THE people never agreed to this naked power grab.
No one should be surprised that the Imperial College’s “Professor Lockdown” (Neil Ferguson), has been exposed as a practitioner of the elites’ fundamental rule ‘Do as I say; not as I do’.
In flagrant breach of the very lockdown he advised, he arranged secret assignations with his mistress.
When this was exposed, he resigned as a principal government adviser, but not before the British government had acted on his warning of half a million deaths from the Wuhan virus as did the US on his warning of 2.2 million deaths there.
He was probably the direct or indirect source for the similar warning of 150,000 Australian deaths, a warning which no doubt put the National Cabinet into a state of panic.
Professor Lockdown’s hypocrisy is no more than par for the course for the elites. Similar hypocrisy was demonstrated recently by a letter to Le Monde from a clutch of celebrities, including Madonna, Robert de Niro, Jane Fonda and our own Cate Blanchett.
Notwithstanding the fact that as a result of their lives of luxury, their CO2 footprints would be very large multiples of the average person’s, they expressed their concern about such matters as climate change. To fight this, they called for an end to “consumerism” and the “obsession with productivity”, the very factors which fuel their extravagant lives, rather than “a return to normal” after the current lockdowns.
MODELLING
What is surprising about the Professor Lockdown affair is not so much the fact that most politicians and journalists do not seem to realise that computer modelling, while a useful tool, must always be wrong but what is truly surprising is that anybody took the slightest notice of Professor Lockdown’s modelling.
His previous predictions could hardly have encouraged confidence. These include 150,000 UK deaths from mad cow disease (there were 177); 200 million world-wide deaths from the bird flu pandemic (281 died) and 6500 UK deaths from the swine flu pandemic (457 died).
Surely that record would have encouraged some reservations about his modelling concerning the Wuhan virus.
But curiously, there seemed to be none among either the politicians, their anointed experts or, as far as we know, their vast armies of advisers.
By relying on their anointed expert advice, and, as argued in this column, not following world’s best practice, the National Cabinet allowed the virus to come into Australia and failed to protect the vulnerable to the high degree necessary.
But it went beyond the pale in imposing a draconian and wholly unnecessary lockdown.
It has long been recognised that there is a time when the exercise of extraordinary powers is justified in a constitutional state.
UNPRECEDENTED
While the threat of invasion, as in 1941, is an example, world’s best practice demonstrates that the Wuhan virus never came even close to justifying the seizure of such extraordinary powers.
In clear breach of the constitution as originally intended, the National Cabinet imposed a massive and unprecedented debt on the people, unlawfully suspending and destroying jobs, small business and much of the economic life of the nation as well as grotesquely limiting the people’s freedom with something approaching house arrest.
The people never agreed to this coup, this unconstitutional seizure of power.
We must never forget the principles on which Western, especially Anglosphere, civilisation is built.
These emerged in the world’s three greatest declarations of civil freedom and the rule of law in the last millennium, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Rights in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Declaration of Independence.
Australians are heirs to these principles, with sovereignty in this federal commonwealth resting neither with the politicians nor with the judges but with the people.
There can be no better definition of the constitution in this Anglo-American tradition than by Bolingbroke, a significant influence on the American founders. He defined the constitution broadly as that assembly of laws, customs and institutions by which the people have agreed to be governed.
It is important to stress then that our constitutional system depends on the people’s agreement, a principle strongly reflected in the constitution of our federal commonwealth. This, it should be stressed, was founded not by the politicians but by the people under the Corowa plan and with the constitution uniquely approved by them.
That the grant of power by the people to the political arm is implicitly limited as Bolingbroke declares was confirmed by a unanimous High Court in Lange v. ABC (1997). This was a case on freedom of political communication with which I am well acquainted, having presented an amicus curiae brief there for the Press Council.
Instead of following world’s best practice and thereby suffering one fifteenth of the deaths so far recorded, our National Cabinet is quibbling in foolish and embarrassing detail about the timing and stages of a ludicrously delayed reopening of the economy to repair the very mess for which it is totally responsible.
There was never an emergency which justified the use of such extreme powers.
MEGALOMANIA
The politicians, rejoicing in their constant access to the media, show a megalomania justifying the exercise of greater popular control in the future.
This is ominous as is the support for this process by the far Left, illustrated by GetUp advertisements adorned by photographs of the Coalition Prime Minister.
Could our politicians not learn from the great Cincinnatus, who handed back dictatorial powers once he achieved his goals, an example of self-abnegation mirrored by the great George Washington.
If our politicians cannot demonstrate such great civic virtue, could they at least abandon their resemblance to an out-of-touch power-drunk aristocracy at Versailles?
Could they at least offer not useless words but the sacrifice of some aspect of their lives of luxury and some guarantee that never again can their ilk seize unconstitutional power?PC
All so dismally true Professor Flint!
And now some glaring facts:
Australia is still the lucky Country: WE HAVE NOT HAD A PANDEMIC – nothing like it! – The definition of a pandemic:
“Disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population” – Miriam-Webster
———Australian Covid 19 numbers as of 29/5 – 7,150 cases – with 103 deaths.
———Most cases were concentrated in the relatively small areas in and around the big cities and the small number of deaths were either of people over 65 or those with poor health or underlying health problems.
———Influenza cases 2019 – 310,000 people presented to Aust. health Services with laboratory confirmed influenza cases.
———The ABC reported there were over 900 deaths in 2019 from influenza.
As Australia now has only 467 active Covid-19 cases left and most of these will very soon be in the clear, so all level-headed Australians should insist on a complete opening of our Country and a return to normalcy from NEXT MONDAY, FIRST OF JUNE!!!!
As Neil Flett predicted in his Politicom article several weeks ago, the government is on a hiding to nothing over its reaction to the virus. If it succeeds, the draconian measures were unnecessary. If it fails, it did not do enough.
It seems that Australia has succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams, leading to this article and Alan Jones’ blistering attack on Sky.
But this is 20-20 vision in hindsight…
The government was faced with predictions such as:
(A) 150,000 Australians will die.
(B) It is likely that 75 per cent of the population will be infected and four per cent of them will die … in Australian terms near 19 million infections and 760,000 deaths. These are what the early figures from China looked like.
(C) Early infected similar societies such as Italy, Spain and Britain have suffered death rates of about 550 people per million population because they fumbled the lockdown. In Australian terms that is about 13,500 deaths.
So Morrison’s “over-reaction” has so far saved about 13,400 Australians. In terms of the cash-splash, one of the main lessons economists learned from the Great Depression is that the way to minimize damage is to try to counter balance reduced spending in the private sector with more spending in the public sector.
The lockdown paralyzed the private sector so the government pumped massive amounts of borrowed money into the economy.
There are no absolutes in this world but to this point Australia seems to be the stand-out star performer.