Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

763 pointssoylentbeige861 comments

I've lived to see this kind of thing enacted in a good portion of the Anglosphere and my visceral reaction is to engage in a combination of civil disobedience and a determination to undermine every overstep made.

With regards to things like the Aussie requirement for phone check-ins every 15 minutes or they will deploy police to follow up and confirm your location, turn off the phone and make them eat the cost of having to deploy all available police resources just to see if people are submitting to the whim of the government every 15 minutes. Bonus if you opt to answer the door naked and claim you were busy showering/having sex/aligning your chakras/whatever.

Any bureaucracy will naturally follow the path of least resistance. It is your job to make it more painful for them to pursue their goals than it is to leave you alone.

You seem to be referring to the South Australia Home Quarantine app [1]. There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about this app recently. I'd just like to clear up some things:

The app only applies to people that need to quarantine, not the general population.

The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app.

It is a way for authorities to make sure people are quarantining correctly, and to follow up cases of contact if people break their isolation bubble. Police are not arresting people for failing to check in. (My guess is that they would reset your isolation duration, follow up contacts and/or move you into a managed quarantine).

[1] https://www.covid-19.sa.gov.au/home-quarantine-app

>> rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app.

Download the app or we send you to a camp? That isn't much of a choice. I'd say it is about as non-choice as possible while still meeting the literal definition.

I'll say what I said on the other thread -

If you want to present an argument against quarantine being needed or warranted, please go ahead. Checking in on the app is the least intrusive of the three options - quarantine under guard (usually in a hotel, like the one I'm in right now), quarantine at home with police visits tio ensure compliance, or quarantine at home checking in to the app once or twice a day.

In this context, getting hysterical about the least intrusive option is weird.

It’s a consensual decision on behalf of the individual - when you travel from a high risk region to another it’s understood by all parties you will need to quarantine for a period to prevent unknowingly spreading the virus on untold others. Which to me just seems you know, ethical and responsible?

> The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility.

> Nobody is being forced to use the app.

If there’s a cost difference, I’d say that “forced” is an unfairly neutral word to use.

SA is charging upwards of $3000 (for 1 adult, plus $1000 each additional adult, plus $500 per child) for hotel quarantine [1], and though I can’t find a definitive source, your link does say it is intended to be a “cost effective alternative to medi-hotel quarantine”.

So for a family of 2 adults, 2 kids, being charged $5000 to avoid using the app isn’t real freedom. If it means the difference between putting food on the table or not, it’s no choice at all.

[1] https://www.covid-19.sa.gov.au/restrictions-and-responsibili...

My guess is you didn't read there are three options. In most countries of the world (including mine) you get only two options, yet in Australia three. Two of them being free of cost: at home with human checks, or at home with app checks. Please take down your costs strawman, it's not helping the debate.

Even if it's "just" for 2 weeks of quarantine, being able to check-in within 15 minutes seems unreasonable. What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.?

Many other countries trust their citizens enough that such draconian measures weren't required even at the height of the pandemic. Not to mention now.

I'd be curious how violations to check-in are handled in practice.

> What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.?

If you fail to check in, they try again a bit later on, if you fail again it falls back to the non app-enabled method of a police check at your home.

The app is voluntary and allows you to be at home rather than in a facility, and to not have random police checks. It's a convenience, not an imposition.

> Many other countries trust their citizens enough that such draconian measures weren't required even at the height of the pandemic.

In some like the UK, that trust was misplaced, and compliance with isolation rules was under 50%.

> I'd be curious how violations to check-in are handled in practice.

By a second request and then a police visit, the same police visit you'd get if you opted not to use the app at all.

“ The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility.”

Sounds just like this was taken from a dystopian novel.

So does a global pandemic that's killed millions worldwide.

"Our oppressor isn't as bad as you've heard. They give us choices! For example, we get to choose chicken or beef for our 12pm meal."

Be careful. Stockholm syndrome is real.

I still don't agree this should be the way people are treated for having a virus. It's over the top.

No where else in the world is cracking down like this (AFAIK, maybe China?)

This is totally abusing a crisis to gain handover people and using "safety" as justification.

It's not people quarantining because they have the virus, it's related to the mandatory quarantine for international arrivals. Previously you needed to complete 2-weeks of hotel quarantine when you arrived in Australia. This new compromise allows people an option to complete that quarantine period from their own home instead. It's part of a move to increase overseas arrivals while minimising transmission.

Why doesn't the Government take some responsibility though?

They screwed up on some many levels, now it's up to the individual to be tracked like a criminal? That's why this is such a joke.

I remember reading the Prime Minister of Australia scoffed at corona virus, said it was a Chinese problem and said he will attend the Rugby League.

“people that need to quarantine” also happens to be based on something only a tiny fraction of people have the means to verify, I can’t think of anything in modern times more prone to tyranny than invisible requirements only the chosen state mages can bless

>My guess is that they would reset your isolation duration

You do know that quarantine isn't supposed to be a punishment, right? Resetting your isolation duration is punitive and has zero relationship to your ability to spread covid.

> The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app.

Oh, well I guess it's ok then. /s

> The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app

Weird. In Canada we're allowed to isolate at home without a wildly intrusive app, or police visits or anything like that.

We get a fine if we are caught out when we are required to isolate, that's all.

Personally if my government was proposing this kind of quarantine tracking, I'd be looking to move somewhere sane.

Bad thing that there's almost nowhere to move. Almost everybody has their intrusive model to cope with Covid.

> The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app.

Wait. So if I refuse to be tracked by the government, the government will take me by force to a detention camp?

Did someone accidently ran a search and replace for Cuba and Australia before publishing the article?

what prohibits them from quarantining at home in the first place? Is there a difference between not leaving my room for 2 weeks (except to use the bathroom) and staying in a hotel for 2 weeks?

> managed quarantine

What's that?

> quarantine facility

> managed quarantine

Love it.

It’s quarantine as a service. The Stripe of quarantine, if you will.

The phone check in thing is for enforcing the two weeks home quarantine for returned travelers and close contacts of confirmed cases. While there are certainly slippery slope arguments to be made, let's not act like we've already slid down it.

> The phone check in thing is for enforcing the two weeks home quarantine for returned travelers and close contacts of confirmed cases.

So the government can effectively just inprison you in your own house, with no proof, no recourse and no due process, because they suspect you were near some guy at some particular time some days ago. They don't even ask to get tested first! How can people on hacker news of all places not see this as a massive threat to civil liberty is beyond me.

When the alternative is thousands and thousands of deaths, most of us are willing to temporarily give up a bit of civil liberty.

Can the quarantine be shortened with negative PCR test?

Unless the exposure site is identified as a low-risk one where contacts are directed to isolate until they get a negative test, no. You have to do a test when going into iso and you have to get a negative test on day 13 to leave it. There have been plenty of cases where the day 13 test is positive, even when the test at the start was negative.

> phone check-ins every 15 minutes or they will deploy police to follow up and confirm your location

WHAAAAAAAT??

The right to bear arms also seems to fit your framework quite well. If the police knocking on your door has to fear that you appear naked that is unpleasent but merely a nuisance. If you could be armed they will probably think twice if it is worth the risk.

And this is the foundation of the Second Amendment despite the intense opposition to it. The Second Amendment creates lines that even the government will be unwilling to cross.

And yet government agents shooting unsuspecting non-criminals in their own home, after mistaking the address or responding to a malicious fake emergency call, is a line that is only crossed in the country with the Second Amendment.

I think in practice (from the US) they come in with 10 people, guns drawn, in bulletproof vests ready to fire at anything moving just in case which leads to unfortunate deaths which is why 'Swatting' is so dangerous in the US

They also murder unarmed people with a frequency I'm not comfortable with, so any argument that guns is what makes the police trigger happy has plenty of counter examples of clearly unarmed people getting killed.

This.

These "data disruption warrants" are the most interesting to me:

> Data disruption means adding, copying, deleting or altering data held in a computer. This can only be done in order to frustrate the commission of offences or determine relevance of data. To assist disruption, a warrant can also authorise other facilitative activities, such as entering specified premises, using electronic equipment to obtain access to data, removing a computer from premises, copying data that has been obtained, and intercepting if necessary to carry out the things authorised in the warrant. A data disruption warrant also allows the officer to take actions to conceal the access and the activities, allowing the warrant to be conducted covertly.

> Data disruption warrants can be used to affect data offshore with the consent of an appropriate consenting foreign official (if the location of data is known or can be reasonably determined). They can also be issued internally in an emergency situation, and subsequently authorised by a Judge or AAT member. They can also permit the officer to seek assistance from a person with knowledge of a computer or a computer system to help in carrying out the warrant.

- https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

So they can get a warrant to come into your house while you're not home and put a keylogger in your keyboard USB cable, or put a bug on the UART of your router, etc. Or just hacking your cheap Netgear router with one of the hundreds of vulnerabilities that exist.

Scary shit. Sounds like they're pretty drunk with power. Does Australia really have a capable offensive security group like the NSA to pull these sorts of things off, though?

They're a member of the FIVE EYEs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

For a second there, I thought I was reading omnipedia instead. Scary stuff.

Well as long as they leave their back doors on these systems open for the rest of us, i think its ok :P

Would love to distrubute zk-chain validators via self replicating router malware lol

Scary shit. Sounds like they're pretty drunk with power. Does Australia really have a capable offensive security group like the NSA to pull these sorts of things off, though?

They do but the real question is whether its appropriate to source intelligence from a place like the NSA when the outcomes are meant to be used by the police.

> So they can get a warrant to come into your house while you're not home and put a keylogger in your keyboard USB cable, or put a bug on the UART of your router, etc. Or just hacking your cheap Netgear router with one of the hundreds of vulnerabilities that exist.

That's actually not that weird.

If you are a suspected criminal and a judge give a warrant targeting you specifically, it's quite natural the police can now gather information on you by any mean possible.

It's not warrant-less, it's not mass surveillance, it sounds like regular police work. Or am I missing something?

Not being a legal expert, I can’t tell where the boundary is between enabling legitimate police work and giving (accidentally or deliberately) the police the power to plant fake evidence, the latter being what some of this sounds like. But, I’m not a legal expert, and “sounds like” is a way to make very large mistakes when looking outside of one’s own domain of expertise like I’m doing here.

(Also doesn’t help that I hear about stories like this from people who don’t like them, so I get a potentially biased first impression).

I have no idea how Australia handles this, but in the U.S., the process of discovery is what is supposed to keep the police from just planting evidence. Prosecution needs to present all evidence that will be used against you, including exactly where it came from and chain of custody. If they can't, it gets thrown out. The only exception is they can't be compelled to give away the identity of confidential informants. But a confidential informant also can't testify anonymously, so the police would always need additional evidence beyond the word of a CI.

It's not a perfect system by any means. The police can and do plant evidence. But a lot of convictions also get thrown out and this is often why obviously guilty people get off on "technicalities" because the police don't follow procedure down to the letter.

The opposite end of the spectrum, not giving the police any power to do covert surveillance at all, is effectively just giving a license to the Mafia to do whatever it wants, as anyone who just commits all of their crimes privately will get away with it as long as they can sufficiently scare or kill anyone who would otherwise have been willing to testify.

It's a tradeoff either way, and we try to let there be a middle ground, where the police can bug your house, tap your phone, hack your router, but they need a warrant that has to be granted by a completely separate branch of government that is not in the same chain of command, and they have to prove to your lawyers that they obtained all of the evidence they have against you legally.

They could always do that: once they have a warrant, they can search your house and pretend to find physical evidences in it.

It's certainly better than simply compromising everyone but it's not like they're going to stop their mass surveillance activities. This is just a step towards legitimization of those activities.

It's time for computer security to include nation states in their threat model. We need tamper-evident hardware.

I’ve spent a bit of time in Australia. When I compared the caliber of people who worked in tech and venture to those in mining and law enforcement, it was night and day. There’s a TON of smart people at companies like Woodside, and lots of smart people at the Australian Federal Police (to the extent where the US and other countries rely on them for help in tricky technical situations). The tech and VC crowd seemed to get off on the size of a funding round, or how tight they were with the founders of Atlassian, or if they knew some guy from America with a “successful exit,” or other complete nonsense.

With a dynamic like that, the law enforcement people are always going to point to the tech and venture people and say to politicians, “are you going to take orders from these clowns, or are you going to listen to us?” And now that you’ve got the climate activists antagonizing the mining companies, who are responsible for a very significant percentage of the economy, you’ve got two extremely savvy and powerful groups working together.

If Australian tech people want their government to take them seriously, they’re going to have to act in a manner that is as professional as those at the AFP, and they’re going to have to hit people with an economic hammer that can match the force of mining. Yes, it’s not fair that things are this difficult, but that’s life.

I'm Australian. Your argument seems to be "If only the tech sector in Australia had some smart people". That's nice but I don't think that's what is going on.

Most of the general public is apathetic to this kind of thing. They just don't get worked up like Americans do about freedom. Especially in the middle of an epidemic (covid19 is now out of control in the two biggest cities).

We have a conservative government at the moment. They're interested in power for the sake of it and very much against transparency. They're certainly not going to listen to anyone's opinions about it - they'll just do it and wear what they know will be a negligible hit they take in the polls.

Well, you are living a period of incredible prosperity: plenty of money, jobs, fantastic weather and a quiet social status quo.

Comfort makes it hard to rebel.

I think you greatly overestimate how “worked up” Americans get. In reality, there is an enormous amount of lobbying and horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes whenever Washington wants to do anything that touches the tech and telecom sectors. Tech and telecom are seen as areas that drive tremendous economic value and national power, so they have the ability to bend things to go their way.

Australia is quite the opposite. The tech industry is a bit like a spoiled, privileged trust fund kid who shows up to the family holding company’s board meetings in flip-flops and a t-shirt and makes a lot of demands. I’m pretty sure the tech/VC industries take more from the government, in the form of mining revenue-funded tax and incentive credits and fast-track high-net-worth immigration residence schemes that require parking money in VC funds, than they contribute back to the Treasury. In fact, I would posit that the state of Western Australia’s share of mining-related tax revenue this past fiscal year was greater than all of the taxes paid by all of Australia’s tech companies combined. (I could be wrong, but it sure feels like I’d be proven correct.)

And on the side of law enforcement and ASIO, well, public sector employees and unions have a LOT of political power. If you think union members are going to vote in favor of policies endorsed by tech plutocrats than those being pushed by their counterparts at other unions... It’s time to go talk to a couple union bosses and see what they think of your ideas. It really doesn’t help the tech crowd that half of them are obsessed with union-busting pseudo-libertarian nonsense, in a country where these organizations still hold a lot of kingmaking power.

Australia’s tech industry just doesn’t have the leverage, either politically or financially, to pursue its agenda. I would flip what you said and turn it back on you, and the other commenters; it seems like all of you are applying American ways of looking at this to a country that has very different dynamics. Trying to import American-style “activism” to make your point isn’t going to get much done there, mate. What plays well on Twitter won’t work in Canberra.

It's interesting to see how, in America, tech is seen as a gateway to prosperity and something worth investing in, while in Australia it's described as a pit for subsidies.

I guess the number one customer for Australian natural resource has incentives to make sure the country stays dependent on said natural resource exports for it's prosperity. Keeps them docile...

I think you're barking up the wrong tree, mate.

The story is "law enforcement and conservative government work together to bring in new laws that makes law enforcement's life easier".

I don't see how tech companies, union bosses or WA tax revenue has much to do with it.

You have an unstated assumption: that the best people in tech are attracted to startups and venture capital. In Australia that's not true. Australia is not America and you've drawn incorrect conclusions due to your incorrect assumption.

> And now that you’ve got the climate activists antagonizing the mining companies, who are responsible for a very significant percentage of the economy, you’ve got two extremely savvy and powerful groups working together.

I wonder which country is the number one customer of these companies.

Atlassian founders are the wrong place to look for tech and VC mentorship.

Every company here has a values round copying them and doing things that atlassian does.

I believe tech and VC ecosystem will improve once they become bigger. There are companies like okzellar, shippit which do not have that atlassian bias.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around what is happening in Australia. Continuing a lockwdown while the number of positive covid cases remains in the low hundreds and the daily death rate in the lower tens to single digits.

Nothing makes sense here. Draconian laws, complete shutdown over something that is and has been statistically under control and managed from months.

Am I alone here or do people really think what is going on in Australia makes sense and that attempting to completely eradicate a virus that may be as easily spread as the common cold makes sense.

Serious cannot leave your house outside and go outside for a jog … because there are 50 positive cases in a nation of millions ?

My mind is blown.

Right, there's something disconcerting about the way people are behaving in this situation, and it's hard to process this as something that could reasonably happen. "I thought we were rational people in a free society?"

The terrible thing is that this is exactly how people behaved in "historical" times - a foreshadowing to what lies ahead. The vast majority of people believe we are post-history, and that we're somehow more rational and good than previous generations. This isn't true, and people are just as susceptible to insane fantasies as they've always been. We're in danger now because of these people.

What we're seeing is exactly what it looks like: mass psychosis on the level of witch-hunts, with incompetent and superstitious leaders trying to rule with underhanded measures. There's nothing to try to understand here, it's just time to wake up from the delusion that everything is stable and properly managed.

The difference between modern and medieval people isn't physiological, it is just education. But since stupidity is unlimited, it will just pick up a new mantle and look a bit different.

Rules of public relation will make it increasingly difficult for any official to take a more relaxed stand. Fearful people are motivated people and will make themselves heard, no matter if their fears are justified or not.

> . "I thought we were rational people in a free society

There is no polity in the world in which "rational people" drove covid policy (or individual behavior) to any significant degree. Whether we're talking about Florida's low restrictions and high cases or the Bay Area's converse outcome, the best you can hope for is that the masses, through their blind superstition and social signaling, ended up somewhere close to the policy/behavior landscape that you think is optimal.

Perhaps you're misinformed.

The laws the article is talking about are the big problem - they're Federal and permanent (at least until we have a sane Government elected to reform and repeal them).

The COVID lockdowns are all operating under temporary state of emergencies under the State Governments. There's no actual reason to think they will be 'extended forever' like some crazies seem to think. For several states, our State Governments are actually much more competent and better in many ways than the Federal Government. Of course, a big part of the reason lockdowns are needed is because the Federal Government botched some vaccine deals with Pfizer etc. so we started vaccinating very late and have been continually supply-constrained since then.

The lockdowns have actually have tended to work effectively - for instance, in my state we've had a few lockdowns and have been able to quash every outbreak so far. So we've been mostly COVID free as we are at the moment, so there is no lockdown right now. Right now I can freely travel to any state except NSW, ACT and Victoria (which are hotspots). I would have to quarantine to go to WA though, but hopefully our state goes from "Low Risk" to "Very Low Risk" by their Government's rating soon so I can take a holiday there without two weeks quarantine.

The main actually ridiculous restriction is the Federal Government's ban on travel out of the country. That is wrong, and probably unconstitutional. Travel out should absolutely be allowed, just with the proviso that there may not be quarantine capacity for months to return (perhaps you should need to have to book in advance and pay a deposit if you intend to return in the next year). Although apparently it is actually ridiculously easy to get an exception to leave, I have a few friends that have taken jobs overseas and their applications were approved in hours with no questions (not even asked for any evidence they actually had a job offer).

It's not misinformation, it's that were looking at Australia from the outside. If you live in the US, pretty much any and all restrictions have been lifted for daily life. You see that there are still Covid cases and deaths, but they have dwindled in comparison to last year and life is pretty much back to how it was Pre-pandemic.

So it's absolutely insane to see that for the same or less daily Covid cases/deaths, Australia is going into lockdowns and imposing draconian restrictions. That's the disconnect between for many of us. At least in the US, any politician even suggesting such measures nowadays would be politically crucified.

This is pretty hyperbolic. Examination of global excess deaths would tell you that the lockdowns were successful in their stated primary aim. Australia and NZ had significantly fewer excess deaths during the first wave [1]. And if they continue with lockdowns, they will have signficantly fewer excess deaths again no matter what else happens.

You may think this isn't a good trade-off, which is a fine point to make, but I don't think any minds need to be blown.

[1] https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1434228604666368007?s=2...

You are correct I think this is not a good trade-off. However I stand by “my mind is blown” that continuing with these draconian measures and the lock down approach borders on madness.

For reference in my part of the world we are fully open going on the 5th week of full in person schooling. All athletic teams and events have resumed with full crowds. In a school district of 2600 students we have over 45 positive cases (temp quarantine). The week prior we had 35 cases.

Neither of these case numbers are concerning and we continue to promote vaccination and frequent testing to limit the spread.

> Continuing a lockwdown while the number of positive covid cases remains in the low hundreds and the daily death rate in the lower tens to single digits.

Surely you can see how this is equivalent to asking why the company hires a system admin when the system hardly ever goes down or gets hacked.

And you have always been allowed outside for a jog. Please do not spread false information.

> And you have always been allowed outside for a jog

If you're in Victoria it can't be a long jog (2hr total per day), and it can't be after 9pm though!

Sorry for being pedantic but really it should be you are allowed outside for a jog sometimes

This talk about "Draconian" lockdown in Australia needs to stop. Our privacy and digital rights laws are awful. But the lockdowns are necessary.

NSW had upward of 1000+ cases and that's why they're (still) in a strict lockdown. QLD and i beleive WA as well for example are not in lockdown at all because of their much much lower daily cases.

Also, "50 cases in a nation of millions"? I dont know where you're getting your info, but NSW and Victoria are NOT on top of COVID: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir...

>This talk about "Draconian" lockdown in Australia needs to stop.

I haven't been following the lockdown laws interstate, but here in Victoria there have definitely been some restrictions that seemed to be extremely harsh and soul-crushing in comparison to their effectiveness at stopping the virus.

The 5km radius and curfew both spring to mind. I (legally) haven't been able to see a single friend or family member for almost 2 months now, even if socially distanced, wearing a mask, vaccinated and outdoors. They're all outside my 5km.

Yet at the same time a 10 year old kid can go into Woolies with 200 other people and not even need to wear a mask.

> This talk about "Draconian" lockdown in Australia needs to stop.

Actually, telling people to stop talking is what needs to stop.

Here in Victoria we're in our 6th lockdown. 220 days of lockdown since last year. Today there were 221 covid cases reported in Victoria. 87 people in hospital - that's not a daily rate, that's total. These are not big numbers.

We have an angry Premier who yells and threatens. Together with his side-kick health officer, they condemn people for taking their kids to park or watching the sunset. [1]

When watching the sunset is considered immoral, it's time to break out the word Draconian.

We have a curfew here in Melbourne. This means everyone must visit the supermarket in reduced opening hours, increasing density in those places. There is no evidence curfews work. Mask mandates outdoors even when by yourself is another useless signalling technique. Australian authorities love their signalling and behavioral manipulation.

They love blaming the lockdowns on the community. They love their new unchallenged surveillance powers and privacy compromising backdoors. They are ecstatic about the idea of mandating apps and vaccine passports for entry to cafes and venues.

People here are vaccinated enough. A high proportion of older and vulnerable people are vaccinated. Young and healthy people would not fill the hospital beds if lockdowns ended. There may be a small surge, but it would level out, we would deal with it. Lockdowns are doing more harm than good at this point. 80% vaccination target is not a magic number from the Gods.

[1] https://headtopics.com/au/andrews-slams-sunset-lovers-breaki...

UK and Israel have proven the "vaccinate your way out of trouble" strategy doesn't work, therefore Australia's lockdown regime will not work either.

Australia is, at a massive social and economic cost, delaying death and cases. They are not preventing them.

At extremely high levels of vaccination, Australia could see 10-50 daily deaths presuming lockdown is eased. There's already prior evidence, other countries have been through this.

Vaccination is not a silver bullet, and lockdown advocates need to stop implying as such.

80% vaccination will mean thousands of daily cases.

Not to mention lockdown advocates routinely ignore the massive costs associated with the ideology, such as additional deaths (suicides, delayed medical treatment, poverty etc) and mental health (1 in 10 Victorians "seriously considered" suicide in 2020(!!!)).

Also, poverty, which will absolutely be the result of this economic destruction, has a directly link to excess mortality (mortality is >100% more likely when you're in poverty).

If lockdowns are "necessary" then there are other things like taxing unhealthy foods and dedicating the economy to produce enough N95 masks that are vastly more necessary.

1200+ cases in NSW out of a population of over 8 million.

So we should extend a strict lockdown … to do what exactly? Is the plan to manage this virus with a series of alternating lockdowns and get the number of cases to zero? Is this realistic, is this the type of world you want to live in?

The virus appears to be as contagious as chicken pox, vaccines help with serious cases but are doing little unfortunately to stop the spread. At what point do you think it would make sense to manage the disease and resume normal life instead of draconian lockdowns for a untenable goal?

> Continuing a lockwdown while the number of positive covid cases remains in the low hundreds and the daily death rate in the lower tens to single digits.

Correction - thousands, not hundreds. But comparison to the previous numbers is required, because it's approaching the peak we've seen. So close to highest ever, rather than something to be dismissed.

> Serious cannot leave your house outside and go outside for a jog … because there are 50 positive cases in a nation of millions ?

... You can still do that. There are several allowed reasons to leave your house, and exercise is one of those, and always has been.

Do you have to wear a mask when jogging outside? (or walking etc). Can you jog with your family or small group of friends?

American here. It appears to me to be poor incentives reinforcing themselves in the political sphere. If you make a single metric the measure of success, most will go to extremes to game that metric. Australian politicians seem to have made the low number of COVID infections the sole measure of their success. The result is somewhat predictable.

> Serious cannot leave your house outside and go outside for a jog … because there are 50 positive cases in a nation of millions ?

There were around 1.5k new cases in NSW today. NSW is in lockdown. Victoria has new cases too, but is opening up its regional areas where they are covid free. WA has no cases and no lockdown.

It's not like the whole country is locked down over 50 cases - there are many times that many, and the whole country is not locked down.

> because there are 50 positive cases in a nation of millions

Australia is currently experiencing 1500 daily case of COVID with some 30,000+ cumulative case since the start of this last outbreak which is now some two months old.

> Nothing makes sense here.

Firstly only three of the seven states and territories are in lock down.

Four states and territories are experiencing zero cases and for them life is very close to normal.

However, the reason two states are now in lock down is because, as a developed country, Australia is last in terms of vaccination roll out.

And it is not only last, it is last by a long way.

There are only two ways to deal with COVID:

1. Lock down until the vaccination numbers improve

2. Open up and let the virus rip and hope the hospital system can cope with the increased demand.

NSW is currently in lock down (i.e. option 1) and even with these strict rules in place the health system is not coping well, as it struggles with the uptick in COVID hospitalizations.

The simple fact is Australia stuffed up the vaccination roll out and we are now paying the price for that mistake.

This is false. We currently have ~1500 positive cases per day in NSW in Australia.

NSW is planning to lift restrictions in mid October once vaccine rates hit 70%.

ICU capacity is just about at 100%, with the peak to hit in the next few weeks.

I'm pretty happy to be in lockdown for a little bit longer in this situation.

Thirty thousand cases today, with about 1700 added overnight - and that is with the lockdowns.

You may still personally consider this an overreaction, but please do not invite other people to that conclusion with incorrect data.

> Serious cannot leave your house outside and go outside for a jog

This is simply not true. Why are you making a factually incorrect statement?

Even at the highest lockdown level you are allowed to leave your home to exercise.

NSW: https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/rules/greater-sydney

VIC: https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/20...

As an Australian, I should note that the reason positive cases were in the low hundreds — actually, low tens most of the time — was precisely because of the lockdowns. Once people stopped obeying the lockdowns, positive cases started rising, and we ended up with the current situation here in Sydney with ~1500 cases per day. The only reason it’s not any higher is because (a) we still have lockdown in place, and most people comply, and (b) we’re rapidly getting vaccinated as I type.

(And also, the lockdowns weren’t continuous by any measure. Lockdown restrictions were consistently relaxed as soon as cases dropped to single digits.)

I’m happy with lockdowns. I think they should have locked down sooner in NSW for the current outbreak.

The alternative is just let a shitload of people die because it enough ventilators to have 100k cases.

I’m not happy with the vaccination sagas and lack of care with the index case that caused the outbreak though.

They're trying to buy enough time to get enough people vaccinated before they "let it rip". Delta has an extremely high R value and will come back in force. This way we eliminate many more unnecessary deaths. Not hard to understand.

We can refer to both now as acts because — in what is an increasing trend in the Australian Parliament — the bills flew through both houses in a single day.

Why is this an increasing trend? Voting is mandatory…so are voters more trusting of their institutions or just apathetic?

Voting is compulsory at federal elections, by-elections and referendums for those on the electoral roll, as well as for State and Territory elections. Australia enforces compulsory voting.[24] People in this situation are asked to explain their failure to vote. If no satisfactory reason is provided (for example, illness or religious prohibition), a fine of up to $170 is imposed,[25] and failure to pay the fine may result in a court hearing and additional costs. About 5% of enrolled voters fail to vote at most elections

Compulsory voting does not imply a politically engaged populace. I believe the majority of voters do not enjoy the requirement to attend on polling day, and treat the whole affair like supporting a football team. Except they care a lot less about the election results than their football team. Mandatory voting probably has the effect of protecting the two major parties more than anything else.

There was a surge in minor parties in the Senate about a decade ago. In the (very large) Senate ballot you were able to vote for a single party, and their official preferences registered with the Electoral Commission were automatically applied to the entire form. Minor parties with similar policies were obviously preferencing each other, and preferencing major parties very low. (The whole point of a minor party, sometimes a single issue party, is a significant deviation from the uncontested policy agreed upon by both major parties). So the process was changed and now the voter has to manually nominate at least 6 parties on the Senate ballot form. The effect of this is even the motivated voter with interest in the policies of a minor party cannot usually name 6 that they prefer over the 2 major parties, and so one (if not both) will end up getting a reasonably high vote preference when the previous scheme would have seen them near the bottom. This further secured the position of the two major parties.

We don't vote on every bill, we vote on preferred parties every 3 years. It's still a predominantly 2-party dominated system though, and there's basically zero difference between the two on issues like this.

Issues around civil liberties don’t rank with Australians.

They are captive to their housing investment debts, so political campaigns are decided on policies around that.

IMO it’s the latter, plus a sprinkle of COVID-19 lockdown distraction (source: I’m Australian).

We haven’t had a prime minister see through a full term in quite a while (they keep getting shuffled out mid-term), and right now everyone is so focussed on lockdowns impacting ~60% of the population that it’s hard to stay up to date and focussed on some of these more important bills being put through the system.

When it comes to authoritarianism Australians are either extremely apathetic or they are generally in favour of more government intervention in private life. Try having a calm and balanced discussion with an Australian about bicycle helmet laws for a wonderful example.

The trend is that anything that invokes National Security or Think of Dah Children gets bipartisan support and flies through without comment.

> Why is this an increasing trend

Because the lived experience of politicians on both sides is that the less time something spends in the limelight the less scrutiny it gets. Once something is determined to be supported by both parties (and almost universally when it involves increasing the power of government over citizens they are all in favor) it is not in anybody's interest to have it linger around for debate.

Most Australian politics is cynically focused on controlling the debate rather than solving important issues. So both sides will usually pick strategically controversial but unimportant things that they think favor them and then focus exclusively on those. Everything else is dealt with as expeditiously and in the most minimalist fashion possible. It does have the upside that a lot of "good government" where both sides agree happens in the background without anybody realising.

Democracy fails if the majority is some combination of apathetic, uneducated, or incapable of critical thought. I don’t know about Australia, but the US is in serious trouble if that statement holds. We are a Republic, which probably buys us time. I’m amazed by how many voters I know personally who have never even read the US constitution or the bill of rights. It’s a real shame, and my guess is it won’t end well.

Consider what happens when you have a bunch of uninformed voters that are forced to vote...

Imagine how elections would shift if only the elderly voted or middle age.

Imagine if only those with children could vote (as they have a reason for the future).

The voting base is important. Forcing people to vote sets up conditions where propaganda as opposed to an informed population is making the decisions.

That’s what happened to Australia

Australia seems on a steep decline and a testing ground for western authoritarianism. Look at the requirements to leave the country, you need to jump through hoops and prove that your presence is required outside to be granted permission to leave. This should be unacceptable for anyone, whether you are Australian or not.

Absolutely, requiring that to leave is all sorts of fucked up. That's some combloc country-type bs. Reentry requirements are different but leaving doesnt put aussie citizens at risk so there's basically 0 justification beyond control.

Wait, they have exit checks?

I know Cuba, North Korea and the USSR have/had these. But It's the first time I hear about it for a "western" country.

I just did a quick look, searching (without quotes) "Australia permission to leave" on DDG. It looks to me like you're conflating emergency restrictions for COVID [0] with something like the exit visas that the former USSR used and Russia still uses. There are a great many people dying in the US at this very moment who were making this same sort of argument, right up until they caught COVID and ended up on ventilators. [1]

[0] https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward

> Russia still uses

No it does not. I'm Russian, and the only thing you need to leave the country is an international passport. You can apply for one online, then come to the immigration service to have your picture taken, then a month later you come again and collect it. The passport is valid for 10 years. I believe it's fairly similar to the process most other countries use.

Many other countries require Russian citizens to have visas, and some visas are hard to obtain (like Australian one, lol) but that's another story entirely.

The question is then: Why is that an emergency COVID restriction in the first place.

I seriously do not understand where the logic is here. I can understand restricting travel in, but why restrict travel out? In my mind there is no reason why someone LEAVING your country might be a health concern.

But hey we're talking about the folks that thought the logical solution to prevent people from spreading COVID at dog shelters would be to just shoot all the dogs.

There is a lot of trust in Australia that their elected officials and the public service / police will do the right thing. These new laws being introduced if used in the spirit they are intended could be good. The continual refusal of the current federal government to introduce a federal crime and misconduct commission as most of the states now have is a disturbing trend. For instance three local councils were placed under administration in my state after the elected leaders were found to be doing illegal things - the classic is the Lord Mayor of Ipswich being found with a suitcase containing $50,000 at an airport, he is now serving a jail term.

So these laws, a refusal to have a watchdog, scaling back of FOI request responses, searching journalists homes by the AFP, are a disturbing trend in the federal arena. Looked at dispassionately you can only assume they're trying to hide something.

> These new laws being introduced if used in the spirit they are intended could be good.

Please find me an example of a government throughout any point in human history that has not turned on its citizens.

The only power that’s safe from abuse by an errant politician is one that politicians as a category aren’t allowed to wield to begin with.

I think the best guiding principle for government is to ask yourself when faced with a proposed extension to the power of politicians this question: “would I be comfortable with politicians having this power if the Cabinet consisted of people who personally hated me”. If there’s any doubt, these powers can and will be used to abuse. The rights that protect the worst of society also protect the rest of it, we remove them at our peril.

every government that peacefully left office after electoral defeat?

> These new laws being introduced if used in the spirit they are intended could be good.

That "if" is doing a lot of work. Gov't power will be abused. That's like, rule one of government.

> These new laws being introduced if used in the spirit they are intended could be good

We already know they won't. Here's [1] the Australian anti-terrorism Police arresting a young online journalist at his house, because he was asking probing questions to a politician that said politician did not like. Video of the incident clearly shows the Politician lied multiple times in his police statement (which is a crime).

Yet the anti-terrorism taskforce was used to arrest this person at his house.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXtq4a8829g

The task force set up because of the Lindt Cafe siege.

In the years before covid, as the sole American in a few 'strayan social circles, I'd receive sh*t for Americans protesting about their "rights" and how entitled they are. Now with Covid, Australian citizens can't leave or can't come in (without significant effort).

I've seen a shift in thinking amongst my Australian friends and family. The Australians I know now see value in something like a bill of rights. Like in business, no one pulls out the contract unless things are going to crap.

There isn't a bill of rights without exceptions, and a pandemic (public health) is always going to be one of those exceptions.

It doesn't help at all during a pandemic.

It does if the people take it seriously. If they tolerate infringement of their rights every time the government says there is a crisis, they will careen from crisis to crisis until their rights are gone. A bill of rights is just paper until the people give it force by refusing to tolerate violations under any circumstances.

I don't know dude I just partied all weekend without any issues, no mask, no constraints on where I could go. No mandates. Seems like some places have their ducks in a row. Get vaccinated and live a little bit...

But are we in a "pandemic" still? How do you define pandemic?

If you go by "a disease spreading out there", then surely colds and flus qualify every year, just nobody bothers to think much of it.

I think we need some quantitative benchmark, like:

- if emergency measures are ever taken, any ban on vaccines is lifted

-once vaccines are no longer banned, to qualify for increased measures the disease must be expected to have 5x worse case fatality rate than the flu in vaccinated people.

So in the US we have 3 groups:

- vaccinated people where the disease risk is very low (lower than flu)

- children who are banned from taking the vaccine

- unvaccinated people whose deaths should be labeled suicide. Their deaths are tragic, but it's basically more akin to suicide than anything else. I mean if I just don't eat, I don't really die of starvation, I die by suicide. So it's fine, let them do what they want, but don't make everyone suffer for it.

The pandemic is forever. It will be 2040 and I guarantee you the Coronavirus will be here with various mutations.

For some reason people are not grasping the reality of how long this is going to last. Until we die, the masks are here to stay, the restrictions are here to stay.

Vaccine stocks are going to the moon because there is going to be a need for vaccines for many decades. We will be taking shots every year if not more frequently.

I'm always kind of surprised by people who move to Australia. It's a country that has had an active policy of censorship on entertainment for a very long time - books, video games, movies. The fact that the populace is okay with such a policy would make me reconsider moving there.

I've also read some really questionable things about policies regarding aboriginals in the northern territories. In 2007 the government 'temporarily' banned alcohol and porn for aboriginals as an 'emergency' measure.[0] And apparently it, or some replacement, is still in effect.[1]

Edit: also, turns out that banning alcohol doesn't get rid of alcohol consumption.[2] Who knew?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/21/australia.jame...

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-17/nt-police-commissione...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-07/qld-mornington-island...

The ban on alcohol in some communities is (AFAICT) welcomed by those communities, which have massive problems with it. There are laws in other states which allow people to declare their house a “dry place” which is then enforceable by law, to try to stop anyone from bringing alcohol into the house.

I can’t tell you whether any of these measures work, but they aren’t implemented for reasons of racist suppression, from what I can tell. Also no idea on the porn bans.

I’ve just moved to Australia, for the second time. The censorship you talk about is trivial and easily worked around (Video game didn’t get approved for sale? Order in from New Zealand or Hong Kong)

The populace isn’t so much OK with the policy as unaffected by it. These policies usually come from SA and are usually rooted in religion, which still seems to hold sway there.

The appeal of Aus to this Brit is that it has space, so much space, and sunshine. And it’s not as downright crazy as the USA (guns, employment rights, healthcare etc)

If you have punitive anti-drinking policy, and a racial group susceptible to that problem, it becomes a racist policy. There's alternatives that don't set people with problems back even further.

> If you have punitive anti-drinking policy, and a racial group susceptible to that problem, it becomes a racist policy.

No it doesn't. A law does not become racist when one race disproportionately breaks it, otherwise every law everywhere would be racist.

I think you could also take in to the willful enforcement as another aspect to the law.

For instance, ACT police are known for not drug testing for cocaine, whereas meth and speed are. (At traffic stops).

This causes the rich, who can afford to take coke, to continue with their lifestyle, and punishes the poor. Using the justification of moral corruption.

For what it's worth, I am Australian, am ashamed of the countries history of treating the rightful owners of the land, but do agree that the alcohol issue is something that has more nuance than appears to outsiders.

Other things that are supposed to address the same issue, such as demonizing social benefits spending with budget control debit cards are outrageous. They are just weapons of the election cycle, and a way to recover campaign funds at the expense to the countries public.

>No it doesn't. A law does not become racist when one race disproportionately breaks it, otherwise every law everywhere would be racist.

I think you'll find there are quite a few folks that disagree with you on this point, some feel that laws can be considered racist exclusively because of disproportionate impact on specific communities.

Personally I think it just boils down to how people define the term 'racist'. When I was growing up (many moons ago), the term was used primarily to describe intent, but now it has expanded to include outcomes.

Intent is an increasingly imaginary concept when decisionmaking is partially or completely performed by neural nets and checklists. As such, outcomes end up being the important thing to examine.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

I agree that it's important to examine outcomes. It's actually the fundamental measurement of a decision and if we recast 'intent' as 'desired outcome' then its clear why paying attention to it is important.

My problem is that I was taught that 'racist' describes an ugly mindset that would confer malice. That may be true in some cases where outcomes disproportionately affect certain folks, but it's clearly not always the case and implying otherwise just distracts the conversation.

Agreed, but this cuts both ways. Intent has a lot of moral judgement attached to it - if we're redefining a word to be primarily about outcomes instead of intent, we should also drop the implied moral assertions around it.

Mmm, I'm not so sure. Certainly the things it means about the person responsible for the decision are a little different - lots of people accidentally put policies into place that harm minority groups, etc. But if the outcome is the same and a person in power chooses not to fix it, it really doesn't matter what their intent is, it's a moral failure not to help the people who need your help if you're able to do so. I don't really care whether they say slurs in their spare time with friends, I just want my elected (and un-elected) representatives to do what they can to prevent people from dying of starvation or preventable diseases.

It may or may not, depending on the context. If you make abortion illegal, for example, women will disproportionately break it. If you make it illegal to drunk drive, on the other hand, and if men are more likely to break it, that's a different case.

Alcohol is banned for everyone in Australia? Imagine how that would go over.

Do these policies push people back even further?

Again, I'm not familiar enough with the causes or effects of these policies to have a properly informed debate BUT on the surface it looks like these rules have been put in place in partnership with the communities in question, in order to try to help what is evidently a severe problem.

But perhaps the reality is different.

(Edit - perhaps I do have the read on this wrong, and these policies were not put in place with community agreement, in which case they should be changed. In other states such as Queensland the 'dry place' legislation is far more voluntary)

What if the communities are the ones creating/supporting these policies? Are the being racist to themselves? As from my reading this is often the case.

I'm not an expert in this field but it seems to me you are vastly oversimplifying the policy and without context. And using language like 'punitive' seems unfair as I dont see how this is a punishment, even if one were to believe it was misguided or ineffective. And I respect this policy has flaws and questionable value, while at the same time feel its fair to recognise it is being done in co-ordination with the community itself and and with altruistic intent.

What are these other alternatives you mention? Please suggest. I suspect they come with a whole set of other flaws and failures as rarely is a solution to these problems without a flip side.

I feel like the sentence “the censorship … is trivial and easily worked around” isn’t as hopeful as it sounds like. Isn’t it bad to have to work around censorship? Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

So your points arethat “some people like authoritarian measures” and “the censorship isn’t bad because today you can get around it”.

Sounds like you have a vested interest in not realizing what these new laws mean for you.

> So your points arethat “some people like authoritarian measures” and [...]

Well, that's how democracy is supposed to work, ain't it?

This is why I’m an anti-authoritarian first and a democrat second. Civil liberties are more important than democracy, they’re worth too much to let the masses throw them in the bin at the first scent of fear.

Same for me. I'd like to see many more small countries and city states. Or at least people taking federalism and subsidiarity serious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

That's because people seem to be much more reasonable when voting with their feet and wallets, then when voting at the polling booth. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter for some background.)

Eg in a US context, there's no reason at all why they need to have a federal minimum wage as far as I can tell.

Different people have different opinions on how minimum wage works, if at all, but from what I can tell minimum wage is an issue that can be done at state or even municipality level only. There's no need to have federal uniformity here.

The issue is that all of those small separate states will do one thing or another wrong. This causes an outcry for centralization because the idea is that the central authority will set them right. And once the power has centralized it doesn't go back to the small states. Eventually people realize that the centralized state also does some things wrong, but now there's no alternative.

Where, of course, 'wrong' is in the eye of the beholder.

Many people cheer on Supreme Court decisions that forbid states from making certain laws or policies that their democratically elected legislatures and governments decided on.

I think the idea that the alcohol rules are authoritarian is misplaced and it’s more complicated than your summation. To have an informed debate you would need to be familiar with the situation on the ground, which I am only in passing, and (respectfully) I suspect you are not at all.

The “censorship” is not really any worse than the UK’s BBFC.

I know what these laws mean for me because I’ve lived here before. They mean very little.

As the Australian government rapidly moves toward an authoritarian police state, does part of you wonder if they'd be so cavalier if their citizens had guns? Or if that might be a deterrent to tyranny at some point?

I don't think it is moving towards being an authoritarian police state any more than any other western country, and I wouldn't want to live in a country where citizens had easy access to guns, and suffered the violence and mass shootings that seem to come from that, like in the US.

Hope that helps.

"I don't think it is moving towards being an authoritarian police state any more than any other western country"

The example on which this thread is based, and otherwise discussed within this thread (checking in every 15 minutes with the state or be visited by the police), is well beyond other western countries and especially the USA at this point. We'll see if that holds.

You imagine some ragtag groups fighting against the police and military with the guns they bought a decade or two ago?

Personal ownership of guns doesn't help that much. You need a lot of people, a lot of organized people. At which point you can acquire or even create the weapons you need.

Not really. Even an unorganized small group of armed people can create enough damage to the Police/Government forces that it's not worth the fight.

Perhaps in the past.

The sheer numbers and equipment of modern police and military forces are overwhelming. You need a lot of people, good organization, support from the inside.

Not to mention you'll be hit with the media first, discrediting all of your efforts and painting you as a terrorist or traitor in everyone's minds. Then you're easy pickings.

Seems like the Taliban did fine taking their country back from globalists, with a bunch of used weapons from the 70s and Toyota utes.

Their country, yeah.

You don't have to imagine, look at Afghanistan. A ragtag group of people won against the strongest military in the world.

lol you're kidding yourself if you think having armed citizens would make any difference to authoritarian policy anywhere.

I've personally witnessed a single gunman absolutely shutdown and preoccupy the entire Philadelphia police forever for several hours. One guy.

You all seriously overestimate the capabilities of the police.

You're kidding yourself if you think it wouldn't. Didn't the Taliban just win despite 20 years of military occupation?

> I'm always kind of surprised by people who move to Australia. It's a country that has had an active policy of censorship on entertainment for a very long time - books, video games, movies. The fact that the populace is okay with such a policy would make me reconsider moving there.

That seems very bizarre to me. I'm not sure what you're talking about here exactly, what you've heard/read. Compared to which countries? Where are you, that censorship in Australia seems like a dealbreaker, or a way of feeling so superior? How would 'it' affect you at all? "The fact that the populace is okay with such a policy" - is it a fact, or your guess?

(Personally, the apparent US movie/TV morality of genitals or swearing being forbidden, but someone shooting peoples' heads off by the dozen being absolutely fine, seems crazy to me. The other way around would be far more sensible. At least for childrens' viewing.)

p.s. I just learned more than I ever knew about a history of censorship in Australia by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_banned_in_Austra...

Age ratings in Australia are legally mandated, but the rating agency regularly refuses classification to video games. Until 2013, it was illegal to publish a video game unsuitable for 15-year-olds. The introduction of R18 for video games was a step forward, but it seems to be backsliding again. In 2019, Hotline Miami was prohibited from being re-released.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_in_...

For the day to day, actual lived life of an Australian, I can't think of any media I want that I cannot get.

There's a lot of media we can get that we don't want though...

Well to be fair the US bans alcohol for native eskimos in the Alaskan bush.

EDIT: I guess in the 1980s the government allowed the villages to make their own decisions to be dry or not: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/is-proh...

Interesting. I found this:

> ABSTRACT: When Alaska became a state in 1959, state laws removed control of alcohol regulation from the federal government and Native communities. In 1981, however, the state legislature changed alcohol laws to give residents broad powers to regulate how alcohol comes into their communities via a local option referendum. By mid-1999, 112 small communities had held 197 alcohol control elections under the state law. Sixty-nine percent of these elections added new restrictions on alcohol, while 13% removed restrictions previously imposed. The remaining 18% of elections did not receive a majority vote needed to change the existing status. Most communities passing local option restrictions chose to ban sale and importation. Although most of these elections occurred during the first eight years after the law was passed, elections continue to occur as the law evolves and as communities debate the merits of alcohol control. Although growing evidence suggests that the local option law may reduce adverse effects of alcohol abuse in Alaska Native communities, its most important contribution may be to restore to these communities a limited form of self-government.

[0] https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy_publication_links/Alcoh...

thanks for pointing that out, I edited my original comment to reflect that this isn't imposed on them anymore.

And any reservation where the tribal council votes to go dry, the Federal government will enforce it. (Well, to the extent that it will, you know, actually spend the money to have BIA police officers assigned to that Rez.)

Is that enforcement a positive thing or not?

Life on a Rez is so outside my experience that I'm not going to second guess tribal politicians on it.

>that the populace is okay with such a policy would make me reconsider moving there

When I had to decide for a job relocation whether I should move to the UK or to the US I had many issues in mind, wages, safety, public transport, childcare, culture but I'm gonna be honest 'censorship in videogames' wasn't very high on the list.

Not to mention that the discourse in regards to Australia seems incredibly hyperbolic in contrast to more strict countries like Singapore or China, which actually have significant limits on freedom of expression, and even in those countries for the average middle-class person it is almost irrelevant compared to safety, income, housing, and whatever else.

I'd like to say it just 'censorship' than 'censorship in videogames'. OP said 'books, video games, movies' so it seems that every media can be censored in the future.

Well, I wouldn't mention Singapore in the same sentence as China here. But I see your point.

You can say the same things about a lot of things in many countries, someone can probably say the same about the one you live in.

I suspect the censorship that you talk about are not as black and white as you seem to be trying to project. It's easy to cherry-pick the things that you don't like to get your own view across.

Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here than to push your own personal viewpoints on things that you don't like? I mean, I could say something like "I'm always kind of surprised by people who want to move to the US because the lack of gun laws", and what does that achieve?

> Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here than to push your own personal viewpoints on things that you don't like? I mean, I could say something like "I'm always kind of surprised by people who want to move to the US because the lack of gun laws", and what does that achieve?

The previous post simply engaged the original with additional comments on why someone might not want to move to Australia. You could always counter with your own thoughts on the matter. This is a place to discuss ideas. The post hardly felt pushy to me, and I don’t understand the skepticism of the poster’s intentions.

> The post hardly felt pushy to me, and I don’t understand the skepticism of the poster’s intentions.

Two things that lead me to thinking that:

* Blanket statement on censorship without providing further details and references * Picking a policy that affects a small part of the population and referencing articles that already say that many experts already find problematic

I think it's great that you could read the comment with good intentions, but the way that the details are presented and cherry-picked doesn't sit right with me.

I can only agree to disagree on your point that's just part of how we communicate.

> I suspect the censorship that you talk about

We're on the internet, you can look it up.

The USA has dozens of dry counties, most famously the home county of Jack Daniel's.

Like everything, the reality is more complex up close. We've never had to think too hard about what underpinned our prosperity, about the law that underpinned our freedoms, because they never failed too badly, for too many people. Perhaps we've had as much law as we needed, and when things chafed we have pushed for changes?

Australia has no official right to the kinds of freedoms you're discussing, but those books and movies were here. Economically Australia has always been top at nothing, top 10 in everything, and that prosperity meant people were free to choose a life they wanted and live free of coercion. Like the poster above, I fear we're embedding an inequality we don't have the will to resolve. But that's been the perpetual fear, that the luck has finally run out. I don't agree with the 'Intervention' the measures you mention in Aboriginal communities, but not because it restricted rights, because I think Aboriginal communities must be allowed to define how individual rights and collective obligations are balanced in their communities. I disagree with it because I don't believe it was driven by Indigenous people. Colonisation dropped a new worldview and law onto an existing civilisation and imposed it with genocide. Indigenous civilisation has different conceptions of duty and rights. If Non Indigenous Australia manages to build a new relationship with Indigenous Australians, I might feel I have the right to form my own opinions, but for now I don't think it's possible for me to understand enough to understand what is right for Indigenous communities, that has to be Indigenous led.

I detest the government that brought in the intervention, but in doing so they were supported by senior Indigenous leaders whom I respect.

https://www.abc.net.au/lateline/leigh-sales-talks-to-directo... https://www.smh.com.au/national/its-time-to-stop-playing-pol...

On my list of things to be concerned about as an Australian, censorship of media is pretty low down. It's not something we run up against in day to day life.

> It's not something we run up against in day to day life.

Perhaps consider that instead you just don't hear about it? Australia has some of the harshest defamation laws on the planet and journalists routinely self-censor.

When evidence of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan came out the federal police raided the ABC head office taking hordes of hard drives and documents trying to find out who was the whistleblower. None of the evidence presented by the ABC was ever contested and has subsequently been proven true. The raid has been deemed entirely valid under Australian law. Maybe that doesn't bother you, but it's clear that investigative journalism in Australia runs the same risks as many basketcase countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/17/federal-police...

> In 2007 the government 'temporarily' banned alcohol and porn for aboriginals as an 'emergency' measure.[0] And apparently it, or some replacement, is still in effect.[1]

In 1976 France implemented a temporary permission to abortion, just to hedge the wave. A lot of social rights come from temporary laws that were never deactivated.

To be fair temporary permissions are harder to take back. It's not the same as a temporary ban.

That's such a bizarre take. I would love to meet these immigrants that care more about whether or not there is gore in Left 4 Dead 2 than social stability, health care, education and economic opportunities.

It’s cool though, this time they’ll finally get rid of COVID.

All snark aside, I ask what I’ve asked everybody: at what point is the cure not worth it anymore?

It's snark but it's relevant. All of this shit has been pushed through during a climate where people are willing to let the government get away with a little more to help fight covid. And look what they're ramming through.

>at what point is the cure not worth it anymore?

At the point where a critical mass of people realize this has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with seizing and consolidating power.

Anytime a government is unified in something, like it has been here, you should be highly skeptical. Politicians make calls for “unity” all the time and of course they do as everyone agreeing with them makes exercising power that much easier. The main objectives of any political elite/party in any form of government throughout all of history are to increase their power and to remain there. Division doesn’t mean dysfunction.

The Patriot Act was roundly supported and of course it was - it increases the political classes power across the board, legitimizing the increase for “safety”.

Aren't we Five Eyes nation members all affected by this? The U.S. should pull out of this. We need to re-assert privacy rights and avoid trade as much as possible with any countries that enact these kind of laws.

The US will not pull out of Five Eyes because it enables the US to circumvent the constitutional rights of its own citizens via proxy. This has been used in multiple high-profile cases to catch cybercriminals.

The government does not give back power it manages to hoard for itself. This is the fundamental problem with modern progressive liberalism and anti-choice conservatism. When you give the government power, it WILL use said power against you.

Not a single government in human history has not turned on its citizens.

Four eyes spying on your citizens and sending reports back to your intelligence agency is sort of the point of Five Eyes (well, one of the points).

It ain't cheating if you're not spying on your own people.

US will never pull out of FVEY the reach they get is the main reason they started the alliance. The US doesn’t need massive overseas bases in places where it may not be possible or feasible when it has partners like Australia and New Zealand.

Im getting the feeling our government’s have switched to economy over everything mode with a dash of pretend to care about the environment

Such as the US largest trade partner, China?

Server looks overloaded. Cached version from Sept 2: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPS9Mc...

It's ironic that a country founded by England with prison convicts who pushed out the indigenous people would eventually choose to create a police state.

Edit: Fixed for people who knew what I meant but want to bust my...

Maybe it isn't ironic at all. This is the conclusion by Waleed Aly (quite a prominent journalist in Aus) that I read a while ago:

> The British arrived with Governors, ready to assume the role of governing. [...] Then, these governments set about building infrastructure in a way they never did in Britain. They were not managing a society that existed. They simply crushed the Indigenous ones that did, then proceeded as though no society was here in the first place. That set in motion a peculiarly Australian logic that government created society, not the other way around.

> All these traits are invaluable weapons against COVID. They’re also what makes it possible for us to legislate gun control after an isolated massacre, pass expansive counter-terrorism legislation without anything like the scrutiny of a serious public debate, and maintain a brutal policy on asylum seekers. [...]

> Perhaps America cannot control its guns for the same reason it can have a spectacular civil rights movement. And if that’s true, perhaps we stopped COVID for the same reason we stopped the boats.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/carefree-larrikin-is-a-myth-...

Australia was initially populated with Aboriginals, from who the land was stolen by convict settlers.

Not just convicts but also the prison guards.

And Tasmania (the Australian island state right at the South) was the prison island for the worst convicts. It is now probably the most conservative state in Australia. It's like the phenomenon where the bullied becomes the bully, but on a societal level.

It was not only founded by the captives, but also by the captors.

GTFOH

Prison convicts were not the first people of Australia.

I don't know how we can stop this. Majority of Australians don't understand the implications of our constantly eroding rights because they are spoon fed bullshit by our media. When 95% of what you hear is cheering on the liberal party here, nothing can change.

The US has been well-served by our constitution. Sure, we still have issues, but it's a massive barrier to power-hungry bureaucrats.

“The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers.” - Clive James

CCP is literally cancer on all citizens living in currently free democracy. They show that it's possible to keep a huge population under control with current tools and technology. Our politicians show public disdain, but fuck are they being seduced. And Australia is just stepping into it step by step while asking it's citizens to trust the government because they seem to be at odds with CCP publicly.

As someone who lives in New Zealand, this isn't the democracy we want our closest neighbour turn into.

Please wake up and do something Aussies, take no bullshit, you can do it. Can laugh about it later, but this shit is serious.

Hey mate. Aussie here.

I'm sorry to say that it seems to me no one around here gives a flying fuck about politics let alone anyrhing to do with digital rights. This is a war we've already lost.

I blame Murdoch but quite frankly most of the people I talk to are too wrapped up in working to pay their bills and care for their families to care about anything else.

Isn't Australia showing the exact opposite, that you don't need CCP-style top down control to enact powerful surveillance laws? That's always been possible in a "free democracy".

The Australian government has explicitly aligned itself with the US and against China in the current tensions, as a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. In my view Australia (and New Zealand) are being seduced by US power above all else.

For example, in 2020 a Strategic Dialogue took place between the US and NZ, which was barely reported on. Items for discussion included "the strategic and economic architecture of the Indo-Pacific" and " the U.S.-NZ strategic partnership, including security cooperation"[1]. I bet you less than 1% of Kiwis know that this high level military dialogue took place - an impressive level of control over a population of a kind that the CCP could only dream of.

[1] https://2017-2021.state.gov/joint-statement-on-united-states...

The difference is the CCP is more aligned with the best interests of the country (not so much as individuals but as a whole) while Australian politicians are only interested in their own profits and those of their friends.

In short tech surveillance are both working and attractive. Regardless of CCP, Australia, US, FB, GOOGL, etc.

You can always find a reason for this, alternatively in the US you could thank Osamma bin Laden, because the patriot act with it's Section 215 was legislated as a result of 9/11.

Delusional blaming CCP for AU surveillance state that is fundementally driven by FVEY interests. Turnbull literally admitted the reason why Huawei was banned from AU networks was because Huawei hardware made it harder to surveil on AU/FVEY citizens. He was worried about denial of access to network that would undermine FVEY capability to spy on each other's citizens vs CCP interception. FVEY's been undermining Kiwi/member populations long before CCP entered the picture.

What a shitshow of a country. Hope people resist and break this dumb law. E2EE all the things.

Laws of mathematics don’t apply here, says Australian PM

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...

I don't see what that really achieves when all the chips and OSes are backdoored. Not to mention the fact that the entire backbone is meticulously tracked.

They could just ban that. Nobody's going to write a law requiring data collection unless the app happens to be E2EE.

I'm curious if this affects FastMail users in US since they're based out of Australia.

Long time FastMail user. Never got a straight answer on privacy so moved to Tutanota for now. Much better, end to end encryption- nice clients too.

FastMail seems to have automated default address collection, backup of drafts & deleted email, ability to archive email. With no at rest encryption this could be possibly used for data mining too.

This new law is the last straw. So far they have not bothered to address the issue. Till few years back FM used to be awesome but feel they have not moved with time.

"Fastmail responds to well formed warrants [and] will continue to do so, for any legislation that applies to us both now and in the future."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28410178

Hopefully brongondwana reads this (CEO of fastmail)

came to post this as a long time fastmail user. i like it a lot and got 10s of domains there but ughhh

Australia is China lite. In China people don't really have a choice, but in Australia people actually voted for this government, which makes it even worse.

Just wondering will this new acts have negative consequences for global and independent internet agencies as Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) is well within Australian borders [1]? If it's function going to be severely affected by these new Australian acts APNIC should it be moved somewhere else without these dubious acts.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNIC

Australian here, have left the country along with a friend because of the bad vibes such as: - not being allowed to leave, aggressive cops arresting pregnant women, raids on journalists, culture of fear growing, increasing surveillance and police powers and intimidation tactics, defunding the arts and humanities, rising costs of living, house crisis and stressed out friends, tall-poppy crushing boring uninspired alcoholic culture.

I don't have any mainstream social media presence. I deleted those accounts years ago. Could the AFP create profiles in my name with my likeness?

yes >AN ACCOUNT TAKEOVER WARRANT enables the law enforcement agencies to take control of an account, and even lock the account holder out of it. This can be done covertly and without consent, so the individual wouldn’t necessarily know what is going on until or if they are ever charged. It includes removing two-factor authentication and using one account to gain access to others (directly contradicting cyber security best practices for staying safe and secure online).

The accounts that hotly defend the australian government interventions seem to be created specifically for this purpose. They only comment on australia covid response posts. Food for thought.

The top thread which I think you're referring to mixes up the new digital surveillance laws and one state's digital quarantine phone app. I don't think anyone from Australia is going to defend the new digital surveillance laws.

Australia's always been a bit icky when it comes to digital rights and censorship, but this just takes it over the top.

I've lived in Australia for 10 years and really considering my familys future in this country. We are sleep-walking towards a very average future.

An undiversified export economy, out of control house prices, a job-market primarily focused on two cities, a government intent on selling all public assets, very limited political interest in positive climate policies. The latter is simply addressed with "technology will help us out when we need it to".

It really feels sometimes that the only thing the average Australian cares about is the price of their property portfolio.

Or maybe 3 months into the Sydney lockdown is finally getting to me.

Born in AU so bias is to stay, which leads me to push more for political change required to try to address these problems. Most of your 10 years has been under a particularly bad (and honestly corrupt) federal gov.

Country has a large state capture problem from largely mining companies but also other special interests that have lobbied and . Anything that might threaten those interests is being pretty heavily targeted, including action on climate[0] (See "Gas led recovery", and the use of funds intended to renewables used for things like CCS/CCUS and "blue" hydrogen.). And this is bleeding into laws and enforcement.

Then there is the constant resistance to a federal anti-corruption agency as well as reducing the influence of money on federal politicians (see backbencher/ministers resolving door with lobbying firms).

The conclusion I've (sadly) come to, is that (in the short term at least) more money needs to be thrown at smaller parties and independents to try to combat this. Unlike the USA, Australia has precedent of minority governments and compulsory voting combined with a preference system means that gaining even a small number of lower house/senate seats can make a disproportional impact to the policies being set around Australia. Both major parties are so similar but just switching from Blue to Red is unlikely to result significant change in policies for some of the issues you've raised.

[0] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-cou...

So I'm Australian but from the part no one ever visits (ie Perth). I say this because for most visitors Australia = Sydney, maybe Melbourne.

Anyway, I've gone to live overseas a couple of times now. The most recent time was to the US 11 years ago. I'm still here.

As many problems as the US has, the one big selling point it has is career opportunities and earning potential as a software engineer. Like... it doesn't even come close. I'll take what my US compensation buys me in NYC over whatever compensation I could get buys me in Sydney (in particular).

Property in Australia is like a game of musical chairs but the music stopped in Sydney in 1978 (in Perth and Melbourne it was more like 2003).

One thing I like about the US tax system is there is no negative gearing (mostly). Specifically if you earn over a certain amount ($150k but it starts sliding down at $100k) then you can't offset ordinary taxes with passive losses. I really think Australia desperately needs this system but negative gearing is so ingrained in Australian culture now that it's political suicide to try and change it. I believe Labor made noises about this in a recent Federal election and suffered the consequences.

It's a shame because Perth and even Melbourne used to have a relatively low cost-of-living and high quality-of-life. I honestly don't know how anyone does it now.

As for the politics, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Australia doesn't have the crazy evangelicals that the US does, for example. Like when the gay marriage issue was decided even the highly conservative former PM Tony Abbott basically came out and said the matter was settled and it's time to move on.

As for climate change, while I believe in it I also don't think anything will change out of pure altruism by any large group of people. And that's anywhere. It's not unique to Australia. Look at what's happened to the price of solar in the last decade.

I'd say the ugliest side of Australian politics and culture in general is actually the treatment of refugees and the so-called (this name still sends shivers down my spine) Pacific Solution.

Oh and we can't forget Australia's most pustulent export: Rupert Murdoch.

`It really feels sometimes that the only thing the average Australian cares about is the price of their property portfolio.`

If this is the only accessible form of financial gain - why wouldn't they?

I strongly suspect that in order to have a dynamic economy a weak housing market is a pre-requisite. Given the choice it's much easier to plunk money down in a house and watch cash magically appear than it is to start a business or do anything creative.

Almost 11 years in Melbourne (from NZ) and I couldn't agree more.

The 220~ days (and counting) that Melbourne has been in lockdown has certainly worn me down, but even before C19 the political climate, attitude towards technology, cost of housing and the impact of increasing bushfires has taken an enormous toll on the country over the past decade that I've been here.

I’m also here, and quite concerned.

I’ve seen how quickly a country can erode (Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong) and am questioning the future of this country.

Australia is still the same 'lucky country' written about over 50 years ago [0]. A second rate political and economic system survives on the back of huge unearned benefits - vast natural wealth, a comparatively small population, multi-culturalism, distant from war and most environmental issues, etc.

The result is still a very attractive place - lots of resources, educated people, safe, little poverty comparatively, etc. But people take it for granted and its sleep walking into a Corporatocracy with fast growing wealth gap.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

Moved to Sydney from New Zealand and have been here for 6 years. I do like it here compared to New Zealand but I think I would move elsewhere given the chance.

The internet here is an actual joke, the politics are biased towards conservatism, don't think about owning an electric car but... the pay is quite good and it's a nice place to go out. Lots of nature and you can find nice apartments to rent if you look.

New Zealand by comparison is great but it's remote, expensive and has a low salary when compared to other western countries. It has been a while since I was there last, but public transport is hilariously bad - but if you enjoy nature and silence, it's there in abundance.

My company has offered to relocate me to NYC, which is interesting. Looking on YouTube at what the city looks like and it's pretty ugly if I am honest. Apartments seem to be small and you don't get modern style apartments even 45 minutes from Manhattan via public transport. I am concerned that my lifestyle would suffer living there.

Hey Canada, how you doing?

I'm releasing a feature film exploring this in a few months (Aus ponzi economy, limited social mobility of next generation here). If anyone is interested in seeing please email hackernewsfilm@gmail and I'll keep you updated.

After 34 years of being an Australian, the feeling is mutual.

So sad to hear that.

Hope it goes well for you wherever you choose to go, although I don't think there are many places left that aren't like that, at least not any places that have an acceptable standard of living. Something about a city having a future at all makes the real estate vortex come to life.

Know of a place? Tell me, dear reader, I'd love to hear it.

The next election is critical, I think. Need a minority Labor Government with a strong crossbench - neither major party ruling in their own right will make any moves in the right direction for the country at this point...

> It really feels sometimes that the only thing the average Australian cares about is the price of their property portfolio.

Maybe the sample average of the people you hang around is quite different from the population average.

The average Australian can't even afford to have a property portfolio, let alone caring about one.

This is one view... but I suspect most people living somewhere that is a proper city as opposed to a resort would say similar things.

Net migration rate provides a more objective view of whether a country has an 'average future'. If you look at the global net migration rates, Australia and particularly the capital cities have some of the highest rates in the world, despite being far away from anywhere.

The factors driving this may not align at all with what you personally want from a country or a city, which is fair enough. But your comment seems like quite a generalisation to make from a very specific position.

If you had to emigrate, what would your top 3 options be?

I feel you mate. Sad part is Australia has all the potential to have a really good future but the only thing missing is competent leadership. The liberal government continues to fuck up time and time again and the Murdoch press just turns a blind eye.

Fucked up quarantine, fucked up vaccine rollout, fucked up climate policies, fucked up the news media bargaining code, and fucked up numerous policies just to prop up the housing market. And it'll be the younger generations that will certainly pay for these fuck ups.

I really hope we have an early election and Australians choose Labor over Liberal this time.

You're not the only one. Reading the news, I feel like a stranger in my own country. Australians don't share the values I thought we did.

I'm leaving early next year. A surprising number of my friends are planning to leave soon too, particularly the highly skilled and employable ones.

Out of all the things you mention, privatizing government owned assets it actually a good thing.

Or at least it can be a good thing, as long as the process ain't mismanaged too badly. Governments seldom do the simplest thing of just auctioning off eg a state-owned business or plot of land to the highest bidder.

Most of the time they insists on beauty contests where politicians want to judge bidders' plans. That's a recipe for corruption and cronyism.

Or they only sell off eg a business piecemeal, making a turnaround in private hands much harder.

For what it’s worth, you could substitute Canada or countless other nations and say all the same things.

You could do the following for almost every response in this particular thread and it would still be accurate:

s/Australian?/US American?/g

might not want to hear this as an adoptive Aussie, but two words, mate: New Zealand.

Sounds like Canada

Spot fucking on.

This is going to happen sooner or later, the pandemic accelerated it, exploiting and abusing the liberty of people will be the new norm - 1984.

Observation: at least in NSW it seems that most people trust the government and cooperate with government orders (Digital Tran formation for public service is on the right track, see the delivery of digital driver licence and all other perks and all other self-service integrated services, at the cost of giving up some personal info and privacy (state government says that we can trust them for securing the data/info)...

I have been living in Sydney, Australia since 2008. Agree that country is facing tough and worrying economic outlook for the 2020's. It was seriously `lucky country` (mining boom, Rise of China, etc.) when I first landed in SYD, however, with the deterioration of Australia-China relationship, and the undiversified economy structure (mining, education, tourism, etc.), the "lucky country" is going downhill towards the "luckin coffee" direction LMAO.

The country is run by politicians holding law and/or accounting degrees with no social responsibility or morals (in comparison with Germany and northern Europe), who are good at making taxation (or similar) laws but with no vision for the country's future (geopolitical influence, economy, etc.). Most people underestimate the stupidity of government and central banks, keep printing $ (QE) and pump the money to the banking system, making the asset bubbles bigger, while failing to stimulate the real economy, most $ went into the construction industry)

All bubbles pop, there is no exit strategy for QE... Recently watched "The Big Short" again and seriously history is repeating itself, so similar. Good luck to the people live in the "lucky country", keep doing what you believe is right, manage risks well (I know many family highly leveraged into investment properties), stay healthy stay sharp ;-)

"The world is sinking, people ware partying."

  Housing "un"affordability will cause negative consequences for the society: psychological problems -> family problems -> community problems -> social problems. Politicians don't care, only focus on winning the next election, they they come and go, they've got their exit route well covered...

NOTE: Recently Deirdré Straughan moved to Australia with Brendan Gregg, you may be interested to know some of the reasons behind the move, I assure you that will be good reads: https://www.beginningwithi.com/category/women-in-technology/

I recall readinga book when I was young, it was all about a nuclear war - and the perspective of the characters was that AU was the last bastion of humanity to survive... and went on to talk about how the people were able to survive there...

So dystopian weird idea follows:

What if "they" are 'cleansing' Australia to make it clear for the oligarch elites to come in and claim the land!

:-)

I lived in Australia for 5 years and my sense is that, as harsh as it sounds, Australia needs to go through an extreme hardship to wake up as a nation. Australia has lived true to its moniker as the Lucky Country - at least two full generations of Australians have never witnessed economic hardship or downturn of any kind. Natural disasters pass the nation by (other than wildfires). Even Covid looked like it was going to give Australia a miss until very recently.

The populous of Australia are fat and happy, and therefore unbothered by the extremely worrying creeping authoritarianism, an economy teetering on total collapse and incompetent local governance. I had real Brave New World vibes living over there.

What happens in Australia in housing also is happening more or less globally when unlimited "rent seeking" is allowed. People and companies can buy residential properties and then rent them out. With current low interest rates they can run amok and make a lot more than the interest. The Netherlands has a way to deal with this. A landlord tax on rented houses. https://borgenproject.org/dutch-housing-crisis/ If you buy a house = no tax, rent it out = tax. This acts to add costs to rent seekers, but real owners do not pay it. They can adjust the tax to the right level to make landlords sell their places.

Many parts of the US have something effectively the same called a Homestead Exemption. You get a discount on your property tax for the house you live in. Any other houses you own pay the full rate. It varies greatly by location and not everywhere has it but it's pretty common.

We don't have anywhere near the individual rights focus of somewhere like the USA, so anything around security is a wedge issue for the other side of politics. Means that things like this are too easily introduced and passed.

Are there any Australians here on HN? Who in your country is pushing this BS? What's the selling point? What do media say?

It's "for our safety".

For context, I'm Australian and have just come back after almost 20 years away, living around the world.

Safety is now the absolute most important thing in Australia above everything else. Sadly, it's now more important than enjoying life.

I'll be leaving, only come back to visit family from time to time. I have zero interest in living here.

Both major parties have promoted these policies. The party in charge has been very effective over the past decade creating an immense atmosphere of fear and envy; the Opposition party believe there are too many votes to lose by not addressing this and have sacrificed a lot of their previously progressive stances to match the tempo of the right-wing. Besides both sides of government, the people pushing it are morning TV show hosts and, naturally, the Murdoch media. There are PLENTY of dissenting voices, typically on the grassroots level or among arts/media industries, but few of them are empowered to match the ferocity with which these other entities will go after them. Police raid journalists' offices and homes at worst, relentlessly harass them in the news or cover them in defamation lawsuits at best. There are a lot of Australians who do not want this current situation, a lot more who are afraid and misguided, and a small but influential fraction protecting their self-interests at the expense of the rest of us. If that summarises things.

Their server seems to be receiving too many requests. Here's the article on wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210903054127/http://digitalrig...

One thing no one is mentioning is how China is the no.1 beneficiary of a pacified and monitored Australian populace. They are already completely dependent on the Aussie natural resource exports, and are deeply interested in Australia continuing to be friendly towards them, and could easily overwhelm them in a fight.

China has nothing to do with the surveillance mandate, unless you believe that Xi got ScoMo's ear.

China has switched to near-open hostility recently.

https://www.hudson.org/research/17228-how-china-overreached-...

Here's the reality - I'd take google and apple's privacy protections related to my data over many govts out there?

Is that a bad thing to say? Back to the regular anti google / google news / apple programming.

Oh yeah of course in a heartbeat. I think the main objection I have to apple / google hoarding my data isn't actually apple / google having them, it's that the government can make them fork it over and so them having it means the government does by proxy.

False choice fallacy.

Google and apple can be regulated or even trust busted.

The government can be forced to serve the people instead of the other way around.

Humanity as a whole may have lost many battles, but we have won some. Plus the war isn't over.

Thing can get better, even if they've consistently gotten worse since before I was born.

I'm prone to despair myself, I always have to give myself self affirmations like this throughout my day. Helps me, hope this comment helped someone else out there.

Perhaps this is why people pray to their god/gods if they have them, to give infinite morale in a seemingly hopeless situation. The majority of casualties occur during a route in war.

Democrats and republicans alike, let's make sure we don't do this in USA. Please donate to EFF, FIRE, ACLU, etc. I feel like both parties are becoming more authoritarian. COVID-19 is here to stay for many years if not decades. We're not going to be able to wipe off the virus from the planet. Governments will continue to use this as an excuse to erode privacy.

This whole clampdown feels completely anti-Australian to me. Australians I've met are all very open minded, free spirited folks and they are always flipping a birdie to the government.

Both parties _are_ becoming more authoritarian. The Economist just wrote a great summary of what's going on: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/09/04/the-threat-from...

ACLU has already been taken by the new American leftist orthodoxy. Turning the tide will require new thinking.

You're making the mistake of conflating Australia's COVID-19 restrictions with this legislation, when they're entirely unrelated. These digital powers were something Australia has sought for many years- under the good ol' reasons of terrorism and child safety.

The recent hubbub surrounding Australia's restrictive COVID-19 measures were possibly the best thing that could happen for our government- when our vaccination numbers rise, the public health restrictions will rollback, whilst the digital legislation will continue on unabated.

I whole heartedly agree. I made a top-level comment, but I think it bears repeating: this is human nature at play.

Governmental parties are making plays for more power under the guise of working “for the people”, but sadly they are deluded.

Not sure what the answer is here, but just voicing that you’re 100% correct in my estimation. This pandemic and the tragedies yet to come will always be leveraged by those in power to gain more power.

ACLU is fully co-opted by the democrats for many years. Just like the SPLC, ADL etc. Look at where vast majority of their donations come from.

1. ACLU actively gives their data to Facebook:

https://www.axios.com/aclu-data-shares-facebook-4f1d21f4-d43...

https://fortune.com/2021/04/02/aclu-shares-data-facebook-thi...

2. ACLU claims Second Amendment is Racist

> "Racism is foundational to the Second Amendment and its inclusion in the Bill of Rights."

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1419294620417155074

Fun fact: Vermont ratified the individual right to gun ownership and the abolishing of slavery in their State Constitution at the same time in 1777. The second amendment actually helped defeat racism and the only thing racist about it is the disproportionate infringement against minorities.

> Vermont’s Declaration of Rights of 1777 set forth the following fundamental rights and abolished slavery: That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave, or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one years; nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years.

> Vt. Constitution, Art. I, § 1 (1777). See Zilversmit at 116. The Vermont Declaration also provided: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State . . . .” Id., § 15.

3. ACLU used to defend free speech of even neo-nazis but have since then abandoned their principles:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/aclu-again-cowardly-abstain...

4. ACLU's most famous lawyer calls JK Rowling and Abigail Shrier "white supremacists" without any proof whatsoever:

https://twitter.com/abigailshrier/status/1358246098364583936...

The same lawyer has also called for banning of Abigail Shrier's book.

5. ACLU now claims ‘Vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties’:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vaccine-mandates-actually-...

The ACLU, Prior to COVID, Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics. Now, they have completely reversed its views, arguing vaccine mandates help civil liberties and bodily autonomy "is not absolute."

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-aclu-prior-to-covid-den...

You know, of all places where Big Brother would be a real thing, Australia was not in my list. I always think a country that use the C word as a term of endearment would know how to take things slow.

Slow like a boiling frog?

Getting back to their prison state roots.

Here’s the update from Fastmail on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28410178

Have we already forgotten that this was part of GCHQ's JTRIG mandate, revealed back in 2014?

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

How did Australia get this far gone?

There are agents in this thread with very vested interests it seems...

Never let a crisis go to waste.

Rahm really nailed it with that one. I mean, I’m almost certain he had it tattooed somewhere, it was his modus operandi. But, really nailed as a succinct collection of words.

As an Australian, I feel like we're all just squatters on the mining companies land. They are tolerating us for now. If you are Adrian Burragubba from the Wangan & Jagalingou people their patience has run out.

you think this is bad, in South Australia they're making people download a government app, and they'll randomly message you and you need to take a picture of your face and it'll submit your face and location. If you don't respond the police with turn up to enforce it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-austra...

cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...

Imo - Best defense is to get off of mainstream software. Bet they'll have a packaged zero click exploit for iOS but not Caylx :)

But that's not for everyone

The problem here is a human one, not a governmental one. The government is just doing what humans tend to do: consolidate and protect power.

The fact that this doesn’t serve anyone (other than their) interest is really just a side effect of the underlying cause.

We should champion this issue and we should fight to keep this kind of thing from happening. But the deeper issue here is one of human nature. How do we build a system that guards against ourselves? 50 years ago I would’ve pointed to our own government as an example, but I’m becoming less and less sure.

Not sure why this is downvoted but it’s factually correct. Organizations consolidate power and try and hold onto it. You can even see it in a big corporation where groups will get territorial and actively try and sabotage other groups even though they work for the same company.

That’s why functional democracies are a patchwork of rules that try and prevent such consolidation.

You’re probably romanticising a past that never existed.

What was happening 50 years ago?

The Vietnam War springs to mind.

Australians were being conscripted in to that war by our government.

So I wouldn’t hold that time up as a paragon of responsibilities government.

Every time Australia is mentioned on hn the same two whiners appear to spray about how it's so horrible here because "nobody has any problems" and everything is "too easy and good", which makes them feel some kind of doomsday prepper type indignation. It seems pathological: "These FOOLS are happy as long as they have extreme happiness, wealth, health, peace and general ease. Little do they know their sacred right to convenient encrypted communication is under grave threat".

I'm struggling to find a list of who voted for/against this bill. Does anyone know where to look?

I can't read the article, resource limit has been reached. Anyone have a mirror?

I wonder if at some point there would not be much difference comparatively to China.

The hot takes from Americans on Australian society have lately been amazing.

AU needs to be stopped. Resources should be put to this.

This is so bad. I have no other words.

Authoritarians wreck nations. It and paternalism is incompatible with functioning democracy.

Democracy is an illusion in Australia, just like the rest of the globalised West.

Politicians are chosen to stand for election by a small number of corrupt branch stackers, not by the people.

The people are given a choice between party a or b, which are two cheeks of the same arse.

I am curious to know where democracy is not an illusion (if it is in all the "globalised West").

The fact that they haven't strung up the puppy killers in Bourke Shire says a lot about Australia's COVID mania.

I remember one time as a child attending school in Australia, overhearing a discussion between a woman who lived near the school and a local council officer. The council officer had discovered the woman had a dog of a certain breed that wasn't permitted in that region, and was telling the distraught woman that the dog would need to be taken away and killed. The dog hadn't caused any trouble or bitten anyone, mind you. Although at the time I didn't have any notion of "freedom", it shocked me nonetheless.

As someone put it, "The problem with Aussies is not that so many are descended from convicts – it's that so many are descended from prison officers".

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