The Crackdown Continues in Oz

Enhancing domestic security arrangements through Exercise Austral Shield | Defence News

The Australian government snuck this one through whilst no-one was looking. It enables our state and territory governments to call in the army to support the police.

The last time this happened was in 1978 in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing [Hilton Hotel]. They used the army then to seal off a country town [Bowral] so that they could hold a heads of government meeting. The military here have also been used as strikebreakers a couple of times as well [1947 coal strike, 1989 pilots strike]. They were also present in the Federal governments intervention in local Indigenous communities which was a manufactured scare campaign about sexual abuse in those communities [2006-7]. These were extraordinary exceptions to the Commonwealth being able to use the military in this way, and they were short-lived and highly controversial at the time.

But this new law takes it to a whole new level, getting rid of the constitutional barriers to military deployments against citizens within the country, normalising such deployments. If you thought SWAT teams were bad, wait till the army arrives at your next XR demo.

II know that it can happen in the States, hows the situation in other countries?