Lockdown has destroyed the Australian spirit: This once easy-going country has become illiberal, mistrustful and divided.

The careless abandonment of liberal-democratic principles in Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic has become notorious. At one end, some abuses are merely foolish and silly, like the warning from a South Australian health officer to Aussie-rules football fans to avoid touching a ball that strays into the stands. At the other end, they have been sinister, notably in the state of Victoria, which has adopted many of the trappings of a police state, backed with intrusive surveillance and intimidation.

One hopes the images that flashed around the world in September 2021, of Melbourne police locked in military formation, firing plastic projectiles indiscriminately at peaceful protesters, represent the lowest point to which Australian civil society can fall and that this will not be superseded by something worse in 2022.

Melbourne is the most locked-down city in the world, having had restrictions in place for 262 days in total, putting it comfortably ahead of second-place Buenos Aires (245 days). Melbourne was the first city in Australia to introduce a nighttime curfew, which was imposed for long stretches in both 2020 and 2021. It was relentlessly enforced by police, who monitored social-media posts for signs of rule-breaking and arrested offenders.

Victoria’s restrictions have taken a devastating toll on small businesses, mental health and trust in the authorities, yet the state’s Labor premier, Dan Andrews, remains not just the darling of the laptop class, but also a popular leader who would win an election comfortably if one were held tomorrow. The same goes for other lockdown leaders, notably the premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, who won 53 out of 59 seats in the state parliament for Labor in the election in March 2021.

The vaccine rollout has also gone hand in hand with coercive measures. Rules vary from state to state, but everywhere vaccines are more or less mandatory – unless one is prepared to live a miserable life, barred from shops, restaurants, churches and, in some cases, employment. Like some benighted republic trapped behind the old Iron Curtain, Australia has become a country where one is required to produce one’s papers in the course of everyday life, albeit on the screen of a mobile phone. For much of the pandemic, citizens have required government approval to enter or leave the country, and even permits for internal travel from some states to others. Should you cross certain state borders without the relevant authority, you are liable to be arrested on arrival and detained in a quarantine hotel for 14 days at your own expense, with no remission granted for a negative Covid test. The rules are ruthlessly applied, as Liberal senator Alex Antic discovered at the end of last year, when he flew back to his home state of South Australia after a sitting period in federal parliament in Canberra, only to be frog-marched on to a bus for a fortnight in a down-at-heel hotel.