text: Amid escalating tensions between the people of Australia and the government, America’s favorite governor, Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., said what everyone is thinking this week: Australia is no longer a free country.
  Speaking at the International Boat Builders’ Exhibition and Conference in Tampa on Tuesday, DeSantis said, “Look at what’s going on in Australia right now, you know, they’re enforcing, after a year-and-a-half, they’re still enforcing lockdowns by the military – and that’s not a free country. That’s not a free country at all.”
  Taking it a step further, DeSantis, who is one of the most anti-lockdown governors in America, added that the United States may need to re-evaluate its relationship with Australian government.
  “In fact, I mean I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that,” he said referring to the shocking police brutality and forced quarantine measures that peaceful Australian protestors are enduring.
  “Is Australia freer than China, communist China, right now? I don’t know. The fact that that’s even a question tells you something has gone dramatically off the rails,” DeSantis said.
  The Florida governor is one of the few U.S. politicians to raise questions about our relationship with Australia amid their treatment of their people over violations of Covid-19 restrictions.
  Over the past few months, tens of thousands of protestors, and sometimes more, have flocked to the streets of Australia’s major cities to demonstrate. However, they were quickly met with law enforcement officers who have shot them with rubber bullets, sprayed pepper spray, and made arrests.
  As of last weekend, police began going door-to-door to perform “wellness checks” and ask Australians if they were planning to participate in protests and intimidate them out of doing so – in a way that seems all too familiar like other events in recent history that are now strongly rebuked.
  Last weekend in Melbourne, 200 protestors were rounded up and arrested for violating the government’s authoritarian rules.
  As DeSantis pointed out, the last time we saw anything even remotely similar to this was in Hong Kong last year when the CCP took complete control of the territory and made it illegal to protest. Demonstrators who refused to comply were also arrested by the masses and charged.
  If Australia is going to adopt the ways of the CCP, then it is time for the United States to take a stand for human rights and freedom by adjusting the relationship with the Australia government accordingly and publicly condemning their behavior toward its people.