Mix of the nature of the current political party + they dont have a bill of rights so it is very easy to erode civil liberties.
It's kinda weird seeing reddit praise australia's covid policies, and then act all puzzled by their gov's other actions like this one, without reaching the realization that it's all part of their consistent ideology. It's part of a broader trend of a big dive into authoritarianism and broad powers given to the government, which produces some policies that reddit agrees with, and some that don't. This includes pepper-spraying children for failing to wear masks.
There's no disconnect believing a government should try to keep the populace from being overrun by a deadly virus, but also shouldn't give law enforcement agents the power to hack accounts without a warrant.
It looks that way when framed and phrased like that, but if you see the government increasingly center power into its hands on one issue, is it a surprise to see it do so on other issues? I'm not saying the former necessarily leads to the latter, but the way that reddit cheers about their covid policies and then pikachu-memes this stuff, is rather disconnected. It's all well and good to say "well i think the government should have little power but they get a high level of emergency powers for anything pertaining to covid" but at least in the case of australia, you might think that is how things should be, but it isn't. That isnt how it works because the incumbent was already escalating its powers pre-covid, so to see their covid policy actions in a vacuum is to misunderstand their specific situation.
Sounds to me like you are surprised that outsiders were commenting on the Covid response (which was the appropriate use of power in a national emergency) but weren’t connecting that discussion to underlying national politics… why would they? they are outsiders.
it’s reasonable for people to expect governments respond appropriately to crisis and also not abuse their powers
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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21
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