Lawfare isn’t just the preserve of the elites and the insider class.
The broad progressive movement and all of its operating divisions – whether it is the woke, the climateers (just ask Mark Steyn), the mee-too sexual assault accuser class, the anti-Trumpers – have mastered the art of silencing and punishing opponents by deft use of the law.
It is a powerful tool of elimination. But sometimes the good guys can use the law to achieve justice and policy goals, too.
One headline this week caught the attention of Australia’s Covid dissidents. The Epoch Times reported:
Australian Employer Ordered to Pay Compensation for Vaccine Injured in ‘Significant Precedent’.
Apart from a case of pushback from an Australian Fair Work Commission officer (heavily slapped down in the popular press) during the Covid period, and a few isolated, heroic law firms, it is difficult to recall a single case of the law standing up for Australian citizens’ rights during all of the lockdowns, the vicious thuggery of our police forces, the abandonment of parliamentary democracy, the illegal border closures, the curtailment of overseas travel rights, the army helicopter-enforced curfews, the vaccine mandates, the Government-led prohibition of safe and effective drugs to treat Covid.
Yes, the law proved to be an ass during Australia’s Covid totalitarianism. The High Court refused to uphold Clive Palmer’s action against the Western Australian Government for border closures, for example.
A travesty. The system failed us. The rule of law proved chimeric. Human Rights Commissions? They were MIA during Covid, when massive and obvious human rights infractions were occurring all over the place, on an hourly basis.
Yet, there is new hope for revenge. I mean justice. Senator Gerard Rennick, one of Australia’s “Covid Five in the Commonwealth Parliament (with Alex Antic, Matt Canavan, Malcolm Roberts and Ralph Babet) has quickly noted:
‘Employers are now going to think twice about forcing people to get a vaccine,’ Senator Gerard Rennick said.
The case concerns a South Australian public servant.
Daniel Shepherd, 44, worked as a child and youth support worker with South Australia’s Department of Child Protection when he developed pericarditis after receiving his third Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in February 2022.
Mr. Shepherd was told by his employer that his employment would be terminated if he did not receive the third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The directions for the mandate were made under Section 25 of South Australia’s Emergency Management Act in January 2022, which required support and healthcare workers to receive a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to continue working.
Mr. Shepherd received two COVID-19 vaccinations on Aug. 19, 2021, and Sept. 9, 2021, respectively, according to documents submitted to the South Australian Employment Tribunal.
On the first dose, Mr. Shepherd experienced aching joints, cold, and flu symptoms, and minor chest pain for one to two weeks. He experienced similar symptoms on his second dose.
Mr. Shepherd then received his third booster dose on Feb. 24, 2022, after receiving a message from his employer saying that employees needed to have a third dose of vaccine within four months of having a second vaccine.
… Mr. Shepherd filed a claim for compensation against his employer, the State of South Australia, which was initially rejected.
The state had initially contested the connection between the vaccine and the injury but later acknowledged that the third dose caused Mr. Shepherd’s pericarditis and subsequent incapacity to work.
Despite that, the state argued that the injury didn’t arise from his employment under the Return to Work Act, and that the injury was linked to the Emergency Management Act.
The state argued that if criteria under the Return to Work Act are met, they are exempt from liability in relation to the broader management of the pandemic under the Emergency Management Act.
But Tribunal deputy president Judge Mark Calligeros rejected those arguments.
The symptoms experienced by Daniel were both severe and, no doubt, experienced by many other innocents across the wide, brown land. And the Judge saw through the slipperiness and chicanery of the State. This is significant.
The trajectory of the case is uncertain. The Covid State will certainly fight back to hold the terrain it has won. But the mighty Rennick is right. Tens of thousands of vaccine-forced and vaccine-injured will be sitting upright and pondering the possibilities.
Another headline is noteworthy:
Professor Ian Brighthope Raises Concerns Over Vaccine-Related Injuries and Fatalities at Senate Committee Hearing.
These are emerging straws in the wind. Brick by brick. The voices of the credentialled are critical in this fight. Professors matter, still. And, as the fictional Sir Humphrey Appleby once said, “truth will out”.
The redoubtable Rebekah Barnett (Dystopian Down Under) has been on the case.
“This is a good decision” says human rights lawyer Peter Fam, of Sydney law firm Maat’s Method, noting that it sets an important precedent for holding employers accountable for injuries incurred as a result of vaccination directives enforced in the workplace.
“The most significant aspect of this case, in my opinion, is that even though there was a Public Health Order in place, the Tribunal found the employer responsible anyway,” says Fam.
Many Australian employers have sought to deflect responsibility for injuries incurred under workplace Covid vaccine directives on the basis that they were simply following state government orders.
However, under workers compensation law, the workplace is liable if employment is “a significant contributing cause of the injury,” regardless of whether other factors also contributed, explains Fam.
… The inadequacy of compensation options available to Australians injured by the Covid vaccines prompted Whitsundays GP, Dr Melissa McCann, to initiate a Covid vaccine injury class action, which filed in the Federal Court in April 2023, and is still taking on members.
The action seeks to hold the TGA to account for alleged, “negligence, breach of statutory duty and misfeasance in public office” in its failure to properly approve and monitor the Covid vaccines, resulting in harms to Australians.
Landmark Covid vaccine injury win - by Rebekah Barnett
Indeed. Senator Rennick is cautiously optimistic.
In a social media post, Senator Gerard Rennick said the ruling is a “significant precedent.”
“[E]mployers are now going to think twice about forcing people to get a vaccine if they have to fork out for potentially significant medical costs if the employee then incurs a vaccine injury,” Mr. Rennick said.
“This is only one case, and I suspect it will be appealed.
“I hope the decision is upheld because it will then open up the option of employers suing governments who mandate vaccines or pharmaceutical companies for unsafe or ineffective vaccines.”
Small victories are, still, victories.
Anyone paying attention to the activities and strategies of the massed forces of the global ruling elite, as is the journalist Seamus Bruner, author of the recently released book, Controligarchs, will know that these people play for keeps. Theirs is a long game. And they do not like pushback.
The counter-revolution will need to deploy many weapons. The law, might, just might, be one of these weapons. There must be a few judges out there who can see what has been going on these past years. Watch this space.
Paul Collits
3 February 2024
One of the truly disappointing things has been the lack of response by ordinary lawyers. They like the doctors have done grievous harm to their profession.
Indeed let us drop the use of that word for them going forward.
All the while praising those that stood up and are standing up still
The Covidiots will fight tooth and nail to cover themselves. Did you see Lorraine Finlay finally raise her head and protest that the farcical enquiry, the one where the covidiots are enquiring about themselves, should be a Royal Commission? Where was the HRC whilst all our rights were stripped away? MIA