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The State of Western Australia has just introduced one the most draconian proof-of-vaccination requirements in the entire world. The state government had already introduced forced vaccinations, including booster shots, for at least 75 per cent of the local workforce. But now, anyone over the age of 16 who refuses to be constantly jabbed by the government will be, as from January 31, completely locked out of all hospitality and entertainment venues, gyms, hospitals, even bottle shops — including the drive-through variety.
Premier Mark McGowan issued the following warning on January 13:
Life will be very difficult for the unvaccinated.[1] … No pub, no bottle shop, no gym, no yoga class, no gigs, no dance floors, no hospital visits.[2]
Announcing the further expansion of an all-encompassing vaccine passport system, he informed the state’s residents that such measures will remain in place for many “years”. As McGowan candidly stated, such segregationist policies will allow the vaccinated to be confident they are “only mixing with other vaccinated people”.[3] The fact that the vaccinated can not only catch COVID but also spread it appears not to have registered in the Premier’s mind.
McGowan has also revealed an expectation that his federal counterpart to further consolidate discrimination by redefining “fully vaccinated” to mean three doses rather than two — and Western Australia would follow suit when that occurred, effectively making ongoing boosters strictly compulsory.[4] “Our expectation is that in order to be fully vaccinated, the Commonwealth rules will say it is three doses. And once that happens, we will move to the three-dose rule in due course,” McGowan says.[5]
We are witnessing here the rise of the tyrannical ruler and a revival of the totalitarian concept that the “health” of the people always trumps even the most basic rights of the individual.[6]
Totalitarianism can be defined as “a form of government that theoretically permits no personal freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the State”.[7] This political phenomenon is characterised by a strong government that attempts to exercise full control over the individual, up to and including coercion and repression.
Many Australians are hopelessly ignorant of these important lessons from the totalitarian past. They remain entirely unaware that totalitarianism often emerges as a gradual process towards the consolidation of absolute power and control over society, which can easily spread without much of the population first noticing it and taking hold before it is too late.[8]
The rise of totalitarianism is often initiated by means of media propaganda and government initiatives that engender “scientifically proven” control measures. These measures can be justified on the basis of community protection and are aimed at establishing a permanent state of surveillance which encompasses a step-by-step exclusion of ‘undesirable’ elements of society.
In this context, the idea of “science” is often employed by totalitarian governments to disseminate societal fear and provide some form of justification for the implementation of far-reaching measures aiming to eliminate any real or perceived threat to society at large.[9] Accompanying totalitarian government there is always the deliberate dehumanization of part of the population, which then becomes the target to all sorts of discriminatory rules and gross human rights violations. This disturbing scenario may eventually result not only in social exclusion but also, as history shows in the worst scenario, physical extermination.
For the gradual process towards the consolidation of totalitarian power, a form of mass support must be orchestrated that can eventually foment a sense of permanent crisis and widespread fear in the community. This serves to feed the urge of the populace to accept emergency “measures” in face of this alleged threat to society.[10] In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt, one of the leading political theorists of the 20th century, vividly describes what she calls the “temporary alliance between the mob and the elite”, and details how, in order to gradually obtain absolute power and control, “gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts”.[11]
Dr Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Belgium’s Ghent University, contends that “historical analysis shows that so-called ‘mass formation’ can be the first step toward totalitarianism and atrocity in the name of collective welfare.”[12] He explains that the response of many governments to the COVID-19 crisis is an example of the psychological concept of “mass formation, a kind of broad scale hypnosis that causes large groups of people to band together to fight a common enemy with complete lack of concern for the loss of individual rights, privileges, and even personal well-being.” It leads to “a kind of mental intoxication of connectedness, which is the real reason why people continue to buy into the narrative, even if it’s utterly absurd or blatantly wrong.”[13]
It might be instructive at this point to highlight the example of Nazi Germany as its ignoble history is particularly pedagogical. From the outset the Nazi regime decided on prevention against infectious diseases as a key public policy. The Nazi approach to public health was based on a conviction that the causes of epidemics are preventable, and this betokened health immunisation measures in the workplace. These ideas saw the Jews as the carriers of a deadly disease. As a result, German Jews were considered to pose a threat to public health and responsible, it was claimed, for actual current epidemics requiring isolation and quarantine. Hence the Nazi race laws of 1935 were underpinned by images of protection against a deadly virus and the need for forced immunisation of the general population.
In August 1938 Germans of Jewish background were forced to carry infamous transit passports that limited their access to various types of services and establishments, both public and private, including restaurants, cafes, pubs, cinemas, theatres and museums. These passports became part of a broader health policy that promoted a state of increasing segregation of the German Jewish population.
To instil fear among the German population, a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda was the idea that Jews were the spreaders of a contagious disease. The government then ordered the production of posters with a quarantine notice at the entrance to the Jewish ghettos, warning the curious about the ‘health dangers’ of venturing into those spaces of segregation. Tracking and identifying ‘spreaders of the virus’ was a Herculean task at a time when computers were still a distant dream. However, the Nazi regime was able to efficiently identify, track, and classify that segment of the population, whether from Germany or the occupied territories.
By the end of 1946, the Nazi leaders were formally condemned in the eyes of the world before a makeshift international court and on the premises of the only public facility still standing in Nuremberg. The lawsuit against the Nazi doctors gave rise to the Nuremberg Code, a document endorsing ten principles that were incorporated into the doctor-patient relationship after the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. The Nuremberg Code upholds the concept of bodily autonomy that has as its most fundamental principle the willingness and informed consent by the patient to receive any form of medical treatment or experiment, including vaccination.
Of course, it is quite disingenuous when people call those who disagree with them “Nazis” or “Hitler”. The atrocities committed by the Nazis are placed at a unique category. The point I am making is simply that evil is often perpetrated by governments under the guise of ‘safety’ and ‘public health’. Furthermore, that totalitarian past has left for its posterity the now apparently forgotten warning that, in the name of ‘safety’ and ‘public health’ governments can implement the most atrocious perversities.
Take for instance the ongoing situation in Western Australia. The Premier has implemented deeply segregationist measures and instilled irrational fear in the populace by claiming that the unvaccinated pose a serious health risk to the vaccinated. Of course, if the vaccine worked properly and as was repeatedly promised before the first doses’ arrival, then no such a risk would exist and people would not need to be so regularly re-vaccinated. However, McGowan has accused those who chose not to get constantly vaccinated of putting the constantly vaccinated at greater risk. “If you choose to remain unvaccinated … you’re choosing to put yourself at risk, you’re choosing to put the people around you at risk, and you’re choosing to increase the burden on our health staff,” he says.[14]
These statements, apart from being profoundly divisive, make no sense from a scientific perspective. However, the Premier has resorted to hatred and dehumanisation by calling those who refuse to comply to his arbitrary commands as “dropkicks”— by which he means stupid or worthless people—for refusing to show proof of vaccination in hospitals, restaurants, pubs hotels, gyms, etc.[15] “If you’re asked to show your proof of vaccination, don’t be a dropkick,” McGowan said on January 6.[16]
This is not the first time the Premier of Western Australia has viciously attacked his own fellow citizens. On September 18, 2021, McGowan told freedom protestors who oppose mandatory vaccination to “grow a brain”. The dehumanisation of those who refuse to be jabbed are meant to turn these individuals into scapegoats for the problem society is currently facing, regardless of the facts. In short, he has decided to promote and combine an irrational fear of the virus with an irrational fear for the unvaccinated, including those who are not prepared to be constantly vaccinated. This excluded group is, therefore, the subject of official disparagement and forcefully ejected from all aspects of normal social life.
This is precisely how in the 20th century the European totalitarian regimes started. The first step towards such totalitarianism was the dehumanisation of certain people coupled with the political instrumentalization of fear – fear for one’s own life and fear of a particular group accused of posing a threat to the individual and society at large.
As a Western Australian resident I am witnessing the constant implementation of lockdowns, police-enforced quarantines, mask mandates, border closures and travel restrictions, vaccine passports and public shaming of critical voices. As has been properly said, “these are all examples of dehumanising measures that should have no place in a system of democracy and the rule of law”. [17] We are also seeing, the ongoing relegation of some individuals to the peripheries whilst singling them out as irresponsible and undesired because of the ‘risk’ they allegedly pose to others, leading to society gradually excluding them.[18]
Of course, I am in no way comparing the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century to what I have been able to identify as the undeniable despotic inclinations of Western Australia’s Premier. However, I would like to inform the reader that what we are witnessing in this State is the emergence of a deeply oppressive regime and a local media that acts as propaganda machine trying to justify fear-based measures that ultimately lead to the segregation of individuals who are now treated less as citizens and more as a threat and a burden to society.[19] In this sense, of course, there is no doubt in my mind that Western Australia has effectively taken the path that leads to absolute power and tyranny.
Augusto Zimmermann is Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Perth, WA. He is also Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney campus. From 2012 to 2017, he served as a Law Reform Commissioner in Western Australia. While serving as Associate Dean (Research) at Murdoch School of Law, he was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research, in 2012. Professor Zimmermann is the author/co-author/editor/co-editor of numerous academic articles and books, including of Fundamental Rights in the Age of Covid-19 (Connor Court Publishing, 2021) and Emergency Powers, COVID-19 Restrictions & Mandatory Vaccination – A Rule-of-Law Perspective (Connor Court Publishing, 2022).
[1] Daniel Khmelev, ‘West Australian Govt Locks Out Unvaccinated From More Venues’, at January 13, 2022, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-australian-govt-locks-out-unvaccinated-from-more-venues_4212590.html
[2] Daniel Khmelev, ‘West Australian Govt Locks Out Unvaccinated From More Venues’, at January 13, 2022, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-australian-govt-locks-out-unvaccinated-from-more-venues_4212590.html
[3] Josh Zimmerman and Charlotte Elton, ‘COVID-19 in WA: Mark McGowan About To Make Life ‘Very Difficult’ For the Unvaccinated’, The West Australian, 13 January 2022, at https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/covid-19-in-wa-mark-mcgowan-about-to-make-life-very-difficult-for-the-unvaccinated-c-5297834
[4] Josh Zimmerman and Charlotte Elton, ‘COVID-19 in WA: Mark McGowan About To Make Life ‘Very Difficult’ For the Unvaccinated’, The West Australian, 13 January 2022, at https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/covid-19-in-wa-mark-mcgowan-about-to-make-life-very-difficult-for-the-unvaccinated-c-5297834
[5] Josh Zimmerman and Charlotte Elton, ‘COVID-19 in WA: Mark McGowan About To Make Life ‘Very Difficult’ For the Unvaccinated’, The West Australian, 13 January 2022, at https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/covid-19-in-wa-mark-mcgowan-about-to-make-life-very-difficult-for-the-unvaccinated-c-5297834
[6] Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethics: The Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6.
[7] ‘Totalitarianism’, Britannica Dictionary, at https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism
[8] Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau, ‘Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization’, https://brownstone.org/articles/totalitarianism-and-the-five-stages-of-dehumanization/
[9] Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau, ‘Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization’, https://brownstone.org/articles/totalitarianism-and-the-five-stages-of-dehumanization/
[10] Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau, ‘Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization’, https://brownstone.org/articles/totalitarianism-and-the-five-stages-of-dehumanization/
[11] Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego/CA: Harvest Book, 1968) 31.
[12]Ashley Sadler, ‘Clinical psychologist warns of totalitarianism, atrocity resulting from mass COVID buy-in’, LifeSiteNews, 10 December 2021, available at https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/clinical-psychologist-warns-of-totalitarianism-atrocity-resulting-from-covid-buy-in/?utm_source=top_news&utm_campaign=usa
[13] Ibid.
[14] Daniel Khmelev, ‘West Australian Govt Locks Out Unvaccinated From More Venues’, at January 13, 2022, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-australian-govt-locks-out-unvaccinated-from-more-venues_4212590.html
[15] Daniel Khmelev, ‘West Australian Premier Uses Slur Against Residents Over Vaccine Passports’, The Epoch Times, January 7, 2022, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-australian-premier-attacks-residents-over-vaccine-passports_4198658.html
[16] Daniel Khmelev, ‘West Australian Premier Uses Slur Against Residents Over Vaccine Passports’, The Epoch Times, January 7, 2022, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-australian-premier-attacks-residents-over-vaccine-passports_4198658.html
[17] Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau, ‘Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization’, https://brownstone.org/articles/totalitarianism-and-the-five-stages-of-dehumanization/
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
As I commented on another thread, we DO have a Prime Minister. It’s just that he seems reluctant to exercise the power of his office in the common good. Thus do we see Victoria’s Daniels stage-manage inquiries with compliant investigators that, as we all knew, would conclude nobody was to blame for the history of the state’s covid-related debacles. On the other side of the country, as Augusto writes, that Premier is another power-mad twerp with the local press in his back pocket and the enforcement machinery of the State, the police, ready to come down hard on all who object.
There is much Morrison could say and do, yet he does and says nothing.
I suspect the focus groups and polling have told him it is better to go along to get along. I can’t speak for other Quadrant readers, but such a man has lost my vote when the election is called.
Vote labor? No, not at all. I just won’t vote at all for the Reps.
Agree completely with N. Strong.
There is so much Morrison could have said, could have done.
The Prime Minister has been a reluctant ‘leader’ from the beginning.
No vote
Nothing like the possibility of losing a hold on power to inspire a politician to change his mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyv7PvBG9kc
“what we are witnessing in this State is the emergence of a deeply oppressive regime and a local media that acts as propaganda machine trying to trying to justify fear-based measures that ultimately lead to the segregation of individuals who are now treated less as citizens and more as a threat and a burden to society.” The media in Qld, Victoria and NSW are exactly the same. I no longer believe their claims to their once-proud Fourth Estate role. How has this happened?
Prof, you keep making great arguments here however nothing happens, I’d be happy to contribute to legal challenges and so would many others, please put yourself to the fore and take this to court. Otherwise it’s just legal argument that has no effect whatsoever except to make you feel good.
Professor Zimmermann, does a mandate have the same legal authority as a law? If it does, there would still be ways to oppose it; but, if it does NOT…
N. Strong is correct.
We are a Federation.
Morrison is prime minister.
Yet he refuses to engage.
Easier to pick fights with Craig Kelly and George Christensen than to have a principle.
I hope and expect the Coalition to be decimated in May, and yes I know that this may mean a Labor government, though a plethora of conservative and/or libertarian independents is possible.
In serious problem solving, one looks at underlying causes in structure.
The Australian Constitution is in dire and urgent need of a re-do.
I have yet to see anything from those claiming that Morrison should “act” or “engage” to control the excesses of State Premiers. Please explain exactly what “many things” he could say or do. Please explain exactly what “power of his office” he has available to use “for the common good”.
The “National Cabinet” forum, a Morrison initiative, has nor legislative power over the States. While I’m not a lawyer, I have a copy of our Constitution ready to hand, and I can find nothing there to suggest that Morrison might use. Section 92 is irrelevant because it refers only to duties and charges on trade between the states. There is nothing there to stop States controlling access through their borders.
So, please, let’s be fair. If we have a constitutionally lawful and politically practicable scheme that Morrison might adopt, we should not keep it to ourselves while insisting that Morrison should “do something”. Do what, precisely.
Morrison is pathetic. McGowan is satisfying what the majority of West Australians want, which is isolation from the east; but the rhetoric is extreme and the authoritarian tendencies have been growing for over a decade. Some others stupidities include:
– Mandatory sentencing for assaults on police officers;
– Ban on state facilities for use by Geert Wilders;
– Restricting the CCC to investigating ‘serious’ misconduct;
– Ban on private prosecutions, centralising the criminal justice in the hands of the state and unlike every other state;
– Banning rather than regulating gel-based water guns;
– Prohibition on owning a sword or any weapon for self-defence in your own home;
– And recently having to get a license to not get your dog sterilised (i.e. unnecessary surgery is mandatory unless you get a permission slip);
The state controls every aspect of our lives.
Doubting Thomas:
The Constitution in Section 109 provides for Commonwealth legislation to override state legislation. He blocked Pauline Hanson’s attempt to use it.
As for what he should say, he should say this:
“I was one of the first Australians to get vaccinated. I don’t regret it because the vaccines are good and effective. They are not as effective as we had hoped but we must accept that and come to terms with it. Nonetheless getting vaccinated is the right thing to do. Everyone should get vaccinated. Simultaneously I understand that a small minority object to it or are hesitant. I ask you to reconsider even as I accept your right to bodily autonomy. Restrictions may apply to you at the behest of the states, but I wish to be clear that Australia will not be a society based on medical apartheid. Police brutality to protestors is absolutely wrong and I condemn it. This is a stressful and difficult time. No-one benefits from demonisation or division. I ask everyone to stay calm and get vaccinated; and regardless of your vaccination status, everyone needs to be taking time to improve their health and hygiene.”
I don’t see how s109 could be relevant in this instance. Exactly what laws conflict? Means of administering the laws may differ, eg the police brutality in some states, but the laws themselves don’t conflict.
The whole object of the Labor states’ restrictions is to “protect their citizens”, and polls indicate that the majority of voters just love it. The unified subtext is to “get Morrison”, for Labor to win the coming election.
Morrison will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, and that’s the whole point. Effectively there’s nothing he can do.
Tonight, Chairman Mark announced that the border that was supposed to be reopening on Feb. 5 won’t actually be reopening, because of this just horrible spread of Omicron in the eastern states. However, from that date the emperor WILL actually allow some people to enter his hermit kingdom–with quarantine, etc. As the Jan. 31 ban of the unvaccinated in so many places was in preparation for the reopening (ostensibly, anyway), the pushing back of the reopening will push back the ban, right? Check again! In what I heard of the press conference, there was not one word about restrictions on the unvaccinated, one way or another. But I’m sure that, with the spread we already have (despite remaining Fortress WA), and what will come in when we return to accepting some people from outside this fiefdom, such restrictions are still necessary to save our crumbling hospital system–I mean, to save lives.
My comment is restricted to the WA situation although I agree with the points made in the article generally. Covid is on its way to becoming endemic world wide. WA has so far largely defied it by becoming a hermit kingdom. The latest is that the 5th February opening date has been postponed with now new date announced. If they open in the future with long quarantine requirements hardly anyone will go there. If they open without lengthy quarantine they will inevitably have a surging outbreak because it has been shown that vaccines reduce ICU and deaths but not the prevalence if infection. New treatments (Pfizer has a very promising one) and better vaccines may come but WA is just delaying the inevitable. They should open up now before the non health related costs become too severe.
Adam J, the Commonwealth can only make laws in respect of matters listed in Section 51. Those are the only laws covered by Section 109. Public health is not one of those.
However, Section 51 (i) includes ‘trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States’ within that list. One definition of ‘commerce’ includes ‘social interaction between people’. It is now regarded as dated although it probably wasn’t in 1901. So if you consider ‘among’ to apply both between and within States, there could be an argument that the Commonwealth could pass a law outlawing border closures and possibly even vaccination mandates.
DT: You say there is nothing Morrison could have done to make the premiers behave themselves. I can think of several things.
1/ When Victoria closed playgrounds, introduced curfews, banned golf and imposed all the other absurdities the Andrews government specialises in, Morrison might have observed that Victoria had lost the plot. He knew it at the time; Victorians of the non-Karen variety knew it too and had to endure the world’s longest lockdown.
He could have said something, taken Andrews to task, and didn’t.
2/ When the premiers closed borders and punished their own economies and populations, Morrison might have gone to court to get them opened. Instead, when Christian Porter joined Fat Clive’s case against WA border closure, his government dropped out of the case almost as soon as it joined it.
The result: McGowan now feels emboldened to insist closure and covidiocy policies will be in place “for years”. And, again, Morrison says nothing.
3/ The Premiers have persistently rooted their economies. Every injurious step they have taken has been underwritten by Morrison’s federal government. It’s a case of ‘damage your state, damage the nation – no worries! We’ll pick up the bill.’
Morrison could still win back my vote and he could do it today (but won’t, being a coward) by saying that McGowan’s plan to get everyone in WA triple-jabbed before opening up and allowing covid in is just plain stupid, which it is.
Morrison could say that, as he must surely by now understand, that the jabbed catch covid and spread it just as readily. If he is not aware of infection rates in 100% vaxxed countries — Iceland, Gibraltar, Isreal — going through the roof he is either ignoring that fact so as not to rile the premiers or he isn’t on top of his brief by keeping up with pandemic news and developments.
There IS one last hope: replace Morrison with Dutton. If the Libs are going to be thrashed on election day, they might as well be thrashed with a man of principle at the helm.
I almost miss Turnbull, whose monumental ego would never, ever would have seen him assume the position and invite the premiers to have their way with him.
4/
Oh dear, Augusto is upset indeed, even invoking Nazism. May I remind him of the recent WA Govt election result whereby MM was given an astonishing mandate to do exactly what he has done. The highly voluble minority were drowned by the silent majority. Best that WA wait and see how the Pandemic pans out before opening up.
Not strongly related to the article, but this MIT woman has good credentials – I’d listen to her in preference to Morrison, Andrews, McGowan…
.
https://americanfaith.com/we-will-likely-see-an-alarming-increase-in-several-major-neurodegenerative-diseases-caused-by-covid-vax-mit-research-scientist/
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U11sy9wFTjE
Not strongly related to the article, but this MIT woman has good credentials – I’d listen to her in preference to Morrison, Andrews, McGowan…
.
americanfaith.com/we-will-likely-see-an-alarming-increase-in-several-major-neurodegenerative-diseases-caused-by-covid-vax-mit-research-scientist/
.
youtube.com/watch?v=U11sy9wFTjE
Good informative piece Augusto, thank you.
As I see it these Premiers are getting away with their behaviour primarily due to lack of effective parliamentary opposition, particularly in W. Australia. Not sure just who is stacking the Liberal Party Branches there, but surely it has to be the Greens, going by the loopy, loony policies they took into the last state election,and the loopy,loony little fellow they had leading…..pretty well handing the place over, almost lock stock and barrel, to a tough, can do sort of head kicker, like McGowan. Put a tough, call’em out sort of man who won’t back down, prepared to take advice where necessary, but not be beholding to it, and who recognises the primary importance of all our mining industries and agriculture, up against him, and I think he’d be forced to pull back on these excesses. The same goes for pretty well all the States, but W.A. takes the cake. Put simply in my view it’s an effective opposition that’s missing in action, in W.A. Victoria and Qld…..not sure about the NSW gov or the others.
@exuberan
That’s it – just get a bigger doona to hide under. In truth, I don’t mind at all.
Just watched Albanese and FryDemEggs on the TV for as long as I could bear it (perhaps 30 seconds all up). Both insist that McGowan is doing the correct and right thing. End of story.
Albanese also has a little remarked policy on including local govt in Canberra policy generation. Morrison will likely lose as by now sufficient people recognise his abject, cynical cowardice. Given the compulsion of preferential voting (allowing vote whisperers to arm the greedy, silly opportunists), Albanese will likely win. so local council greenies will be empowered by Canberra to push right up into our faces at home. A hung Senate will not stop that.
This *is* the beginning of the Great Reset, the New World Order. All it needed was a panicked “emergency” such as covid to kickstart. It may not entirely succeed but it is certainly winning as of now.
Cassandra says …
Another good article by Augusto but as some have flagged here let us not forget that an overwhelming proportion of W.A. voters supported the other view.
.
An interesting range of comments. However those who say they will stop voting are probably more dangerous to our freedoms than Emperor Mark. Please think again before you put your democratic responsibilities down the toilet. If you can’t vote for Libs or Labor find another candidate to give your valuable vote to but don’t waste the inheritance our forefathers have given us.
.
Peter OBrien, your “definition of ‘commerce’ includes ‘social interaction between people’” is a very long bow. My Concise Oxford from 1966 is certainly dated and it simply defines “commerce” as exchange of merchandise.
Doubting Thomas and Mr O’Brien:
The Federal Government has extremely broad legislative powers in part because of the external affairs clause. Pauline Hanson tried to outlaw passports and/or mandates but Morrison stopped it. There was no suggestion it was unconstitutional for her to do so. The government can outlaw these things yet it does not.
Public health is not in the constitution but nonetheless there is a health department. Education is not and neither is narcotics. Ditto. Perhaps there shouldn’t be but I don’t think they are going to be declared unconstitutional.
Section 51 also gives the federal government power to make laws regarding quarantine. This power is in PARLIAMENT, not the PM or an unconstitutional “national cabinet”; but as the leader of the party in power in the House, Mr. Morrison could have prevented people being locked up when entering–or reentering–another state. Instead, he shafted that responsibility onto the states (who have complained about the expense and hassle, after agreeing to it, but kept the power).
What I had not thought about until today is–Are not restrictions on the unvaccinated actually a form of quarantine? If so, they absolutely fall under the power of the Commonwealth to deal with.
exuberan–Because the “silent” majority–backed by all the loudest voices, including the entire ordinary media–supported Chairman Mark and his tyranny, you think we should not complain about any of his decisions? It’s so nice to know that you think it justifiable that, from next month, I cannot visit friends in hospital, no matter how needy they are or how healthy I am. It’s nice to know that you think it’s fine that I will no longer be able to sit down in a restaurant or go to the cricket (with the couple hundred other people who are spread throughout the WACA at a Sheffield Shield match). It’s nice to know that you don’t think it’s wrong that the owner of a nearby cafe is likely to lose her business, that one of my best friends and her whole family have had to leave or change jobs, that a good family friend in the Southwest can no longer VOLUNTEER to help fight bushfires, and that other friends who are career nurses and teachers have had to leave their jobs. When masks are required for eight-year-olds (as in Vic.), will that also be justifiable? What about if the jabs become compulsory for school attendance, as they probably will?
Prof. Zimmermann is absolutely right to bring up the Nazis. Less than a year after Hitler had come to power, the Nazis overwhelmingly won a German election–even securing a slight majority in Dachau concentration camp. The majority wins an election, but that never, never means that the majority is automatically morally right.
I don’t understand why everyone is so coy about making the link between Fauci and the Nazis. Read the Robert Kennedy book, “The Real Anthony Fauci” and it is clear that, based on publicly available evidence, Antonio Fauci’s sabotage of the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroqil trials, plus the promotion of, by his own admission, inappropriately tested vaccines, he is now arguably responsible for more global deaths than Adolf Eichmann managed in all of his death camps. And the use of children under five as guinea pigs for vaccines trials – when the long-term side effects are completely unknown, makes Josef Megeler look a bit of a whimp.
Brian Boru,
yes it is a long bow. Quick and Garran certainly define it in a limited sense. But the High Court has shown it is willing to draw a long bow on occasions – Mabo, Thoms etc.
We are witnessing de Tocqueville’s Tyranny of the Majority, with WA Characteristics (following the lead from the Victorian version already ably implemented by Chairman Dan). The playbook works well: instil, play up and then play on the fear of the majority, and then ride to their rescue as the only one who can save the day. Then, bingo, look at the landslide election spoils to be won.
It is the Fourth Estate, however, that has delivered the critical necessary conditions for the situation we are now in: they did the instilling and playing up of the fears. All the canny politicians have had to do is to turn the fear to their advantage. Instead of providing balanced information to the public and pursuing rational, targeted strategies commensurate with the actual nature and impact of the virus, they have taken the easy vote-winning path of following the stampede. And so we have ended up with the blunt instruments of lockdowns and de facto and de jure vaccination mandates (plus many other absurdities too numerous to mention).
Here is but a recent example of the Fourth Estate’s role in creating fear and loathing – the Janet Albrechtsen piece on the Djokovic case in The Australian, “How to make a martyr out of a molehill” (17/1/2022). In the article, Albrechtsen has her own mini “deplorables” moment:
“Whether you agree with a person who chooses not to get vaccinated or not – and I don’t – it is not yet illegal to be unvaccinated. Until that happens, there ought to be room in a democracy for idiots, even for foreign ones”.
Disturbed by the implications of this kind of rhetoric, I contributed what I thought was a moderately expressed contrary online comment:
“Calling them “idiots”? What has our society become when even the best of our classical liberal commentators can be so disrespectful and divisive. Such “othering” is a path to a darker place”.
The Australian, in its editorial wisdom, saw fit to reject my comment. Apparently there is no debate to be had once The Australian has decided to be pro-vax. I guess the Vax Science must now be settled, so any dissenting minority voices can now be steamrolled by the acquiescent majority. Welcome to Democracy with Communist Characteristics.
Brian Boru,
just to clarify, if I am prevented from selling you my labour or you are prevented from selling me your goods and services and I am prevented from buying them, is that not a restraint on commerce?
Rebekah, My answers are a resounding Yes, Yes, and Yes, if it means that I am not robbed of the final years of my life by the Wuhan Flu. And if that means I am being selfish and uncaring towards my fellow man, then so be it. And Jesus wept.
Any discussion about liberty that omits sound treatment of responsibility is a waste, if not fully destructive.
Peter OBrien
Well Peter, hope springs eternal. Maybe yes but if anyone could get that past the same High Court that found that “absolutely” doesn’t mean “absolutely” I would be surprised.
Brian Boru
I wouldn’t pin my hope on the HC for anything, but that shouldn’t stop the Commonwealth government from trying. There is no doubt in my mind that what McGowan is doing is a breach of human rights, but using the external affairs power to counter this is fraught with danger. It would give rulings of the UN a status that will allow them to metastasise throughout in our common law.
You can almost feel the frustration in Professor Zimmerman’s post but he is right,(as he always is), and the comments are entertaining
A marvellous thing is happening in Western Australia that nobody has mentioned. More than a fair few are now referring to their Premier as “Mark”
Surely a sign of some type of mass hysteria, or as the Professor quotes it
“A kind of mental intoxication of connectiveness”
In any event, everything the Professor says is true. I’m sure his contributions here are for anything but to make him feel good
exuberan
If you are willing to see children gagged (which cannot possibly be good for growing bodies and brains), and jabbed with experimental medication with dangerous side effects and unknown future effects to prolong your old age, then I pity any grandchildren you have. I have no children, but I hope that I would be willing to die if it would save my Sunday school kids from these jabs.
Then there is the issue of freedom–something that used to be more dear to the Anglo-Saxon race than life. If we can close down the world for a disease with a recovery rate in the high 90s, we can do it for anything. My grandfather did not fight in the Pacific to win for future generations a life of cowering slavery. Life is a risk–but a life without risks is a life without the ability of achievement.
Peter OB. The external affairs power is a loophole which allows an unscrupulous government to pass laws beyond the regular otherwise envisioned in our Constitution.
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I would not even get to thinking about UN consequences, although that is a pragmatic reality. I put that kind of legislation in the same category as bills of attainder and retrospective laws.
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Yet another gripe I have about the HC, along with Gaudron J. finding in Kruger that our govt could even enact genocide. That’s how much she respects fundamental rights.
From above … Fauci’s deaths … hundreds a day.
https://notrickszone.com/2022/01/21/analysis-by-german-prof-thousands-of-hidden-deaths-daily-may-be-greatest-medical-debacle-in-human-history/
And all his minions who force mandated vaccination on the rest of us are no better than the death camp guards.
Brian Boru, coudn’t agree more.
It would be nice to think there could be some legal route that would free Australia from the totalitarian urges of its failed and failing dictator premiers.
Meanwhile it is worth reiterating that the masks do not work, the lockdowns do not work, the ‘quarantine’ does not work, the testing does not work, and the so-called ‘vaccines’ are perfectly useless. The injections not only do not produce immunity and do not prevent transmission, but are an especially nasty concoction, aptly described by Dr. Zelenko as “the poison death shot”.
Worst of all, however, is the ongoing ban imposed by Scott Morrison’s government on drugs known to cure the flu-like illness in question. Hydroxychloroquine, in particular, has been known from the beginning to cure Covid when prescribed in accordance with rational protocols.
The plain fact is that it would have been much better for everyone if governments had done nothing whatsoever to manage this pandemic. Had they done nothing, the sick would simply have gone to the GP and been treated. End of story.
God help us if any real threat or emergency confronts the nation.
Alistair: thanks for posting the link to the article by the German professor. Below is the link to the article that the professor is discussing:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356756711_Latest_statistics_on_England_mortality_data_suggest_systematic_mis-categorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination
The article is by a group of English researchers, who are using data supplied by Britain’s Office of National Statistics. If what they say is correct, Government policy on Covid is the most stupendous mistake ever made by those who rule us.
A FOI release in the UK in mid December illustrates how ridiculously overblown this “plandemic” has been.
Typically, the death rate in the UK is about 700,000 per year.
Since the beginning, only 17,000 deaths are attributable soley to covid.
https://youtu.be/9UHvwWWcjYw
There can be no doubt that there were many more than that attributable to the lockdowns, and suicide. Not to mention deaths due to the injection of an experimental concoction into unsuspecting innocents.
Let’s get our priorities straight.
There is a lot Morrison and his Ministers could and should have done. The Commonwealth has a quarantine power. There is already in force a Commonwealth Biosecurity Act containing extensive powers. Section 92 covers “intercourse” meaning movement of persons between the States and the High Court has not been approached since effective vaccines became available. There are a number of bases for further legislation. If the Commonwealth failed to get legislation passed or failed in Court, at least it would be seen to have acted. Leadership requires nothing less. Inaction and silence based on the sole focus of winning the next election may well be a self-destructive policy.
I think Morrison could have/should have taken overall command.
The way I see it there’s two ‘paths’ :
When the ‘attack’ is an indiscriminate attack by a foreign invader then that’s an attack on the nation and requires response from the nation not the States.
Just imagine if it boldly declared and widely known that it was an attack engineered by – Kim Jun IL ? Would the response be left up to the States?
Of course not.
And how do we know it was NOT a deliberate attack? If it looks like, walks, like, talks like….
and path number two:
When every State sees fit to declare there is a State of Emergency due to a foreign invader then there’s by definition a ‘National Emergency’ – they just defined it.
But I’m not at all sure the results would have been any better if it had all been run by Morrison. Just look around the world and see what’s the problem with the leaders: lack of any scientific understanding/rationale whatever on the one hand and total lack of empathy/concern for their constituents on the other.
It’s as simple as that. They don’t know and they don’t care. They’re having fun.
You have any reason to think Morrison would be any different?
It is disappointing to see Professor Zimmerman peddling disinformation about the approach taken by
National Socialist Germany to compulsory vaccination. The fact is that the NS regime actually continued
the move to voluntary immunization that was introduced towards the end of the Weimar Republic.
Even the leftist website Jacobin has acknowledged that reality. Opponents of “vaccine” mandates here in Australia need not falsify history to bolster their case:
“Though the Nazis were in favor of the shots, they made the pragmatic choice to keep the new, elastic enforcement of vaccination in place, even when they later officially withdrew the relaxation in 1934, according to Malte Thiessen, head of the LWL Institute for Westphalian Regional History. Hitler’s interior ministry (the department in charge of the police, among other things) proposed adding an English-style conscience clause to the vaccination law, and, in 1935, the minister instructed that “the popular character of the health laws, which must appear to be absolutely desirable in the National Socialist state, is better served if unnecessary restlessness is avoided in the implementation of the laws in the population.”
Forced vaccination against the will of kids and parents alike, which had caused outrage throughout the Weimar years, stopped happening from the 1930s on. By 1936, Germans no longer had to prove they’d gotten a smallpox vaccine to attend secondary school, and, by 1940, the policy of “elasticity” was made legally binding, and continued to be used by German governments even after the war. The Nazis instead relied on mass propaganda and the education system to convince people to choose to get vaccinated.
‘If at the end of the Weimar Republic the attitude of state actors to coercive measures changed cautiously, the ‘Third Reich’ heralded the transition from coercion to voluntary action,” writes Thiessen.”
See, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/vaccine-mandates-covid-pandemic-german-nazi-inoculation-policy
The article by Thiessen (in German) can be found here:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1524/vfzg.2013.0002/html
The Federal Health Minister could direct the TGA to withdraw their ‘provisional’ approval of those EXPERIMENTAL (non-) vaccines whereby their use would be immediately illegal; period.
…
Rebekah: I agree with you, entirely – “Life is a risk–but a life without risks is a life without the ability of achievement.”
….
Stephen: You nailed it completely, and your last sentence is the key issue for our very uncertain future – “God help us if any real threat or emergency confronts the nation.”
Hear Hear to Augusto Zimmerman, and to Rebekah Meredith, Stephen Due and N. Strong.
These truths need to be shouted from the rooftops.
May that day come soon.
(I have not yet abandoned hope of a return to sanity).
Alistair and Arthur, your article link is interesting, but it seems a little incredible. This is a big claim, and the first question anyone has to ask is, ‘Am I seeing evidence of this’?
I would say that the answer to that is probably ‘no’. Whilst I don’t generally move in 70+ yo circles, I have still not heard any stories of people dying after receiving the vacc. If I am wrong on this, and you have your own personal evidence, then please correct me.
Just about everyone I know has suffered side effects from the clot shots, but nothing that has been life-threatening.
The only defensible (though not overwhelming) argument for vaccination mandates is to prevent health systems from being overrun. (Anyone who knows a working nurse should have some idea of the stress that health systems are under.) But this is never advanced as the reason for the mandates. Instead, it seems to me from the available evidence that our political leaders at all levels are dishonestly perpetuating an unspoken falsehood that, more than the rest of us, the unvaccinated pose a serious risk of infecting others. I’ve seen some commentary that the unvaccinated carry a higher viral load at the peak of infection and that they might have the virus longer, but nothing to suggest they are so unclean as to warrant their particular exclusion from society. For our governments, apparently, the end justifies the means. Reprehensible.
“McGowan has accused those who chose not to get constantly vaccinated of putting the constantly vaccinated at greater risk. “If you choose to remain unvaccinated … you’re choosing to put yourself at risk, you’re choosing to put the people around you at risk, and you’re choosing to increase the burden on our health staff,” he says.”
Jennifer Oriel in today’s Australian reports Dementia Australia chair Graeme Samuel saying that there are an estimated half a million people living with dementia across the country. The number of Australians with dementia is expected to triple by 2050. Samuel revealed that every year, dementia costs more than $6bn in healthcare and productivity loss.
Alienation is a dangerous thing and never more so when it drifts into public sentiment and seeds the division of people into the useful and useless, the independent and dependent, the economically productive and unproductive.
Laws for voluntary assisted dying, or state-sanctioned killing, have been passed in Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland. It hasn’t remained voluntary in some European countries as Oriel records. How long before politicians and the compliant media mould majority opinion so that it is in favour of legally killing off the burden on health staff, working people and the economy posed by the demented elderly? Given the politicians’ and the people’s responses to the covid virus, that may not be long off.
Well said, DougD.
ecd In reply to sfw there is a large, current investigation in the UK for breaches against the Nuremberg Code being prepared for the International Criminal Court. Australia would have plenty of evidence for the same action. Details in the link below.
https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/group-of-activists-and-law-firm-say-met-police-are-engaged-in-criminal-investigation-over-issues-around-vaccines-and-public-health/
Who wants to have a bet that two-faced Dom will extend all mandates this week, particularly face muzzling?