LOCKDOWN FOR SOME: DOUBLE STANDARDS AND ABUSE OF POLICE POWERS IN WESTERN SYDNEY
Western Sydney’s fraught relationship with police powers and the “justice” system as a whole is not insular to the increased police presence in South West Sydney this lockdown. Rather, it is so embedded into every aspect of life in The Area that while we are often aware of its symptoms, we may forget the underpinning reason why police are viewed as threats to our safety, rather than the protectors of it. It is because they exist to uphold institutional white supremacy and racism in our communities.
The importance of understanding the fact that these issues stem from the systemic inequality embedded into the fabric of the settler-colony that is so-called Australia cannot be emphasized enough. The relationship that Western Sydney has with police powers is thus, one that is dramatically different than that of the rest of Sydney. It is informed by justifiable fears and anxieties of being unfairly treated at the hands of cops. Never has this been clearer than in analyzing the way the Australian government has treated Western Sydney throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Image Credit: Ellie Zheng)
In observing the New South Wales government’s response to the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 Delta variant cases across Sydney, it is no surprise that their lenient response to the initial outbreak in Bondi looked completely different to their heavy-handed crackdown in Western Sydney communities, once the cluster reached us. While northern and eastern suburbs were given less than a slap on the wrist by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian after crowds amassed across the beaches within the first couple of days of lockdown, and were instead encouraged to take advantage of the good weather and continue to exercise outside, the same tenderness was not extended to South-West Sydney, when cases began cropping up in the Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas. Instead, the messaging clearly pinned the increasing cases on our breach of lockdown rules to supposedly visit family, and upwards of 100 extra officers were deployed across the area to enforce compliance.
There are a myriad of issues within these obvious double standards in the NSW government’s response. First and foremost, the targeting of South-West Sydney is an issue of race and class. It is no coincidence that Western Sydney bore the brunt of this crackdown, seeing as our population is, of course, primarily constituted of migrant and ethnic communities, with a significantly larger working class population in the area - especially retail and hospitality workers.
The immediate crackdown on South-West Sydney, with immediate rollout of increased police powers across the area, is largely informed by the narrative that we can see emulated by Premier Berejiklian’s comments on the matter; the idea that South-West Sydney’s growing COVID cluster earlier this month can be blamed on ethnic communities in the area, who are breaking lockdown restrictions. Berejiklian’s comment to Western Sydney was “don’t mingle with family, don’t think it is OK to visit your cousins or have sleepovers,” and therein lies an implication within this statement that the family oriented and collectivist cultures of ethnic communities is seemingly incompatible with adhering to health and safety regulations.
In the following days and weeks, we saw police presence increase across South-West Sydney; some mounted and patrolling the streets, some stationed at stores in shopping centres, surveilling the crowds and dolling out fines for supposed breaches of lockdown restrictions. In comparing this to the cop-free scenes in the same public areas in the eastern and northern suburbs of Sydney, where this COVID breakout was originated and continues to spread, the double standard in policing is revealed; police in Western Sydney are using their discretionary powers to enforce the lockdown restrictions, they are choosing to purposely interpret the ever-confusing meaning of ‘essential’ goods and services in their most strict definitions - more ‘firm’ than ‘fair’, as NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Gary Worboys has described it. This has allowed them to do so much as check the individual purchases of Kmart shoppers in Casula, arrest the owner of Rashays for allowing his restaurant employees to take off their masks to eat during their lunch break, and generally dole out fines to anyone in Western Sydney that they deem negligent of restrictions. As of the 29th of July, more than 300 Australian Defence Force personnel are also set to be positioned around Western Sydney as further measures to supposedly enforce COVID-19 restrictions in the hotspot areas, despite the fact that there have been no reports attributing the increasing COVID cases in said Western Sydney hotspots to a lack of public adherence to the restrictions.
The issue with this is that those in the Eastern and Northern suburbs are not subject to the same interpretation of the rules - instead, photos of the eastern and northern beaches show that they are able to enjoy a largely police-free existence in their public areas, and residents report that they are mostly given warnings instead of fines for breach of COVID restrictions. It seems that the NSW Police force’s interpretation of the law for vulnerable people is much harsher, and almost always assumes the worst of them, as compared to the residents of its more affluent suburbs. Western Sydney is subject to constant surveillance and scrutiny, lockdown or not, while our northern and eastern suburbs counterparts are able to enjoy a relatively police-free existence.
This double standard is even more troubling when considering the fact that a large percentage of the population of the west are non-English speaking, and the Australian government has been repeatedly criticized throughout the duration of the pandemic, about the lack of accommodation to multilingual communities in their COVID messaging and information. Mandates and measures change and develop extremely fast, and are subject to change within a matter of hours, especially during a larger outbreak of cases as we are seeing now - time and time again, our communities are the ones that suffer when the government fails to make that information as accessible as it can to multilingual communities. Time and time again, the onus falls on local governments and communities themselves to translate the information and disseminate it - but the mere turnaround time this takes is enough to leave whole chunks of multilingual populations out of the loop as to the details of COVID restrictions, making them an easier target than most to misunderstand the nuances of said restrictions, and be fined by overzealous cops preying on them for this reason.
It is also no coincidence that there is a significantly larger working class population in the area, especially retail and hospitality workers whose livelihoods are impacted hardest during these lockdowns. They must put themselves at risk in order to keep shops open, due to the abhorrent lack of governmental financial support for businesses during this time. There is a significant disregard for this fact by the NSW government who have, instead of attempting to impactfully support these communities, instead chosen to introduce mandates that have resulted in further burdening workers. The prime example of this is the short-notice decision by Berejiklian to implement mandatory COVID testing every three days for essential workers in the Fairfield local government area, with less than a day’s notice for clinics and workers alike, leading to the local COVID clinic being overwhelmed, with lines stretching around the block, with wait times up to eight hours, as estimated by locals. The lack of foresight and preparations taken with this measure have left workers hindered in their ability to work their shifts, as they must wait 24 hours after each test to receive a negative result, before being able to go back to work. The government’s decisions to roll out this measure in such short notice, specifically in a community that comprises largely of retail and hospitality workers who are already struggling to bear the brunt of this lockdown, shows a disgusting lack of care for vulnerable communities in the area.
It is clear that this government is unconcerned about the vulnerable communities that are bearing the brunt of another endless lockdown at the hands of an incompetent government. Despite millions of Australians being left with little to no support -financial or otherwise- from the government, Harvey Norman is able to keep the millions it was paid out in Jobkeeper last year, even after reporting their profits doubling in 2020. Elite private school students are able to get vaccinated and travel for school trips as we get our personal belongings ransacked outside department stores. These double standards are not the easily dismissable flukes that you might believe them to be when looking at them insularly. However, the bigger picture paints a more sinister scene of purposeful mistreatment of poor people, and of vulnerable communities, at the hands of a negligent government. Western Sydney will never be afforded the same luxury of freedom from constant police scrutiny and surveillance, because the police force does not exist to protect us at all; instead, it exists to protect the upper class from us, and at our direct expense.
By no means are the aforementioned issues an exhaustive list of the unfair treatment that Western Sydneysiders must deal with, but the common thread that ties them together is an abuse of police powers by the government, to subdue, and debilitate vulnerable peoples, especially ethnic communities, for the benefit of the upper class; the rich and affluent. All signs point to the fact that what Western Sydney needs is cops out of our communities, and more genuinely helpful support and resources to ensure that we are able to survive this pandemic safely.
