“Freedom is a fragile thing… never more than one generation away from extinction.”
So warned Ronald Reagan in words relevant to all Australians today.
The National Cabinet Nine, Australia’s first junta, are desperately downplaying the recent revelation that the economic depression they imposed on this nation can never be justified. Most of the mainstream media seem to be covering for them. Why?
Based on a truly massive error in their secret modelling, this was over-pessimistic by a factor of between about 80 and 415, compounded by treating it as a state secret.
If anybody else made such a mistake with such consequences, we have to ask whether they would expect to be still in a job if not in court.
It is a long time since most Australian politicians have offered what Burke explained is the only justification for representative democracy – their judgement.
Most politicians do what they are told, by the caucus, factions, power brokers or even, we learned recently, foreign powers. Their words are rarely theirs, but instead massaged by habitués of the swamp.
They will often claim they’re following ‘the science’, pseudonym for ‘always wrong’ computer modelling. This is used to justify what President Trump almost alone refuses to do: ruin his country to achieve the aims of the Paris Accords.
In their response to Wuhan, the Nine should be asked why they have committed nine moral if not legal offences against Australia.
First, why did they increase the death rate 100-fold by ignoring, from Day 1, world’s best practice. This advised no lock down.
Second, why did they substitute computer programming for exercising judgement, especially that apparently influenced by Imperial College’s master modeler, Neil Ferguson? He was brought down not for his years of dire and wrong predictions but for his dalliances against the very social distancing rules he recommended.
Third, why did they claim the lock down was to ‘flatten the curve’, i.e., allow hospitals to cope, when they soon switched this to ‘eradication’, impossible without a vaccine?
Fourth, why was there not an effective process to ensure compliance with the Constitution. This declares Commonwealth executive power extends to its ‘execution and maintenance’. The Federal Executive Council could monitor that everything done was consistent with the constitutional requirement that we are one, borderless nation. Instead of pulling out of the High Court border closure case, as abuses became more cruel and partisan against ordinary Australians and so indulgent towards the elites, the prime minister could and should have instituted his own.
Fifth, why have the junta not ensured that their decisions be subject to scrutiny as to legality, especially as most are effected by subordinate legislation by a minister. Since parliaments have too often stripped themselves of the power to disallow such subordinate legislation and most seem to have fled from the capitals, the power to make all subordinate legislation responding to the virus could have been elevated to the Governor-General and made for shorter periods. The Executive Council process would have then ensured
a more independent appraisal, especially through legal advice that any measure is within power and does not unnecessarily restrict the rights of Australians. This would include the common law right to conduct a business, a critical issue in the recent Federal Court ruling that the live export cattle ban by Gillard government minister Joe Ludwig was not only unlawful but constituted misfeasance in public
office.
As noted here there is good reason to believe the near blanket overseas travel ban is similarly unlawful.
Sixth, why haven’t the states also required all Wuhan virus response measures go to their state executive councils? Already, one of Melbourne’s leading QCs, Michael Wyles, has questioned the validity of Premier Andrews’ extraordinary martial law curfew.
Seventh, why did the Nine keep their modelling secret? The Daily Telegraph’s Matthew Benns (10 Sept) was told by the chief medical officer that only people with ’scientific brains’ could understand it.
Eighth, why did not one of the junta or their many advisers notice their modelling contained a serious and extraordinarily obvious error which demanded close and deep interrogation?
The modelling claimed that if nothing were done, the daily demand for new intensive care beds (ICU) would be remarkable; over 35,000, and under a lock down: 5,000.
This finally explains the suspension of elective surgery.
These projections were intended for total hospitalisation but mistakenly inserted in the column for ICUs. The correct figures which should have been 8,750 and 1,250.
To bring everything down to earth, note that at the time of writing, there are 162 in hospital of which 18 are in ICUs, with 12 of those in Victoria.
If the details had been made public, the error would have been noticed by at least some observers. Had the media and opposition strongly campaigned for the publication of the modelling, the model’s deficiencies might have been exposed.
In the meantime, James Cook University’s Professor McBryde told the government’s modelers about the error three months ago and is still waiting for the corrections promised. With this scandal, there can be no better demonstration of the corruption of power. The Nine seized inordinate power at the beginning, ignored best practice, accepted seriously deficient modelling and have increasingly been cruel, unfair and inconsistent in the exercise of power, at times even bordering on the unbalanced.
Ninth, this leads to the final question: what have the junta done to ensure that, as with previous pandemics, the outrage they presided over is not repeated in the next inevitable pandemic? It is clear that the political class seem determined to ensure the decline of the nation.
The people made Australia into one country under the Corowa Plan.
The only solution to the restoration of Australia is, I believe, by the political class once again standing aside for the people under a new Corowa Plan.
It’s time to Take Back Your Country.
Do have a look at the petition.
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Professor David Flint AM is an emeritus professor of law and was chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Press Council, president of the National Federation of the English Speaking Union, Associate Commissioner with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and convenor of the Committee of Australian Law Deans. He has been National Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy since the 1999 referendum campaign. He has authored books on topics such as the media, international economic law and on the Constitution. At Barcelona in 1991 he received a World Jurist Association award as World Outstanding Legal Scholar. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1995. His Good Sauce show,Take Back Your Country, discusses the problems and solutions to the decay of federalism and democracy.
