Putting an Honest Face on Tyranny

It is not that hard and has antique precedence, but we have taken it to a whole new level.

The incessant talk about Australia becoming modern has turned my eye to a more important topic – dictatorship.

My point of reference is the traditional office of dictator as established in the early years of Rome under the kings.

Most people shudder when I dare to suggest that Australia is operating as a quasi-dictatorship. I honestly cannot understand why, given the current hiding we are receiving over our ability to speak openly, coupled with the other lashing over our right and ability to invest for a secure financial future.

That, by any stretch, has its genesis in dictatorial power.

Even one of Australia’s foremost political scientists, Professor Scott Prasser, writes on the issue of an elective dictatorship, referring to a quote by Lord Hailsham three decades ago:

More and more, debate is becoming a ritual dance, sometimes interspersed with catcalls ... we live under an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory, if hitherto tolerable in practice.

I regard this topic as profoundly relevant to our times, since dictatorships are seeded long before they flourish. But that moment comes upon a populace with a sense of fire and brimstone once unleashed, and there is no mistaking the consequences.

Australia, and indeed most western nations, woke up one day in 2020 to be told that their countries would be locked down because a virus was about to wipe us all out. Just for two weeks, we were told, and then would reopen so life could proceed as normal. Of course, that two weeks turned into months and in the case of Victoria, even longer.

Following these lockdowns a malaise enveloped our nation. We were tired and demoralised from the ever-increasing rules put upon us. We are taxed too high, incessantly told how the Leviathan and its lackey politicians know better, culminating in an ever-increasing grab for power that includes at the top of the list, our freedom of speech.

It cannot be stressed enough – if we do not have the ability to speak freely, we do not have a democracy.

Our constitution does not allow for an official role of a dictator – a person put in place in an emergency when the nation is deemed to be under serious threat such as ancient Republican Rome faced. During the infamous pandemic of 2020, that role fell to the Prime Minister of the day, Scott Morrison. In effect, though, he was merely carrying out orders from unelected bureaucrats. And it wasn’t long before bureaucrats, in every state and territory, were rocking up to the podium to direct all of us plebs what to do, all for our own good.

The office of dictator in ancient Rome was primarily established to ensure there was strong leadership for military engagement against foes who posed a threat to Rome’s existence. However, historians are at odds as to whether it was also a move to cow unruly plebs, ensuring one strong man was able to deal with dissent in the ranks.

The position came with unlimited power, with even the consuls (the two leaders who shared the position of leadership) bowing to the dictates of the man who held the office. What they could not do, however, is change laws and make new ones without presenting their legislation to the Senate. That would change with the election of Sulla in 81 BC.

Sulla not only appointed himself dictator, but he changed and made new laws without seeking approval from the Senate. He was at odds with the conditions of the early emergency institution comprising a fixed term of no more than six months, and to take any newly formed legislation to the Senate. He held what is known as “extraordinary constituent power”, making his role as dictator constitutionally novel.

Echoes of Morrison’s National Cabinet?

Morrison usurped the regular rules of debate and transparency in 2020 when he created the National Cabinet in the hope that all discussions would stay out of the public eye and be protected from Freedom of Information rules, something a judge ruled unconstitutional. The Australian Financial Review accused Morrison of having a God complex:

Told he had been sent by God to save Australians from a great sickness, Morrison turned himself into a kind of one-man government. He wasn’t quite a president, but he wasn’t bound by the conventional institutional constraints on a prime minister either.

One question which Cicero asked in a speech of 57 BC that relates to constitutional law (ius) sums up perfectly the unconstitutional nature of punishing one’s citizens who have not been charged with wrongdoing:

“…by what ‘ius’, or in accordance with what tradition (quo more) or what precedent (quo examplo) did you pass a law (lex) explicitly aimed, by name, against the civil rights (de capite) of a citizen who had not been condemned?

I submit that it is punishment meted out against Roman citizens without trial.”

Sulla was the first Roman leader to exercise shocking brutality against the citizenry.

Echoes of Victorian state premier, Daniel Andrews?

Andrews not only opened fire on his own citizens for daring to protest lockdowns and mandates, but also dragged his own “honest face on tyranny” out for much longer than Sulla’s six months, with Victorians enduring a longer modern-day tyranny than anyone could imagine. In addition, the state is now left with a massive financial cleanup with taxpayers being slugged hard to pay for the slovenliness of Andrews’ handiwork.

Whether ancient Rome or modern Australia, the fact remains that it is not the office which offends, rather the individual occupying it.

Modern Australia has already shown the world how we can shut down our own citizens in the name of safety for grandma. We even showed the world that firing on our own people with rubber bullets is okay for the same reason. All this with no repercussions for those who advised the move, carried it out, and most of all, the man in charge who gave the order.

Instead, the tyranny required an honest face under a public title.

The Roman dictatorship was used by the man who held the office to punish a consul who was proposing a coup, allegedly aimed at kingship (anathema to the Republicans). I see no comparable punishments being meted out to the political leaders who ordered us to take the shot or lose our jobs during Covid, or worse, and who presided over a period when draconian rules resulted in people dying needlessly because of state border closures.

When a leader is granted extraordinary powers above and beyond our existing constitutional framework, it is incumbent upon them to exercise that power in a measured way while doing no harm to the people they represent.

We are still a democracy, albeit in name, and while emergency measures may need to be taken occasionally with a view to protecting our nation’s sovereignty, they must be carried out humanely and with a sense of humility – a virtue which was nowhere to be seen from our state premiers during this disgraceful period in our history.

If the most militarily strong and brutal ancient Roman republican empire can manage to keep true to their constitutional framework (except during the late Republic with Sulla and Caesar), then it should not even be a question for us in modern Australia.