Category: CLArion

It’s good to look back on an extraordinary 2020 to re-set the gauges of life for 2021 and beyond. A virus has curtailed personal liberties in the name of a wider good, so the challenge becomes to decide how basic freedoms can be entrenched better in ordinary times – and extraordinary times – in future. This year will feature a push for human rights laws for all of us in more jurisdictions (including federally) and, in particular, the quest for justice denied these past 12 years for Sue Neill-Fraser, still locked in Hobart’s Risdon jail.

Much about wider military and general society is revealed by the alleged murders committed by special forces troops. Cover-ups and refusal to account for bad behaviour are rampant throughout politics and police forces, and strongly suspected among the security elite. CLA believes widespread change is needed to re-boot society, starting with a strong ICAC accountability mechanism to de-power ruling elites, and a human rights act and tribunal to empower the less-privileged.

Criticise the federal government at your peril is the lesson from the 2020 Budget as the ANAO, ABC, human rights and other agencies suffer more funding cuts. Meanwhile funny money magically appears in ever-increasing amounts to continue the two-decade long expansion of security, police and intelligence agencies…even as state governments hand over our driver licence photos before legal and privacy protections are legislated.

There are vivid lessons to learn for the next emergency from the current Covid-19 pandemic. We need to identify the right ones, so that for the next virus wave or national disaster we better incorporate maximum freedoms and individual compassion and care into a process where lockdown, quarantine, personal fines and repression were allowed to become excessive and over-dominant recently. It’s not easy…but considering liberties and rights of everyone, from the beginning, would be a great start.

As the virus pandemic grinds on, people are increasingly questioning traditional daily Australian life, from how Parliament convenes (eg, with electronic access and voting, or not) to how we value older people’s lives during a Covid-19 disease which specifically targets them. Trust in politicians, already fragile before the pandemic, is dissipating even as state boundaries become Great Walls. And, as happens during emergencies, organised operators as widely dispersed as security and police agencies to online trolls and anti-vaccination fanatics are actively taking advantage of uncertainty and confusion to further their unique views.