This morning.
Darwin, Australia.
An SOS from a group of Indigenous Australians alarmed at reports of forced vaccinations and covid positive Aborigines and their contacts being removed from their homes and placed in isolation centres.
Yesterday: Rabbit-Proof Fence
Australia’s Northern Territory’s Howard Springs quarantine centre
This afternoon.
Further to yesterday’s announcement from Australia’s Northern Territory Chief Minister that the army will move covid positive cases and their contacts to isolation centres…
….health authorities in South Australia are organising camps for Aboriginal people ‘unable to quarantine at home’.
Via The Age:
South Australia Health opened a tender calling for expressions of interest from organisations that can provide “services for the effective quarantine of vulnerable persons who have been identified as close contacts” and “culturally appropriate and safe quarantine conditions”.
“It has been identified that facilities would be required for the quarantining of persons who would otherwise be unable to home quarantine due to their living circumstances,” the procurement document states.
“It has been identified that various sites will be required for use as facilities, due to the vulnerability of persons in multiple communities, including Port Augusta, Port Lincoln, Renmark and Mount Gambier.”
The tender makes specific reference to 14-day quarantine periods – mandatory for unvaccinated close contacts – as opposed to the seven-day quarantine requirement for vaccinated contacts.
Yesterday: Get On The Truck
Earlier: Austrian Resistance
SA Health plans regional quarantine camps for Indigenous close contacts (The Age)
SA Health planning COVID quarantine camps in case of outbreak (IN Daily)
APP
Last night.
Northern Territory, Australia.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Martin Gunner announcing a ‘hard lockdown’.
How hard?
Via ABC News:
Under a hard lockdown residents are only able to leave their homes and yards for medical treatment or in an emergency, according to the NT government.
At a press conference, Mr Gunner said the hard lockdown measures were appropriate because the “threat to lives is extreme” in the communities.
He said the federal government had offered to deploy 20 ADF personnel, as well as army trucks, to assist with the unfolding situation in the Northern Territory.
The trucks, Mr Gunner said, would help the transfer of positive cases and close contacts and “to support the communities”.
“I contacted the Prime Minister last night. We are grateful for the support,” Mr Gunner said.
“We are doing an assessment today of what extra resources we might need from the [federal government] and the Prime Minister is ready to help further.”
NT records no new cases of COVID-19 overnight following nine Binjari cases (ABC)
Meanwhile…
AUSTRALIA – The army is now transferring positive Covid cases and contacts in the Northern Territories to ‘Quarantine Camps’ by army truck.
So it wasn’t a conspiracy theory then. #COVID19 #Australia pic.twitter.com/NfJzqrO1fz
— Bernie’s Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) November 22, 2021
Meanwhile…
As the Chief Minister of Northern Territory announces the army is transferring Australians with a positive PCR-test to quarantine camps, Robin Monotti discusses comparisons with the Third Reich and tactics for shaking people out of their complacency.https://t.co/iLOjxjdSmz
— Architects for Social Housing (@9thfloor) November 22, 2021
Gulp.
Victoria Premier Dan Andrews refuses to let unvaccinated tennis players compete at the Australian Open – as he overrules the Australian Prime Minister’s suggestion that they could quarantine. https://t.co/tPkCxf8B19
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) October 27, 2021
This morning.
You cannot be serious?
G’wan the mad Dan.
Australian Open in CHAOS as Daniel Andrews REFUSES to let unvaccinated players compete (MailOnline)
Previously: The Danned
Getty
The constituency office of Australia’s Victorian Premier Dan Andrews
Strewth.
Last night.
Mulgrave, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Meanwhile…
Dan Andrews
Via MailOnline:
A ‘world-first’ study that Dan Andrews used to justify his mandatory mask mandate has been ridiculed by top experts.
The report was published by the Burnet Institute supporting the Victorian premier’s outdoor mask mandate during the 112-day lockdown in 2020.
The policy has since been widely criticised by Australian scientists and was labelled by an anonymous clinician as ‘crap’.
…Mr Andrews made the decision based on the report, which made the case for ‘the use of masks for controlling epidemics in the broader community.’
Despite no reported cases of outdoor transmission of coronavirus, Victorians were subjected to months of universal mask use.
Getty
Australia’s Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner
Last night/this morning.
Via News.com.aus:
Essential workers in the Australian Northern Territory will be subject to one of the strictest Covid-19 vaccination mandates in the world to begin in just a month.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner said employees who interacted with the public needed to get least one Covid-19 jab by November 13 or they wouldn’t be allowed back to work and faced a $5000 fine.
The new directions apply to:
Employees at all jobs that involve interacting with members of the public. For example: hospitality, banking, retail, supermarket, receptionists, hairdressers and beauty therapists
Workers who come into direct contact with people at risk of severe illness from Covid-19, like Aboriginal people or those who can’t be vaccinated
People who perform work in essential infrastructure, food or essential good security or supply, or logistics.
The direction also includes a provision that mandates booster shots for those workers in the future.
Employers will be allowed to request proof of vaccination of staff and will be required to keep a register of the vaccination status of all employees.
Getty
This afternoon.
To the suburbs!
“Those 27 postcodes are postcodes where the current first dose coverage rates are under 75 per cent and we’re going to try and get those up as high as we possibly can.”
Daniel Andrews., Premier of Victoria, Australia. ‘Authorised workers’ in Victoria have until November 26 to be fully vaccinated (which currently means two doses of an approved vaccine).
Victoria to target 27 postcodes with below average vaccination rates (Sky.aus)
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Gladys Berejiklian, who became premier of New South Wales in 2017, had fronted the media on an almost daily basis to announce COVID-19 infection rates
This morning.
Via Reuters:
The premier of Australia’s biggest state economy New South Wales (NSW), Gladys Berejiklian, resigned on Friday after a corruption watchdog said it was investigating whether she was involved in conduct that “constituted or involved a breach of public trust”.
Berejiklian said the issues being investigated were “historical matters” but she felt compelled to resign because of the long time frames likely to be involved in the investigation. She also said the state needed certainty over its leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I state categorically I have always acted with the highest level of integrity” she said at a news conference.
Berejiklian, who became premier in 2017, had fronted the media on an almost daily basis to announce COVID-19 infection rates, deaths and restrictions on businesses, schools and households as the state battles an outbreak of the Delta variant that began in June.
Australia’s NSW state premier resigns over corruption probe amid COVID-19 battle (Reuters)
Getty
Meanwhile…
All it took was one dogged journalist. Imagine what might happen if all of our journalists were so determined…https://t.co/rGs9WjWTPu pic.twitter.com/lupAvKIvTt
— I do not consent (this tweet is misleading) (@Idonotconsent6) October 1, 2021
Police outside the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday afternoon
This morning.
Further to continuing protests against covid measures across Australia….
…public health physician David Bell writes:
‘As an Australian, I want to write something on the significance of what happened in Melbourne this week, and the destruction of societal values. About the scenes of black-clad police firing rubber bullets at protestors at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
The Shrine of Remembrance is as close as non-Aboriginal Australia comes to a sacred place. It’s an unusually moving place of quiet and reflection. It evokes the memory of many who chose to risk death, and died, so that others would be free, not live under totalitarian regimes.
This was not empty garbage. As a child I knew people who had suffered greatly and survived, an uncle died well before I was born. A family member still had the nightmares 30 years on. As many have, in many countries, in the sufferings of war.
Australia, despite many faults and suffering internally, particularly for indigenous people, has been an unusually inclusive society.
Police have never, to my knowledge, fired rubber bullets.They don’t use armoured vehicles. They only recently started dressing in black.
To see these black-clad police, replete with weapons and body armour, firing on civilians at the Shrine, forcing the type of regime that the Shrine’s solemn defiance is set against, with the excuse of ‘public health’, brings a profound sense of something gone terribly wrong.
We have to realise the enormity of what is being done, through promotion of fear, and through incitement of hatred against others for thinking differently.
Not just in Australia, but wherever people hold that all are born equal, and oppression is wrong.
If we don’t work together to stop this, stop the people doing this, and tell them this is unacceptable, the Shrine will signify effort spent in vain.
The effort of those who have fought to keep truth, openness and respect as a basis for society will have been betrayed.’
Hundreds arrested for illegally protesting across Melbourne (9News)
Pic: Sky News
