Australia Breaks Apart

The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation's history.
On the 12th of February 2022, the largest gathering of Australians in the nation's history marched on the National Parliament in Canberra to protest the totalitarianism of the Australian Government, chanting "Sack Them All, Sack Them All".
Crowd numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate and prone to distortion, but whatever the number, no politician, intelligence agency, police force or political strategist in Australia failed to notice that a massive number of people marched on the nation's capital, with a remarkable amount of good cheer, jubilance and camaraderie; character traits which the nation's leaders had failed to show in the years of authoritarian derangement.
Between 2020 and 2022 Australia was gripped by a madness which was spiritual, administrative, political, social and judicial in its dimensions. Australians who stood up against the rising tide of tyranny found themselves pepper sprayed, bashed by police, fined and imprisoned in dictatorial abuses which made headlines around the world, a warning to the world against Covid overreach.
A nation which once prided itself on its laissez faire approach to life and the friendly, easy going nature of its population lay besmirched by a descent into totalitarianism. All the systems Australians had come to rely on failed them at their time of greatest need, every last one of them: the mainstream media, the social media platforms, the legal, medical and academic professions, politicians, bureaucrats, the police, the military and the nation's intelligence agencies.
Australia's democracy proved virus thin.
Retired news reporter John Stapleton shines a light on one of the darkest episodes in the Australian story. Australia Breaks Apart is a fine demonstration of the old saying, journalism is the first draft of history.

John Stapleton was born in Bangalow on the New South Wales north coast on 21 June 1952. The first money he ever made out of writing was in 1974 when he was co-winner of a short story competition held by what was then Australia's leading cultural celebration, the Adelaide Arts Festival.He graduated from Macquarie University in 1975 with a double major in philosophy and anthropology and did post-graduate work with the Sociology Department at Flinders University.As a freelance journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, while alternating between living in Sydney and London, his articles and fiction appeared in a wide range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies, including The Australian Financial Review and the now defunct Bulletin.After a period as a casual, John Stapleton worked on The Sydney Morning Herald as a staff news reporter between 1986 and 1994. The paper was then listed as one of theTop 20 newspapers in the world.He worked for the national newspaper The Australian from 1994 until the end of 2009. His books include: Thailand: Deadly Destination, Terror in Australia: Workers' Paradise Lost, Hideout in the Apocalypse, Dark Dark Policing, Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia and Australia Breaks Apart. As a news reporter, Stapleton encountered and wrote literally thousands of stories about everyone from street alcoholics to Australian Prime Ministers; from the staple flood, drought, fire and natural disasters of the Australian bush to scenes of urban dysfunction. In 2000 he became co-founder of the world's longest running radio program on father's issues, Dads on the Air, which he contributed to until 2010. He currently edits A Sense of Place Magazine. He is the proud father of two adult children.