Victorian government loses fight to keep Covid health advice hidden
In news this week, the incredible lengths taken by the Victorian government to hide the health advice on which its extremist Covid policies were supposedly based.
The Herald Sun reports,
The Victorian government has lost its bid to keep secret the coronavirus briefings used to justify sending Victorians into the world’s longest lockdown.
The Court of Appeal on Thursday refused the Department of Health’s application for leave to appeal a landmark Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruling in June last year to hand over the documents to Liberal [conservative] MP David Davis.
Mr Davis had been fighting for the release of the documents, including emails behind lockdown decisions between then-Public Health Commander Finn Romanes, and the chief health officer Brett Sutton, since first lodging a Freedom of Information [FOI] request in September 2020.
The state government now has to hand over the documents, unless it takes its appeal to a higher court. A Victorian government spokesperson said the Department of Health would “take the appropriate time to consider the court’s judgment.”
Over the past five years, the Victorian government seriously argued that the requested briefing documents were “not in the public interest” in its effort to keep them under lock and key.
Other excuses proffered included that releasing the requested documents would inhibit senior public officers from speaking freely in future written communications, and that “the work involved in processing the request would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations.”
Several government officials pulled the same trick that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to try to obstruct the release of Pfizer Covid vaccine trial data, claiming impossibly long timeframes for the release of the requested briefing documents, which are estimated to total approximately 7,000 pages.
From News.com.au,
Then Covid-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar claimed it would take an estimated 169.4 to 208.4 working weeks (about four years) to process Mr Davis’ combined FOI requests, in a statement dated October 2021.
Michael Cain, the department’s manager of FOI and legal compliance, then claimed it would take 61 to 74 work weeks, in a statement dated November 2023. He argued the cost would run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Unable to force release of the documents via the FOI process, MP David Davis, leader of the opposition in the Upper House, took the matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
In May 2024 he won, with VCAT Judge Caitlin English ordering the government to release the documents due to a “high degree of public interest” and the fact that processing the request would not substantially or unreasonably divert the resources of the Health Department from its other operations.
Apparently desperate to keep the briefing documents under lock and key, the government sought leave to appeal the decision, but the appeal was refused.
More than 115 briefs supporting the left-wing Labor government’s public health orders should now be released, reportedly averaging 40 to 60 pages each.
At the height of the pandemic, Victorians under former Premier Dan Andrews’ leadership were subjected to curfews, masking and vaccine mandates, were not allowed to go further than 5km from home, were confined to zones under the ‘ring of steel’ policy, and were locked down for over 260 days, the longest cumulative total in the world.
Victorians are still living with the effects of these policies, saddled with over $150 billion of lockdown-driven debt, learning loss among school-aged children, and ongoing mental health impacts.
Nearly three-quarters of Victorians supported the Andrews government’s extreme measures in the first year of the pandemic, polling shows.
However by 2024, only half of Victorians thought the Andrews government handled the pandemic well, according to a recent report by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The report details a plethora of human rights infringements, including the government banning protests, arresting and charging pregnant mother-of-three Zoe Buhler for a social media post, and the confinement of thousands of Melbourne residents in public housing flats under police guard.
The Andrews government’s response to complaints over its pandemic police carnage was always that it made ‘no apologies for saving lives.’ Under Andrews’ successor Jacinta Allen, the Labor government has continued in this vein.
Dan Andrews “won’t apologise for saving lives”, via 9 NEWS (video 1 min 30 sec)
If there’s really nothing to apologise for, then the Victorian government should have no qualms about releasing its top secret health advice.
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The public was tortured but it is not in their interest to know why?????
The Herald Sun article reports David Davis saying:
QUOTE
“How can you lock down a community for so long and restrict their freedoms without having an absolute duty to be transparent and open about the reasons?
“We owe it to those who died, to those who suffered, and to the children who were robbed of their childhood to understand the reasons, and to learn the lessons, so they are never repeated.”
END OF QUOTE
Yes, there must be transparency for ALL the governments who collaborated in this deliberately manufactured crisis.
For instance, on 23 July 2021 I sent an email to Greg Hunt, then federal Minister for Health and Aged Care, asking the questions below...and I didn't receive an answer...
QUOTE
- What is the definition of 'the emergency' you are using to justify the Governor General's declaration of a human biosecurity emergency under the Biosecurity Act 2015?
- What is the "specialist medical and epidemiological advice provided by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) and the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer"? Has this been objectively and independently assessed? Please provide me with the AHPPC and Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer's advice, and the empirical evidence supporting this advice.
- Who are the members of the AHPPC and 'other experts' influencing Australia's taxpayer-funded
response to covid-19 and the vaccine rollout? What are their names, role, qualifications/expertise,
professional affiliations, and any conflicts of interest, these must be clearly listed on the AHPPC
webpage.
END OF QUOTE
Again, I didn't receive an answer to the questions above.
We must have the answers now, and so much more information must be exposed in the court of public opinion before the next federal election.
See this link for my original email to Greg Hunt: https://vaccinationispolitical.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/the-covid-emergency-and-medical-and-scientific-experts.pdf