Forgive me for thinking that Liberty and Freedom as is currently being pursued in Melbourne specifically and Australia generally, looks very much like the kind of Liberty and Freedom which resulted in the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol Building earlier this year. Liberty and Freedom as they are currently being bandied about, looks less and less like genuine claims upon government and society and more and more like a cultish push for nothing more than absolute selfish knavery at the expense of society.
What we're witnessing isn't some grand project to increase the scope of human happiness, such as expanding the franchise, or pushing for equality, or equity as the result of past injury, but rather people demanding licence for abject knavery.
In the wake of the destruction of a hundred million people through the scourge of war, which brought untold sorrow to mankind, the United Nations was set up and the European Coal and Steel Community was founded, to pour treacle into that same machinery of war. The grand story of history should tell us that people didn't die for Liberty and Freedom, as much as they did to stop knavery. As ineffectual and bureaucratic as the UN is, it still managed to contain some pretty lofty ideals in the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights:
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
"Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,"
- Preamble, Universal Declaration Of Human Rights (1948)
I think that the stated starting point and goal of human rights, as mentioned in the UDHR, is a noble one; namely "dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women".
To that end, what we saw in Melbourne, does not even remotely look that is a thought in the minds of the people who were there. This was purely about manbabies having a cry because they were restrained from doing exactly what they want whenever they want.
Not even John Stuart Mill, who wrote the book On Liberty, would come to the conclusion that someone should be free to do whatever they want whenever they like.
"The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people, if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct.
Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection."
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
A madman standing in the town square who is swinging his fists around (because he is a madman) is probably reasonably allowed to do that but the instant that his fists come in contact with anyone else, this ceases to be a matter of individual liberty and becomes a matter upon which society at large has a very reasonable claim upon him. The right to individual liberty only extends as far as someone's fists, it does not extend to the right to cause injury to someone else.
It may have escaped these people but we are living in the middle of the 7th worst pandemic in human history. It is reasonable, although somewhat unpleasant, that governments who have the responsibility of the protection of the citizenry, should place reasonable limits upon the populace. Likewise it is reasonable that employers and people who operate premises who have a duty of care to the public, also place limits upon individual liberty.
Let's assume for a second that there exists some kind of unwritten declaration, or perhaps social contract as theorised by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to establish some kind of political community in the face of the problems that we face. Presumably we would want to mutually pledge to each other our lives and fortunes, and this would be bound by nothing more than a code of honour. (As if it could be any other way).
Since we'd move out of what Thomas Hobbes called a "state of nature" in which people's lives were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", then does that mean we can live any old way we want? If individual liberty and freedom are going to be absolute, then should we be rightly free to do anything that comes to mind? Hardly.
It should stand to reason that there are some acts of so-called freedom which actually destroy freedom itself. Since we're living in a pandemic, where a virus might actually kill you, then it's possible that some acts could very well be your last free act.
Suppose that you do keep on doing just what you feel like doing; not giving a peppercorn of thought for the welfare of others, then if they or you get injured or sick, or worse die, then what?
Presumably if everyone does exactly what they feel like like doing, then they don't have to bother about any kind of sensible or rational thought, or any kind of sensible or rational action for that matter. Do you call that a free life? What do you get out of it? What is the point of Liberty and Freedom if you are dead?
I would suggest that people would likely come to agreement that they should live free lives. I don't think that freedom should be used as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and in the process destroy freedom. Rather, freedom is best expressed through civic philos. If everyone is out biting and ravaging each other, then watch out. History proves again and again that it takes almost no time at all before everyone is annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
This might sound counter intuitive but as someone who thinks that people are endowed with inherent dignity (irrespective of whether or not you think that's the result of divine providence or consciousness and self awareness or some other rational construction), I hate the idea of absolute private selfish liberty and freedom.
I live in a society which depends upon a network of interactions, and whether that has to do with justice, or education, health care, and the provision of services which it is reasonable that people should have access to in order to achieve a higher degree of dignity, I think that absolute private selfish liberty and freedom actively harms society and with it, harms people's welfare, liberty and freedom in the process.
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