User:AustralianPrisoner/sandbox
| Australian War on People's Freedom | |||||||
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| Part of COVID-19 pandemic in Australia | |||||||
 Clockwise from top: NSW Police mounted units patrol Fairfield; Victoria Police fire rubber bullets on peaceful anti-lockdown protesters; residents of Sydney protests the lockdown; Australian Defence Force enforces Sydney lockdown. | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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Pro-Freedom |
Anti-Freedom: | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Clive Palmer (Chairman of United Australia Party) Pauline Hanson (Founder of One Nation) |
Scott Morrison (Australian prime minister) Gladys Berejiklian ((former) NSW state premier) Daniel Andrews (Victorian state premier) Annastacia Palaszczuk (Queensland state premier) Mark McGowan (Western Australian state premier) | ||||||
The Australian War on People's Freedom is an unofficial term used to describe an ongoing conflict between the Australian Government and the general population of the country. It became apparent that the nation was in conflict with their own leaders during the month of July in 2021 when Gladys Berejiklian, who was then the premier of New South Wales (NSW), extended the Greater Sydney lockdown (which originally started in the upper class beachfront suburb of Bondi) and on the 9th of July, placed extra police presence (including mounted police and police helicopters) in the working class ethnic Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Liverpool, Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown, with Liverpool being home to a significant Indian population, Fairfield to an Iraqi population, and Canterbury-Bankstown for a Lebanese population.
As the lockdown progressed, the ethnic LGAs became known as the 'Local Government Areas of Concern' and whilst originally they were subjected to the same stay-at-home restrictions as the rest of Greater Sydney (which comprised of Sydney itself, alongside the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Wollongong, and Shellharbour), on 17th of July, additional restrictions were placed on these LGAs, preventing them from leaving their local area, not even for employment, unless they were deemed to be an authorised worker (usually a healthcare, aged care, supermarket, or transport worker) whilst everyone who was unable to work form home was required to live off welfare payments provided by Services Australia.
Over time, more and more working class and ethnic LGAs were placed under increasingly harsher restrictions, sometimes it would only take a few cases of COVID-19 for the NSW Government to justify this even if greater impact form the apparent pandemic was sometimes greater in wealthier and less cultured LGAs of Sydney, for example, on 28th of July, Georges River Council which contains the suburb of Hurstville which is home a significant Chinese population, was placed under stricter restrictions following 3 additional cases, but when a Woolworths supermarket was temporarily shut down due to multiple cases in the Northern Beaches suburb of Belrose, a death in the Royal North Shore Hospital, and a nurse testing positive in an aged-care home in the Sutherland Shire suburb of Kirrawee, no additional restrictions were placed on the relevant LGAs which are known for being upper class and predominately home to caucasian Australians.
During this time, many Australian politicians began to refuse to answer questions, go against things they said they would previously not do, or deny and responsibility of negative consequences caused by their decisions, for example, Gladys Berejiklian refused to meet with the mayors of the 12 LGAs of concern previously she also said that she would not implement 'symbolic' restrictions such as mandatory mask-wearing outdoors, and curfews because she believed they would not be effective in stopping the spread of the virus, only for her to later place these restrictions on the LGAs of concern, whilst on multiple occasions, Berejiklian has been asked controversial questions by the media only for her to refuse to answer and change the topic. Meanwhile Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would make the COVID-19 vaccine "as mandatory possible" and stated that "We’d have to have more restrictions on people who are unvaccinated because they’re a danger to themselves and others", but when two people perished as a result of adverse affects from the AstraZeneca vaccine, he denied responsibility claiming that "people make their own decision about their own health and their own bodies, that's why we don't have mandatory vaccination", Morrison had been against lockdowns since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia, and labelled NSW as the "gold standard" for it's contact tracing and not placing it's population under lockdown (as opposed to Victoria), but stated that he wanted the Australian Defence Force to patrol the streets of South Western Sydney, something that Gladys Berejiklian insisted that she would not do as she believed it would make the local population feel uncomfortable, only for her a few weeks later to give more power to NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller more powers to enforce the lockdown, which on the same day he used to accept Morrison's offer deploy soldiers to assist the police in their enforcement of the lockdown.
Whilst Sydney faced it's own crisis, other states became involved in the conflict, the outbreak in Sydney spread to the Victorian capital Melbourne by a removalist, which then resulted in Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, placing the city in both it's fifth and sixth lockdowns, parts of the state of Queensland, including Brisbane, Townsville, and Cairns, were also placed under multiple lockdowns by Annastacia Palaszczuk, the premier of Queensland, but these were much shorter in length then the one in Victoria which is currently still ongoing. Because of this, both states closed their borders to New South Wales as well as to each other, during this time and the time prior to the conflict, many Australian people fled Sydney and Melbourne, either to regional areas, or in most cases to Queensland, under the border restrictions, people were still allowed to relocate across state borders, but in order to do so, were required to abandon their many of their belongings (unless shipment and collection could somehow be organised) including their car, furniture, and pets, and cross the border via air, this resulted in the state's supervised hotel quarantine system apparently becoming filled to capacity with Annastacia Palaszczuk placing a two week ban on all incoming arrivals and temporarily stopping all commercial flights into state from NSW and Victoria on 24th of August.
Multiple protests erupted across the country starting with mass gatherings in Sydney and Melbourne 24th of July, demonstrators at these protests were fighting against the extended lockdowns, with Sydney at the time being referred to as "one of the most locked-down cities in the world, and Melbourne becoming the city that has spend the most time in lockdown surpassing 250 days of COVID-19 restrictions. Protests would also occur in other Australian cities including Brisbane and Perth, but aside from protests at the closed New South Wales-Queensland border in Coolangatta on Gold Coast, these protests did not attract as much media attention as there were no major restrictions in these cities. The protests in Sydney and Melborune triggered a wave of police brutality to spread across these cities, in Sydney, the Berejiklian government's 'LGAs of concern' policy meant that police brutality was target towards the ethnic groups living in those areas, attacks from the New South Wales Police Force included situations that involved multiple police officers would forcefully restrain someone under their bodyweight while they were screaming "I have a disability" for not wearing a mask, a single mother being knocked down and having her pants removed in a public park by officers when searching for documentation, a man being knocked unconscious by police and refusing to remove handcuffs or call an ambulance while he was attempting to be revived with a defibrillation, in Melbourne, police brutality occurred at the multiple subsequent protests
Background[edit]
Australia recorded it's first case of COVID-19 the day prior to Australia Day on 25th of January in Melbourne, Victoria. Australian international borders were closed to all non-residents on 20 March, and returning residents were required to spend two weeks in supervised quarantine hotels from 27 March, shortly thereafter, many individual states and territories also closed their borders to varying degrees, with some remaining closed until late 2020, and continuing to periodically close during localised outbreaks. Social distancing rules were gradually imposed on 21 March, and state governments started to close "non-essential" services until the country entered a nationwide lockdown, the number of new cases initially grew sharply, then levelled out 22 March, before falling at the beginning of April to under 20 cases per day by the end of the month. Early during the month of May after approximately, the Australian Treasury revealed that it was costing the government around A$4,000,000,000 to keep the nation in lockdown, and following a meeting by the Australian National Cabinet, the government wound back restrictions.
Localised lockdowns continue to occur throughout Australia during 2020 and the first half of 2021, most notably in Melbourne, which had a strict lockdown lasting 112 days, but these were initiated by state premiers as opposed to the federal government, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison going as far to say that the state of New South Wales was the "gold standard" for it's contact tracing and not placing it's population under lockdown.
Other than the unusually strict international and state border travel restrictions, Australia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic did not differ greatly from the rest of the world, with Australia's lockdowns being notably softer than those seen in New Zealand and the United Kingdom with fast food and take-away allowed to operate at restaurant, and most business operations such as construction, manufacturing, and many retail categories, were allowed to continue to operate. However, one thing to note is that the Morrison Government attempted to implement a digital contact tracing smartphone app titled COVIDSafe, the app is intended to augment contact tracing by automatically tracking encounters between users to warn a user they have come with an infected person, however, the app which cost taxpayers A$7,753,863.38 (with at least an additional A$100,000 a month) was released on 26th of April 2020 to much controversy around privacy concerns, unfortunately the voluntary app was unsuccessful in preventing outbreaks, and was eventually all but abandoned in favour of requiring an individual to scan a QR code upon entry to a business, this was made mandatory in the state of New South Wales on 12th of July, with NSW Police Minister David Elliot ordering all supermarkets in the state to have a staff member or security guard at the entrance checking that all shoppers are complying with the new rules from 3rd of August.
Pre-conflict events[edit]
On 16th of June, the first COVID-19 case of what would later become known as the Bondi cluster occurred in the affluent upper class suburb of Bondi, the case was a man in his 60s who worked as a limousine driver, and had been transporting crew off international flights. On 18th of June from 4pm in Greater Sydney (not including the Illawarra and Wollongong regions), masks were again made mandatory on public transport, before being mandated in all indoor non-residential settings, including workplaces, and at organised outdoor events on 23rd of July, the same day general movement restrictions were imposed on the LGAs of Bayside, Canada Bay, Inner West, Randwick, Waverley, and Woollahra.
Sydney entered a light lockdown on