Dear fellow Australians, 'Canberra' and 'Federal Parliament' are not the same thing

As long as you don’t mind losing many of the big businesses and the career opportunities that come to us because of Parliament, along with many of the restaurants and bars. Armidale does not offer the same social, employment or other opportunities that Canberra does.

Rubbish! They’re only here for a small proportion of the year and then they’re mostly in the House, certainly not part of the local population.

The Silver,
Your comment assumes that much of the things being protested have merit.

Whereas in reality, as you say, Canberrans are generally highly educated, highly paid and informed. We can identify much of the arguments being put forward by the protesters as absolutely irrational and evidence free.

This isn’t a debate about opinions, ideology or logical arguments of equal weight.

That’s easy for the laptop class to say who were largely unaffected by working from home, rather than let go. Which is my point.

Silver,
That’s a pretty meaningless cliche to throw around in substitution for an argument.

Which is actually my point.

Even if you removed the bulk of crazy conspiracy theories and proven misinformation being spread by the protesters, to (generously) say their position was soley around promoting increased freedoms and an end to mandated vaccinations. Then they are protesting in the wrong location.

It is the state governments who’ve enacted the laws and regulations they are arguing against. The Federal government isn’t in control in these areas.

Once again, it isn’t about equally weighted opinions, the protesters are verifiably wrong and their well documented abuse and harassment of locals only exacerbates the division.

Whatever they think they’re trying to achieve, they couldn’t go about it in a more ineffective and actually counter-productive way.

Having your life destroyed for two years is a “cliché”? Really? And you wonder why these people have poor opinion of Canberrans.

Also, have to come back to your first reply to say that wisdom does not correlate with education or intelligence. Most of the biggest disasters in history have been caused by Very Smart People who think they completely understood a complex system when in fact they didn’t. That goes double for public servants. The USSR tried to cross smallpox and ebola. That requires a tremendous amount of intelligence and education but requires almost no wisdom to know that was incredibly stupid.

The Australian system is pretty weird. I’d point out that a lot of the mandate requirements across the country are enabled by tying proof of vaccination to Medicare, which is within the Federal Government’s remit. The Federal Government also controls the purse strings for most of the funding States receive. Howard did fail in federalising the health system, but that is a lever the Feds could pull to curb authoritarianism as well.

The Prime Minister also has the bully pulpit. The current Prime Minister rarely says anything without it being polled and managed to death. I doubt Hawke or even Howard would have been so silent on a matter of such major significance for two years.

Silver,

“Having your life destroyed for two years is a “cliché”? Really?”

Nobody said this except you.

Although you’re right, perhaps this type of deliberate strawman is why these protesters have a poor view of Canberrans.

And sorry, intelligence and education is positively correlated with a whole heap of things that benefit society including better decision making.

The fact that some bad decisions have been made by people you think were intelligent does not negate this. In fact, I’d argue that those decisions often weren’t made by intelligent or educated people but that’s another matter.

And despite your position that the Feds have provided supporting infrastructure that has allowed the mandates to be enacted, it also doesn’t negate the fact they are state issues.

And even if your position was correct, that type of nuance isn’t the argument being put by the protesters as to why they are in Canberra.

Arguments which have varied between getting the Federal government to repeal the mandates themselves to wanting to overthrow and execute the Federal government entirely.

I know it can be difficult to recognise and call out the irrationality of others when they hold broadly similar ideological views to yourself but sometimes it needs to be done.

These protesters are actively harming the position they are trying to progress.

If I was more conspiracy minded, I could posit an argument that the government is allowing protests to continue (or supplying plants) because it helps discredit those against the myriad of health directions that have been enacted, through association with the nutters getting most of the air time.

Actually – the Medicare Arrangements – are a State/Territory and Federal Government agreement. Not entirely Federal nor State.

The Covid arrangements are similar, but mostly State / Territory.

I’m retired, but I used to be the Risk Manager for the Health Insurance Commission back in the 1990s until I retired.

Both my sons work and have NOT found the Covid requirements onerous, nor has it destroyed their lives.

Are you opposed to the States vaccine mandates?

I’m not but that’s because I get epidemiology. It’s mostly statistics.

When was the last time that you – when sick – were expected to queue at your fund or medicare to get a rebate, after seeing a GP?

Getting rid of that queue not only saved lots of parent’s (mothers mostly) time and $$$. It also lowered the risk of infective transmission, while queue-ing.

I put that through, and, I was NOT in the 1st or 2nd Division at the time. It just seemed obvious.

chewy14, I went for my weekly bike ride around the lake. It just happened that today coincided with the protest. All well behaved. I didn’t get abused. Had to get off my bike going across the bridge, but that was because of the sheer number of people

If the Federal government had met its responsibilities in these areas (eg biosecurity, border control, quarantine, aged care) the state government wouldn’t have needed to put up such strong protections.