Instead of a bedtime story, late last night NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian read the state a list of new rules and police powers to punish anyone leaving their house without a valid excuse.
NSW is not alone in its authoritarian push — Victoria and Queensland have followed suit with a list of strict measures to keep people at home.
Draconian measures
Following Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement on Sunday night limiting gatherings from 10 people to two, states have acted to pass that rule into law.
NSW has the harshest fines — nearly 10 times more than any other state for breaking the same rule. It’s unclear if leaving the house in groups of three will also result in an unnecessary strip search.
Breaking these rules can result in an on-the-spot fine of a whopping $11,000 and six months prison.
In NSW, a “reasonable excuse” is defined in 16 ways:
- Obtaining food, household items or services for pets, the household, or vulnerable people
- Travelling to work if working from home isn’t an option
- Dropping and picking kids up from childcare
- Getting someone to and from school or other educational institution where learning at home can’t isn’t an option
- Exercising
- Getting medical care or health supplies for yourself or a person you’re caring for
- Heading to a wedding or funeral, as long as it follows the current rules (no more than 10 people at a funeral, no more than five at a wedding)
- Moving to a new house or office building, or inspecting a new place
- Providing help or care to a vulnerable person, or someone in an emergency
- Donating blood
- Undertaking legal obligations
- Accessing government services such as social, employment, domestic violence, mental health and victim of crime services
- Ferrying kids from one parent’s or sibling’s place to another
- For religious leaders, going to a place of worship or providing pastoral care
- Avoiding injury, illness, or escaping harm
- For emergencies or compassionate reasons.
Victoria has very similar rules, with much smaller fines of $1652 for individuals caught breaking them.
Queensland has introduced on-the-spot fines of $1334, though disobeying quarantine orders result in a $13,345 fine.
Tasmanians face $750 on-the-spot fines. Ten people have already been fined for camping in closed areas. WA and SA both have $1000 fines, and ACT will give you a second chance with a warning before fines.
The NT has yet to introduce any specific fines for breaking social distancing rules, focusing instead on securing its borders and protecting remote communities.
Wage subsidy
Workers may now actually have a chance of paying off fines if they break the law, thanks to the new wage subsidy unveiled in the latest $130 billion stimulus package.
The government will pay a company up to $750 a week for employees, including casual workers provided they work regularly and have been there for more than a year.
Companies will need to have lost between 30% and 50% of their turnover to be eligible.
Vincent Van Gone
A Van Gogh painting has been stolen from a museum in The Netherlands, which was closed due to coronavirus restrictions. The painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884”, was stolen from the Singer Laren — where it was on loan from the Groninger Museum — some time last night.
The value of the painting is estimated to be between one and six million euros (A$1.8 to A$10.8 million).
Something’s got to be done – income tax revenue will be down for a while.
“Draconian” Love that word. Centuries old but never goes out of fashion.
I’m trying to work out how I can fit taking my dog down to the local dog park under the allowed activities.
It’s not exercise for me, since I’m only walking 200 metres there and back, and all I’m doing at the park is walking slowly, keeping an eye on the dog and avoiding other dog owners.
It might fit under ‘avoiding injury’ since if the dog doesn’t get out twice a day, she gets very stroppy, and a stroppy dog of her size is hazardous.
I went to the vet today to buy some food for her (which fits under the provisions). The vet’s office doesn’t allow people inside owing to the plague, which seems an overreaction.
Its ‘caring’ and ‘compassionate’ & despite the imputation in Amber’s article the list is a non-exclusive list of examples, so there are other undefined ‘reasonable excuses’ for being out.
Amber, another good article but you failed to mention that the list in s.16 is a non-exhaustive list of examples. Any of the 16 things will get you off, but there are also likely to be many other reasonable excuses. I checked.
I’m assuming, because no one has mentioned otherwise, that the burden of proof still lies with the police to prove beyond reasonable doubt (just like the guilty George Pell) that you don’t have a reasonable excuse for being out and about. So my guess is that a lot of this is huff & puff (which is no bad thing in the circumstances), so long as you have an excuse and some basis to justify why this is reasonable. I would have been more comfortable if the law was couched along the lines of that if you are found ‘out and about’, that you have taken all reasonable actions to minimise the transmission of the virus from you to another person or vice a versa, and then to list examples of what failures of action are not reasonable, eg. not wearing protective gloves in a shop, being within a 1.5m radius of another person etc etc.
So, as all shops and malls have not been closed, would buying anything, clothes, bric-a-brac, furniture, sheets, etc all be classed as household items? If I’m stopped on the street, do I just tell the kind police person I’m out looking for a new mirror? I’m not trying to be a smart arse, this is precisely the kind of mixed messaging that’s been going on for weeks now.