The reflexive “common sense” response to the complaints of civil rights advocates about repressive criminal laws is basically this: what’s the big deal? If you’re not doing the wrong thing, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
In the COVID-19 world, that logic has ramped up with the extra ingredient of necessary expediency: sure, we’re putting up with unprecedented restrictions, but a bit of greyness around the edges of these new laws is to be expected. It’ll be fine, relax.
Sure, until you’re the one standing on a street corner in the middle of the day trying to explain to the armed police officers encircling you why your trip across the road to get a takeway coffee constituted a reasonable excuse to have left your home. On my reading of the NSW law, it may not be. That’ll be $1000 and an experience that only Indigenous Australians usually get to enjoy.
As Easter approaches, this isn’t an abstract concern. Young people in particular are feeling the pinch of domestic confinement and, entirely understandably, keen to test the limits of what is responsibly doable. As matters stand, that is not the same as what is lawful, and that is the problem.
Case study: a man was fined $1000 under the public health order by NSW Police for sitting on a bench on his own, eating a kebab. Sounds unreasonable? The police commissioner was forced to explain subsequently that the kebab guy had already been asked to move on from two other public spots. OK, not that unreasonable. But not until we heard the full context.
Back to the coffee run: one of the reasonable excuses for being outdoors is “obtaining food or other goods or services for the personal needs of the household”. Is takeaway coffee a personal need, or rather an indulgent want? What if you added a bacon and egg roll, but you don’t have a hangover?
As for the exercise exception, it is clear that the police are happy if you’re running, or taking a breath from running. Walking is fine, but what if you’re taking a breath from walking? Sunbaking and reading are not exercise, because the police are not interpreting exercise to include the maintenance of mental health, only the physical variety. Which leaves yoga in a tenuous position, and meditation… well, I don’t know.
Now that’s funny, but not so much for the 17-year-old in Victoria who (as reported by 3AW) got fined $1652 on the weekend for engaging in non-essential travel. She was taking a driving lesson with her mum in the family car.
There is a gaping divide here between the law and its purpose. It is axiomatic that that 17-year-old and her mum presented absolutely no public health risk, to themselves or anyone else. Just as it is obvious that no such risk exists when a person sits under a tree in the park with a book, or goes for a solo surf at a closed beach.
The supposed reason these things are illegal is that the law has been created for the ostensible purpose of forcing us all to stay home and stop the spread of COVID-19. That is an entirely legitimate, justifiable and fair legislative purpose right now.
However, that purpose is disconnected from what the law does. It allows me to go to the shops 25 times a day if I choose. It places no restriction on “exercise”, as that term is interpreted by police. It allows booty calls (in Victoria, explicitly; in NSW, by police commissioner’s discretion).
All those things are arguably reasonable departures from the lockdown principle, but they are not essential and they clearly carry a public health risk. As the law stands, we can happily go out and do numerous unnecessary things, but not a whole pile of other things that are arguably more valuable and less risky.
The only way, with this present mish-mash of laws, to obtain public clarity is for the police commissioner to hold a lengthy press conference every day going through each infringement that’s been issued in the past 24 hours and providing the public with the full context for the police officers’ decision in that situation.
Otherwise, we’re left to guess what is or isn’t okay today, depending on which state we live in and what the attitude of the local coppers may be.
To illustrate the stupidity, the NSW Greens are, as I write, seeking an urgent interpretation from the government as to whether taking a driving lesson would qualify in NSW for the reasonable excuse of “education”. Maybe it will be okay in Albury, but not Wodonga.
It didn’t need to be this way. If the idea is to keep us at home, then keep us at home. Close the coffee shops and non-essential retailers; tell us only one household member can go out once a day for essentials; no visits to family, no visitors, nothing. Lockdown.
Or — if that is deemed too much — get rid of the list of excuses, give us the power to decide what behaving with social responsibility looks like, and remove the police from the equation. They are the last group on earth who should have the power to decide what is or isn’t anti-social behaviour; hasn’t 250+ years of policing history taught us at least that?
Let’s face it: it’s one or the other. This middle road is a debacle.
In a shocking twist, giving the police unfettered power is leading to abuse of said power.
The student driver didn’t need to be taking a driving lesson now, she wouldn’t be able to take a driving test until the lockdown is over (perhaps months off) since she’d be putting the driving examiner at risk, and she’s putting other people at risk too, since she’s more likely to be involved in a traffic crash, just by being inexperienced.
I think the fine was reasonable, although it should be quashed. Now everyone should be aware that driving lessons aren’t considered essential.
Maybe, but it would have been allowed in NSW and it takes a long time to log the hours
A lot of people have had to put their lives on hold due to the lockdown. A student driver is no different.
Why should the hours driving when the roads are quieter than normal count the same as those during normal times anyway?
Don’t agree WR. This is obvious over reach and totally counterproductive. An over zealous cop trying to make a mark. I walk our beach every morning and have seen the police patrolling over the last week. Last weekend there were quite a number of families with their children enjoying the sunny weather. All were very widely spaced and socially responsible and the patrolling police didn’t move them on. Common sense is what is needed here. I hope the parent fights it and the magistrate has enough sense to throw it out. By the way, obviously politicians have lost touch with reality, a $1600 fine is over 2 weeks income for many people, are they crazy!
Bref,
You don’t agree? It’s your right in a democracy. Just because you’re wrong, doesn’t remove your right to do so.
Exercise within your neighborhood. There’s no need to go to public beaches. If everyone did, then the beaches would rapidly become overcrowded as everyone from everywhere go there.
So much muddled thinking.
A learner has to log at least 120 hours of driving – over at least 12 months – before attempting to pass the test to get a P1 licence. So for many learner drivers its wouldn’t be a problem to wait until restrictions (no, its not a lockdown) are removed.
The Victorian TAC found that, “As soon as newly licensed drivers switch from their L’s to their P’s they’re 30 times more likely to crash”. You would be better off banning P plate drivers!
It makes no sense to say, “the fine was reasonable, although it should be quashed”. If you believe an offence has occurred, why shouldn’t a fine be levied?
Because now everyone is aware that student driver instruction isn’t essential or allowed in Victoria. It’s for the dissemination of information.
Agree with ralph. Quiet(er) streets, seems like a great opportunity to log some hours.
Also, she was in the car with her mum, whom I assume she lives with. No increased risk of transmission there. Police discretion should have let them carry on, or at worst, sent them home.
How do driving lessons constitute a threat to public health, namely pandemic spread? Introducing the possibility of an accident has nothing to do with the supposed purpose of the legislation; to introduce it exactly illustrates unreasonable and excessive overreach.
We are being treated as naughty children, and encouraged to spy on and denounce one another. Agreed, normal police state behaviour.
That’s crap reasoning on so many levels. It was a lesson with her mum. No public risk. Likelihood of an accident seriously reduced with less traffic. Mental health benefits getting out of the house.
Should clearly be open slather for driving lessons from a member of your own household.
Or just tell the cops your driving to the shops.
The only thing that matters if you are away from home is maintaining spatial distancing. Or am I missing something?
And not putting other people at risk, as with the two fishermen who went out fishing in a boat, and then went missing.
Presumably, they’re putting other people at risk of infection if they go looking for them.
But how does the same two people going directly to fish increase the risk of infection? This is deciding on a position, then working back by picking and choosing only arguments that support it.
It’s not so much what’s banned. It’s what’s permitted.
What’s permitted are shopping for food, exercising, going to work or education facilities, or seeking medical attention.
Not recreational fishing.
It’s just the way it is.
The Gov’ could try to slide these rules into the same law as traffic offences. This would be a nice little place where ‘reasonable’, ‘fairness’, ‘common sense’ and a ‘lack of intent’, simply don’t exist. And, if you clock-up enough infringements, it’s off to Gaolburn [sic]…
Unlike many in the land I remember the old NSW Summary Offences Act that allowed police to be nothing more than bullies. When I was at university in Armidale, I was stopped by coppers for whatever reason, ie none. One day I was threatened with arrest because I was waiting outside the guitar shop, for which I worked now and then, as it was not quite opening time. I had the price of a new set of strings, which was slightly less than the amount required to shoe I wasn’t a vagrant. Loitering without a reasonable excuse? These kind of powers go to some coppers heads, especially as we get further away from community policing and closer to the calamitous US model.
…yes ,I recall those wonderful arrest you for nothing days….and they weren’t even dressed n armed in the paramilitary paraphernalia hardware of today..
Hey, you probably had long hair and wore a duffle coat. That would have got you ‘moved on’ in most of rural Australia in those days. In Townsville you didn’t even need the duffle coat. LOL