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Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

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Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#341

Post by tikwidd »

908B64B197 wrote: post #269
gorwell wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably what they are referring to. Some areas are limiting outdoor time and fining people who are "outside without a reasonable excuse". "From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms. Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour , while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors." https://twitt…

> will be given new freedoms Wow, that's Orwellian to say the least. Freedom is never granted, it is earned.

And not all freedoms are equal. My freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road is lesser than your freedom to drive safely, so we restrict the former over the latter. Australians have chosen the freedom to live free of the virus over some temporary freedom of movement.

In Auckland (NZ) we are in probably some of the strictest lockdown conditions in the world, with schools and non-essential business closed, travel only permitted for exercise in a local area or visit to the supermarket, and mandatory isolation and testing for close contacts. Lockdowns are still viable here because we have been so vigilant and basically everyone understands the shared responsibility. That's how we earn that freedom.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#342

Post by dang »

UnseenTraveller wrote: post #147
eplanit wrote: post #68

There and New Zealand both. The responses (extreme lockdown) of both countries to Covid has been nothing short of insane.

I promise you, Australians and Kiwis don't need advice from Americans on how to keep citizens safe.

We've banned this account for using HN for flamewar. Not what this site is for.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#343

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

smsm42 wrote: post #254
0xdeadb00f wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about being "allowed to" go outside isn't true. Take it from me, I live here and am free to go wherever I please.

So this report, touting additional hour of outside time (within the limits of curfew and for fully vaccinated families of course, we're not savages!) is a complete fabrication? https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-nsw-restrictio...

It's either fabricated or you're reading it wrong. I'm out and about right now.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#344

Post by audit »

desertraven wrote: post #324

As an Australian, how concerned should I be about this authoritarian trend? I've heard people saying that Australia is used as a test-bed for government policy. I've also heard the creep of China could be the cause of this trend. I've seen how quickly a functioning country can dissolve (Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong). Just how concerned should we be about this? And apart from voting, is there any kind of action that can…

I do not think Australia will dissolve into a civil war supported by external proxys (like it is in Syria).

Instead, I think it will turn into East Germany with the Stasi.

It will be a society of informants...

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/ten-terrifying-f...

>" ....If someone looked like he might challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy or control, the Stasi systematically destroyed his life. They used blackmail, social shame, threats, and torture. Careers, reputations, relationships, and lives were exploded to destabilize and delegitimize a critic. Some forms of harassment were almost comical: agents spread rumors about their targets, flooded their mailboxes with pornography, moved things around in their apartments, or deflated their bicycle tires day after day. Others were life-altering: Individuals labeled as subversives were banned from higher education, forced into unemployment, and forcibly committed to asylums. Many suffered long-term psychological trauma, loss of earnings, and intense social shame as a result of Stasi lies. .... "

Take a look at where Australia is galloping to...

No physical cash, no meaningful firearm ownership, passport-system for everything (social credit score).

Kids are not to be raised by parents, instead, huge economic insentives and constraints to send them to federal kindergardens (making the care 'affordeable' while parents must work .. is a way to do this...)

Laws are designed such that they can be selective applied, everything is up to a discretion of a prosecuture or a judge.. and so on.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#345

Post by audit »

UnseenTraveller wrote: post #96
nemo44x wrote: post #26

It's a good thing everyone surrendered their firearms to this same government. Once they know you can't resist anything they can do anything to you. I'm guessing NZ is next now that they've confiscated nearly every firearm they could.

Guns in the hands of idiots. That always works out well.

Without a threat of people revolting (with firearms) against a police state, the police state sets the rules, quickly and forcefully.

Their zombified base screams profanities at the opposition. Calls them cospiracy theorists, uneducated idiots, lunatiks... etc. USSR did this for a some time...

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#346

Post by dang »

nemo44x wrote: post #26

It's a good thing everyone surrendered their firearms to this same government. Once they know you can't resist anything they can do anything to you. I'm guessing NZ is next now that they've confiscated nearly every firearm they could.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewars, and especially not classic generic ideological flamewars. They are predictable, tedious, and nasty, and we don't want that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#347

Post by dang »

cfcfcf wrote: post #36
nemo44x wrote: post #26

It's a good thing everyone surrendered their firearms to this same government. Once they know you can't resist anything they can do anything to you. I'm guessing NZ is next now that they've confiscated nearly every firearm they could.

Yes. If we had our firearms we could shoot back. Pew pew!

Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. We're trying for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#348

Post by nemo44x »

dang wrote: post #346
nemo44x wrote: post #26

It's a good thing everyone surrendered their firearms to this same government. Once they know you can't resist anything they can do anything to you. I'm guessing NZ is next now that they've confiscated nearly every firearm they could.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewars, and especially not classic generic ideological flamewars. They are predictable, tedious, and nasty, and we don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. Although my comment is probably tangential to the topic, I intended it as related and relevant.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#349

Post by arthens »

inter_netuser wrote: post #331
camillomiller wrote: post #251

My girlfriend is Australian, stranded abroad here in Germany like many other Aussies. I’ve bern following the news from down under for quite a while. I have the nagging feeling that Australia is currently the Western country with the highest chance of turning into Gilead.

Gilead...? You mean Gulag?

I assumed they meant this https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_of_Gilea...

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#350

Post by hajile »

majormajor wrote: post #293
hajile wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the early Federalist papers deal with this problem of democracy in very damning terms. It leads to failures of the state -- usually within a hundred or so years. That is why the US decided to be a Republic instead. Outside the US, countries after WW1/2 opted for democracies instead of republics with strong foundations. We're witnessing the point of failure due to the exact issues outlined in those papers.

If there is such a convincing answer, why don't you actually state it, instead of just saying that others have talked about it? It's very non-obvious to me why there's a natural "coalition of the bottom" versus that just being one possible way for things to shake out. (It's also worth noting that the original American system already suffered a MASSIVE failure of the state - coincidentally also around the hundred year…

It took them almost a dozen papers to cover all the points and explain them. Asking me to cover all that in a short post is rather unfair (and your various counterpoints no doubt appear in the anti-federalist papers which are also great reading).

What crisis are you talking about specifically? The closest they came to failure was definitely the civil war. Most people would put that as a crisis of absolutely irreconcilable moral differences rather than of normal politics. No political system ever devised could solve that problem without violence or complete separation.

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