In those confused first weeks of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr delighted in telling anyone who cared to listen that you don't get fined for eating a kebab in Canberra.
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As states such as NSW took a hardline approach to enforcing restrictions, including fining people for eating kebabs on park benches, Mr Barr boasted of how different things were in the nation's capital.
Canberrans were mature folk, he would say, and authorities would treat them as such.
Enforcement was an option, but it wasn't the first, second or perhaps even the third one.
ACT Policing have issued the odd fine through the pandemic, and they've been active in keeping tabs on returned travellers in mandatory quarantine.
But in comparison to other states - such as South Australia, where the chief copper is running the show - local police have played a bit-part role in the territory's coronavirus response.
Canberrans have responded to the trust and faith placed in them by authorities by generally sticking to the rules.
The fact the ACT has recorded just 118 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic started, and no cases of community transmission, is a credit to the collective obedience and the goodwill of the community.
Goodwill has become part of the ACT's public health armoury, as relied upon as much as social distancing and hand hygiene to shield Canberrans from a coronavirus outbreak.
But has it gone too far? Are authorities placing too much faith in our obedience, and as a result, exposing the community to a needlessly high level of risk.
Consider the ACT's government's response to the northern beaches cluster.
On Monday, ACT authorities were relying on the honesty of travellers from Greater Sydney, the Central Coast and Wollongong to complete an online declaration form and put themselves in mandatory quarantine after crossing an open, unpatrolled border into Canberra.
A person - a dishonest one, admittedly - could have driven from Avalon to Ainslie without police or health authorities knowing anything about it.
Police will be stationed on the Federal Highway from Tuesday to conduct checks on cars and make sure travellers from Sydney and the surrounding region are aware of the quarantine rules.
But not all vehicles will be pulled over and at this stage ACT Policing won't be placed on any of the other major gateways into the capital.
Amid the confusion on Monday about what presence police would have on the NSW/ACT border, there appeared a degree of reluctance among the chief decision makers for police to be involved at all.
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There was, as there has been throughout the public health emergency, a hope that people would simply do the right thing.
"We have a great tradition in the ACT, over the past nine months people have really come along with us, people's compliance to date and coming on board with all of our measures has been fantastic," chief health officer Kerryn Coleman said on Monday.
"So while we are looking at this option [to have police on the border] to try and support and strengthen that, and ensure we protect residents, we are really relying on people to do the right thing."
The latest outbreak might remain entirely contained to Sydney's northern beaches. The evidence thus far suggests it very well might.
There might be no cases transported back to the ACT. Canberra might dodge another bullet.
But as we are constantly reminded, there will be more outbreaks.
Nobody thinks police should be patrolling every street, dishing out fines for each minor breach, or manning every inch of sealed or dirt road into the ACT. Canberrans wouldn't expect or tolerate that.
But they would rightly expect authorities to clamp down on the greatest areas of risk - like people travelling back to Canberra from Sydney's northern beaches.
The stakes are simply too high to rely on honesty and goodwill.