Commentary
Over the last three years, the Australian government has exercised coercive powers over its citizens on a scale never previously attempted.
At some moments, it took oppressive control over almost every aspect of our personal lives: where we could go, whom we could meet, what we could do even within our own homes.
Australians believed to have violated COVID-19 guidelines could have been arbitrarily punished with little regard for the rule of law and its impact on fundamental human rights.
The ideal of legality, known as the rule of law, can be traced to the ancient Greeks. For example, Aristotle argued that “it is better for the law to rule than one of the citizens, so even the guardians of the laws are obeying the laws.”…