Melbourne.

One thinks of it as an agreeable Australian city, home to middle-class gentility, often satirised to great effect by Melbourne native John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE (creator of humorous fictional characters e.g. Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson). Humphries moved to England and has lived in London for the past 40 years.

Melbourne is also home to MasterChef Australia.

Nothing bad happens in Melbourne, one would think.

Except that COVID-19 moved in.

Now everything has changed, rather suddenly.

One can imagine that Barry Humphries is relieved that he left but might empathise with the residents, who are enduring a dystopia in his once-home town.

Jeffrey Tucker, an American who enjoyed his travels in Melbourne, wrote an article dated August 4, 2020, for the American Institute for Economic Research, ‘Madness in Melbourne’.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine, unless indicated otherwise.

Tucker begins by describing the Melbourne of his travels:

A happy, civilized, highly educated people are here living amidst modern architecture, inspiring bridges, and natural beauty, a place where even the police are kind, and when you ask them for directions they reply with a smile, and when you say thank you, they say “No worries.”

Now things are much different:

The Premier has imposed a vicious police state without precedent in this country’s history. His name is Dan Andrews (a sweet-sounding name that masks the tyrant he has become), and he tweets out pictures of empty streets to brag about what he has achieved in the name of suppressing a virus. 

Even though it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, Melbourne’s anti-coronavirus measures give pause for thought. Tucker received the following lockdown information from a friend. Emphases in purple mine:

• • Police may now enter anyone’s home without a warrant.
  • Curfew 8:00pm.
  • $1,652 fine if outside without “a valid reason” – an amount being raised by the day
  • Can’t visit any family or friends.
  • $200 fine for no mask (mandatory masks at all times).
  • Can only exercise once per day, for up to 1 hour. 
  • Only one person per household, per day can leave the house (including for groceries).
  • Can’t go more than 3 miles from your home.
  • Weddings are illegal.
  • No gatherings of any size.
  • Army is on the streets fining/arresting people.
  • “Since March 21, a total of 193,740 spot checks have been conducted by police across Victoria.”
  • Protests/activism is illegal; people have already been arrested for peaceful gatherings.
  • Media is EXTREMELY biased, calls protesters “right wing conspiracy nutjobs” and won’t allow discussion of whether these lockdowns are right or not. 
  • Several thousand people were placed under house arrest and unable to leave for ANY reason, with food rations delivered by the army, leading to appalling levels of personal trauma. 
  • Australia won’t release how many fines they’ve given out, but an ABC news report says it’s over $5.2 million so far.
  • Streets of Melbourne are empty, even in a city of 5 million+ people. People are HATEFUL to each other, everyone is cannibalising their neighbours (calling police to report any little infraction of the rules and turning on each other like some socialist hellhole).
  • Billboards outside on the street that say in capital letters: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STAY HOME.” They feel extremely oppressive, like we’re being yelled at by a very oppressive government.
  • The Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews shows complete and utter disdain for us, constantly blaming us. He’s blamed children (yes, really) for not taking this seriously enough. Every chance he gets, he tells us it’s OUR fault the virus is spreading (even though that’s what viruses do – they spread). 
  • It’s not just the Victorian Premier – the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is just as terrible. He’s encouraged all of this, and he was responsible for the first lockdown.
  • 1984 dystopian language: billboards everywhere saying “Staying apart keeps us together.” Have they gone mad?
  • There’s probably more but at this point I honestly lost track of all the insanity that’s happened.
  • All because 147 people died in the state of Victoria (total population is 6.359 million), almost all of the deaths are over 70 with comorbidities, same as everywhere else in the world. 

This is lockdown ideology at work. It is tyranny without limit, at the expense of all human dignity, decency, and rights. The politicians make a desert and call it health. 

You also need a ‘worker permit’ when going to your place of employment (see banner in the police video below):

Shane Patton, the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, says that the time for leeway is over. Now there will be fines and interventions where applicable:

There are consequences. I want to be really clear on that.

He says that there are people calling themselves ‘sovereign citizens’ who are ‘baiting police at checkpoints’. On such occasions, Commissioner Patton says, police have had to break their car windows in order to get them to provide their personal details.

He also stated that police will arrest people for infringements of the current coronavirus rules. He did cite the incident where a maskless 38-year-old woman, with no prior criminal record, struck a policewoman in the head when confronted. That is wrong. But mandatory masks are not 100% correct, either. We were not meant to walk around wearing masks, indoors or outdoors.

So much for Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch. In a year or two, one could make an incredible dystopian television series on what is happening in Melbourne during these restrictions.

Jeffrey Tucker concludes his article with this (emphases mine):

Perhaps the other states in Australia will observe the destruction in Victoria and learn to take another path when the virus first arrives in their territory, as it surely will. Lockdowns are not science; they are brutality.

I cry for the once-great city of Melbourne this day. May there be justice. And may its future political leadership be granted some modicum of decency and wisdom.

All the rest of us can do is watch and pray for the people of Melbourne and surrounds.

The power of prayer is great. Don’t let anyone steer you wrong on that score.

Anyone living in Melbourne is more than welcome to comment.