Phillip, as a person who deals with "law" on a daily basis, no doubt you are familiar with the 2 systems of law within the 'adversarial' system in operation here. System 1 gives justice to those with means to employ solicitors/barristers to represent them and the other, System 2, hands out sentences/judgments to those who have neither connections nor money to employ said legal "representation". It has been that way since the common law rights of citizens went overboard with the anchor dropped in Sydney Cove on the morning of 26th January, 1788. That you refer to American cases (which are only ever considered when System 1 defendants/plaintiffs are before the bench) says to me we have well and truly become "Americanised" in our knowledge and interpretations of our bastardised version of a legal system. No doubt we have the silver screen, TV and the Electronic Whorehouse to thank. Ask most the Joe Average or generations born after 1980 and they can rattle off the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution chapter and verse, but very few, if any could actually tell you much about our own Australian Constitution. Thus it is given one or maybe 2 units, in any Bachelors degree course in Law, Jurisprudence and legal studies.

When is a threat not a threat? When it is not actually a real threat! Real threats that cannot be discounted as actual and real include a mutated coronavirus, that like many antibody resistant pathogens is not killed by antibiotics! Or like HIV ave already mutated so none of the current antivirals are at all effective! And to the point are so contagious and lethal they spread like an unstoppable wildfire that simply kills all who are infected, even those who are vaccinated and have had their boosters!

This is why ideas like learning to live with this virus are dangerous and threats to our existence.

I believe we need to embrace ideas the intellectually challenged decision-makers have avoided on entirely idiotic ideological grounds? The first being island quarantine the second is rapid testing. The third, getting really serious over non-compliance and idiot protest marches in our streets. Which is a real threat to the rest of the compliant community!

Me? I'd have met them with body amour and beanbag ammo the first time and real ammo the next. albeit aimed at legs when using real ammo. Why legs. Well, what better way to stop the marches in their tracks or prevent them from running away from the legal consequences of the dangerous activities/super spreader events? And just as liable as those who knowingly spread HIV!

That said, the most dangerous threat of all is idealogues that are welded to idiotic ideologies and top that by being recalcitrant in the extreme! With some examples treating climate change or a pandemic as little more than economy hurting left-wing conspiracies! And I know you know who I'm talking about!

Yes, I understand livelihoods could be on the line? As they are via droughts, floods and other extreme events. And where w need to do what is doable and just cop what cannot be avoided, on the chin! TBC.
Alan B.

When is a threat a real threat? when we are threatened by decision making recalcitrant idealogues welded to idiotic ideological imperatives! Like the coal lobby and fossil fuel industry? And or those that see the future through the narrow prism of pure, financial self-interest and the devil take the hindmost/the rest!

And consequently avoid real tax reform and the world's cheapest power, i.e. MSR thorium and or tax reform that taxes income rather than a shrinking cohort that earns wages!

And the above threat compounded by the stubborn resistance to new and far better ideas by the born to rule, privileged elite! And I know you know who I'm referring to!
Alan B.

Our inherited system of "law" is all about winning rather than justice! And winning is usually reserved for those with the deepest pockets and the privileged elite? That's why it needs to be reformed to remove the impediment to justice. The first being financial outcomes for the justice industry, an oxymoron if ever there was one!
The second being injustice for those who cannot afford to pay for preferential outcomes!

That some folk believe in this antiquated ancient system tells where they come from. Certainly not from any cohort that puts real transparent justice outcomes ahead of personal financial reward?

Real justice would be immeasurably rewarded by treating cases before treaging truth and justice tribunals equipped with covertly deployed, unbeatable, space-age lie detection technology!

And because this is so? Reform resisted to the last generic man in the justice industry, where the real imperatives, I believe, are financial rewards for the practitioners ahead of all other considerations, including real justice outcomes?

If management teaches just one thing!? It teaches there is always a better way! Particularly one which is welded by tradition to a medieval system of BS justice? Which is assisted by the salient fact, we the people do not have a guaranteed bill of irrevocable human rights!
Alan B.