Over the last two years, despite being assured by our Prime Minister Scott Morrison that “we’re all in this together”, the plain truth is that we are not and have never been “all in this together”. The facts are that all those tyrannical Covid rules and regulations have been applied selectively and specifically, the application has been dependent on one’s sporting prowess, one’s celebrity status and one’s business connections. To put is simply, rules for thee but not for me. Whilst borders have been slammed shut to ordinary Australians, various athletes, celebrities and businessmen and women have been allowed to fly in and out of this country and they’ve been awarded privileges and dispensations denied to other Australians, even during that dark year of 2020 when there was no vaccination available and when the virus was supposedly at its most lethal. Whilst ordinary Australians returning from overseas were compelled to quarantine in small, stuffy and often dingy inner-city hotel rooms for fourteen days, a celebrity like Nicole Kidman was allowed the privilege of quarantining on her rural estate. Only last month, Rebel Wilson arrived from overseas and was conveniently granted an exemption to skip the required 72 hours quarantine so that she could appear at the AACTA Awards. Apparently, Ms Wilson received government permission from the NSW Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard.
Am I missing something?
Is this what you call “we’re all in this together”?
Which brings me to the Novak Djokovic saga. If I thought we were all truly in this together, that from day one all Covid rules and regulations had been rigorously and fairly applied across the board, regardless of one’s sporting fame, celebrity status, business connections etc, I would not particularly care about the Djokovic saga. I’d probably think that it’s the right thing to deport him, after all, fair’s fair, we should not give one particular tennis player any special privileges. But what the Djokovic saga has done over last the ten days is to magnificently and beautifully expose the federal and state government’s nauseating Covid hypocrisy, endless Covid double standards and very sinister totalitarian Covid governance.
Back in August 2021, when the residents of the Sydney suburb of Ashfield were locked down due to the raging Covid strain “Delta”, a special dispensation was given to film a miniseries called “Wolf Like Me” in Ashfield. This miniseries starred the ghastly Isla Fisher (Mrs Baron Cohen) and American actor Josh Gad. Oh, and I wonder where Mr Gad quarantined? Hmm, was it in a small, dingy inner-city hotel room for fourteen days? Why do I think not?
I’ve never ever agreed with a Green politician in my life before (and I probably never will again) but the mayor of the Inner West at the time, Darcy Byrne said: “The army is deployed on the streets and just down the road a miniseries can shoot scenes freely in public. It’s a tale of two cities at the moment.”
Mr Byrne was 100% right.
The mayor of Canterbury Bankstown Khal Asfour said: “While Canterbury Bankstown residents are subject to a curfew and under the harshest restrictions imaginable, only a few hundred metres away you’ve got a film crew doing something which is non-essential”.
Mr Asfour was 100% right.
By the way, for those who don’t know Sydney, the suburb of Ashfield isn’t some tony, tree filled suburb located in Sydney’s eastern suburbs or on Sydney’s north shore nor is it located on a beach or harbour, rather it’s a densely populated and rather ugly inner-west suburb, full of high-rise apartment blocks. Many of Ashfield residents are migrants (Chinese), and the suburb is full of tradies and people who run small businesses. I can guarantee that most of the residents of Ashfield don’t take a computer home to work because their work requires them to leave the unit/house to go to work. So, we had a situation where residents living in Ashfield were locked down and yet a miniseries was deemed essential and allowed to proceed. Talk about rubbing people’s noses in it.
What we have seen over the last twenty-two months is rank selectivity, rank double standards and rank hypocrisy.
Remember what Scott Morrison said back in March 2020…” we’re all in this together”.
Except Scotty, we’re not and we never have been.
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