A VICTORIAN State MP has said that the rights and freedoms of Australians have been incrementally chipped away during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the unprecedented newly proposed pandemic laws giving politicians “unfettered power” over people’s lives.
The Liberal Party member for Forest Hill, Mr Neil Angus, said that 20 months ago – at the beginning of the pandemic – many Victorians would not have anticipated health restrictions such as curfews or limits on travel within a few kilometres of their home.
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“If we had have talked about this a couple of years ago, people would have laughed at us. And yet now, we’ve had this in place for just under two years, and who knows what could be happening next,” he told The Epoch Times.
“It’s extremely concerning, and like all these things, they come incrementally and in the heat of the battle when we don’t notice it,” he said.
FRIGHTENING
“But when you step back and have a look, you can see how far we have gone down the path of losing our liberties, and that is very frightening.”
Mr Angus said the Victorian Labor government’s new Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021, in some ways, justified his concerns.
He noted that the bill had finally galvanised State MPs into speaking out against government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen bipartisan support for public health restrictions and increased powers to authorities.
In contrast, just a few weeks earlier, Angus was one of a handful of MPs – and the only member of Victoria’s lower house – to oppose a vaccine mandate for all parliamentary staff and MPs.
His opposition – which saw him choose to vote against the governing Labor Party and his own Liberal Party – was “all about freedoms.”
“My concern has been just the continual overreach and interference by this government into the lives and every part of the lives of all Victorians,” he said.
He noted that his speech opposing the mandate was also well received by individuals locally and from around the world.
The Victorian government is now pushing through its Pandemic Management Bill, which will establish a permanent structure for the government to manage pandemics in future.
While the Bill streamlines certain operational aspects of the government and establishes new safeguards around privacy rights, it also contains wide-ranging provisions that give the premier and health minister unprecedented power over the State.
These include “broad powers” for the health minister to make pandemic orders, on the advice of the chief health officer, where it is deemed “reasonably necessary” to “protect public health”.
UNLIMITED
The premier can also “declare a pandemic” and extend such a declaration three months at a time – the number of extensions is unlimited.
Additionally, the pandemic orders would give the premier and health minister the power to issue new public health decrees, including closing borders, lockdowns and mask mandates.
Further, police will receive new powers to enter private premises without a warrant to implement such decrees.
Under the bill, health restrictions can also be categorised, and target classes of citizens, including based on vaccination status and new record penalties have been introduced—including two-year prison terms and fines of A$90,000 for “aggravated offences” where an individual breaches a health order and is deemed to have caused a “serious risk” to the health of another.
The State opposition has vowed to repeal the bill, while the peak legal body, the Victorian Bar, has spoken out against it.
Christopher Blanden QC, president of the Bar, warned it would allow “unlimited interference” in the liberties of Victoria’s residents.
OVERSIGHT
“The overriding concern is that the bill confers on the health minister what is, in a practical sense, an effectively unlimited power to rule the State by decree, for an effectively indefinite period, and without effective judicial or parliamentary oversight,” he said in an internal email to Bar members.
In recent months, Victorians have mobilised in protest against government-mandated health restrictions and powers, with opposition to the Pandemic Bill now added to the mix.
On November 6, several thousand Victorians took to the streets of Melbourne chanting the words “kill the bill”.
Mr Angus said the new bill would ultimately change the fabric of life in Victoria.
“We’re always going to have to look out and listen out for the premier. One day he might get up on his soapbox and make a decree about certain classes of people, certain geographical areas, and about certain things you can and can’t do,” he said.
“The freedoms that we have taken for granted for so long here in Victoria are potentially put at risk by this particular bill. So, I think it’s going to change things dramatically here in Victoria, and for the worse,” he added.PC
Massive corruption and conflicts of interest with governments and Vic government is seriously corrupted with systemic and widespread conflicts of interest and the ties association. Partnership membership with mainstream medicine and pharmaceutical industries. Victoria global health and huge revolving doors and with that it becomes serious crimes when they pull the mandates caper.
All mandates and all other tyrannical actions by governments must be abolished now and forever more.
See
Bloody criminals. !!!
Black sheep Mesiti exposes the woke Rev. Costello’s “social justice by vaccination” crusade | Cairns News
https://cairnsnews.org/2021/11/18/black-sheep-mesiti-exposes-the-woke-rev-costellos-social-justice-by-vaccination-crusade/
THE Rev. Tim Costello and his brother the former Treasurer Peter Costello, are up to their eyeballs in big pharma’s insane “global vaccination” drive. While one Costello beats the drum to “share the vaccines with our poor neighbours” the other keenly watches over the vaccine profits rolling on in.
Rev. Tim Costello cunningly co-opted major church denominations into a vaccination crusade.
The former Treasurer these days is making sure the Australian Future Fund ($149 billion in assets) is raking in tens of millions from its big pharma and “medical research” investments, while his woke Baptist brother Tim is making sure those shots are distributed far and wide with generous support from the Aussie taxpayers – all in the name of “regional social justice” and “vaccine equity” of course.
I am heartened that some opposition MPs are finally standing up for the people. I have to ask though, where were they 18 months ago??
By the end of April 2020 it was apparent to anyone paying attention that the modelled projections being used to strip us of our rights were wrong by large factors. The new figure were from actual case studies, not politically opportunistic naval gazing. Even the WHO downgraded its mortality projections by a factor of 92x (3.4% > .037%)
The hospitals were not overwhelmed, nor the mortuaries. At the beginning of April it was made clear there were safe, cheap and readily available drugs to treat Covid symptoms and prevent potential hospitalizations by at least 87%, so there was no need to panic waiting for a ‘vaccine’.
Hospitals were so underwhelmed medical staff passed the time taking part in choreographed dance routines and pasting them onto social media.
By the end of June 2020, Sweden had achieved herd immunity with none of the authoritarian restrictions.
A few months in and it was apparent that Covid was not the horror extinction event the hapless politicians and their media propagandists were screeching about. It was in fact (as has been proven in the months since) a mild flu.
All these things are facts yet, bar a couple, I do not recall many feckless politicians of any rosette colour standing up for our freedoms. Please spare us your indignation, you had the chance to do something from the very start of this tyranny and you did nothing. You ignored the developing situation, you ignored the ‘science’ which countered the corrupt narrative being used to force the vaccines on us. You ignored the facts. You ignored the truth. You encouraged tyranny and censorship. You are responsible for the gross and disgusting violence being meted out to innocent Australians. You are responsible for the continuing situation, which should have been resolved by April 2020. By your lack if actions you have encouraged segregation and internment camps.
You failed us completely.
Agree with Mr Angus. Thank you for your words.