Sunday 5 December 2021

 COVID

The Victorian government has passed a pandemic bill amidst large protests. The bill has sparked outrage amongst many sectors of the community including an open letter from the Victorian Bar and objections from human rights advocates. Interestingly, it largely replicates the NSW government Public Health Act by moving the decision making power to the Health Minister rather than the Chief Medical Officer. The issue seems to be that whereas the NSW Public Health Act was written sometime and is very vague, the Victorian Act spells out the powers in quite some detail. This puts the powers available to the Minister in black and white, which is what seems to have sparked the outrage. The reality is that human rights and liberal freedoms only have very limited protections in Australia under either a state of emergency or a pandemic. This is because the Australian Constitution and the resulting attitude of the courts is to support a representative democracy which means the Government gets to make the decisions on balancing human rights and public interest. It turns out inalienable rights are not so inalienable after all.

A new strain of COVID, Omicron, has also arisen. Whilst the initial reports coming from South America indicate that it is a milder variant, governments across Australia initially seemed to panic, although now seem to have gone into a holding pattern. We will see what the outcome is over the next few weeks. Perrottet continues, albeit with qualified language, to say that the 15 December date for largely removing government vaccination segregation will still occur. Interestingly, government, at the same time, seems to be mandating vaccination across large sections of the public service including emergency service volunteers.

Taiwan

International rhetoric regarding the independence of Taiwan continues to escalate. China does not recognise Taiwan as having sovereignty.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions continue to occur around the world including a recent eruption in Indonesia.

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