CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
HAHA NOT THOSE ONES: The Northern Territory government is today taking on the bizarre task of explaining social distancing to their citizens after Greater Darwin entered a snap 48-hour lockdown last night.
Starting at 1:00pm yesterday, the new restrictions were implemented with one hour’s warning after the detection of five new community cases linked to a Central Australian mine.
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner said NT health authorities were “assuming the worst” and operating under the scenario there are infectious people in the community.
This means mandatory face masks, a concept that Territorians are not familiar with.
However this public health measure has sent shockwaves of fear through the Top End, as residents immediately associate ‘face masks’ with the spit hoods that the NT Government likes to use on juvenile offenders.
Spit hoods are a mesh-fabric hood designed for restraint that conceal the face and they’re generally fixed at the base with a band around the neck.
This community response is obviously triggered by the 2016 Four Corners report featuring the use of spit hoods on Northern Territory youth detainees.
This report featured images that are still fresh in the minds of Territorians. The ABC’s heartbreaking video footage of children being strapped to chairs with their faces covered for hours led to a royal commission into the Northern Territory’s youth detention system, which heralded very little changes in correctional centres and in fact has only resulted in millions of dollars in funding to expand the controversial child prison at the centre of the investigation.
“Just chill out a minute. I’m not talking about spithoods” said the Chief Minister today, upon learning about the community’s reluctance to wear ‘face masks’ after confusing the medical protective wear with a form of torture used in the sensory deprivation of children as young as ten.
“I’m talking about those masks that Asians tourists wear in airports”
“Haha. I’m locking you down, not locking you up!”
“But yeah I can see why you’d all by confused by this. Obviously youth crime rates are really bad, but I’m not calling for the entire state to be gagged in spit hoods!!!”
“Just the at-risk children who get into trouble walking the streets at night because their home lives are horrible”
