Caitlin Johnstone is, an independent journalist based in Melbourne. She puts the case, and rightly so, that there has been a rapid movement into Australia becoming a surveillance state, not only from the Covid-19 over-reach, but with new laws, prima facie to combat terrorism, which allow police to hack into on-line accounts of targets, and alter information, to prevent the commission of crimes, although it is far from clear how this would operate in practice. Certainly the entire process could be subject to massive abuses. Overall she expresses a view that I definitely agree with: “Australia is not a free country. Westerners are trained to believe that that’s what you call any wealthy English-speaking nation with liberal cultural values, but really it’s just a continent-sized US military base with kangaroos. Human rights are allowed only where they are convenient, which is why they are continually disintegrating.” However, this is where agreement ands: “There’s a lot that’s going to have to shift before Australians gain stable protections for their civil liberties, which will necessarily have to include not just some kind of bill of rights but becoming an actual republic and finally getting that ugly old woman off our coins and ending the illegitimate US military occupation here once and for all. This will not happen until there’s an expansion in public consciousness of the need to do this, which may or may not be born out of conditions getting a lot worse before they get better. It may also be born out of a critical mass of Australians deciding they’re fed up and beginning a real push toward becoming a free country.”