When I recently observed how Australia’s state premiers were quietly colluding to ease back the worst of their pandemic restrictions, with an eye to upcoming elections, it might have seemed that my oft-repeated warning that they will never let us be free again, if they can help it was utterly discredited. As we shall see, the warning stands as stark as ever.
Because while premiers have thrown voters the odd bone or two, to mollify the growing protests at vaccine mandates and lockdowns — even as the supposed rationale for them, Covid “cases” and “deaths” — are at peaks well above when the worst restrictions were enforced, many remain quietly in the background.
Worse, the most destructively anti-democratic aspects of pandemic politics lurk, untouched and unreformed, ready to be unleashed again at a state premier’s whim.
In what is regarded as an abuse of power, the McGowan Government introduced a bill into parliament on Monday seeking to extend the pandemic ‘emergency powers’ for Western Australia.
While the duration of the extended powers will be subject to revision, this fourth extension is forecast to last until January 2023, rather than the previous expiration date of 4 July 2022.
In mid-April this year the McGowan government announced that the state reached the peak of the Omicron outbreak, however, he now says the state of emergency would continue to be rolled over every two weeks, at the stroke of Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson’s pen.
Western Australia has now been in a continuous “state of emergency” for two years.
In response, Opposition Leader Mia Davies slammed the McGowan government on Tuesday calling the move ‘arrogant,’ saying it has the majority numbers to ‘ram’ the legislation through.
The Opposition leader’s office was brief at 11;30 am on Monday — with parliament sitting just one and a half hours later.
AINN
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Andrews’ “Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management)” laws are still very much in place. The new laws, which were rammed through parliament by just two votes from microparty crossbenchers, allow the premier to declare an “emergency”, with astonishing powers, virtually at will. The Premier and Health Minister will have absolute, unreviewable power to indefinitely keep Victorians in lockdown. Under the changed laws, this can be done even if there are zero cases in Victoria and can be for an indefinite period of time. The laws also allow the state government to detain or quarantine citizens for any reason. Power to detain is not limited to police, but any “Authorised Officer” so deemed by the premier.
And just to rub in how the pandemic dictators are still well and truly committed to keeping their subjects under the iron heel, California is moving to allow children to be vaccinated without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
Your children are no longer yours, and they will never let us be free again if they can help it.
