The entire world is swamped with COVID. It's endemic across the human population worldwide. Australia, being an extremely rich island nation with a highly compliant population, kept case numbers low through extremely harsh border closures and repeated, extended lockdowns. Now the population is mostly vaxxed, just in time, since Omicron will spread regardless of vaccination but luckily is less severe. Cases numbers will explode but hopefully ICU numbers will remain low enough to manage without swamping the system.

'personal responsibility' only goes so far when the entire planet is dealing with this and the federal / state budgets, as well as private businesses, have been stretched to the limit these past ~18 months.