According to UN records (all internal references were deleted by The Australian Interior Command post 2019) Australia was once a stable and prosperous democratic society. The road to tyranny started after the widespread financial devastation of the second GFC, the tripling of refugee intakes in the wake of the escalation of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, and the first terrorist attack on Australian soil - vast public unrest caused the Government to call in the army to help quell mass protests.
With record unemployment, falling property values and the fear of more home-grown terrorist attacks no party was able to gain a clear majority in the 2016 elections. Disaffected, more people took to the streets and after three months of civil unrest and an unprecedented drop in the Australian dollar, the Prime Minister declared martial law for the first time in Australia’s history. This resulted in over two million Australians taking to the streets to protest budget austerity measures and a growing sense of censorship after the bankruptcy of the News/Fairfax publishing conglomerate. The protests became violent after eight students were accidentally shot in Melbourne by the army. Fearing the collapse of society, the Prime Minister FIRED the head of the defence force General Peter Stricklin to subdue public outrage.
A veteran and hero of the Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran wars, Stricklin gathered his forces and in a fateful day took Parliament house by force and imprisoned the Senate, the House of Representatives and Governor General Wendy Mundine. Once order was restored Stricklin promised to hold new elections, but shortly after declared himself the Prime Minister General of The Australian Interior Command.
Noting that the increasing divide between the super wealthy and the massively unemployed working class was continuing to give people time to protest a national lottery was set up to conscript people to work on various mining and ‘nation building’ infrastructure projects, the most famous being the Sydney-Melbourne-Perth high-speed rail line. These projects would later be declared forced work camps by the UN, a point The Australian Interior Command denied. In Stricklin’s famed address to the UN a year later he not only withdrew Australia from the UN, but also announced that Australia’s borders would be closed permanently.
Details of life within Australia, beyond The Australian Interior Command’s line, became increasingly unreliable after internet for the general population was severed in 2020 as a part of the government’s Stronger Australia Act. The few boat people who have managed to escape Australia’s remote shores have detailed that most rights have been abolished, rendition and prolonged imprisonment without trial is common, all media is state-run and that having more than one child and public protest are all illegal.
