What I would like to know is how widespread the lockdowns are in Australia and how much discord there is within the various levels of government.
In the US there are lots of areas of resistance that seldom makes the news. First, there are no federal lockdowns. It’s all various states. Some states are fairly restrictive, some literally not at all. And a lot are in between. Within those states, you have counties and municipalities who are all in on any restrictions, some not at all, and lot in between. Within those states and municipalities you have state and local law enforcement with the same divide and within the local law enforcement you have city and county law enforcement.
In my area, early on the county sheriff, the local police, and the district attorney said that they wouldn’t lift a finger to enforce any lockdowns or mask mandates. The law makers could pass whatever they wanted, but they could get out there and enforce them themselves if they wanted anything done. Thus, we’ve lived our lives as normal and never gotten to the point of needing any sort of resistance at all. I honestly don’t know what would happen if we had actual lockdowns here, but I suspect we wouldn’t have mass protest, we would just ignore them.
People tend to be polite here. Being unnecessarily rude to a stranger could still lead to an ass beating or worse. So, we don’t even have mask Karens running around.
Is there any of that level of official resistance in Australia or is everything mandated from the top down. I realize the entire system is less bifurcated than ours.
I can answer some.
The state governments are responsible for the public health of their citizens and provide the enforceable government directions. The federal government is responsible for biosecurity and controls restrictions on international travel, and also provides funding for any assistance payments and support etc as part of its responsibility for the financial health of the country and the businesses within. (You will see examples below that the effects of the actions of the state politicians has to be corrected by the federal politicians.) The federal government is also arranging the supply of vaccines.
Each state only has one major city (where the bulk of the population live) and the local governments do not have any additional power for health orders, and they are controlled by the state health directives. Any additional health control layer at a local level would be sure to totally fugg things up further.
The states are generally in close competition with each other so follow what the others are doing. Queensland and Western Australia have a long reputation as nanny states and go beyond what's needed irrespective of the negative outcomes and damages this causes (eg zero cases, border closures etc). Our politicians are extremely short sighted and are happy just to make it through a term. Either way at the end of it they are guaranteed healthy pensions and benefits as a result of their efforts that mere plebs can only dream of. They also like to use the power of sledging their counterparts in other states in order to make their own incompetent performance look a little better. But I'm sure this is a common theme with politicians worldwide.
At a more personal level, I don't know people who are strongly biased either way in regards to the handling of the covid in as far as actually taking action or being local about it in public. The people I associate with tend to go with the flow and don't get easily offended, nor feel extremely violated, by being told to wear a cheap cotton rag on their face - we'll survive. I'll even wear a little hat at birthday party even though I think it's stupid (actually that's why I do it). At the shopping centres I go to I sometimes see people without a mask but it's no big deal, and it looks like no-one in our area is named Karen. I did it myself accidently once when I'd forgotten to mask up before I got out of the car, and no one said anything. I hardly ever use the hand sanitiser and often forget to scan the Q-code, just like many others, and I'm still alive and not even in jail.
Most people would be happy to see restrictions go and most of these are happy to wait it out. Some are impacted worse than others and some are willing to go vocal and publicly protest. Just like anywhere else only the more extreme events get reported, and sadly others only see this and think that this is the norm. Karens are out there.
