Fourteen Australian Senators and MPs have written to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urging his Government to reject impending WHO pandemic reforms, which are to be voted on by WHO member states at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) at the end of this month.
In the letter, parliamentarians from the Coalition (opposition) and the crossbench expressed “deep concern” at the prospect that the Australian Government might commit Australia to proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) and separately to a WHO Pandemic Treaty.
The Australian Government says that the proposed IHR amendments and WHO Pandemic Treaty are necessary to prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics and other international health emergencies.
However in their letter, dated May 14th, the 14 Senators and MPs warn that the reforms “pose a significant threat to Australia’s autonomy and independence on the global stage”.
If adopted, and implemented into Australian domestic law, the World Health Organisation will hold an unacceptable level of authority, power and influence over Australia’s affairs under the guise of declaring ’emergencies’.
The letter acknowledges “a large volume of correspondence from Australians who are rightly concerned about the IHR Amendments and the WHO Pandemic Treaty”, which, taken together, “will transform the WHO from an advisory organisation to a supranational health authority dictating how governments must respond to emergencies which the WHO itself declares”.
Public consultation on the reforms attracted 4,521 submissions from individuals and stakeholder groups in December last year, indicating a high level of interest in the matter within the community.
The letter also notes that the impending vote on the reforms later this month is in breach of the WHO’s own guidelines. The final IHR amendments are meant to be circulated four months in advance of the vote to allow the 194 member states time to review them (Schedule 2, Article 55). However, updated versions of the IHR amendments presented in April 2024 were still in draft form, and were still being negotiated by the working group as late as last week.
This means that, in contravention of WHO rules, member states still have not received the final versions of the documents, with mere weeks remaining for them to consider how the complex amendments will interact with the proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty and national domestic law before voting at the WHA, which is scheduled to take place between May 27th and June 1st.
Moreover, the letter argues that the WHO Pandemic Treaty “goes well beyond [the WHO’s] jurisdiction” of “assist[ing] Governments upon request, in strengthening health services”.
“We call on the Government to reject the IHR Amendments and the WHO Pandemic Treaty at [the 77th World Health Assembly],” concludes the letter, signed by the below members of the Coalition and the crossbench. At the top of the list is vocal WHO critic Senator Alex Antic, who has frequently referred to the WHO reforms as a “power grab”.
- Alex Antic, Senator for South Australia
- Pauline Hanson, Senator for Queensland
- Matt Canavan, Senator for Queensland
- Malcolm Roberts, Senator for Queensland
- Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria
- Terry Young MP, Member for Longman
- Tony Pasin MP, Member for Barker
- Matthew O’Sullivan, Senator for Western Australia
- Colin Boyce MP, Member for Flynn
- Hon Luke Howarth MP, Member for Petrie
- Hon David Gillespie MP, Member for Lyne
- Hon Barnaby Joyce MP, Member for New England
- Llew O’Brien MP, Member for Wide Bay
Mounting international pushback
The letter from 14 Australian elected officials urging the Government to reject the WHO reforms comes after the U.K. Government announced this month that it does not intend to sign onto the WHO Pandemic Treaty at the impending WHA.
“We will only support the adoption of the accord and accept it on behalf of the U.K., if it is firmly in the U.K. national interest and respects national sovereignty,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement to Reuters.
In the US, 49 Republican Senators have written to President Biden strongly urging him “not to join any pandemic related treaty, convention or agreement being considered” at the upcoming WHA.
“Instead of addressing the WHO’s well-documented shortcomings, the treaty focuses on mandated resource and technology transfers, shredding intellectual property rights, infringing [on] free speech and supercharging the WHO,” they wrote.
Additionally, 22 U.S. Attorney Generals are calling on President Biden to reject the IHR Amendments and WHO Pandemic Treaty.
Sovereignty in question
Most of the controversy around the proposed IHR amendments and the WHO Pandemic Treaty relates to the question of sovereignty. Critics are concerned that the reforms will effectively make the WHO a supranational director of public health policy, with member states being bound under international law to bring their own domestic law into line with the WHO’s directives.
The WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus flatly denies such claims, stating on numerous occasions that not only will nation states retain their sovereignty, but that “the [WHO Pandemic Treaty] agreement actually affirms national sovereignty and national responsibility in its foundational principles”.
Australian Senator Katie Gallagher, representing the Health portfolio in the Senate, similarly assures that the proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty poses no threat to Australia’s sovereignty.
If it’s that simple, then why do so many credentialed experts insist that the WHO’s proposed Pandemic Treaty and IHR amendments really do pose a threat to national sovereignty?
Because, “that is what is written in black and white in the documents, and there’s no other way rationally to interpret it,” says Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and former WHO Medical Officer.
“I mean, it’s not a theory. It is very specific in the IHR that countries will undertake to do what a single person, the Director General of the WHO recommends, and it’s repeatedly stated in these amendments,” he told me in an interview for Umbrella News.
This is unsurprising given that the Australian Government’s FAQ sheet on the IHR amendments states that the IHRs are “an instrument of international law that is legally-binding on 196 countries”, and that “Australia has complied with the IHR since their development in 2005”. Australia has already incorporated key IHR standards into domestic law, such as in the Biosecurity Act 2015 and the National Health Security Act 2007.
It is worth noting that Dr. Bell references the IHR amendments as the primary source for the claim that the WHO will supersede national sovereignty, while assurances that to the contrary are generally made in reference to the proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty, as in the Director General’s statement referenced above.
The treaty and the IHR amendments are often discussed interchangeably or in isolation from each other, but they perform different functions that work in conjunction. Dr. Bell has written extensively on the two reforms, how they interact and the globalisation of public health more broadly, for the Brownstone Institute.
Another way to think about the issue of sovereignty is to see the WHO reforms as a “shell game”. says executive director of Rights Probe and Professor of Law at Queen’s University, Bruce Pardy. In an article titled ‘The WHO’s Managerial Gambit‘, Pardy writes (emphasis mine):
Under the [WHO Pandemic treaty and IHR amendment] proposals, the WHO will become the directing mind and will of global health. It will have authority to declare public health emergencies.
National governments will promise to do as the WHO directs. Countries will “undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations. …
The idea is to persuade the public that their governments must obey the WHO. Binding recommendations legitimise the heavy hands of domestic governments. Local officials will be able to justify restrictions by citing global duties.
They will say that WHO directives leave them no choice. “The WHO has called for lockdowns, so we must order you to stay in your home. Sorry, but it’s not our call.“
In other words, the unelected WHO gives ‘advice’ and elected officials in nation-states dutifully implement it. It’s a partnership that allows the WHO to say “we didn’t make you do anything” and allows politicians to say “we were just following advice”.
Case in point: a recent Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee Report reveals that the Australian Government granted indemnity to the Covid vaccine manufacturers under the guidance of the World Health Organisation.
“An international precedent was set, in accordance with guidance from the COVAX facility, requiring that all 172 member states, including Australia, who received vaccines through the COVAX Facility indemnify manufacturers,” states the report.
COVAX was a global vaccine procurement and delivery project co-ordinated by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO. The WHO’s role in COVAX was to provide “normative guidance on vaccine policy, regulation, safety, R&D, allocation, and country readiness and delivery”.
As well as pressuring nations into granting indemnity to vaccine manufacturers, COVAX arranged for wealthy nations to buy vaccines for poorer nations. This is reportedly the main sticking point for the U.K. in its rejection of the WHO Pandemic Treaty in its current form, as it would allegedly force Britain to give away a fifth of its vaccines in a future pandemic.
Both WHO pandemic reforms will unquestionably strengthen the self-reinforcing feedback loop between governments, their agencies and NGOs regardless.
How the vote works
The WHO Pandemic Treaty will come into effect if two thirds of member states present at the WHA vote to accept it.
Australia can reject the treaty, but if it is accepted by the required two thirds, the Australian Government advises that it “will be required to domestically implement the agreement in accordance with their constitutional processes”.
The IHRs (2005) are already legally binding, with compliance being enacted through domestic legislation; however the proposed amendments are not yet binding.
Acceptance of the IHR amendments only requires a 50% majority. Once the amendments are adopted, individual member states can reject them within a designated timeframe – otherwise, at the end of this period, the amendments become binding.
This process played out last year, when the deadline for rejecting several IHR amendments (adopted in 2022 and different from those discussed in this article) passed on December 1st 2023. While some countries, like Slovakia, Estonia and New Zealand, rejected the amendments, Australia simply did nothing. This means that the amendments are now legally binding in Australia.
Australians join together to reject WHO reforms
In response to the seeming political inertia, confusion and ignorance of the reforms, the Aligned Council of Australia (ACA) formed in February of this year to raise community awareness, educate politicians and co-ordinate activism campaigns. The ACA now comprises of 37 organisations representing over 1.7 million Australians.
Last week, the ACA hosted an international press conference featuring Professor Ramesh Thakur, who previously served as the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, the aforementioned Dr. David Bell, Professor Augusto Zimmermann and Professor Ian Brighthope.
The panel discussion touches on all the main ‘need to knows’ about the reforms, and with questions from the floor at the end, also allows for the correction of some unfounded anxieties. Click here to watch (1 hour 53 mins).
A key point highlighted by Dr. Bell, is that the reforms needn’t be rushed through at breakneck speed without time for proper review. A ‘no’ vote at the upcoming WHA is not final, but would simply allow more time to consider the nature of the problems we face and how best to ameliorate them.
Dr. Bell said that the notion that natural pandemics are increasing is a myth, and that the urgency in shoving the proposed reforms through to the vote at the WHA are not only in contravention with WHO guidelines, but are wholly misplaced.
Interested readers may wish to read a report calling for rational policy over panic prepared by Dr. Bell and colleagues in partnership with the University of Leeds and the Brownstone Institute, which assesses the research underlying the global pandemic agenda. Read the four-page summary here, and the full 116-page document here.
With limited time remaining until the 77th WHA convenes, the ACA is encouraging Australians to take action.
“The 14 parliamentarians who wrote to our Prime Minister raising concerns about the WHO pandemic reforms mentioned a large volume of communications from the public. This is a sign of how effective public pressure can be,” says ACA Co-Founder Katie Ashby-Koppens.
“We have been working so hard on different campaigns with the Aligned Council of Australia, but there’s still more to do.”
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnettt’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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“Elon Musk’s visionary work with Tesla…”
Oh, puh-lease..
Elon Reeve Musk is nothing but a crook. He noticed the huge amounts of OPM piling up on offer from idiotic politicians to “save the planet” and thought,
“I’ll have some of that!”
He didn’t even found the company. Instead, he destroyed the founder.
If that is “visionary”, then STOP THE BUS – I WANT TO GET OFF.
Aside from this, there is absolutely nothing visionary about electric cars. That happened over 130 years ago. And it was destroyed the moment Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz entered the scene.
Everything Mr Musk touches turns to sh*t sooner or later. Yet there he stands. I can’t help but admire him for using the system. Which is so screwed up.
All he has done is played to the rules available to him to maximise his companies revenue streams and his own net worth (the vast majority of which is tied up in stock in those same companies). That doesn’t make him a crook in the same way that choosing your company car to take advantage of subsidies and BiK rules makes any of us crooks.
You do make good points.
But he participates in and enables the whole fraud, very actively. And he doesn’t put his money where his mouth is. Quite the contrary. Check his stock sale history.
All while pushing the man made climate change scam. He is, in the book according to Marcus Aurelius knew, most definitely a crook.
And he sells cars while knowing they’re dangerous, and terrorises/bribes anyone and everyone (including employees and legislators) who tries to blow the whistle.
He’s a huge part of the problems we have today.
But there are worse offenders, obviously. And he got my respect for (initially) declaring that COVID-19 was just the flu. And then he gets in bed with ModeRNA. That should tell you all you need to know.
The guy is a NASTY CROOK.
But don’t believe me. I am gonna leave Time to tell.
And if you’re wrong?
About… what, exactly?
But in the meantime, if I am wrong, I’ll be… wrong.
It’s not as if I’ll be dead or something.
Right, need to go, got work to do!
I was very much a doubter on Musk and could not see how Tesla would ramp up their manufacturing enough to be profitable. I was wrong and I have to respect EM for driving the company to profitability. I do think there are extremely rocky days ahead for all EV manufacturers ahead, the price wars going on in China are brutal and many start-ups won’t survive. I think Tesla will probably be one of the lucky ones though, but it looks grim for most European brands.
Profits paid for by taxpayer subsidy.
Indeed. On both sides. Direct subsidies to the mftrs and direct subsidies to the loons that go and buy one of these non-green, Gaia unfriendly technologies.
Tesla is not profitable in the normal sense of the word, TheGreenAcres. It loses money on every car it sells.
No, he is a crook. What short memories we have. To stop the early collapse of TSLA back when we were smart and knew it should die (without brainwashing by American Legacy Media) he falsified the possible sale of his company, a violation of SEC rules. He settled by paying the largest fine on record for illegal price manipulation/fixing. That’s spells crook in my book, esp. since I had put options on the stock at the time. Alas, we have short memories in a world of information that is near;y impossible to keep track.
If you chuck chips out on the promenade the gulls will wolf it down. Just like the Subsidy farmers wolf all the subsidies down their neck. I know global warming is a crock of manufactured junk science but if government want to pay me big sums of money I will take it and can pretend to save the planet as much as the next guy.
I actually have the same view. That’s why I invest in the whole shitshow. By buying as much of the UK equivalent of VTSAX as I can afford, every month.
The world is not black and white.
Doesn’t mean I have to think Musk is a “visionary”, and I can’t promise not to vomit whenever people faun over him.
Faun, or fawn? I forget.
Fawn is good…………
Billions in US Gov subsidies.
How many ‘entrepreneurs’ get lavish and unlimited state support?
Tesla is a joke and the entire EV market a fraud.
I’m on the fence with a lot of the rantings of the electric Jesus, but, I use his starlink internet connection out here in the middle of nowhere and its darn good, 300mbs for €50 a month and hardly ever drops out!
Wont be getting on the hyperloop, going to Mars, fitting a neuralink brain implant or buying a tesla anytime soon though!
Hmmm. This yank never knew the UK had a “middle of nowhere”. Try southern Idaho. Proof that all things, esp poverty, is relative. Thanks for that Albert.
Things will only get worse for EV owners as the subsidies are withdrawn and replaced with additional revenue streams – that £25bn the Government steals from us in from fuel duty has to be replaced, they sure as hell won’t forgo that cash!
Road pricing – via spy-in-the-car technology.
This is astonishing news— how quickly and unexpectedly that particular arm of the Globalist Octopus has withered.
Looks like the bold Finns were far ahead of everyone else when they did this to a Tesla, starting at 4:55 to 6:56 minutes. You can even see the slow-motion percussion wave distorting the quarry background:
Insane Tesla Model S EXPLOSION!! 30kg of dynamite! (youtube.com)
Excellent watch. Thank you.
I’m glad you watched it— even the music was perfect!
BEV = UXB.
Ha-ha! Wonderful! I didn’t understand your meaning at first, then I looked it up.
Save the planet governments just don’t get the Free Market. People know best how to spend their own money. If they want a Mars Bar instead of lettuce then they will buy the chocolate. You cannot stuff lettuce down their throat no matter how much you bribe them or tell them there is a climate cataclysm coming in a months’ time and we will all be dead from global scorching by September. When there is no evidence then we are going to keep enjoying the chocolate, and it is the same with the green scam. No matter how often they tell us we need EV’s and heat pumps we are going to keep buying the petrol car and the gas boiler instead, because we like them. The petrol car is cheaper and gets us to where we are going and the gas boiler keeps us warm. So flooding the market with lettuce is going to be a bad idea because we just don’t want the bloody stuff. Take your Ev’s and stuff them where the sun don’t shine.
As Milton Friedman said, Socialists don’t understand economics, if they did they wouldn’t be Socialists.
The whole climate change/net zero scam is Socialism with new branding and livery. New bucket same old merde.
Worse still their cocamamy schemes aren’t just unpopular, they actually make things worse.
The revolution is going strong I’m afraid.
They have laws in place that make any change of course extremely difficult if not virtually impossible.
All we are seeing now is the gnashing of teeth, the economic pain, the dislocation of industry, the anxiety and cost of having to change how we live our lives.
They don’t give a shit. They’re not stepping back. We can kock and scream all we like.
I’m afraid that’s how it is.
True… but that course leads onto the rocks.
It does, but our ruling class is in self destructive mode.
The whole covid saga was an exercise in self harm on so many different levels.
The dismantling of our history, our values in favour of bizarre new norms is an act of self mutilation.
The wild over spending and racking up of debt is reckless.
It’s as if they exercise power for it’s own sake, just because they can, with no real regard or understanding of where value resides or comes from.
This is where we are, in a spiral of self destruction.
Exactly, to alter the zero emissions mandate or the ban on the sale of ICE cars would require a significant changer to the climate change act. The new post July 4th UK Government is most unlikely to consider doing this and so we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, if EVs fail to sell and ICE cars are phased out by the climate change act then basically we will all be grounded.
As a sop we may see a large influx of cheap low range Chinese EVs that will be OK for some local utility travel otherwise it will be the end of leisure car travel, the end of motoring as we have known it for the last 50 years.
And if we think we will just hang on to our ageing ICE cars, I think we are kidding ourselves. The UK Gov and local councils will increasingly force ICE cars off the road.
That is exactly what is coming.
It’s not that they just don’t care if you don’t get a car. They actually prefer it. It’s a big part of their vision.
Yup. They will just stop importing petrol/diesel. No fuel …. no point having the vehicle.
And there is no wiggle room because the insane political class have forced us in law to do Net Zero. ——-Total traitors using the junk science climate excuse to impose their eco socialism on us, and the trouble is most people still believe there is a climate emergency, no matter how much evidence you provide them that there is NONE. Such is the power of propaganda.
If you look at the energy density data its obvious that battery powered cars are an absolute waste of time. Mr Toyota us correct. If you want ICE free motoring then you need easily fuel able hydrogen system with a cheap efficient hydrogen fuel cell (sadly this does not exist yet and isn’t looking imminent)
Hydrogen isn’t even a fuel. It has to be manufacture and that is very expensive.
Like everything else that is Green. The days of cheap abundant energy are over. Not because we don’t have cheap abundant energy but because the Politicians have decided we cannot have it anymore. To understand the real reason you need to understand what Sustainable Development really is and who is imposing it on us. Our spineless politicians are fully onboard with all of this eco socialism and they are a total disgrace.
Thanks to a commenter on TCW…..advises that basically a new EV on your driveway arrives with a 70% higher upfront ‘carbon footprint’ which will take 50,000 – 80,000 miles to eliminate.
And battery powered by slave labour.
Indeed!
About half the distance required to break even on the cost of the vehicle plus battery charging vs petrol if you can do cheapest home charging. That’s assuming electricity and fossil fuel prices remain in step over however long it takes you to do 100,000 miles.
As Blessed Margaret Hilda was fond of saying, ‘You can’t buck the market.’
Government intervention can distort the market, but like a spring it will bounce back and correct – often brutally. That’s why we have financial crises and recessions every so often, the inevitable result of political interference in the market process.
Another little snag with the EV revolution; it appears that increasingly unattended EV charging stations are being targeted by thieves who are stealing the copper and leaving the charging point unusable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B_WUPQwzEQ
If I was forced to have an EV I suspect I would only feel confident to use if for local utility travel and charge it on a home charger. I suspect that many would feel like me, not so much an EV revolution as travel immiseration.
Tesla has a fleet of support vehicles, they run on diesel. Nuff said