Australia, once a thriving democracy and a free and open society, devolved into a totalitarian-like state over the spring and summer when COVID-19 cases began to climb and most Aussies had not rolled up a sleeve for The Jab. To date, the nation of 25 million has documented 191,000 cases, a rate that is less than 1%, so the fatality rate that has yet to hit 2,000 Australians falls far below 1%, too.
Despite the mild statistics, Australians have witnessed their own government force them to remain in their homes, with a nightly curfew and a five-kilometer limit from home, but politicians promised to ease those restrictions if the vaccination rate climbs. The nation hit an 80% vaccine rate in early November among Aussies age 16 and older but even now there are warnings for a fresh round of lockdowns for fear of a "super spreader" during the Christmas holidays.
An estimated 18.4 million had taken the shot as of November 7, The Sidney Morning Herald reported. From that number, 78,880 reported side effects and 10,000 so far have registered their intention to make a legal claim over their injuries.
Yet the country’s authoritarian rules just gets worse and worse. Just commenting on Facebook about lockdown protests warrants an intimidating visit by police, who are holding copies of your online post, and who ask if you attended the protest six months earlier.
That video was posted in October by Avi Yemini, an Australian correspondent for Rebel News. In hundreds of Rebel News videos posted to YouTube, he has documented street protests as well as his own run-ins with uniformed police officers demanding his press credentials in an obvious attempt to stop him.
In another video, Yemini and Rebel News filmed Melbourne police shutting down an outdoor church service in June. In that same video (see below), a police officer is filmed grabbing a churchgoer by the neck and throwing him to the ground.
"The fundamental reason they're doing this is it is pure intimidation," the man later told Rebel News. "What it is is Communist-style policing."
In a dire warning posted online, Australian journalist-activist Monica Smit said she wanted the rest of the world to know what has happened in the once-free nation that was cowered by the virus.
“It is now a land of division, blackmail, coercion, discrimination and medical apartheid,” she said. “A land where movement, speech, religion, and opinion are no longer free.”
In the Australian state of Tasmania, where U.S.-born citizen Jack Sonnemann lives with his family, he says the authoritarians are not giving up their power. In the House of Representatives, in the state of Victoria, he says, a bill authorizing a $90,000 fine for disobeying state-mandated health orders has passed and is now on its way to the state Senate.
Sonnemann’s first-hand report from Australia was also reported by The Daily Mail, the British newspaper. The newspaper said the “sweeping” new law would give Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, the legal authority to declare a pandemic even if no cases have been documented. It also allows him to extend a state of emergency, giving him authority to implement lockdowns and quarantine requirements for three months at a time.
“Placing so much power in the hands of one person, not the cabinet, not the parliament, but in the hands of the premier alone would be unprecedented,” an opposing member of parliament warned.
According to Sonnemann, Andrews is better described as the “Victorian dictator” who himself was fined $500 for failing to wear a mask near Parliament. Other citizens, Sonnemann says, have been fined $5,000 and arrested for failing to do so.
“No wonder protest crowds estimated at up to 100,000 have marched on Victorian Parliament over the last few weekends objecting to this authoritarian overreach,” Sonnemann wrote in an email to American Family News.
“The current state of Australia should be a warning to Americans,” says author and Christian apologist Alex McFarland. “Please, Americans, do not assume that our liberties can't be taken away.”
