Where Do We Draw the Line?
The line between free speech and prohibited speech is being redrawn almost daily. What will it do to us as a society?
The latest repugnant proposal put forward by the Victorian Government is a version of East Germany's notorious secret police, the Stasi.
Cast your mind back to the days of German Democratic Republic before the fall of the Berlin Wall and try to imagine what it was like to live there.
As a citizen, not only were you being continually monitored by the secret police (Stasi), you were also vulnerable to the complaints of fellow citizens who can win indulgences for providing information.
It didn't matter if what they supplied to the Ministry for State Security was accurate or not, simply being identified as a potential problem was enough to threaten your life.
That process led to torture and imprisonment. It destroyed families and delivered death. The result was the suppression of all dissent and rendered men and women as mere vassals of the State.
Husbands couldn't trust wives, parents couldn't trust children and genuine friendship was almost impossible. Like most experiences under the rule of the authoritarian left, it was a soul destroying and dehumanising existence.
Now jump forward thirty years and consider what Victorian Premier Dan Andrews wants to do through his COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020.
The Bill provides the power for non-police 'designated authorised officers' to be able to detain and imprison a person considered high risk. A high risk person is someone with COVID -19 or one of their close contacts.
That's right, under the Andrews' proposal, you could be arrested by a secret non-policeman simply for knowing someone else so well that you are deemed a 'close contact'.
It doesn't stop there though. The authorised officers can also detain people who they consider 'likely' to refuse to follow the direction of the aforementioned officer.
Let me make it clear that you don't actually have to refuse the commands of the Victorian Stasi officer to be detained. They just have to think you might disobey him!
That sounds like the East German thought police to me.
It's a repugnant concept that has no place in Australia and should never be even considered. As incredible as it sounds, things get even worse under the proposal.
The appointment of officers is the purview of any unelected and virtually unaccountable bureaucrat. This Reichskommissar of Victoria's Secret Police will be able to appoint almost anyone they consider appropriate to be their 2020 covert Stasi agents.
In a time when few would trust the Victorian police to enforce the existing law judiciously, and when politicians grant crime immunity based on ideology ( or race, creed and colour), how on earth would we fare under a thought crimes Act policed by the pets of a puffed up public servant?
Of course if you become a target of the Victorian secret police, under the current proposal, it's not just you at risk.
They can remove your children and keep them in 'out of home care' for up to 30 months. I am guessing that's just long enough to place them in a re-education camp to learn the appropriate state sanctioned propaganda and spying techniques.
This Bill is the single most dangerous proposal I can recall ever being put forward by any Australian government. It's a grotesque insult to every person who risked their all protecting our freedoms in service of our nation and to those who suffered under the tyranny of the socialist state.
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