While it is true that there is a dedicated minority who oppose mandatory vaccinations and might overturn government vote-chasing policy, it is also true that there is a dedicated minority who favour compulsory vaccination and will try to keep policy settings as they are. These people have all the power levers to ensure that the dissenters are kept in check – the media, the police, the courts and of course the power-hungry segments within the various governments.

It is amazing how far we’ve come in two years. I used to wonder at how the populace in 1930s Germany would fall into line around the Nazis, how Russians wept at the death of Stalin or how mass hysteria overran China during the cultural revolution. There must have been something different about those cultures, I thought, and tried to find it.

But now we see that we are just like them. Vast numbers of us encourage the government to take us to safety by taking freedom from us and cheer when they do so. Then, with the new highly questionable laws in place we admonish others to just fall into line for the sake of the community.

Rubber bullets fired into peaceful crowds. Police orders used to censor protest coverage. Playgrounds disfigured to stop masked kids using them. Families separated across state or even local government boarders. Yet vast numbers buy into the suppression. Why? Because they have been conditioned to seeing it all as necessary to save them from an unseen foe.

It may be, as GY thinks, that innate Australian larrikinism will rear up and overturn government orders by simply ignoring them. But I have my doubts. Enough people are sufficiently terrified by the media/government/health-bureaucracy claims that they will demand that the orders be followed. A few businesses singled out by the jihadists with the willing help of the police for failure to ban the unclean, will be sufficient to force the rest into compliance.

We used to pride ourselves on the hard-won freedoms that made us special in the world. But we’ve given them up with nary a whimper.

Dear mhaze,

Well that is a complete rewriting of history.

It was the Nazis who came and caused the rioting in the streets, who saw normal law and order dismantled, who incited, cajoled and threatened. The Victorian Proud Boys are attending all the protests assaulting police and stirring up as much trouble as they can. This is right out of the Nazi playbook.

The messaging of this “Work, Freedom, and Bread” Nazi poster from the 30s wouldn't look out of place in some of the protests in Melbourne.
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-work-freedom-and-bread!-nazi-party-election-poster-ca-1931-50031089.html

And it doesn't take much imaginations to see evil Jewish businessmen from that time being replaced by evil Pharma now.

As I stated earlier we are moving away from those notions of social responsibility to individual freedom themes which are challenging our British origins.

I have a close relative in Vicpol and he assures me rubber bullets are not being used at the protests. He also attended the BLM protests and is very struck at the difference between the two. The violence characterising the recent protests was something he was not expecting. He had a female member standing next to him on the Westgate who was felled by a rock and he has had to dodge batteries and baked bean cans being propelled toward he and fellow officers.

Just look at what GrahamY used in his article, it was a case of a woman suing because her claimed exemption from the flu vaccine was denied, not the compulsory vaccination regime itself. Yet somehow it leads the case against mandatory Covid vaccinations for the health industry, something which was already in place for the flu.

That is what 2 years have done in this State, not in a small part because of the Murdoch press. We use to pride ourselves in how we came together, often quite selflessly, to help tackle disasters like the bushfires which took lives. We seem to be quickly losing that. Thankfully most Australians still see things in those terms and know that by getting vaccinated they are helping to serve their community and keep others safer.

Police not firing on the crowd....

http://twitter.com/i/status/1440571893388484612

Nazis on the streets of Melbourne:

http://xyz.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/D74A0077-F8A1-43F9-B270-58B1A114739F.jpeg

"Well that is a complete rewriting of history."

Sometimes its very obvious that you write the reply without bothering to read the post.

First, I thank the author for acknowledging that there is no atrocity worse than conscription.

There are actions that are right and moral and other actions that are wrong and immoral, but what the hell is "human rights"?

Good deeds do not become wrong just because someone in Helsinki, Nuremburg or Siracusa said so, nor do bad deeds become right because someone there said that they were acceptable.

It is wrong to interfere with someone else's body without their permission - and this goes both ways: wrong to force a vaccine on another, and wrong to go into other people's space without their consent while carrying (or potentially carrying) a dangerous virus¹.

So while nobody should ever be forced to get vaccinated, it is quite OK in principle to instruct those who are not vaccinated to stay out of public space and/or to refuse them employment or education².

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Dear SteeleRedux,

«Australia unsurprisingly sits between the two but there is no doubt we are gradually moving to the American model»

This is only a temporary coincidence. The situation is Australia is unique and different to both:

Here in Australia, people, with very few exceptions, WANT to be vaccinated, because we are good, responsible and caring people, not because government orders so, offering carrots and threatening with sticks.

What happened here is that for a long time government denied us the freedom to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Now that we are (more-or-less) no longer prevented from getting vaccinations, we are in the process of catching up and will probably end up way higher than England.

For some, there is however the reactive tendency to avoid being vaccinated due only to the insult of being ordered by government to do so.

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¹ actually, it is wrong to go into other people's space without their consent, period, but that's a different topic

² actually, there is anyway nothing wrong about refusing to provide employment or education, on whatever grounds, since one ought not be obliged to provide such services to others in the first place

Dear Mhaze,

«But now we see that we are just like them. Vast numbers of us encourage the government to take us to safety by taking freedom from us and cheer when they do so.»

Is it not legitimate for people to seek safety?
Is it not legitimate for people to defend themselves by keeping away others who might infect them?

The tragedy is that we have been so disarmed, for so long, that we are left with no other way to defend ourselves other than by pleading government to do so on our behalf (not that it matters - government will do whatever they want anyway, for their own interests, they never listen to our pleadings).
So sad - I wish there was no government, but this wouldn't mean that we, the people who live on this land, wouldn't take similar protective measures ourselves.

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It seems to me that the objective of democracy is justice and that the role and duty of a democratically elected government is to do everything it can to enable society to attain that objective.

By justice, in this context, I mean equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. Among the rights are individual freedoms. Theoretically, everybody has the right to their individual freedoms – but, naturally, in the social context, individual freedoms are often compounded with those of others or in complete opposition with them.

While, as a rule, it is the role of democratic government to ensure the protection of individual rights, in some circumstances, the full, unrestrained respect of the rights of every single individual could have negative effects for society as a whole, and result in a form of anarchy.

When such a situation arises, without falling into an excess of authoritarianism, it would simply be good common sense for the government to arbitrate in favour of whatever represents the common good.

For the past two years, we have been at war with an invisible enemy that ruthlessly and indiscriminately attacks our civil population and there is no end in sight. We struggle to survive and turn to the state for protection. What can it do ? What does it do ?

It provides us with vaccines that were miraculously produced and approved in record time but which some people reject through lack of confidence. The state insists that the vaccines are sufficiently safe and our most effective means of protection against the deadly virus. Proof of vaccination has become a necessary requisite for access to many of our normal daily activities, resulting in social discrimination.

The war against the virus continues to rage. Mandatory vaccination may be the next step, perhaps our last resort – while waiting for the miracle to come.

After all, conscription or mandatory military service was introduced in Australia in 1942, when all men aged 18–35, and single men aged 35–45 fought in the Second World War. Here we go again. This time it"s the virus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXvG0SMP7tw&ab_channel=LeonardCohenVEVO

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