The more accurate description is “mandatory supervised quarantine”. In other words, we do not trust returning countrymen who have probably paid a fortune to price-gouging airlines to get back here to act honourably and self-quarantine at a place of their choosing. Say with relatives or friends, or, indeed in a nice hotel somewhere.

CRUEL

Others have not been so kind in their descriptions of the Howard Springs facility, as fresh stories emerge of cruel treatment to “in-mates” who don’t behave.

The reports of ill-treatment in Australian quarantine facilities are not new.

Many of us enjoyed Katie Hopkins’ recent take on the new Aussie approach to hospitality for visitors.

Not including various government ministers who kicked her out of the country, it must be noted. (I believe she is currently prospering in Florida where the treatment of a COVID recalcitrant is a little more humane than in these penal colonies of the 21st century.)

There were the appalling accounts from the Melbourne quarantine fiasco of 2020, which resulted in a Commission of Inquiry but, alas, no punishment for the political and bureaucratic perpetrators. (The Inquiry has been described as a “whitewash”).

This was because no-one in government actually admitted to having made the decision to employ private contractors to provide security for the hotel quarantine system, and the commission couldn’t prove who made the decision.

Mates of the infamous Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews were given the contract and were later found to be having sex with in-mates, among a range of atrocities that also included breaches of security and the documented absence of proper training.

And over 700 people died with COVID during the 2020 winter in Melbourne, which still accounts for the vast majority of Australian deaths overall attributed to COVID.

This is despite the current spike in NSW that is tearing the State apart.

That was last year. This week a story emerged of frightful conditions that still exist in Melbourne’s quarantine hotels.

As reported by cairnsnews.org. The videoed person’s comments: “No air, no leaving the room for 338 hours, the second time in my 11 days here someone has totally smashed up their room, babies crying. I think this guy thought he was leaving today when he is actually leaving at 11.59 pm tonight. You go crazy being all alone. Is this really necessary? I myself had nine negative tests before being denied quarantine at home and I am vaccinated. Why? What is the price of Victorian’s mental health? Does anyone actually care? This guy is threatened to be gassed by authorities if he doesn’t calm down…”

INMATES

And another story emerged from Howard Springs, via Twitter: “Howard Springs CV quarantine camp in Australia for all the “dangerous” people to society. Reports now surfacing of inmates (that’s not a mistake) not being fed if they breach minor rules. Let me ask you. Does this remind you of any part of our history? Can you see it yet?”

Then this: “I’m afraid this is an internment camp and if you can’t see otherwise you are doomed. There was a 33-year-old woman who packed her bags, walked to the fence, threw her luggage over, climbed the barrier and walked away, as stunned people filmed her on their cell phones. Police caught her 15 minutes later and she was fined nearly $4000.”

It is extremely difficult to get to the bottom of these reports, given that the corporate media and the public broadcaster never publish such stories, or investigate accusations of ill-treatment that could be seen to subvert the official COVID narrative.

Nor, of course, do you ever find any of these accounts on a search engine that so efficiently silences dissent. So, it is very hard to corroborate what is said to be happening by the alt-media.

Look at the pile-on that occurred recently when it was claimed that children had died following the vax. To even raise such things is to invite yet further abuse and stereotyping.

All one can do is to determine whether the stories about quarantine facilities are plausible given what else we know. And we know a lot.

We know that:

• Police have been firing rubber bullets at innocent demonstrators on the streets of Melbourne, and using pepper spray;
• The Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton has announced that two separate COVID commands have been set up with operations extending until at least the end of 2022 – possibly indefinitely (as reported by Rebel News);
• Victoria is building a designated quarantine facility, as is Queensland (a thousand bed facility at the delightfully titled “Wellcamp” airport west of Brisbane);
• Residents at Sydney’s apartment blocks locked-down by NSW Health are having their alcohol deliveries policed as part of a policy to limit the number of drinks being consumed each day, that is six beers or equivalent amounts of wine and spirits (The West Australian) with any excess alcohol being confiscated;
• South Australians in quarantine at home have to mark their houses with a sign indicating their status. As stated proudly by the SA Premier, “… geo-location and facial recognition software would be used to track people who were quarantining. They will be contacted at random and required to provide proof of their location within 15 minutes”;
• Police are searching bags and confiscating gifts delivered to locked-down social housing buildings in Sydney;
• Curfews have been used to lock people in their homes after 9pm in both Melbourne and Sydney;
• Australians in India were threatened with jail by the Australian government if they tried to return home during the Indian outbreak;
• Freedom-fighters like Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy Australia have been arrested and jailed for organising protests;
• Schoolchildren in Sydney have been “ushered” into police-secured stadiums to be vaccinated following pressure on them related to their forthcoming Higher School Certificate exams;
• Massive fines are being issued for non-compliance with a range of public health orders;
• The NSW government is sacking its own teachers for not taking the jab, in a State where the premier has said that “for those of you who choose not to be vaccinated, that’s your choice, but don’t expect to do everything that vaccinated people do even when we hit 80 per cent [double vaccinated]”;
• Armed guards and the army have secured lockdown buildings in suburban Sydney;
• Under the newly released NSW “roadmap” out of lockdowns, the unvaccinated will not be allowed to visit the vaccinated. This amounts to “State-sanctioned segregation based upon private medical records”, in the words of Alexandra Marshall. (The NSW premier, who is currently under a cloud as the result of a corruption investigation into rorted community grants to the constituency formerly represented by her then (secret) lover, recently appointed a former member of the UK Communist Party as head of the civil service, and has cancelled the parliament indefinitely).

Given all these flagrant breaches of human rights and democratic process that have been occurring routinely in a country recently criticised by China for the severity of its draconian measures, why on earth wouldn’t you believe that the stories now emerging from quarantine facilities are accurate?

In view of what our thug-police are willing to be seen doing in public, nothing should surprise us about what they get up to behind locked doors. I find these reports totally plausible.

It is all very well for corporate media darlings like Claire Lehman of Quillette (writing in The Australian newspaper on September 13) to mock those in Australia and the United States who fear for our future and who (perfectly reasonably) compare us here to totalitarian regimes with armed camps, and accuse them of hyperbole, since in her view we remain “… a nation that still retains civic pride and community spirit”.