Tuesday, 22 February 2022

COVID-19

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:48): Over the last few weeks we have watched with interest the trucker protests in Canada and the daughter protests that sprang up around the world, including in Canberra. The protests were aimed at the vaccine mandates, at governments who think they have the right to force themselves into people’s lives and dictate medical treatments and to punish those who will not comply. And in Canada we have seen that overreach playing out, with the introduction of emergency police powers, riot police, pepper spray, mounted police riding down protesters and terrorist laws against free citizens. But for the snow we could have been forgiven for thinking we were watching scenes from Melbourne last year.

Politicians who in the past have supported the right to have protests as an essential part of democracy have turned on the people with savagery when those politicians became the targets of the protests. Police in Canberra have also been heavy handed in breaking up peaceful protests and evicting and hounding those camping in the ACT. Canberra is the government’s city, not the people’s city, and the police boot is being used to ram that fact home to Australians. Some people ask why the people have time to protest—what are they doing there? It is because the governments have taken their jobs away, their livelihoods, their futures. While mandates are used to shut them out of their lives, they have nowhere to go, nothing better to do. Expect them back on the steps of this building before long. They are not going away while the government boot is pressing onto their necks. It is time to end the mandates, end this divided society and give all Victorians their rights back. Freedom matters.