My own guess is that a part of what you are guessing is the misunderstanding—which may further involve a misrepresentation by an official in an attempt to gain a desired response.
By asking Naturalman nicely one can learn things. Which is why I pinged him to this thread—not to have him showered with abuse.
I fail to see how responding to criticism about Australia’s perceived Covid actions with caustic comments about freedom loss in the US as an answer is ‘learning things.’
In large part, those here already knew that.