South Australia became even more totalitarian today, with ALL businesses having to report their customers to Big Brother Steve via the QR app or manual sign in. South Australian's have already increased their online buying by 65% this year.

Marshall, a one time small business owner himself, will go down as the man who wrecked retail and drove away thousands of jobs.

Ttbn,

Yep, totalitarianism has been around in Australia for a long time.

At the beginning of the Second World War, that totalitarian Menzies - and then that totalitarian Curtin - demanded that all able-bodied people in Australia contribute to the war effort, men and women, everybody apart from essential workers and women with kids. No doubt dictated to by that totalitarian Churchill who had the same secret communist policies.

What a couple of communist bastards, Menzies and Curtin ! How clever was Pig-Iron Bob, pretending to be anti-communist and sucking up to Japan, while all along he was working for Stalin and the Comintern ?

Joe

One silly comment only, so I have to accept that most of the sheep are happy with government surveillance and having their movements traced, all because of a disease that kills a mere 1% of the people who contract it. Those dying already having one foot in the grave. What a bunch of ba lambs. The Great Reset is going to be a doddle for its perpetrators. You 'will own nothing, and you will be happy' is their latest jingle.

Eventually, the incompetent authorities, as they are laughingly called, are going to have to let the virus rip and nature take its course. When your number is up, it's up. Vaccine, no vaccine. Compulsory or voluntary. Yada, Yada. We are all getting a lesson in the fragility of man against nature, and the useless of our politicians when they are actually called on to earn their money.

I'll go with the politicians on this, Australia seems to be doing much better than many other countries.

See that a new strain has appeared in England.

Is Mise,

You are entitled to surrender to Big Brother; in this case, for no good reason at all. But Big Brother hasn't done much in the China virus area, except wreck the economy and jobs and small and medium businesses, and hand out money like the socialists they have become. Our relative good fortune has been due to luck, weather and geography.

I made one of my rare sorties to a shopping precinct this morning and, in shops at least, surveillance was being ignored.

It is a delicate issue: the virus is real, serious and must be dealt with, but digital technology is an even bigger plague in the long run and no vaccine is in sight.

Marshall has so far done well and acted in a balanced way, but he did cross a red line with the latest decrees, breaking the right balance.

In his own words, it was OK to introduce COVID check-in into clubs and restaurants because these places are optional - "don't like it, don't enter".

But introducing the same for people getting their life-essentials, including food and medicine, is not on!

Same for places of worship: no one has a right to interfere between someone and their God, this is essential because this is what life is about in the first place.

I must imagine the pain this causes the Jewish community, where neither the use of electrical devices nor writing is allowed on the Sabbath and major Jewish holidays (when the most important communal prayers occur). One solution they could have previously implemented to register their attendance in synagogue is to have a board of beads with everyone's pre-written names and phone-numbers, so when they enter they simply move their bead to the other side. The new decrees no longer allow it. When one is faced with the choice of obeying God or obeying secular authorities, there is no doubt whose orders one should follow (notwithstanding that actions could be hidden from secular authorities, but not the other way).

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Dear Ttbn,

Government surveillance is a problem, but the safeguards in this case are pretty good. I would be more worried about the possible abuse of data by commercial bodies and family members. The promised "Scantek" technology could have solved some of these privacy-holes, but Marshall has fallen silent about it.

«Those dying already having one foot in the grave.»

Yes, but many others are left with permanent holes in their lungs, hearts and brains - none of which I would like to have.