Liz Hicks
@LizHcks
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Postdoc @uni_muenster | Assoc. ed @verfassungsblog | Environment & comparative law
Berlin
Joined July 2017
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A bit of news from me: I’ll be returning to Melbourne in July to take up a role as a Lecturer at
@MelbLawSchool
. MLS and its fantastic people played such a huge role in my intellectual development during my PhD and I’m excited to be able to return for the next stage in my career.
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Fun fact: the covid crisis has produced over 1200 new words in German over the past year. Personal favourites are coronamüde (tired of covid) & Impfneid (envy of those who have been vaccinated).
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Howard being asked if there is a racism problem in Australia. “That has not been my experience”. Well yes, obviously.
#australiatalks
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My op ed with
@GregDore2
for the
@GuardianAus
.
Analysing the extremely low risk of infection amongst the vaccinated, we argue fully vaccinated citizens & residents should be allowed to leave Australia and return to home quarantine /1
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Some of those returning have been vaccinated.
We should be moving to expand capacity by allowing home quarantine for vaccinated from low- to medium-risk countries.
As many parts of the world are moving to restore freedoms, 🇦🇺 is moving backward.
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“The Guardian has also found striking similarities in the way governments from Canada and the US to Guatemala and Chile, from India and Tanzania to the UK, Europe and Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet.”
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It is incredibly painful reading about Afghanistan with the knowledge that the Australian government (purporting to act in our name) has been actively deporting asylum seekers and Hazara back into that situation
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A lot of feelings when graduating yesterday from
@MelbLawSchool
. Above all: gratitude. A huge thank you to my supervisors
@Adrienne_Stone1
and
@CherylSaunders1
(& Philipp Dann) who guided me over the past years & shaped me so much as a scholar. I feel very lucky to have had you!
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Protest movements are part of the history of Australian democracy. We’re witnessing a dangerous, bipartisan trend of state governments attacking that right to protest - great analysis here from our star legal journo
@KieranPender
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Bang on comment from Liz Allen
@DrDemography
. Australia treats its migrants and international students like labour fodder and cash cows and that was absolutely on display during COVID.
Australia needs migrants more than migrants need Australia.
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“Nearly seven in 10 of academics surveyed rated disruptive protest tactics as “at least quite important” to success of a movement, ranking it as more important than gaining media coverage or even strictly avoiding violent tactics.”
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Extraordinary relief that this is being lifted, but the framing speaks volumes about this entire saga: “Australians will be able to holiday abroad within weeks…” 😒
Amongst many character reveals during the pandemic, the shallowness of how 🇦🇺 sees movement was a key one.
Australia set to reopen international borders after 18 months
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Excellent explainer and critique of Victoria’s new Pandemic Bill from Kristen Rundle,
@WPartlett
(
@MelbLawSchool
) &
@mariaosulliv
(
@MonashLawSchool
) earlier this evening.
Main concerns of speakers 🧵:
/1
Our discussion of the Vic Pandemic Bill today will assess the Bill for its engagement with the principles underpinning Australia's democratic tradition (separation of powers, rule of law, parliamentary governance). All welcome
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.
@thejuicemedia
covers the 🇦🇺 housing crisis.
Where treating home ownership as both a middle class essential (poor protection of renters) and a vehicle for wealth creation (is there a better example of the Australian contradiction?) has produced a predictable social cannibalism
The Australien Government has made an ad about the national rental crisis, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.
👉 We're on patreon:
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Given we are now living in a state of rolling lockdown, with thousands of close contacts quarantine each outbreak, refusing to allow vaccinated returnees to home quarantine is no longer just disproportionate.
It’s ridiculous.
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For non-German speakers watching this shit show from afar: Minister for Education threw a bunch of academics under the bus for antisemitism after they signed a letter in support of right of peaceful protests on campus; academic profiles then doxxed on a tabloid front page
A state leader of Germany’s most popular party has suggested the domestic intelligence service investigate professors for “Islamism and left-wing extremism”.
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“That is why we have to take direct action to stop this and to kick oil money out of politics. We have no other option but to put our bodies outside this conference and to physically disrupt [it].”
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Commonwealth moves to close the automatic exemption of people ordinarily resident overseas from the ban on leaving Australia.
Ie, if you ordinarily reside abroad and visit family / Australia, you will now need to apply for permission to leave & satisfy exemption criteria.
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My (brief) thoughts for
@Verfassungsblog
on environmental protest and civil disobedience in Australia, the trend of state legislatures targeting that protest, and a critique of its treatment (so far) under the implied freedom (Brown v Tas; Farm Transparency v NSW).
As disruptive climate protests increase across the world, governments are legislating to deter them with harsher penalties, new offences and new powers.
LIZ HICKS (
@LizHcks
) considers the Australian 🇦🇺 example.
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Your daily reminder that Australian governments’ strategy (put the individual civilians who are small enough to not swing elections) is requiring greater restrictions on rights than ever to sustain.
And it’s not working out for any of us anymore. We are at an inflection point.
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“The cab rank rule is bound up, inseparably, with the idea that the law is right and its ends are worth upholding. But the law is not always right. Sometimes the law does not reflect the democratic preferences of the people.”
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Amen to this. As an Australian living in Germany: 30 degrees here kills me in a way 38 at home does not because the infrastructure here is built to trap heat. No aircon on public transport / in apartments, it’s broken in public libraries / spaces, underground is a sauna for days.
hi, australian here! here’s my top tips on how you can be annoying, patronising & unhelpful to people experiencing temperatures they never experience, in countries with infrastructure completely unequipped to deal with a heatwave of 40° C (🧵)
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Every time a politician says quarantine is solely a “Federal constitutional responsibility” a constitutional law scholar dies
Wrong. 🤦♂️
S51 (ix) of the Australian Constitution vests the quarantine power solely with the Commonwealth ie the Federal Government. The fact that
@ScottMorrisonMP
abrogated his responsibility to fulfil his constitutional obligation doesn’t change that fact.
#COVID19
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I’m really glad the system uses capital letters otherwise this would have been somewhat anticlimactic
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He doesn’t really believe closing the border to “southern African countries” will “ensure this variant never enters 🇦🇺 ”, does he?
It’s already in those “advanced northern hemisphere economies”. Selective border closures don’t work**
The new Omicron variant is of real concern, and we should be cautious. The Morrison Government needs to act today.
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How fossil fuel lobbying shaped the outcome of the 2019 election - this is big, and important reading while we try and make sense of
#auspol
and inertia on climate action. A thread /1
#ClimateEmergency
#AustraliaFires
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@GregDore2
The reason why you are so publicly trusted, Greg, is because you are one of the few experts on this platform who concede when predictions / modelling were wrong 👏👏
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“It is extraordinary that a research institute threatens to dismiss a researcher for doing his job too diligently and for avoiding flying during a climate emergency” -
@JKSteinberger
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“Pfizer wanted new doses to go to poorer nations alone, but COVAX was insisting on fulfilling orders to rich countries such as Australia that had begun buying directly at higher prices”
Great work, everyone 🇦🇺🇦🇺
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Australia has delivered just 8% of Covid vaccinations promised to developing nations
Not sure why we ceased producing Astra Zeneca here
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Really excited to join
@Verfassungsblog
as an associate editor alongside
@amalsethi
!
I’ll be assisting with comparative constitutional law and climate litigation.
We are thrilled to welcome two new associate editors to our team! 🎉
@LizHcks
(
@MelbLawSchool
&
@HumboldtUni
) will cover comparative constitutional law and
climate litigation issues.
@amalsethi
(
@unihh
) will cover issues of comparative constitutional law
and legal theory.
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@profsarahj
Risks of an outbreak with Delta apparently high enough to require slashing international arrivals/ suppressing some pretty important rights, but not high enough to justify a different approach to AZ risks. Value judgments informing that position pretty revealing.
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In Paris and just overheard a couple of Australians complaining that every French person they meet who has visited Australia has never visited Perth. Hmm.
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“…a strong sense that we have become inured to restrictions on liberty to a point where people accept them as part of a new normal.. There is something happening to our democracy and political culture which is deeply unhealthy” -
@timsout
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“That the targets have generated so much heat is because they fail to account for what must be an ongoing conversation about nuanced strategies before reaching those targets, and long after.”
@GregDore2
& I on easing restrictions &
#strandedaussies
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A reminder that those with loved ones, ties to - and family - abroad, have born the brunt of restrictions during this pandemic.
Even when Australians are apparently “living like no other”, these people are effectively still locked down.
We owe them thanks. Get vaccinated.
15 months today since I last saw my partner. If you’re eligible to get vaccinated, please just go and get vaccinated.
#VaccinesWork
#VaccineRollout
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Encouraging an environment of hysteria and fear and attributing COVID outbreaks to personal / moral failure: what could go wrong?
JUST IN: The car belonging to a COVID-positive Mount Gambier woman has been torched in the driveway of her home. Police say emergency services attended the fire at the Sandalwood Crescent property in Mount Gambier around 10pm.
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You can follow the Leibniz Institute that compiles the words here:
(...hopefully they’ll publish an English translation for non-German speakers soon!)
@spideypencil
@LizHcks
You can find our list here: . Do you have similar
#corona
#words
in your language?
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Disappointed that arrivals caps will be halved by 50% - stranded citizens and residents already the carrying the primary burden of Australia’s covid response. Where there has been governmental error, the burden has been consistently placed on private citizens. I explain why here:
My brief on repatriation rights for
@Government_UoM
. I discuss the limited protection that Australia’s legal system provides for citizens stranded abroad + limits of political mechanisms (cf rights-based mechanism) to ensure measures are proportionate where they are popular. /1
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“This is an issue more so for Labor, which, in attempting to gain political mileage by prosecuting outdated COVID-control policies, risks misreading the mood of the electorate for the second election running.” -
@nick_coatsworth
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Congratulations to
@migga
whose website
@covidliveau
was cited as an authoritative source by the Victorian Supreme Court in the ongoing vaccine mandate litigation.
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The precautionary principle applies to more than just preventing one disease. These decisions involve more than one single axis of risk / consequence.
If we insist on the maximal response every time, a lot of babies are going to be thrown out with the bath water.
In 18 months, I’ve gone from excitedly believing Australia was my future - and handsomely paying for the privilege - to feeling it deserves every consequence of its hysterical cruelty towards its own citizens - let alone foreigners - in pursuit of a rubbish fantasy. Time to go.
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It’s time to change and adapt, not to double down on a strategy that belongs to a different time and is no longer working.
@GregDore2
& I argue here that vaccination status can assist in respecting rights of movement; risks involved are minuscule (greater risks now within 🇦🇺 )
My op ed with
@GregDore2
for the
@GuardianAus
.
Analysing the extremely low risk of infection amongst the vaccinated, we argue fully vaccinated citizens & residents should be allowed to leave Australia and return to home quarantine /1
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🇦🇺‘s current circumstances — more restrictions than ever— aren’t solely attributable to a delayed vaccination rollout. They also flow from a refusal to let go of a ‘one size fits all’ approach to risk preventing us minimising impact of necessary restrictions on civilians. /3
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Have decided to retweet this chart every day until 21 May, enjoy 🌏
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“Research shows that over 50% of law students who come into law school saying they want to work in public interest leave with jobs in big law…”
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“It’s very confusing to me that being vaccinated is not making a difference to policy or these individual compassionate claims.”
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My comment for the
@ConversationEDU
on why we should be doing more to get our people home from India, and the legal and political structures that led us to our current dilemma. /1
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This is a fantastic piece from
@profjmcadam
&
@ReginaJefferies
, using the recent changes to the exemption on Australians who live abroad from leaving, as a lens through which to look at Australia's treatment of rights and citizenship as a whole.
#auslaw
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Super interesting stats from Germany:
Only 25% agree that the Israeli military approach in Gaza can be justified in light of civilian casualties.
61% disagree.
Suggests that the behaviour of German media and political elite is *not* the German public.
tfw die Gesellschaft die gesellschaftliche Linke links überholt
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“Coco is the first person to be sentenced under laws introduced by the Perrottet government in April that carry fines of up to $22,000 and jail terms of up to two years... They were passed with the support of the Labor opposition.”
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“The Age is not arguing that we should throw out restrictions, but instead that we need to work out those that could be lifted at minimal risk to health but with maximum benefit to Victorians. “Minimal risk” is not “no risk”, but we must shift towards a more balanced position…”
“There comes a point, and The Age believes that point has been reached, where the damage caused by the harshest and longest lockdowns in the country needs to be more seriously factored in.”
@theage
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Everyone looks bad here. The Federal government. The Opposition, which is literally running a campaign about not ordering enough of the Gucci vaccine (also about outbidding other countries for limited supplies). Media. Medical commentators on Twitter who slammed AZ.
A new low.
“Pfizer wanted new doses to go to poorer nations alone, but COVAX was insisting on fulfilling orders to rich countries such as Australia that had begun buying directly at higher prices”
Great work, everyone 🇦🇺🇦🇺
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@Marcorizzi83
Extraordinarily, I knew who the epidemiologist was before I clicked through.
We need to have a conversation about the relationship between the media and its coverage / presentation of expertise. It was overdue before COVID hit.
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As we saw at the Fed level with the Biosecurity Act & border closures / India ban: we need to care about how these powers could be used five or ten years from now.
The time to care about Australians being banned from returning from India was back in 2015.
Care about this Bill.
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That relatable feeling when you increase your funding of police more than you increase your funding of healthcare, and then a pandemic catches you out and you have to wing it
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@KieranPender
.
@dsheikh726
posted this on instagram a while I go and I’ve bookmarked it - seems like good suggestions!
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We also argue governments should consider restoring some freedoms to the fully vaccinated in the medium-term, even prior to completion of the rollout / meeting particular targets. /2
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Samira Akbarian's brilliant thesis on civil disobedience as constitutional interpretation - have learned so much from reading!
One of Germany's rising academic superstars to watch.
Mit einer Mischung aus Freude, Dankbarkeit und Nervosität habe ich heute meine Doktorarbeit „Ziviler Ungehorsam als Verfasaungsinterpretation“ erhalten.
Dank an
@mohr_recht
und alle, die mich unterstützt, mir zugehört und mir widersprochen haben 🌹
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Worth pointing out the Pfizer vaccine is being delivered from abroad.
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Excellent piece here in
@ConversationEDU
from
@profjmcadam
and Regina Jeffries
@KaldorCentre
: on why halving the flight cap breaches international human rights protections guaranteed in ICCPR art 12(4)
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A comment on the fairness question in
@GregDore2
and my proposal (perhaps the most compelling objection). Couple of thoughts / a 🧵.
My op ed with
@GregDore2
for the
@GuardianAus
.
Analysing the extremely low risk of infection amongst the vaccinated, we argue fully vaccinated citizens & residents should be allowed to leave Australia and return to home quarantine /1
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My brief on repatriation rights for
@Government_UoM
. I discuss the limited protection that Australia’s legal system provides for citizens stranded abroad + limits of political mechanisms (cf rights-based mechanism) to ensure measures are proportionate where they are popular. /1
NEW POLICY BRIEF: Do Australian citizens stranded abroad have a right to come home? Our new
#GoverningDuringCrises
Policy Brief by
@LizHcks
offers recommendations to expand and improve Australia’s quarantine system for international travel
Access:
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Couldn’t have had a more appropriate travel companion,
@DemocracyTalk
Huge relief for everyone who has been separated from loved ones over the past two years.
Well would you believe it, after 2 years of talking about
#Australia
’s closed borders and the need to treat everyone fairly,
@LizHcks
and I are on the same flight out of Melbourne!
#serendipity
#Lizthelegend
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Last week the Australian government removed the automatic exemption on Australians who live overseas from the outward travel ban.
@profjmcadam
,
@ReginaJefferies
and I look consider this through the lens of constitutional & international human rights law.
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“Pfizer and BioNTech have so far delivered nine times more vaccines to Sweden alone than to all low-income countries combined – less than 1% of their production so far. High prices mean the companies are set to earn over $86 billion in revenues by the end of 2022”
🚨 NEW REPORT 🚨
Our report on
#Covid19
vaccines reveals how big pharma companies are driving vaccine inequality and fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis. Some companies have almost exclusively delivered to rich countries, putting profit before people. Read it 👇
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We are at that stage of the lockdown where there are 50/50 odds an abandoned glass of water found in my apartment is actually a G&T.
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“What do you say to the suggestion that it’s for parliaments and elected officials to determine climate policy, not the courts?”
“Well, they’re not doing it.”
Anjali Sharma is a litigant in the class action against the Federal government (in particular the Environment Minister, Sussan Ley) for failing to consider the impacts of
#ClimateChange
.
She is, quite simply, amazing!
#abc730
#auspol
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“[Western Australia] is a lucky [state], run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck.” - Donald Horne on Perth, probably
I recently went to two Christmas parties. Not a single person was wearing a mask.
And it was okay, because there’s no epidemic where I live. Western Australia has managed to sustain zero COVID for nearly 2 years.
Eliminating COVID-19 was always possible. The world chose not to.
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1. I am hoping Sydney succeeds here, because I want to believe in what properly funded public health systems (proactively) can do. Because I’m from Melbourne. Because I / my community have experienced the harms of what lockdowns can do, which is still very much felt in Victoria.
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Another illustration of the climate crisis disrupting all areas of law: US fossil fuel company suing its insurer for refusing to cover it for climate litigation on basis damage intentional. Hugely significant case /1
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“What many people across the continent are facing today is the effects of the climate emergency at 1.4°C of global heating — and we’re on track for 4.4°C of heating by the end of the century” —
@AdamBandt
#ClimateEmergency
#ClimateCrisis
#gasledrecovery
#Heatwave
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Good quote summing up the EPA recommendations on Woodside from
@David_Ritter
Greenpeace appeals EPA recommendation to allow Woodside to blow Australia’s carbon budget, pollute into 2070s via
@GreenpeaceAP
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“Actually, and counter-intuitively, given zero-COVID is no longer NSW’s or Victoria’s objective, a more nuanced option now exists to increase arrivals”
A great read here from
@nandcgrills
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Big news for the implied freedom of political communication, disruptive protest / civil disobedience and climate movements in Australia - NSW legislation cracking down on disruptive protest held partly invalid.
WHAT A WIN✊🏻 ANTI PROTEST LAWS 👇🏻
“The Court declares that subsection 214A(1)(d) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) is invalid because the provision impermissibly burdens the implied freedom of political communication contrary to the Commonwealth Constitution.
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1. The current approach is not fair. If you have elderly parents, family or a partner abroad, a loved one who is across state borders, then you are impacted to a greater degree by this than a member of the general public.
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We may be in pandemic now, but eventually it will become endemic and destroy less people’s lives.
Moral Puritanism directed at the already marginalised and vulnerable is a forever thing though that will continue to mutate.
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@lukristofer
So it’s a variation of an existing amendment. Art 12(3) ICCPR does permit right to leave to be restricted on public health grounds, but must be proportionate.
With so much time passed, and vaccines now available to manage individual risk, it’s arguably no longer proportionate
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💯this - but have also felt uncomfortable that this event had such an impact on how I feel about 🇦🇺. The way we do politics, how our gov system is organised, lack of robust rights protection etc crushes those at fringe all the time. It just never affected me / the middle class.
I share many of these sentiments. My relationship with Australia, together with my perspective on ‘Australian values’ and the ‘value’ of citizenship, is forever changed.
#strandedAussies
@EstherRockett
@profsarahj
@justine_nolan
@LucMcK
@timsout
@tim_clairs
@profjmcadam
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6. And as for 🇳🇿 (the Holy Land for🇦🇺 progressives’ frame of reference): a reminder that you could leave when the vaccination rate was 0%.
You can even leave Saudi Arabia now if you are vaccinated, even though the rollout is not complete. Australian exceptionalism indeed.
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“How it started” vs “how it’s going”. That’s some fine Spring weather you’ve got there, Sydney 👌
#auspol
#ClimateCrisis
#gasledrecovery
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@_david_ho_
“Tell me you come from a country where you believe you’re less impacted by climate change without telling me you come from a country where you believe you’re less impacted”
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The immaturity of the Aus media class is a large part of why we are in such a mess. Massive cost of living crisis with pressure on government to respond and adapt = government responds to ease that pressure = focus on broken promises. This is why we can’t have nice things.
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“Rallies and campaigning within the system are clearly not working, so people like me who are terrified for our future are left with no option but civil disobedience.”
#ClimateEmergency
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“The larger and more pressing dilemma… is the growing tendency of government to criminalise peaceful protest, while climate breakdown and mass extinction envelop the world, forever sealing its fate.”
@crikey_news
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