Voting to ban free speech wouldn't really be a democracy for long in any real sense. If you can't talk about the candidates openly you can't really say people are actually making an informed choice.

I feel that a lot of what comes with the "Western Model" of democracy is there because if you don't hold those norms, things can slip into non democracy pretty easily. If you can ban free speech, impose curfews, legislate to murder people or oppress minorities- the political system will not be stable, and so long term it actually won't be a democracy.

But any sane person can see that's not the case here. It truly is an exceptional circumstance, and there is no legitimate long term threat to Australia's democracy from collectively agreeing to impose a curfew in order to deal with a health crisis. The author is trying to conflate the two so you feel the uneasiness that you would if the government had a curfew to suppress unrest. But they're not the same.