost to history.
NSW survives, however. Here in Sydney you sense a government trying, trying, to loosen the shackles, but it’s so very hard, so very unnatural.
In a month’s time, so the official Covid website promises, the state will be “fully reopened”. Except we’ll still have to wear masks on public transport, of course, and on planes, and in airports. And so will the people who attend you at a restaurant. Where, naturally, density limits will continue to apply.
Ooh, almost forgot: those density limits of one person per 2sq m, indoors and outdoors, will still apply to retail shops, gyms, churches, bars, museums, weddings and funerals, until who knows when. Nightclubs will be treated differently, obviously, because people traditionally enjoy getting down on a sweaty, crowded dancefloor.
Well, not exactly. Instead let’s double the social distancing required to one person per 4sq m. Groovers hitting clubs in the Cross will find dancers spread across the room like at a Jane Austen ball. “Fancy a line of toot, Miss Bennet?” “Indeed I do, Mr Darcy. Pray take my arm and lead me to the unisex toilet.”
Even more curiously, the 4sq m rule also applies to brothels. I’m no expert, but it strikes me that order runs counter to the purpose of such establishments.
Sadly, I can find no information on when the tiresome QR codes will be retired, save a suggestion by the Minister for Customer Service a month ago that when we reach 95 per cent fully vaccinated they might be removed from low-risk venues.
At 95 per cent I’d have thought everywhere was low risk, but hey, caution, remember. At least vaccine certificates won’t have to be produced, which means the ladies who lunch in Sydney’s eastern suburbs need no longer fear someone catching a glimpse of their date of birth.
So this is what freedom now looks like. It hasn’t aged well since we last saw it. The sorry fact is that even outside the benighted state of Victoria, we had a sinking feeling this nonsense was never going to end, didn’t we?
Some of us look at countries such as Norway, which decided last month, at just under 70 per cent double-vaccinated, to lift all restrictions at once – yes, masks too – and wonder why the same can’t happen here, at our much higher rates.
Where does the idea come from that our tiny rump of unvaccinated citizens are a threat to the vaccinated? The whole country has detected only 166,000 cases from 43 million tests since the pandemic began 20 months ago, but all of a sudden, with more than 75 per cent of Australians fully vaccinated and an additional 15 per cent about to be, the holdouts are all going to contract the disease at the same time, and all so seriously that they require admission to intensive care?
Are otherwise healthy people, by virtue of not having an injection, magically transformed into statistical outliers in terms of vulnerability? Have we abandoned all logic?
It’s become so tedious. If you persist in believing unvaccinated means infected, and fear exposure to the unclean, stay at home, wear a mask forever and let the rest of us get on with life. Good luck to you. And unvaccinated people, if you still cannot be persuaded of the benefits of the Covid injections, good luck to you too – and good luck getting to Paris any time soon.
But it’s not just our governments and bureaucracies dragging the torture out; ordinary citizens, emboldened by our leaders’ consequence-free (for them) rule-making are now imposing their own half-witted versions of pandemic management, dripping with caution in such abundance that it threatens to drown us all.
Here’s a fun example: it doesn’t matter when the NSW Premier and his team decide to lift restrictions, a collection of Sydney theatres and their ensembles, revered for their ability to dress up, pretend to be someone else and memorise words, have declared you’re not entering their enchanting world of make-believe unless double-vaccinated and sporting the mask of obedience (which also conveniently hides your grimace at their right-on pieties), even after those rules are gone. By the way, thanks for the $75m arts stimulus package, everybody!
Medical professionals, not content with your multiple injections, are further demanding negative Covid tests a day or two before examining or treating you. What happens when the free testing stops? Will we be obliged to fork out hundreds of dollars to assuage other people’s paranoia? See, it’s not just the wicked unvaccinated who will be punished.
Employers in all manner of low-contact industries are implementing “No jab, no job” conditions, temperature testing their staff, continuing to mandate social distancing like it’s the bad old days of 2020, their security guards empowered to check your vaccine status.
What happens when vaccine certificates are no longer required? Will it be legal for hospitality venues to continue to demand them? Will pub bouncers be trained to make a snap health assessment, some steroid-fuelled ox with his meaty hand on your chest saying, “You look a bit crook, bro. Me and Bazza here reckon you’ve got long Covid, so bugger off”?
We might fantasise about lifting the mindless, petty, micromanaged rules and regulations all at once, but no, that might be unsafe.
Better to have people drift away from compliance as our governments peel off the Band-Aids agonisingly slowly, dragging the lunacy into next year and beyond.
For if the past 20 months have taught us anything, it’s that it’s not long Covid we need to worry about. It’s long government.
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