On Tuesday last week, New South Wales joined the growing list of governments to quietly drop (or reimburse) Covid fines.

The fines, based upon health directions during peak Covid panic, were under question for their legitimacy right from the start. Not only did many of them seem wildly disproportionate to the supposed ‘moral crimes’ being committed, the vast majority defied both science and common decency.

Fining a business for letting an unvaccinated person in the front doors? Fining a citizen for walking more than 5km from their home – or spending more than an hour outside? Hunting down families who had a guest at their house? Fined for holding up a protest sign while standing alone on a street corner?

These Covid fines had no measurable health benefit. Their primary use was a form of economic coercion that led to people – against their natural inclination and better judgment – to treat their fellow citizens like animals.

If it were not for ruinous fines – that in some cases exceeded the average yearly income of the average Australian – it is doubtful any state government would have been able to manufacture the public cruelty and discrimination felt by citizens.

Fines, along with lockdowns (upheld by fines) and employment bans (upheld by corporate fines), were the primary arm of enforcement wielded by the state.

The excessive amount of fines issued gives an indication of their application as a constant tool of fear-mongering. At least 62,138 fines were issued in New South Wales with 33,121 being withdrawn and the rest ‘no longer subject to enforcement’.

A test case in the NSW Supreme Court made the argument that Covid fines were invalid due to a technicality about failing to adequately describe the alleged offence, but it’s doubtful the government believes it can uphold fines given that vaccine manufacturers have admitted their products fail to impact transmission – the basis of nearly all of the state’s fines.

Legal challenges to Covid health orders also threaten to expose the wider narrative of Covid hysteria – a period in which the government acted irrationally, cruelly, and one might argue illegally against its people. Any victory in court might invite class action against the very real financial damage done by the state.

It’s much cheaper to repay the fines and hope people are in the forgiving mood than face down compensation claims.

While New South Wales should be applauded for giving back over $20 million in fines, nothing has been done about the political and legal environment that allowed such a catastrophic error in process to happen.

As Samantha Lee, a solicitor at Redfern Legal Centre, was quoted as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘This case has set a precedent that all of those fines are invalid and should never have been issued. What has happened today is pure justice and really is a case for the people.’

Covid fines became an invisible prison for the poorest Australians, whose businesses were shut or jobs taken away by the state. People found themselves isolated from friends and family, locked in their homes, and subjected to daily finger-wagging from Premiers who preached about an abyss of isolation unless they complied with vaccine orders – orders which, if international investigations continue, may be found directly culpable of causing physical harm to otherwise healthy people.

For some, that invisible prison became an actual prison. New Zealand jailed hundreds of citizens for Covid offences, with accusations that Māori were disproportionately impacted.

As Director of JustSpeak said, ‘Lots of people were almost certainly breaking Covid restrictions all the time … but people in affluent white neighbourhoods were not the ones encountering police on their daily walks or trips to the supermarket. It’s not really about who broke the law, it’s about where police were at any given point as we all figured out how to live under these strict new rules.’

The abuse of power exercised by every Premier was truly shocking, although not as shocking as how quickly frightened citizens crawled along after their politicians and health authorities in quasi-religious worship, thanking the experts for these abuses.

‘The NSW government must now cancel the 29,000 Covid fines that remain standing. How many more people does it plan to put through this ordeal before accepting that all Covid fines must be cancelled?’ said Chief Executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service, Karly Warner.

More to the point, where was all the legal condemnation when we had a few brave Aussie businesses putting signs up saying, ‘Screw the fines! We will not discriminate against customers!’ All they got was a knock on the door from NSW Police and a defamatory headline in the news.

In the modern world, governments cannot kill people or throw thousands of citizens in jail as happened when previous tyrannical regimes took power. The new weapon of choice is economic – and it is particularly powerful when we consider Australia, like its peers in the West, use comparative affluence as a key part of their existence. Threatening the middle-class and working-class with poverty is an attack on their dignity and their survival.

Fines cut deeper than any state noose.

As such, the New South Wales Liberal Party under Perrottet must immediately close the loophole that allowed these injustices to occur. If he doesn’t, fines will be wielded again – maybe in another ‘pandemic’, or more likely they will become the key to upholding the eco-fascist movement of ‘Climate Change’.

After all, the Deputy Leader and chief hypocrite Matt Kean has already imposed ridiculous fines on farmers’ markets and small retailers in his lopsided ‘war against plastic’ embarked upon to prop up his climate credentials.