[IMAGE: PRIVATE MEDIA]

US conservative political commentator Candace Owens has called on the US military to invade Australia over its “tyrannical police state”. 

“When do we invade Australia and free an oppressed people who are suffering under a totalitarian regime?” she said on her TV show last week. 

US commentator Joe Rogan also criticised Australia as a country “with dystopian, police-state measures that are truly inconceivable to the rest of the civilised world” — although he later realised he was criticising a satirical sketch instead of a government advertisement.

Both have been mocked for their hyperbolic attitudes — but there is something to be said about Australia’s increasing government powers throughout the pandemic. Its border policy was one of the toughest in the world, isolating Australians and putting those on temporary visas in difficult positions. Fortress Australia reopened this week after almost 600 days of isolation. 

The Council of Australian Governments was replaced with the opaque national cabinet; unconstitutional travel bans were implemented; police were given excessive powers to fine people and designate others as “authorised officers”; emergency powers have been extended time and again, and Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is proposing laws that would give the premier the power to declare pandemics and have public health orders enforced for three months at a time. 

How did Australia quietly become a country with such emboldened police, government and military powers?

Powers emerge as quickly as the pandemic 

Public health emergencies were declared by states and territories across March 2020. This allowed governments to allocate extra funding to healthcare, public housing, food relief and economic packages to support businesses. 

But the new powers weren’t all about moving cash around for support. Policing powers also increased, allowing police to fine people flouting COVID-19 rules or instruct them to move along. 

In Victoria, the government could appoint anyone to become an “authorised officer” who could arrest anyone suspected of having COVID or of breaching emergency directions and detain them indefinitely. Police could also take possession of any person’s property. 

Fines were implemented swiftly; a learner driver copped a $1600 fine for “non-essential” travel during a lesson with her mother. In July 2020, public housing tower residents in Flemington and North Melbourne were forced into lockdown with no warning — which the Victorian Ombudsman later found breached human rights laws. (Despite this December ruling, a similar thing happened in Sydney this year). 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison developed the national cabinet to replace the COAG and speed up decision-making in April. But the cabinet also kept crucial information away from public scrutiny: cabinet documents are exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. 

The government is fighting to keep this information secret despite a Federal Court ruling that the national cabinet was not entitled to “cabinet confidentiality”. 

Federal Parliament was suspended for five months across 2020 due to the outbreak and again in 2021– an international anomaly — while state Parliaments also hit the pause button. 

Militarisation becomes a focus

In September the federal defence legislation amendment permitted foreign armies and police forces to be called in for ill-defined “emergencies”, allowing immunity for the defence force from criminal and civil penalties; 700 defence force members assisted Sydney during the outbreak. 

That same month, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller was given new powers in his role as State Emergency Operations controller, proudly announcing: “These are some of the strongest powers we’ve ever had in the history of the NSW police force.”

Along with heightened powers, increased police presence and deployed ADF members, governments started comparing the battle against COVID as a war. Despite having no experience in public health, Lieutenant General John Frewen was appointed commander of the national COVID vaccine task force in June 2021. 

Andrews called the virus a “wicked enemy”, in July 2020; Frewen launched the military-themed vaccination campaign “arm yourself”; Morrison said the pandemic response had been a “long war against this virus” with “many, many battles”, and in announcing a snap lockdown, former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said the outbreak was “literally a war”. 

This, infectious disease specialist and University of Melbourne associate professor Stuart Ralph tells Crikey, wasn’t the best approach, especially now the rhetoric has shifted to living with the virus.

“You either need to say we beat COVID-19, which doesn’t really seem like it’s true, or we lost, and that’s obviously not suitable either,” he said. 

“It shows how unsuitable militaristic language is, because in a military conflict there’s going to be a winner or loser, and that’s not really the appropriate way of dealing with infectious diseases.”

There are other concerns, too: marginalised communities with a distrust of governments may be less inclined to follow health orders coming from the military over public health officials and community leaders, and a key concern was when the increased powers would be scaled back.

What impact has this had on democracy? 

Former human rights commissioner and University of Sydney political theorist Professor Tim Soutphommasane tells Crikey the pandemic had a corrosive effect on Australia’s political culture.

“There has been surprising acceptance of significantly expanded government power, even though it hasn’t been accompanied by enhanced scrutiny and accountability,” he said. “Many Australians have been happy to trade off liberty for safety. Many have accepted the introduction of emergency measures without asking too many questions.”

Soutphommasane says much of the acceptance was borne out of fear and anxiety as Australia pursued zero COVID cases — a strategy later abandoned. He says more transparency is needed, as is more information about when emergency powers will be reduced. 

“The danger isn’t yet over,” he said. “It’s still possible that we may see the entrenchment of a new normal where liberties and human rights can be encroached upon in the name of public health, without people objecting.

“COVID-19 in this sense could be like what September 11 was for civil liberties.”