If you have to deploy your military on your citizens you have in fact ventured way beyond into the extreme.
If you think this is the point of the military then we just have two very different opinions about what it says about a governments ability to manage the mess they made themselves.
The use of coercion is a sign you've failed regardless of the outcome.
The ADF's stated mission is "to defend Australia and its national interests in order to advance Australia's security and prosperity.", and further goes on to state one of it's purposes is to "defend Australia and its national interests through the conduct of operations and provision of support for the Australian community and civilian authorities in accordance with Government direction."
Supporting state government and local police during a time of declared emergency is clearly within that scope.
Further, the ADF personnel deployed to assist with the lockdown will not be armed and will not have law enforcement powers - each ADF member will be paired with a regular police officer, and the police will be performing checks as they have for the last however many months [2]. This is simply to alleviate staffing and logistical issues, and is entirely ordinary. No one's getting a rifle squad kicking down their door because they didn't wear a mask.
>The use of coercion is a sign you've failed regardless of the outcome.
There is no coercion, and the whole point of the lockdowns are to prevent failure (that is, uncontrolled community transmission of COVID).
[1] https://www1.defence.gov.au/about/at-a-glance
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arriv... - quote extract from NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller
Given that we know people are ignoring lockdown, it would be a failing of the government NOT to do something about it given the grave consequences to both individuals and the security of the nation as a whole.
>why did you have to use military to coerce people
The ADF are not there in a military capacity. They are assisting regular law enforcement with a labor shortage due to the scale of the outbreak.
And again, it is not coercive for police officers to enforce the law, including public health directives. Unless you consider all law enforcement to be coercive, in which case I no longer have any time for your opinions and would encourage you to expatriate yourself to a country with a more "relaxed" legal system as soon as you can. I hear Mogadishu is nice this time of year.
If you can't at least understand why people are opposed to the lockdown of course you think "boots on the neck" is a justified response.
Most people luckily do know the nuances and do understand the consequences of lockdown taken to the extreme of what we see in Australia.
That's why as I said we should probably just agree to disagree, I am not convinced about your justification for coercion no matter what semantic and rhetorical games you throw at it.
When you have to use military to enforce your policies you've lost the plot it's really that simple.
I'm not familiar with the "bad takes" happening in the Anglosphere, but it should be noted that the French Gendarmerie is not exactly the same thing as "the military".
Until recently they were, technically, military, as in they were attached to the Defense Ministry. This has changed a few years ago, and are now attached to the Interior (Home) Ministry, like the "regular" Police. But this isn't what I'm arguing.
Even before the change, the Gendarmerie was intended to police the citizens, even though they would sometime take part in external operations. They are basically "the police outside of cities". This is in contrast to the "regular military" whose goal is to operate outside of France.
What is unusual is the "Operation Sentinelle", where actual soldiers are patrolling the streets of French cities in an effort to fight terrorism.
But note that pretty much every action by the actual military inside of France is seen as exceptional, and there really aren't that many.
For example, during the height of the Covid crisis last year, when hospitals were overflowing with the sick, the military transported some people from one hospital to another. This was considered fairly out of the ordinary, much more so than the national rail company preparing special TGVs (high-speed trains) for the same.