There is danger in writing an article on Covid’s Australian Passing Parade. You just know there will be more Covid gauleiters tip-toeing from the wreckage almost before you press “send” to the editor. And so it has gone … two in one week. Not only is whinging Boris Johnson leaving the Covid building (at last). Victoria is losing its Covid point man, the resigning Chief Health Officer and former earring-wearing reality TV star, Brett Sutton.
In the latter’s case, not so soon after his political boss, The Danster, declared “Covid exceptionalism” over, so as to draw comment about rats and sinking ships, mind you. Just a safe distance from the carnage that he, principally, left all about him.
Sutton is moving to CSIRO, the organisation that has been lying about climate change for at least two decades. I am not sure if this means a move to Canberra, where his brother (Trevor, senior official at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and sister-in law (Jane Halton, Australia’s “corona queen” and Bill Gates’ vaccinator-girl down under) reside. Canberra’s power couple.
As Mark Antony might have said, I come here to bury Sutton, not to praise him. But the strangely appealing, to some at least, public servant has earned the plaudits of the leftist media branch of the Covid Class. To them, he is a hero. Like all of the others to have experienced a soft landing. So, before we come to Sutton’s actual record, let us sample the hagiography.
One of The Guardian’s drooling females headlined the following:
Farewell Brett Sutton, the silver fox chief health officer Victorians couldn’t keep their eyes off.
Not content with this opening, she continued:
Like a superhero in an open-necked shirt and a vaguely sexy beard, he emerged during the Covid crisis to keep us safe. And now he’s gone!
A cold shower for the lady, please.
It gets worse:
The rise of Brett Sutton: Sex Symbol came shortly after we all noticed Dan Andrews had developed crazy eyes from weeks of perpetual hypervigilance. As a sidekick, Sutton had it all: hair, open collars, evidence of employment. He was the Robin to Andrews’ Batman. The Donkey to his Shrek. The Piglet to his Pooh.
After that, I had to stop reading. Another Guardianista female chimed in:
‘It nearly crushed me’: Brett Sutton resigns as Victoria’s chief health officer.
Well, it nearly crushed us too, matey.
Then there is The Age:
Book extract: On a perfect autumn day, Brett Sutton sat on the couch in tears. It was his first big call.
Book extract! That’s all we need. Will it be as good as Brittany Higgins’ (possibly now not forthcoming) book? The Sutton-related book referred to is called Life as We Knew It by Aisha Dow of The Age. For a far more reliable read, I recommend any of John Stapleton’s books on the Covid disaster, for example his latest, Australia Breaks Apart, or see him on Nick Cater’s Battleground program on ADH TV, https://watch.adh.tv/nick-cater-s-battleground/season:2/videos/james-mathias-thursday-8-june-2023
Next, Malcolm Fraser’s signature creation, the Special Broadcasting Service:
Brett Sutton became an unlikely viral sensation during the COVID-19 pandemic, but he has joined a wave of leaders to the global disease response stepping down from their roles.
Professor Sutton became Victoria's chief health officer in 2019 and spearheaded the state's policy on coronavirus, appearing on television daily and gaining fans that dedicated calendars, mugs and book clubs to his image.
The SBS revealed Sutton’s new role:
Professor Sutton will take up a new role as director of health and biosecurity at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency.
Director of biosecurity? That sounds a tad ominous, next pandemic-wise. But he probably won’t have much say in that. The World Health Organisation will be in charge of us all by then. He will be just another front man. What might he be researching at CSIRO? How to get mRNA vaccines to market even faster than last time? How to cover up fake clinical trials? How to get more funding for gain-of-function research? Even better nudging techniques? How to adapt lockdowns to climate change? How to plug the few remaining gaps in the panopticon?
The SBS’s idiosyncratic take on the resignations of Ardern – yet another to have gone – Sutton and Mark McGowan focused on the issue of “exhaustion”. Those of us who lost our careers, our businesses, in some cases our families and friends, and in other cases our lives and our health, as a direct result of the actions and words of these people are clearly less important that the “exhaustion” of members of the Covid criminal class.
Then this encomium:
"He brought a … reassuring, measured response that I think overwhelmingly endeared him to Victorians," former Health minister Martin Foley told ABC Melbourne radio.
Foley once nailed his own colours to the mast by attending a launch of Louise Milligan’s pre-emptive hatchet job on George Pell. So, I am not treating him as a reliable source. On anything. Anyone who thinks that Victoria’s response to Covid was “measured” needs counselling urgently. Even the Chinese Communist Party thought that Australia – let alone Victoria – was going too far. Reassuring? Sutton was reassuring the people of Victoria of the need for a hysterical response to a minor virus. “Reassuring” is only virtuous when the truth is being spoken. Otherwise, it is dangerously, indeed, fatally, misleading. People have been jailed for far less.
Here is Foley again:
"He always spoke truth to power”.
To which “power” did Sutton speak “truth”, I wonder. There was no countervailing power in Australia to stand up to the Covid State. As for truth, well, see again under Pants-on-Fire Albanese, Scott Morrison, Brittany Higgins and Lisa Wilkinson. I guess it is hardly surprising that truth has lost just about all of its currency in public life when everyone from birth up is taught that truth is relative. You know, your truth and my truth.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation called Sutton “Victoria’s Covid guardian”.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-10/chief-health-officer-brett-sutton-covid-guardian/102460072
“Guardian” is defined as:
… a person who protects or defends something.
Well, Sutton and his peers, like Kerry Chant in New South Wales and Jeannette Young (now comfortably off as Governor) in Queensland, did not protect us from a virus from which we did not need much protection. No, they ditched half a century of settled science on lockdowns and masks, and allowed us to be exposed to dangerous non-vaccines that they all insisted we take. They had us lining up for boosters that almost no one takes and which are no longer even recommended. They had us lining up for “tests” that were not even fit for purpose. They appeared day after day on our TV screens, spouting lies. (I support the oft-expressed view of Mike Yeadon that they knew exactly what they were doing).
Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy Australia has a slightly different take on our Brett, the “chottie”.
Rest assured - I take what he has done to all of us very personally and have a plan to make an example of him! These things take time, but we won’t forget.
It was his actions that tore our state apart and landed me in prison. If he thinks he can resign and leave it all behind him…HE’S SORELY MISTAKEN!
Well said, Monica. Craig Kelly is on the same page, and adds to the list of indictments:
Brett Sutton was an active combatant in the War Against Ivermectin.
Sutton, together with all those that fought to demonise Ivermectin or deny sick Australians access to this medicine, have blood on their hands.
And it was Sutton’s misinformation about the vaccines that gave cover to the brutal & criminal conduct of the Victorian Police to bash Victorians and even shoot rubber bullets into the backs of fleeing protestors in a public park.
Sutton and all the other State & Federal Chief Medical Officers that ignored the science, the data and the evidence - and just parroted from the marketing brochures of the vaccine sellers must be held to account.
Craig Kelly was one of the very, very few – the only one from either major party save for Gerard Rennick, Alex Antic and George Christensen – to be speaking “truth to power”. Sutton certainly wasn’t. He simply got caught up in the daily excitement of a public policy crisis, as all people who experience their one and only fifteen minutes of fame period do. And he got everything he did horribly wrong. Everything he said, everything he advised, was disastrously wrong. One hundred and eighty degrees wrong. And he gave cover, plausible deniability, to Daniel Andrews. Day after day during the longest lockdown in the world.
One unkind observer on the Twittersphere had this to say of Sutton:
Dictator Dan's utterly unaccountable, black shirt pretty boy Brett Sutton - currently being humanised by Kerry Stokes' lockdown propagandists.
https://twitter.com/GraffitiExpert/status/1321785458766958593
Just as well he has friends in low (media) places. Not to mention the fact checker industrial complex. Just try putting “brett sutton says vaccines don't stop covid transmission” into a search engine and see how you go. Even though he did, in August 2022.
Despite two, three, four doses of the vaccine, ah, it’s not so good at preventing infection in the first place. So we are getting infected, that’s why we’ve had tens of thousands of cases in this wave.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1558950231836078080
Sounds pretty clear to me. Unless Twitter and YouTube have found Brett’s body double.
Brett Sutton admits vaccines don’t work - XYZ
This was a massive backdown, a massive admission of error, said with a straight face and dutifully covered up by the ABC and all the fact checkers. Tell the big lie. Rinse. Repeat. This is the hymn sheet of the Covid and post-Covid media, and as we have seen this week with the Brittany Higgins farrago, the whole damned political class.
It has also been suggested that the whole Victorian lockdown was illegal, in submissions to a VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) hearing about the calling of the Victorian state of emergency (declared on 16 March 2020). And who was it who let the cat out of the bag? None other than the good Professor Brett. First, Sutton couldn’t even show evidence of having, as CHO, isolated the virus.
The CHO has not produced any evidence to substantiate the isolation of novel coronavirus in Cov-2 in human cells obtained from a Victorian patient. The CHO adduced evidence that he relied completely on reports he received from persons he could not identify by means he could not identify allegedly informing him there were 48 confirmed positive infections.
In cross examination, the CHO admitted he had not viewed any patient medical records, did not have any patient details, nor did he make any enquiries to ascertain further information, that he simply accepted the reports provided to him as being true and accurate.
In cross examination, the CHO gave evidence that the positive identifications of alleged infections prior to 15 March 2020 came via an approved PCR Test and that no blood test was ordered to support the PCR result.
The CHO later acknowledged that no approved PCR test was in existence prior to 18 March 2020 and therefore the alleged positive results could not have come from any approved PCR test.
Furthermore, having admitted he had no first hand knowledge of the details surrounding the confirmation of infection, he could not say with any degree of certainty how any positive identification was made.
The CHO was unable to provide evidence how the positive readings were obtained and therefore based his entire assessment on unsubstantiated unsupported hearsay. The CHO did not produce any evidence to the Tribunal about the alleged 38 Infections.
Second, the CHO couldn’t say who told him of the state of emergency, and how he found out.
In order for the declaration to be compliant with the Act, each and every word the Act requires to be inserted must be inserted. It is not open for the Minister to create her own wording, she is compelled by the Act to comply with the strict intention and direction of the Act. In failing to include the word causing in her declaration, she has failed to meet the minimum standards required. It is insufficient for a Declaration to be declared unless there is a cause. It cannot be for an imaginary threat or a computer-generated threat, or any other ephemeral threat. An emergency requires there be a real, tangible, immediate and readily identifiable threat capable of remedy. The omission nullifies the veracity of the declaration, the same as if any other word was excluded such as emergency or risk or public or health. The effect of the omission is the same: the declaration is inadequate, insufficient and incorrect and cannot be relied upon in its present form.
The CHO adduced evidence that he had never seen the actual declaration and that he was informed by someone that a declaration was made, but could not identify who or when or how he was notified, and suggested it may have been by email but produced no copy.
The CHO having never received formal written notification from the Minister, relied on nothing more than hearsay.
Having no evidence upon which to rely, the CHO could not satisfy himself that a declaration for a state of emergency had been issued, and no basis to conclude that a declaration of a state of emergency was properly and lawfully declared, that it contained the relevant wording requirements under the Act, nor could he say from direct evidence that it was executed by the authorised person being the Minister.
Final Submissioins of 815 Truemans Cabin Hire Pty Ltd.pdf - Google Drive
Naturally, they got away with all this. But what a way to run a State. The state of emergency was unnecessary and caused massive pain and suffering to Victorians. Suffering that will be felt for years, decades even. That Sutton didn’t even see the declaration, and therefore, confirm the legality of the state of emergency, is a blight on his already tarnished record. Little wonder he is running from the building.
Finally, we should not forget “slug-gate”, the closing of a food business and (unproven) allegations of perverting the course of justice – against Brett Sutton, the Department of Health and Dandenong Council. Sutton was in the public eye well before Covid. This was a very seedy affair, indeed, and so typical of the governance of Victoria.
I Cook Foods was closed in 2019 after an elderly woman died in Knox Private hospital, which the caterer supplied, with listeriosis suspected as a contributing factor in her death.
Allegations before the [parliamentary] inquiry have included council officers planting a slug at the business and doctoring evidence, which Ian Cook believes was part of a concerted push to shut him down.
Mr Cook has alleged his business was considered a commercial threat to the council’s partly owned catering company, Community Chef.
… Former Greater Dandenong Council food inspector Kim Rogerson last week told the inquiry the council was operating under a culture of corruption and bullying, and accused the council of wanting to “destroy” I Cook Foods.
Channel Nine reported:
The mollusc, allegedly found in the factory of a catering company blamed for supplying contaminated food to a private hospital, where an elderly patient died, came to symbolise the questionable evidence used by the Victorian Health Department to shut down a 30-year-old family business.
Sutton's tone is alarming as he underscores the danger faced by Victorians.
"Potentially thousands of people have been exposed," he says. "We don't know the level of listeria contamination that might have occurred."
In response to the listeria outbreak, Sutton announces he has ordered the closure of I Cook Foods and the destruction of ten tonnes of their food products. To the public it seems like decisive action by the health department bureaucrat who would become Victoria's public face of the Covid pandemic.
To the company at the centre of the emergency - I Cook Foods - it is devastating. It will never recover from the closure, sacking its entire 41-strong workforce, including some with disabilities and crashing out of business. It will not even be able to sell its surplus canned-goods with the I Cook brand, so tarnished is its reputation.
But experts on Under Investigation with Liz Hayes think that Professor Sutton's urgency and alarm was misplaced, the level of risk to the Victorian public overstated, and the evidence he used to name, shame and shut down I Cook foods was shaky at best.
"When you go down a path like that, you've got to be absolutely sure of your facts. and there's no way known this guy was sure of his facts," former Victorian detective Paul Brady told Liz Hayes and her 'war table'.
Brady, who spent three years investigating the case, said ignorance was no excuse when the future of a company hung in the balance.
At the time of Brett Sutton's press conference there was no doubt in the minds of the media reporting the listeria case at Knox Private Hospital that it was an imminent threat to public health and safety.
As journalist and author Andrew Rule told Under Investigation: "The Chief Health Officer came out and said this could kill thousands. It was an enormously public and dramatic stage managed event."
But was it all an extreme overreaction?
Knox Council Health Inspector, Ray Christy, was sent in to investigate the Knox Private Hospital listeria case. Directly contradicting what Brett Sutton told the Victorian public, Christy said he found no evidence that I Cook sandwiches were the source of the listeria infection at the hospital.
"In my opinion, there wasn't a link between the patient's death and the food provided by I Cook Foods," he told Under Investigation's panel. "I couldn't find it as a result of my investigation."
Christy agreed to become a whistleblower and speak to UI out of a sense of outrage at what happened to I Cook Foods, raising the possibility that the company was ruined for no reason.
“Questionable”, indeed. Over-reaction. No evidence. Ruined for no reason. Dramatic. Stage managed. Sound at all familiar, post-Covid? Brett Sutton as CHO signed the closure order for the business. Then he later misspoke in sworn testimony at the parliamentary inquiry. He said things later found to be untrue. The science was NOT in, on slug-gate and the source of the listeria. Again, does this not sound familiar? What a cowboy. Slug-gate might well be seen as a dress rehearsal for the massively greater false arm that Sutton raised a mere year later. There is a clear pattern in Sutton’s career of playing fast and loose. Very fast, and very loose.
The case of Sutton and the rest of the Covid gang shows, once again, that reputation protection is really the only game in town, and there is literally nothing that perpetrators will not say or do to ensure they remain in the clear.
And so, off he goes to a further stage of his glittering career, while the rest of us still scratch our heads and say, what just happened?
Paul Collits
13 June 2023
The degree of corruption in Australian governments is breathtaking. The cc’s creep off to well remunerated retirements or jobs whilst the rest of are left scratching our heads and wanting to tear our hair out.
Gods, this is all such a dark French Farce. These awful human beings just scuttle away and leave the rest of us stunned. Excellent post, Paul.