"Make no mistake: your rights and freedoms have been taken away from you disproportionately and illegally by governments who have overreached their powers constitutionally….".

True. But the plebs approve: they are lapping it up. That's how totalitarianism comes about; and when it gets worse, as it will, there will be nowhere for refugees to go, from Australia, because the rest of the West is the same. When plebs return a neo- Marxist government like WA's as they did recently, just because they think the scum "saved" them from a bad 'flu by removing their rights, all is lost. They are no different from the 1.3 billion Chinese, who could defeat the Communists with sticks if they wanted to.

Sorry, but your article seems to b the product of an intellectually challenged juvenile. And borderline libel? Using highly inappropriate labels does nothing to improve a patently preposterous piece of pernicious parsimonious propaganda, promulgated by a postering, postulating pompous political popinjay?

Here's the thing. None of this would have been necessary if we had, fit for purpose Island quarantine. And ramped vaccine production of the Pfizer type!

And all laid at the feet of an incompetent PM, who ought to go back to Honolulu and just hand it to independent experts. Given his forte is and was marketing and selling unpalatable messages and absurd right-wing ideology.

Thus far the one thousand million spendathon has merely supported consumption and little else. As very rapid rail once again goes begging!

They've announced a big infrastructure spend that seems aimed at their base/cronies/political status quo. The elephant in the room is their highly flawed energy policy that comes with too many unproductive anchors/ And imposed middlemen costs/political ATMs.

Therefore the real question becomes, are we governed by elected public servants or their covert political masters? The results thus far would seem to indicate the latter, as does this piece of pass the parcel, political propaganda?

Sweet hulali, you beautiful flower, you are my dream of paradise completed, you are my dream come true.
Alan B.

Poorly written but I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately we can now clearly see that "rights" are really only what the people in power choose to afford us. Constitutional rights mean nothing when the government or high court will not enforce them on our behalf.
Unfortunately we seem to be living in an age of mass hysteria where no matter how minor the problem is, it can be blown into an existential crisis by a willing and incompetent media, and politicians who have learned that scaring people (and then "keeping them safe") is the easiest way to gain and maintain power. The Covid pandemic is no different to the "Climate crisis" the "Systemic racism crisis" and the "crisis in women's safety". All have a tiny core of truth covered in mountains of rhetoric and disinformation, justifying extraordinary government actions and infringements on our freedoms.

So called "human rights" are meaningless because they were invented by humans for humans...........
Putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank indeed.

>We have willingly given up the majority of our rights and freedoms in response to the fear of death: due to a virus that has statistically taken mostly the elderly, with the majority who contract it: surviving and thriving.

Voters lead, Politicians follow, the "strongman" braggadocio politicians are becoming de riguer. From Trump, to Bolsonaro, to Palaszczuk, to McGowan. Voters lap it up, so if I was a politicians I would as well.

I certainly don't blame the politicians for any of it, I am appalled at my fellow voters, a resounding message sent by ousting them at the elections would have served to nip it in the bud but quite the opposite.

Clive James once observed: “The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers.”

I think it was CLive James t

Oh what tripe.

Most people will be looking at India and be saying, yup, prepared to put up with restrictions rather than face that.

This person however thinks "We have willingly given up the majority of our rights and freedoms in response to the fear of death: due to a virus that has statistically taken mostly the elderly, with the majority who contract it: surviving and thriving."

No, we have temporarily allowed the government to assume greater authority in order to deal with a bloody PANDEMIC.

Why is it that freedom freaks inevitably go with the 'I'm alright Jack' and stuff the rest approach?

It really is a crap approach to life and certainly not in keeping with Australians values for the most part.

Steeleredux.

Prove the pandemic by reference to the mortality statistics.

You've been brainwashed and don't know what you're talking about.

You're re-running the failed Nuremberg defences, and have the gall to call those opposed to your fascism "freedom freaks". What is wrong with you people?

Dear Cumberland,

Sure.

There you go.

http://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/983686/Weekly_report_mortality__W18.pdf

Dear Steeleredux

I refute it with your agreement, to your standard, here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/983686/Weekly_report_mortality__W18.pdf

Whee! This brainwashed moron stuff is easy!

"A WA Liberal Party election candidate has quit after revelations she shared her “dangerous conspiracy theories” that linked 5G technology with COVID-19 on a conservative Christian website."

"Andrea Tokaji was forced to withdraw as the candidate for Baldivis after it was revealed she had written an article titled ‘Are Our Fears of the Coronavirus Undermining Our Freedoms?’ on the Caldron Pool website in April last year."

"In the very lengthy article, she claimed 5G towers were “being rolled out against our knowledge — despite the known under-reported health risks” while WA was self-isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic."

"Opposition leader Zak Kirkup said in a statement he did not endorse Ms Tokaji’s controversial views."

"Mr Kirkup later told reporters on Thursday he was “disappointed and quite concerned”.

“More than anything I consider them dangerous conspiracy theories and they have no place in the Liberal Party,” he said."

“I think they are dangerous and undermine an important public health response."

Please, the writer has academic background but then goes onto provide little if any credible support for claims made, while ignoring the risks of not taking action i.e. lockdowns on Covid.

The writer's country of origin or heritage, Hungary, has struggled like others in Europe with a libertarian off and on Covid response, including lock downs, so as not to disrupt the economy; in the long run you need a healthy working society not ideology.

Andras

So how come when Texas and other states abandoned lockdowns, their covid deaths dropped, but covid deaths were and are highest in the states with the strictest lockdowns?

Do you have a clear question or argument supported by credible data, that can be tested?

Seems more about cherry picking libertarian conservative news articles in the US to support no Covid response?

Andras

That's a fail.

Stop squirming and contorting.

Answer the question. Stop squarking your mid-brain ultra-fascist brainwashed extremism, and ANSWER IT.

You're the one ASSUMING that "covid response" is a self-justifying proposition.

Prove it by credible data that can be tested.

Make sure you take account of Pcr rate false positives, falsey counting flu or co-motbidities as covid deaths, any relevant governmental conflcit of interest, and the costs of policy in units of a lowest common denominator.

Prove what you're vapidly assuming without evidence or reason. Go ahead.

You still have not presented anything but demand one follows your 'logic' and manners (lack of)?

You are a good example of authoritarian nativist conservative libertarians demanding or shouting for their rights and being co-opted into adopting non science beliefs, while shouting at others to shut up ....

If you had an education, you would understand how to present your case with credible support including data, but clearly you have not.

If its appropriate for Andrea Tokaji to refer to the democratically elected Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan as "Marxist Mark" then its equally appropriate if one refers to Ms Tokaji as "Fascist Andrea". Even the LIBERAL PARTY found this persons views on Covid-19 too extreme for them, and she was kicked off the Liberal ticket at the last state election in WA. Full of far right conspiracy theories, the scare mongering Fascist Andrea and other venomous serpents are given a free hand by some to peddle garbage about Covid-19. The big claim to fame for this person was her unproven, and down right absurd claim there is a link between the 5G network and coronavirus.

Maybe Cumberland can explain with supporting evidence that there is such a link.

I put much of this far right ranting and raving about Covid-19 as an attempt to cover up the total failure of conservative politicians like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to handle the pandemic in the first instance, which resulted in thousands of needless deaths in their countries.

OMG, the educated beyond comprehension & devoid of logic are in full gear again !

Dear Cumberland,

Lol.

So you have obviously looked at the report as you have taken the live url from it.

So you will have seen Figure 1 on the first page which is a graph clearly showing the dramatically increased spikes in mortality caused by both waves of the pandemic in England and Wales.

Then the little shutters have gone up in that pea sized brain of yours and you have decided that 'there is nothing to see here'.

What an absolute flog you are old boy. Another of the ideologically tainted and logically stunted which infest this forum.

Pages and pages written with dozens of quotes/references to the UDHR. But why? The UDHR is not the law in Australia. It is just a declaration. Well anyone can make a declaration- you could it, I could do it, kermit the frog could do it: for example, I could declare that I'm the greatest authority there is and I and I alone can decide what people can and can't do and that I'm the final arbiter of truth. But that would just be a worthless declaration because it is not the law and has no backing by the government and will not be enforced by it. It's the same with the UDHR- it is just a feel good declaration and but not the law in Australia. The only Australian laws that exist and that the government should be concerned about and that it can enforce in Australia are those that:
1) Exist because of our UK heritage from which we've inherited their legal system, legal traditions and laws. And it will only still exist if it has not been repealed/modified by an Act of an Australian parliament.
2) Have been created directly by an act of parliament in Australia or indirectly by an authority that's been granted by an act of parliament the power to make laws/regulations (eg: local governments have been granted the power to make bylaws by the state governments)

Anything the the UDHR states, or for that matter any other document/statement that some foreign entity (such as the UN) creates/says is NOT Australian law by right of its mere existence. So quoting/referring to it in an article to try and convince the reader that the government is actually illegally according to OUR laws is pointless. If the author really wants to convince us that Australia is acting illegally then she should give direct references to acts of parliament (she did this only twice that I counted out of the plethora of references/links she provided).

Steeleredux

Oh so you have finally figured out the difference between giving a reason and posting a link. Well done! Now you're only four steps behind me.

You do know, don't you, that the PCR tests have given positive results for a pawpaw, a goat, dog urine, a pheasant, a kiwifruit, and a glass of Coca-Cola? Look it up. Use your brain. Do your own research.

I saw a video by a PhD in immunology and virology who had been a professional lab scientists for 25 years. He was sent 1500 samples of biological material that had tested positive to Covid19 by PCR tests . He did a full lab test on all of them, and found EVERY SINGLE ONE was a false positive.

So given the tests can't distinguish between the above-mentioned species and compounds, and Covid19, what makes you think they can distinguish between influenza A and B, which are species of coronavirus, and *the* coronavirus?

That's not a rhetorical question. Answer it.

Then prove what was the "dominant circulating respiratory virus" in your cited source.

Show how you have accounted for:
1. the use of PCR tests in the figures you cite
2. the classification of deaths *with* covid19 as deaths *by* Covid19, e.g. co-morbidities.
3. give an account of any conflict of interest, including government paying hospitals more for covid diagnoses and death certificates, and directions or pressure on medical staff to count deaths as covid.

Go ahead.

Show your workings.

Your failure to reply, or making any other reply whatsoever including ad hominem, constitutes your irrevocable agreement that you are dishonestly trying to slime out of humiliating defeat, and that your flaccid docility has COMPLETELY FAILED to join issue and to establish any covid pandemic whatsoever. Okay? Got that? Now answer.

Andras

You are displaying confusion and brainwashing, which I prove as follows.

If you're saying that covid policy is NOT justified, then there is no issue between us, and you are displaying confusion by arguing about it.

If you're saying that covid policy IS justified, then you have the burden of proof, not me. Only *after* you have given reason - NOT circularities or assumptions - based on evidence, does any question arise of me having to prove anything.

So you're displaying confusion, and showing that you don't understand the requirements of logical thought, let alone the issues of policy or science.

And you're displaying brainwashing by your approach, namely
1. assume all conclusions in your own favour without articulating this assumption or giving any reason, and then
2. meeting any question with more question-begging, backed up by personal argument.
(*My* personal argument is only in response to yours, and disproves you by your own standard.
*Your* personal argument is the necessary foundation for your entire argument which evaporates without it; else you'd put forward a non-fallacious argument.)

You need to understand that other people aren't as brainwashed as you, don't stupidly think that government is a god because that belief is not reality-based, and rightly understand that you should be ashamed of your blind obedient evil in re-running the Nuremberg defence arguments.

So, anyway, go ahead a prove your justification of covid policy. Note that any ASSUMPTION that it's justified, or any other reply or personal argument whatsoever, means we both agree that you are a brainwashed fascist totalitarian Nazi who agrees that you can't give a rational defence of your cult superstition.

Okay? Got that? *Now* do you understand?

Go ahead. Start with the proofs I have set SteeleRedux, who, like you, has NO HOPE of proving what he is asserting, or rather assuming.

You're just making a display of your ovine docility - backed up with thinking the Nazis were clever and progressive. BAAAAAAAAA!

thinkabit

Yes, all valid.

However beware of proving too much.

It is common knowledge that the Nazi defence at Nuremberg was "just following orders", which was rejected.

What is not so commonly known, is that that defence was just a subsidiary and secondary leg of the main defence which was that law and rights are whatever the state says they are.

According to this theory, so long as the state has followed whatever formalities it has set itself, in order to enact a positive law, then there's nothing that the government can't legitimately do, and nothing so wrong that it can't constitute it a "right". If, let's say, it says there's a "right" to arbitrary killings, then it is a right in the proper sense of the word. Not only that, we can legitimately presume it is self-evidently for the public good, because the state did it, especially if it's a democratic state.

And that's what you're saying, right?

So. Freeze frame. Sheep test.

What is wrong with this picture?

Cumberland,

Do you think you could explain, with evidence, the link between Covid-19 and the 5G network some time soon? It seems your forum "friend" and fellow constitutional lawyer "Fascist Andrea" thinks there is. She was kicked off the LIBERAL ticket at the last WA election for having that opinion, not that it mattered Mark McGowan and LABOR had a landside victory.

Paul1405s

No, I don't know. And I don't know whom you refer to.

But I have seen a couple of videos in which a little magnet adhered to the site of the vaccination. Can you explain what kind of vaccine would do that?