A feeling of déjà vu has washed over the country as Melbourne plunges back into a seven-day lockdown following a new outbreak of COVID-19.
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It marks the return to a more anxious time as the city's residents tune in for daily figures and changes to restrictions after experiencing a relatively liberating period.
For Australian music icon Tina Arena, who's finishing her month-long tour with three shows in Canberra this weekend, touring after a Covid-induced hiatus feels very different.
"It's been so good to just get back and be doing art again," Arena said.
"We've been a world that's been locked up and away from art so how can it not be different? It's an incredibly different world."
Arena's 10-show tour has taken her to some of the country's biggest entertainment venues but her final three shows will be played to a more intimate crowd in Acton's Llewellyn Hall.
The concert hall, located in the heritage-listed School of Music, can hold an audience of more than 1300 but is decked out with the finest acoustics, Arena said.
"It's, acoustically, really beautiful," Arena said.
"It's a room I've played in before and I really do like very much, it's a wonderful venue."
It's hard not to discuss the recent events transpiring in Melbourne, with another quarantine breach forcing the city to close down venues and residents to stay inside for seven days.
Arena, who was born in Keilor East in Melbourne's north-west, worried for the mental health of those in the city after being plunged into yet another set of tough restrictions.
"It's not been at all pleasant for Victorians," Arena said.
"I think Victorians are suffering some very serious mental health issues, and a lot of post traumatic stress, which is going to continue for some years.
"I think it's going to take more than a seven-day circuit breaker to resolve the issues that Victoria, and ... the country have been dealing with."
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The singer-songwriter has been a household name in the country for decades but it's meant she's faced a lot of adversity in that time too.
In recent years, Arena put her name behind a number of movements calling for change and action against powerful figures in the music industry on harassment and abuse, noting she had personally faced bullying.
"I have been jumping up and down for a very long time with harassment for me, not so much sexual, but certainly an enormous amount of bullying, undermining and manipulation and extortion," Arena said.
"They are things that have, unfortunately, been lived from my perspective, which are incredibly sad, but rife within many sectors of life."
Landing in Canberra, considered the epicentre of the latest movement calling for change in regards to the behaviour of politicians and their staffers, Arena remarked it was important that survivors spoke up about their experiences.
"Things never change when there is fear involved," Arena said.
"Things don't change in fear, or stand over or undermining or gaslighting.
"Justice is not able to be properly exercised when you are dealing with those kinds of things."
After Sunday's show, the last of her tour, Arena has plans to roll out new music throughout the year but her immediate focus is on the state of the world around us.
She wants the government to reexamine the way the country is heading and use this time, a "blank canvas" she called it, to forge a new path forward with art and music having more of a focus.
"Art is vital. It's an exchange. It's a human thing, it's a beautiful thing," Arena said.
"It transforms people, it saves people. That's what I'd like to see more of."
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