The Optics of an Aussie Police State
By Paul Collits
Victoria's police are very concerned about "optics". Like all corporate institutions these days. Well, it hasn't been a good week for Australia's police state.
A clever marketing person – no, not that one; he isn’t that clever – once came up with a terrific line for tourism advertisements urging people to visit out southernmost mainland state. “You will love every piece of Victoria”. On the evidence then presented, the line had merit and the quality of truth.
Not so much today. The state is an international embarrassment. We now make the news globally, on an almost daily basis, for all the wrong reasons. I have never known a year in which I have said the words “I am ashamed to be an Australian” so often. In fact, I am sick of saying that which can so easily appear clichéd.
The arrest this week of Zoe Buhler of Ballarat for organising a protest again the very laws under which she was arrested has caused an international storm of anger and shock. Yet why should we be even surprised at any of this? And who can we turn to for protection? Certainly not the three wastrels who in the Upper House in Victoria this week gave the escaped lunatic who runs Victoria – the one who has our prime minister’s “full support” – another six months of emergency powers. The ones under which Zoe Buhler was arrested.
Oh yes. Kim Jong Dan has extended his astonishing emergency powers this very week, for another six months (at least) on the back of deals (no doubt) done with three Victorian sleazy Upper House MPs – to be precise, a former prostitute, an animal rights activist and a greenie. Amazingly, the former prostitute claims to be a libertarian. Aren’t they meant to cherish freedom above all else?
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/australias-move-towards-authoritarianism-under-the-guise-of-public-health/
The senior VicPol spokesman these days sent out to defend the indefensible before the acquiescent media, one Luke Cornelius, actually said on television that Zoe Buhler was engaged in “serious criminal activity”. I kid you not. Serious. Criminal. Activity. Whatever attributes are needed to get a senior position in VicPol, clearly an IQ of over 30 isn’t one of them. Daniel Andrews claimed not to have even seen the video of her arrest. The biggest story in the world, just about, an atrocity committed on his watch, and he looks the other way, in that stupid-face way of his.
Ponder the nation we have become, and consider those to whom the power to govern us has been handed. Overpaid, publicly funded Chief Health Officers who clearly don’t know what a real pandemic looks like. Police forces of the calibre of the corrupt cowboys of VicPol. Bureaucrats behind which scared, clueless politicians cower.
According to the conservative American blogger Sydney Watson:
The police officer who signed the warrant to arrest a pregnant Aussie mum over a Facebook post is the same officer who used a lawyer as an informant on her own clients. The cop also admits to having a sexual relationship with that lawyer.
His name is Tim Argall. Still happily employed by VicPol. Paid for by the taxpayers of Victoria.
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/police-arrest-pregnant-woman-for-facebook-post/
In April 2019, Argall confessed to an "episode of physical intimacy" with Nicola Gobbo, Melbourne's criminal defense barrister turned high-level informer, Courier News reported.
The Ballarat policeman reportedly sought legal advice from Gobbo when a colleague of his, detective Paul Dale, was charged with the burglary of a drug house that was the target of a surveillance operation by his squad in 2003.
Argall stated that he socialized with her in later years during regular visits at Melbourne Magistrates' Court, meeting for drinks and dinner on occasion sometimes at each other's homes.
"There was an occasion in about 1997 where you had an episode of physical intimacy with her, if we can put it that way?" asked counsel assisting Chris Winneke in a disposition noted in the minutes.
"Yes... I don't think it was after court. There was probably some other contact or arrangement to catch up and it eventuated from that," responded Argall.
https://thepostmillennial.com/victoria-police-officer-under-investigation-for-corruption
Almost too delicious to be actually true. Even if were not true, it hardly matters. The awful juxtaposition of these high morals law enforcement heroes shagging police informants while placing in jeopardy thousands of criminal trials, then raiding the homes of humble protest organisers is there for the world to see.
Here is another of these paragons of virtue signalling, Black Lives Matter knee takers, telling us what is in store for protesters:
If you do take the selfish option and leave home to protest, we’ll be ready for you … We have hundreds of police ready to respond, including our general duties and specialist police, such as the public order response unit, mounted branch and the highway patrol. They’ve all been rostered and will be deployed to support this operation.
Ah, the selfish option. And Lawyer X is merely “poor optics”. Just like arresting a pregnant woman for exercising just about the most fundamental human right of all is merely “poor optics”. But this is a country, remember, where it is illegal to leave. Just like the Hotel California – you can check out any time you like. But you can never leave. The only two other countries on God’s earth it is illegal to leave? Cuba and North Korea. Perhaps Argall and Patton and Cornelius would be better placed working for one of those two wonderful, freedom loving regimes.
On 7 August the British broadcaster James Delingpole stated in Breitbart that:
An Australian state has gone full coronafascist.
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/by-dr-guy-campbell/
Delingpole continued, quoting yet more VicPol stooges: “We had to smash car windows and pull people out because they wouldn’t give us details… they wouldn’t tell us where they’re going”, declares a senior Australian policeman dressed from head to toe in black.
The man in black, alas, was not Johnny Cash but Shane Patton, recently promoted to the top job in VicPol after the much welcomed retirement of the buffoon Graham Ashton. No surprises that Daniel Andrews went for an internal candidate. The very same senior officer (then Assistant Commissioner) who personally flew to Rome with more junior officers to snare Cardinal George Pell in an infamous interview at Fiumicino Airport. We now know all about those particular charges.
Here is what Patton said about exercising your democratic rights in the fascist enclave that is Victoria:
“Groups of people who classify themselves as ‘sovereign citizens’ — whatever that might mean — people who don’t think the law applies to them: we’ve seen them at checkpoints baiting police, not providing their name and address.”
“On at least three or four occasions in the past week we’ve had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there so they could provide their details because they weren’t telling us where they were going. They weren’t adhering to the Chief Health Officer guidelines. They weren’t providing their name and their address.”
This is what above all exercises what pass for the minds of law enforcement these days in the state of public health (another suggested number plate for the Garden State, perhaps). And to think this man carries the immortal name “Patton”.
Then there was the case of VicPol officers wrestling a woman to the ground and exercising a choke hold – for not wearing a mask. This happened on 11 August. A mask that nobody with a brain and who has read a few peer reviewed articles on the subject thinks will actually protect anyone. As reported:
Video emerged last month of a woman being confronted by state police and violently wrestled to the ground for not wearing a mask. The vision has gone viral and sparked an official inquiry.
The woman – who was subsequently found to have had an exemption for wearing a mask – appears to resist as the male officer grabs her and she is pushed against a wall.“You’re choking me,” she yells and repeatedly swears at the officer before she is forced to the ground.
The woman has been charged with resisting police and assaulting police and the arrest has been referred to an internal Victoria police review body, the Professional Standards Command.
“Police made the decision to arrest the woman after she failed to provide her name and address,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said, NINE News reports. “She also did not state she had an exemption for not wearing a face covering.”
https://youtu.be/eBT9fuTJDRE
And then there are all the fines. Even in the bedwetting UK, they actually don’t enforce their equally crazy rules. Just a few fines a day are issued there. In MelDanistan, hundreds a day are issue. Oh yes, the Vics take their coronafascism quite seriously.
Why is all this happening? What is said to justify Victoria’s current madness and evil?
… six Victorians died on Tuesday. Five were men in their 80s and one was a man in his 90s. All of the deaths are linked to outbreaks in aged care facilities.
Six people died. A ninety year old and five in their eighties. Guess what happens when you get to that age? You generally count your blessings for having had the privilege of a long life, you probably get sick, and then you trundle off to meet your Maker. In Victoria, of course, you can even speed up the process, under Daniel Andrews’ generous suicide laws.
I tell you what. As suicides skyrocket during the lockdown madness that is supported by ALL of our elected leaders, their non-elected bureaucrats and apparently the bulk of a cowed, supine, ignorant Australian population, that awful option in Victoria, alas, becomes more and more appealing as each day passes.
Yes six very aged people died this Tuesday past. As Delingpole has noted:
All for a disease that even if death rates double, won’t kill as many Australians as skin diseases.
The Australian death toll from Covid at the time of writing is 678. Out of a population of 25 million. Sounds a lot, apparently to some people. Here is a table of other causes of death in Australia in 2019, sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Health.
Mental and behavioural disorders - 10747
Nervous system diseases - 9736
Circulatory/cardiovascular - 36822
Respiratory - 15330
Influenza and pneumonia - 3855
Digestive diseases - 5689
Car accidents - 1105
Oh, and worldwide, a mere six per cent of “Covid” deaths” were the result of Covid alone. And this pathetic “pandemic” justifies a police state? Go figure.
We should not forget that the cowboys and thugs who enforce in such an appalling and heavy-handed manner the horrible and literally insane laws that come with states of emergency (er, state of disaster), travel bans, curfews, virtual house arrest and the like, are simply implementing the wishes of the second-raters, chancers and bungling, clueless fools that we-the-people have, utterly mysteriously, elected around this country. We put these people there. Every last one of them. Every other Friday, they sit around a video conferenced table and collectively determine our fate. In a new and sinister, non-democratic decision-making cabal with a fancy name – “national cabinet” – to which we NEVER gave our consent.
Neither our various opposition parties, nor the corporate media, nor our bureaucrats, nor our churches, are doing their jobs in holding the mediocrities who govern us responsible for their extremist actions. Without exception, they have assumed the role of useful idiots for the state. Is it any wonder that concerned citizens with a range of legitimate worries about the direction of our once great country are now looking to direct action, albeit of a quite moderate and proportional nature, to advance their cause?
We should not forget, either, that the patently obvious wokeness and the hypocrisy of governments and bureaucrats who grovel before leftist protesters rather than arresting them – or fining them ten thousand pounds in the case of the UK protest leader Piers Corbyn – is only part of the bigger problem.
The right to protest is fundamental to every democracy worthy of the name. End. Of. Story. Emphasising on the wokeness and the hypocrisy creates a real danger of going after the wrong issue. And missing the point. (You do know, dear reader, why there is such a fuss among governments about anti-lockdown protests and so little over BLM.
It is because anti-lockdown protests are a direct threat to authority of these same governments. The optics of that would be just too awful for governments who cling to power to contemplate, if they got to the size of the leftist protests.
I am a sovereign citizen. I and other taxpayers pay the salaries of Inspector Plod of the Clouseau Police State. I have an inalienable right to freedom of movement and freedom of association. I have the right to visit Ballarat if I want to. And do what I like there, so long as it harms no one else. Je suis Zoe Buhler.
Note: Some of the reports on Victorian police violence and brutality are, mysteriously, unable to be hyperlinked.
Paul Collits
Paul Collits is a freelance writer and independent researcher who lives in Lismore New South Wales. He has worked in government, industry and the university sector, and has taught at tertiary level in three different disciplines - politics, geography and planning and business studies. He spent over 25 years working in economic development and has published widely in Australian and international peer reviewed and other journals. He has been a keynote speaker internationally on topics such as rural development, regional policy, entrepreneurship and innovation.
