"EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for "causing annoyance" to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.
...
People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.
...
The president of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann, SC, described the regulations as "unnecessary and repugnant"."

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Can we now claim that the idea we are in a police state is at least plausible? Remember that it happens in small grades, bit by bit.You can't be remotely "irritable" to the participants. This is probably about as bad as you will get in the Chinese communist regime.

No free speech. No freedom of expression.

Fines of $5500 and presumably arrest and detainment.

And the police are no doubt proud of this fact. They are showing strong tendencies to becoming inbred like the American law enforcement. And again we have very few options politically if we disagree with this policy.

It must be difficult for todays cops.
Stuck between the civil liberatarians and a skyrocketing crime rate...what are they going to do.
They have been losing their powers for several decades.
The Rudd government, like John Howards, has no answer to the crime (though the born again Christians do by encouraging the seeding of Christian revival to control youth...when the people get saved and born again they get set free from the carnality...its in the history books under christian revivals. The net is full of personal testimonies on the successes.)
The New World Order wants control over everything.
The thread on the Bilderbergers says much.
They want a microchip on everyone so they can keep an eye on daily movements via satellite (click on the mark of the beast 666).
Know where the people are and you have control over them just as in George O rwells 1984.
Police state is coming...but I dont blame the cops.
The powers at play are global and bigger that joe/jane Constable...or even joe/jane Commissioner.

I find it quite appalling that a religious festival that has relevance to a minority of Australia's population is to be allowed to disrupt the lives of everybody else. Worse still, it seems to be providing an excuse for the ever-increasing erosion of civil liberties that appears to be the hallmark of 21st century life.

When was the general public consulted about this monumental pain in the arse that has been foisted on us by the State, in collaboration with one religious sect?

I'm even more glad than usual that I don't live anywhere near Sydney.

I'm with CJ on this one. I'm more concerned at how a sectarian religious gathering, with the deliberately innocuous and misleading title of World Youth Day, can be allowed to cause the large scale disruption and tie up state resources to the extent that it will.

Hopefully, the intrusive use of police powers in this particular case will mean there is no repetition of this event.

I have Catholic friends who've told me the whole event is running on the backs of volunteers. Good Catholics all over the country are expected to drive huge distances to collect and billet these young people. Well, we hope they do; there might be a spike in the number of homeless on Sydney's streets otherwise.

Which brings me to an appalling abuse of police power, captured on camera and shown on the 7:30 Report last night, where a homeless older man, desperately in need of help, was laid into by four police thugs. This is the state of police I don't like.

I agree though, Steel, we are becoming a police state. Dissent is being stifled in the name of security and we should all be making a big noise about it.

CJ,

I note with interest you don't feel the same way about any other religions and their burgeoning claims to special treatment. On that issue you have an entirely different view.

Paul.L: << I note with interest you don't feel the same way about any other religions and their burgeoning claims to special treatment. On that issue you have an entirely different view. >>

What rot, Paul. I would feel exactly the same way about it if the deceptively named "World Youth Day" was conducted by any religious group - whether they were Anglican, Pentecostal, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever.

When have I ever advocated for any religion or religious group? There's a world of difference between arguing against bigotry and advocating for the victims of it.