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Totalitarianism and the myth of Australian democracy

Totalitarianism and the myth of Australian democracy

When I was a kid, we used to live in a democracy, a place where you could walk and talk without fear or favour, without being afraid of having every word recorded for potential use against you.

Sometimes you could even disagree with politicians, and the press could report the truth without having to divulge confidential sources (where they didn’t involve security or defence).

If the management of the current APEC conference has created one thing, it is the myth of the Australian democracy.

The police state we live in has been created through the excesses of Government and the incompetent ineptitude of the Opposition.

Governments lock people up at whim by using various fictions and abuses, people can walk and talk only where the Government says they may, the press cannot protect confidential information sources that point to Government and ministerial lies. Even here in the ACT, the right to protest against human rights abuses has been restricted because of discomfit to the embassies of some countries.

Let’s be quite clear about it the totalitarian regime doesn’t exist in the Afghan mountains or the Iraqi oil fields.

It is here, in Australia, in the hearts and minds of our political leadership.

Encouraged by a feckless Opposition, we see the deceptions of an election-driven Federal Government creating “law and order” division to wedge our communities, to spy on our citizens and to stifle debate.

And through it all we see the silence of the lambs in the muted outcry of a Federal Opposition completely disinterested in protecting basic democratic ideals.

In fact the only “rights” being protected are the political “right wings” of Government and Opposition.

The true champions of democracy, the Parkes, the Menzies, the Langs, must lie churning in their graves as the democracy that they cherished becomes a dim and distant memory.

James Grenfell, Spence (Canbera Times Letter)

2 Comments

  1. Alas that is becoming increasingly clear and obvious 14 years later.

    As a political scientist by qualification, I now find the need to mind what I say, write and post, as the government now has the power to observe, record, amend and control my online accounts. I also wonder if I will one day hear the 3am pounding on my door. Personally I always saw myself as a political gasbag, but there is no real way of knowing when an increasingly secretive, corrupt and undemocratic state might suddenly decide it might be fun to give me a hard time, or worse.

    Our moniker in 2021 as the new “hermit kingdom” is not just about our covid lockdowns, it is increasingly about our secretive and corrupt government and limp dick opposition.

    James
  2. Being living here in Australia for the past 10 years, I have slowly experienced and understood the fake of democracy in Australia and I have always explained my view to the locals that they have been brainwashed and their country is a totalitarian regime rather than a an advance fair Australia !!! How a justice system can accept that citizen are recorded in a centralised system and every move out of the country is recorded , in and out ? This is anti democratic act taking the freedom of movement of individual human being under the name of terrorism !!! Political are the terrorist here , serving themselves . Australian are the Guinea pigs of the system! Are they any yellow jackets here ?

    Cecile

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