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@oz_f I’ve been thinking a lot about your posts re police actions. I’m coming to the conclusion that maybe the framing of this as a ‘war’ justifies intrusion on civil liberties. Imagine if govt framed it as a public health issue, we’d be asking why the heavy police presence.
Chris Uhlman was one of the first to call the new cabinet structure, a ‘war time cabinet’. Granted there are other options like calling it a govt of national unity, governing coalition etc (as is typical in other parts of the world)
This initial framing of a public health issue as a war psychologically prepares us to accept whatever draconian impositions the govt deems necessary to win the so called war.
The economic impacts are usually discussed with the world wars as a subtle baseline. The IR minister today invoked Dunkirk as justification to possibly change the IR system.
Yet from economics, this looks purely like a natural disaster in which govts respond with financial aid to citizens, businesses and other groups. War time economics generally push industry to cater for war needs eg. Manufacturing of defence materiel.
Maybe I’m overthinking this but from what we know about politics, words matter, framing matters.
Finally, a war framing is about power. It locates power in the PM not public health experts, neuters the opposition from opposing govt. Until this overwhelmingly becomes an economic crisis, ALP will be relegated to squirming from the sidelines & voting for whatever govt wants.
