“We had to smash car windows and pull people out because they wouldn’t give us details… they wouldn’t tell us where they’re going”, declares a senior Australian policeman dressed from head to toe in black.
No, this is not a scene from a prequel to Mad Max where Australia gets taken over by fascists. This is actually happening right now in the Australian state of Victoria, under the regime of power-crazed, hard left premier Daniel Andrews. (Or ‘Kim Jong Dan’, as he is known locally.
Victoria has adopted some of the strictest coronavirus rules anywhere in the world, including an 8 p.m. curfew and police roadblocks to discourage any citizens with pesky notions about personal freedom.
Police are even allowed into your home to carry out spot checks — without a warrant and without your permission.
One or two Australians are resisting and Victoria’s Police Commissioner Shane Patton is responding with the full force of the law.
“Groups of people who classify themselves as ‘sovereign citizens’ — whatever that might mean — people who don’t think the law applies to them: we’ve seen them at checkpoints baiting police, not providing their name and address.”
“On at least three or four occasions in the past week we’ve had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there so they could provide their details because they weren’t telling us where they were going. They weren’t adhering to the Chief Health Officer guidelines. They weren’t providing their name and their address.”
So presumably, in order to justify these extreme measures, the state of Victoria must be experiencing an exceptional, indeed, unprecedented crisis?
Nope. Not remotely.
In the state of Victoria there had been just 162 deaths attributed to coronavirus. Even in the whole of Australia the total was only 247.
To put this into perspective, this is less than half the number of people who die in Australia every year from skin diseases, and about one-fifth of the number killed in car accidents.
Australia likes to call itself ‘The Lucky Country’. It prides itself on its no-nonsense, independent, good-humoured, matey culture and its aversion to petty rules and regulation.
But clearly Victoria’s premier Dan Andrews — and his various black-clad henchmen — hasn’t got the memo.
Here — courtesy of Lockdown Sceptics — are the new rules imposed on Victoria’s state capitol of Melbourne, to be enforced for at least the next six weeks:
- The “state of emergency” in Victoria has been upgraded to a “state of disaster”, meaning police can now enter your home to carry out spot checks even if you don’t give them permission and they don’t have a warrant.
- Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., you’re not allowed to leave your homes except for work, medical care and caregiving.
- Outside those hours, you may only leave your home for four reasons: shopping for food and essential items, care and caregiving, daily exercise and work. “We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason whatsoever,” said Kim Jong Dan.
- Daily exercise can only take place within a 5km radius of your home and cannot last longer than an hour.
- You cannot exercise in groups of more than two, even if they’re members of the same household.
- Apart from daily exercise, you are only allowed to leave your home once a day for essential supplies and food.
- In the whole of Victoria, you cannot buy more than two of certain essential items, including dairy, meat, vegetables, fish and toilet paper.
- Schools have closed again, with all Victoria school students returning to remote learning from Wednesday (except for vulnerable children and children of permitted workers). Childcare and kindergarten will be closed from Thursday.
- Golf and tennis venues, which were open, have now been closed.
- Weddings will no longer be allowed from Thursday, and funerals will be limited to 10 people.
- Face nappies anywhere outside your home have been mandatory for people in metropolitan Melbourne since July 22nd, but that rule has now been extended to the entire state of Victoria.
- You cannot have visitors or go to another person’s house unless it is for the purpose of giving or receiving care. However, you can leave your house to visit a person if you are in an “intimate personal relationship” with them, even during curfew hours. So no “bonk ban”.
- If you have a holiday home or were planning a holiday outside Melbourne, tough cheese. You must remain in the city for the next six weeks.
- The maximum fine for breaching a health order currently stands at $1,652, but Kim Jong Dan said he would have more to say about penalties later today, i.e. he’s going to increase them.
Perhaps the most depressing thing of all is that a lot of Victorians appear to be enjoying Kim Jong Dan’s iron grip.
According to this ‘postcard from Melbourne’ from one of the few dissenters in Victoria, one enthusiast of the draconian rules and regs has actually produced a homeware range featuring portraits of the Covidfascists responsible: Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos; Premier Dan Andrews; Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.
Eat your heart out Mad Max. The future’s here and it’s even scarier than the Thunderdome.