As an Australian? Dude, your country is the most authoritarian of the current English speaking "western" countries.

The parliamentary countries like Australia just have made it so that they forever encroach in civil liberties and hide it all in bureocracy and pretend things work as intended and that democracy is working but when it was covid time they utterly crashed dissent. Same with most cases of effective opposition to power. The first in line to try and control the internet, speech and more from its citizens who don't even notice it that much because it's so ingrained in the culture of self censorship.

Having said that, yes, the pardon powers are ridiculous and they're being used more and more in ridiculous ways like this one from trump or the "pardon for everything just in case, for future and past" from Biden.