On Saturday, July 4, the Daniel Andrews Labor government in Victoria announced that nine public housing towers in Melbourne’s inner north were to be put under a “hard lockdown.” Effective immediately, the roughly three thousand tower residents would be subjected to the harshest COVID-19-related restrictions in Australia yet, unable to leave their apartments for any reason. More than five hundred police officers would patrol the buildings and enforce the new restrictions.

Before many residents had even learned of the announcement, the lockdown came into effect. Police surrounded the estates and began patrolling the floors in pairs. They also commandeered the buildings’ security systems (public housing residents are some of the most surveilled people in Australia) to watch residents’ every move. For the first time in Australia, isolation is being enforced en masse at gunpoint.

The latest measures from the Andrews government, now tackling what’s understood to be Melbourne’s second wave, have provoked outrage for their double standards. Though there are several viral “hot spots” in Melbourne, it’s only those who reside in high-rise public housing — largely poor and working-class immigrant and refugee families — that are subject to the measures. Other residents in the rapidly gentrifying area haven’t been subjected to the same restrictions, and they are still able to go to work, attend school, exercise outside, and shop for supplies.