We are covering the "joyful" occasion of Australia's top award, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) going to Covid-lockdown premiers Daniel Andrews (Victoria) and Mark McGowan (Western Australia). Now Rebekah Barnett has compiled a painful list of what these lockdowns and Covid mandate policies achieved, in wrecking small businesses, in creating learning difficulties with children, and so much more evil. Most of all, these policies, especially the police brutality (discussed below), led to Australia sliding even more in the direction of a communist Chinese dystopia. And the people voted for these guys! At the time I expressed my outrage at this, at my fellow Victorians, and I am still mad.
So, I am not surprised that the AC went to these guys. Remember this is not our country anymore, even less than it ever was, and we are subjects for control, not citizens. For an occupied country, this makes a lot of sense.
For a much less "black pill' view of this outrage, without the satire, see Rebekah's take below:
https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/australias-top-honours-awarded-to
"In Australia, you can preside over human rights abuses, you can run the healthcare system into the ground, you can authorise police violence on citizens, you can blow millions-to-billions on cancelled infrastructure projects, and you can name-call from the bully pulpit... and we'll give you an award for it.
Today, Australia's two most aggressive Covid-era premiers, Daniel Andrews (Victoria) and Mark McGowan (Western Australia), were awarded the nation's top honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).
In the 2024 King's Birthday honours roll, only six Australians received the award, which signifies "eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or to humanity at large."
Andrews received the award for "eminent service to the people and parliament of Victoria, to public health, to policy and regulatory reform, and to infrastructure development."
McGowan received the same award for "eminent service to the people and parliament of Western Australia, to public health and education, and to international trade relations".
Awarding the Companion of the Order of Australia to these two former premiers renders the honour system essentially meaningless - no more than a pat on the back for occupying a top position during hard times.
Daniel Andrews, also known as 'Dictator Dan' for his strongman style of leadership during the pandemic years, left a legacy of brutality, debt, and corruption after stepping down as Victorian premier in September last year.
Some of Andrews' greatest hits include:
The world's longest Covid lockdown, keeping Melburnians under house arrest for just over 260 days.
Setting Victorian Police onto peaceful protestors, who were beaten, pepper sprayed, shot at with rubber bullets, and arrested on charges of incitement.
Two people set themselves on fire to protest Andrews' vaccine mandates/passports
Trapped thousands of low-income Melbourne residents in public housing flats under armed guard for weeks. The Victorian ombudsman found that the government had breached human rights, but Housing Minister Richard Wynne flipped it off, stating, "We make no apology for saving people's lives.
"Trashed Victoria's finances," leaving behind "a nasty financial cocktail" of debt and high borrowing costs.
Blew $1.1 billion for cancelling Melbourne's East West Link road project and $380 million on compensation for cancelling the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
Cultivated a culture of corruption, secrecy and outright lying, brushing off scandal after scandal and never apologising.
A hotel quarantine bungle that resulted in 800 deaths. After being pinned to the wall over it, Andrews did eventually apologise for this one.
Mark McGowan, who resigned from the WA premiership in June last year, is often credited with 'keeping Covid out' with his prolonged hard border closure, but WA hospitals buckled during this time, concurrent with the vaccine rollout and record-high adverse event reporting.
McGowan's greatest hits include:
697-day nightmare border closure, separating families and resulting in suicides of despair
World's toughest and most punitive segregation rules, excluding the remaining 1-2% unvaccinated from the economy, society, and access to services they paid for with their taxes
Adverse event reporting shot up to 24x the usual rate with the Covid vaccine rollout, with 57% of adverse events requiring treatment in the emergency department or hospital admission.
Tanking the hospital system. Ambulance ramping doubled in 2021 - at a time when there was almost zero Covid in the state, but there were record-high adverse events reported in relation to the Covid vaccines. In the same year, the tragic and preventable death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath occurred due to understaffing at Perth Children's Hospital.
School-yard bully name-calling, labelling his critics "anti-vaxxers," "misfits" and "losers", and telling them to "grow a brain."
Gross mismanagement of pandemic spending, including a budget of $3 million on tests blowing out $580 million (enough to fund two hospital redevelopment). Many tests ended up being binned.
An international scandal of fraudulent gold doping at the Perth Mint (this fell under McGowan's portfolio as Treasurer).
And no one will ever be able to forget this paternalistic campaign featuring an Indigenous woman translating McGowan's English into… English.
As expected, WA experienced the pandemic when the borders opened - two years after everyone else. WA's 'independent' pandemic review declared the McGowan government's pandemic response a great success, but provided no empirical evidence to support this conclusion (unless you count forcibly mass-vaccinating the entire population and prolonging the pandemic for years as the sole measures of "success").