The pandemic is serious and strong action needs to be taken to stop its spread. But punitive and paternalistic interventions, that remove people鈥檚 agency, is counterproductive, writes Sue Bolton.
Daniel Andrews
The Victorian road lobby is at it again. Fresh from being defeated on the East-West Link, the rent-seeking tollroad builders have been given a construction gift in the form of a massive new project in Melbourne鈥檚 east.
While conservative governments are constantly making calls to criminalise trade union activities, Geelong Trades Hall Council secretary聽Colin Vernon says governments should instead be focusing on the real crime wave occurring in our community right now.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the Victorian state government鈥檚 March 29 announcement to arm its police with semi-automatic, military-grade weapons was an early April Fool鈥檚 joke.
After all, the announcement came in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in the United States. It also came after the Crime Statistics Agency published data on March 15 showing that crime rates have fallen by 9.9%.
There is a popular folk saying: 鈥淚f it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck鈥.
The Malcolm Turnbull government鈥檚 hysterical warnings about 鈥淪udanese gangs鈥 in Melbourne certainly look and sound like a blatant case of trying to stir up a racist moral panic that can be used to his political advantage.
The decision by state and territory leaders at the recent Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting to give the federal government real time access to data, including driver's licences, is the latest measure likely to undermine civil liberties in the government鈥檚 so-called war on terror.
Victoria鈥檚 Premier Daniel Andrews apologised on May 25 to the state鈥檚 Chinese community for the racism and unjust policies their ancestors endured during the gold rush era.
With the passage of the Climate Change Act (CCA) that mandates a target of zero net emissions by 2050, Victoria is formally in the leadership among state and federal governments.聽
Hundreds of Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) members disrupted the Victorian State Labor Conference on November 12 to protest against plans by the Daniel Andrews government to privatise public disability services.
Delegates walked off the conference floor to meet HACSU members, people with disabilities and their friends and families at the Moonee Valley Racecourse where they heard the message loud and clear: No to the privatisation of public disability.
Up to 40 teenage prisoners from Victoria鈥檚 youth justice centre at Parkville will be sent to a segregated wing of the maximum security Barwon adult prison after it was gazetted as a youth remand centre and a youth justice custodial centre on November 17.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said an adult prison was the 鈥渕ost appropriate facility鈥 for those responsible for allegedly rioting at the Parkville Justice Centre the previous weekend.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews formally apologised on May 24 in state parliament for a past law that treated people as criminals for being gay.
"It is never too late to put things right," Andrews said. "It is never too late to say sorry and mean it.
"There was a time in our history when we turned thousands of young men into criminals ... this was profoundly wrong.
"It is the first responsibility of a government to keep people safe. But the Government didn't keep LGBTI people safe. The Government invalidated their humanity and cast them into a nightmare.鈥
On February 18, a delegation of Victoria University staff and students delivered a letter to the office of Tim Watts, Labor MP for the federal seat of Gellibrand.
The letter, signed by 125 students and teachers 鈥 in only two days and before most students were back at university 鈥 pleaded with Watts to follow Premier Daniel Andrews' example and advocate that the 267 vulnerable asylum seekers, including 36 babies, not be sent back to Nauru.