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Aussie Police Searching Deliveries to Locked Down Apartment Complexes

Neil Campbell
Neil lives in Canada and writes about society and politics.
Published: September 10, 2021
New South Wales police monitor an apartment block in Botany Street in Bondi on July 14, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. Police are searching the deliveries of residents at Common Down in Camperdown in Sydney and confiscating alcohol and cigarettes, enforcing the same restrictions as those who are sent to government quarantine camps are subject to.
New South Wales police monitor an apartment block in Botany Street in Bondi on July 14, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. Police are searching the deliveries of residents at Common Down in Camperdown in Sydney and confiscating alcohol and cigarettes, enforcing the same restrictions as those who are sent to government quarantine camps are subject to. (Image: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Police in the state of New South Wales, one of Australia’s most heavy-handed users of lockdowns and civil liberty infringements to attempt to control SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), are searching deliveries to residents of an apartment complex placed under Wuhan-style lockdown by the government. 

The story was originally framed in Daily Mail Australia on Sept. 8 as an issue of police confiscating alcohol and cigarette deliveries to locked down apartment buildings, installing the same consumption restrictions of a six-pack of beer, a bottle of wine, or a 375ml (12 ounce) bottle of spirits per day as in the country’s government-run quarantine camps. 

But according to tweets referenced in the article by residents of Common Down in Camperdown, a government subsidized apartment complex for homeless people in Sydney, residents have been receiving food deliveries and deliveries from apartment stores that have clearly been opened by the NSW police who are posted at the site to enforce the lockdown. 

Common Down and its 104 residents were placed under a 14-day lockdown at 8:00 am on Sept. 1 after four residents registered a positive PCR test and were escorted, along with “10 identified close contacts” to a government quarantine facility, described as “off-site health accommodation,” according to 7News.

Residents of the building say on Twitter that they were placed under a snap lockdown by police without notice, and have not been able to communicate with NSW Health. Twitter user Ms Safaa posted on Sept. 6 that apartment managers finally posted information about the lockdown inside the building, but had otherwise remained silent for the first six days.

In another video posted the same day, a man is heard screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night as he suffers from mental health-related issues due to the lockdown. 

On Sept. 7, Ms Saffa posted complaints that NSW Health staff were going door to door at all hours of the day to conduct mandatory PCR testing. 

Saffa again posted on Sept. 10 that the City of Sydney was issuing parking fines to residents who were trapped in the building without notice and unable to move their vehicles. 

In a reply, the City of Sydney’s official Twitter account said the parking tickets were correct, but would “review” disputes against the penalties.

‘New World Order’

Some controversy emerged on Sept. 9 when NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant used the phrase “New World Order” to describe the future of her state’s contact tracing initiative in a press conference.

In response to a question about contact tracing, Chant said, “We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the New World Order.” Currently, NSW requires all citizens to fulfill a “mandatory electronic check-in” QR code scan for contact tracing using the government’s Service NSW app at virtually every kind of business except for grocery stores.

The system is an emulation of the colour coded QR code scan system used by the Chinese Communist Party to control movement of the citizens of Wuhan City during the earliest parts of the pandemic

NSW citizens are also not allowed to leave their home, except for “reasonable excuses,” such as food and work, that must be within five kilometers of their home.

The term New World Order is synonymous to many with the concept of a global government or the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. When the video of Chant’s words went viral, Twitter affixed an appendix to the tweet attempting to downplay the phrase’s weight, which said “Fact-checkers have regularly debunked claims connected to the conspiracy theory,…The phrase is regularly used to [refer to] times of change or cultural shift.”

On July 20, as Australia’s military was deployed to Sydney to enforce NSW’s lockdowns, Chant attempted to instruct the public not to talk to each other during a press conference, “Whilst it’s human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately this is not the time to do that.”

“So even if you run into your next door neighbor in the shopping center…don’t start up a conversation, now is the time for minimizing your interactions with others, even if you’ve got a mask.”

The New World Order gaffe isn’t Chant’s alone. In July of 2020, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard made the same reference at a press conference when he said, “This is a world pandemic, it’s a one in a 100-year event, so you can expect that we will have transmission from time to time, and that’s just the way it is. We’ve got to accept that this is the New World Order.”

Hazzard used the phrase during a second press conference, “We must treat this New World Order…this new world of Covid. We must treat this new world of Covid, even in our own homes, with a high level of care and caution.”