In Australia, you can preside over human rights abuses, you can run the healthcare system into the ground, you can authorise police violence on citizens, you can blow billions on cancelled infrastructure projects, and you can name-call from the bully pulpit – and we’ll give you an award for it.
Today, Australia’s two most aggressive Covid-era premiers, Daniel Andrews (Victoria) and Mark McGowan (Western Australia), were awarded the nation’s top honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).
In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours roll, only six Australians received the award, which signifies “eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or to humanity at large”.
Andrews received the award for “eminent service to the people and parliament of Victoria, to public health, to policy and regulatory reform, and to infrastructure development”.
McGowan received the same award for “eminent service to the people and Parliament of Western Australia, to public health and education, and to international trade relations”.
Awarding the Companion of the Order of Australia to these two former premiers renders the honour system essentially meaningless – no more than a pat on the back for occupying a top position during hard times.
Daniel Andrews, also known as ‘Dictator Dan’ for his strongman style of leadership during the pandemic years, left a legacy of brutality, debt and corruption after stepping down as Victorian premier in September last year.
Some of Andrews’s greatest hits include:
- The world’s longest Covid lockdown, keeping Melburnians under house arrest for just over 260 days.
- Setting Victorian Police onto peaceful protesters, who were beaten, pepper sprayed, shot at with rubber bullets, and arrested on charges of incitement.
- Two people set themselves on fire to protest Andrews’s vaccine mandates and passports.
- Trapped thousands of low-income Melbourne residents in public housing flats under armed guard for weeks. The Victorian ombudsman found that the Government had breached human rights, but Housing Minister Richard Wynne flipped it off, stating, “We make no apology for saving people’s lives.”
- “Trashed Victoria’s finances”, leaving behind “a nasty financial cocktail” of debt and high borrowing costs.
- Blew $1.1 billion for cancelling Melbourne’s East West Link road project and $380 million on compensation for cancelling the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
- Cultivated a culture of corruption, secrecy and outright lying, brushing off scandal after scandal and never apologising.
- A hotel quarantine bungle that resulted in 800 deaths. After being pinned to the wall over it, Andrews did eventually apologise for this one.
Read more about Dan Andrews’s legacy.
Mark McGowan, who resigned from the Western Australian premiership in June last year, is often credited with ‘keeping Covid out’ with his prolonged hard border closure, but WA hospitals buckled during this time, concurrent with the vaccine rollout and record-high adverse event reporting.
McGowan’s greatest hits include:
- 697-day nightmare border closure, separating families and resulting in suicides of despair.
- World’s toughest and most punitive segregation rules, excluding the remaining 1-2% unvaccinated from the economy, society and access to services they paid for with their taxes
- Adverse event reporting shot up to 24 times the usual rate with the Covid vaccine rollout, with 57% of adverse events requiring treatment in the emergency department or hospital admission.
- Tanking the hospital system. Ambulance ramping doubled in 2021 – at a time when there was almost zero Covid in the state, but there were record-high adverse events reported in relation to the Covid vaccines. In the same year, the tragic and preventable death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath occurred due to under-staffing at Perth Children’s Hospital.
- School-yard bully name-calling, labelling his critics “anti-vaxxers,” “misfits” and “losers”, and telling them to “grow a brain”.
- Gross mismanagement of pandemic spending, including a budget of $3 million on tests blowing out $580 million (enough to fund two hospital redevelopments). Many tests ended up being binned.
- An international scandal of fraudulent gold doping at the Perth Mint (this fell under McGowan’s portfolio as Treasurer).
- And no one will ever be able to forget this paternalistic campaign featuring an Indigenous woman translating McGowan’s English into… English.
- As expected, WA experienced the pandemic when the borders opened – two years after everyone else. WA’s ‘independent’ pandemic review declared the McGowan Government’s pandemic response a great success, but provided no empirical evidence to support this conclusion (unless you count forcibly mass-vaccinating the entire population and prolonging the pandemic for years as the sole measures of ‘success’).
Read more about Mark McGowan’s legacy.
Another Covid worst-offender honoured on the King’s Birthday is former Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) boss Professor John Skerritt, who has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on the ‘COVID-19 Honour Roll’.
As head of the TGA, Skerritt oversaw the rushed approvals of the Covid vaccines, which are associated with unprecedented rates of adverse event reporting, and which are contaminated with high levels of plasmid DNA (though the TGA has yet to acknowledge this). On Skerritt’s watch, the TGA effectively banned the use of ivermectin at the height of the pandemic until the majority of Australians were vaccinated, after which the ban was lifted.
Moreover, Skerritt denied that the regulator hid post-vaccination child deaths from the Australian public, despite TGA communications clearly stating that the deaths had been hidden from the Freedom of Information disclosure logs because “disclosure of the documents could undermine public confidence”. He also said that cardiac arrest was not a safety signal for Covid vaccines despite TGA records showing that it was (FOI 4032).
Skerritt is named as a respondent in a Covid vaccine injury class action, which filed in the Federal Court last year. The action alleges that Skerritt’s “negligence” and “misfeasance” led to the approval and use of vaccines that did not meet the critical safety and efficacy requirements, resulting in death, serious illness and serious injury of Australians, of whom over 1,000 are represented in the action. The action is still taking on members injured by the Covid vaccines (find out more here).
After exiting their pandemic-era roles, Andrews, McGowan and Skerritt have all moved on to cushy private-sector jobs. Andrews has reportedly taken the ‘billionaire career path’, teaming up with WA mining billionaire Andrew Forrest to sell ‘green’ iron to China. McGowan has branched into consulting on international trade and mining. Skerritt has switched teams from regulator to regulated, taking up a role on the board of Medicines Australia, Australia’s peak body representing the pharmaceutical industry.
Last month, Victoria appointed Australia’s first ‘Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change’ to address what is widely viewed as a national ‘masculinity crisis’ by “focus[ing] largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys’ and men’s attitudes towards women and building respectful relationships”.
Yet, this is what our political class teaches Australia’s young men (and women):
- Abusers get awards
- Never say sorry
- Blame everyone else for your failures
- Bullying is okay
- Violence is an appropriate way to solve disagreements
- Mates club over merit
The old saying goes, “actions speak louder than words”.
We could have an entire Department of Secretaries for Men’s Behaviour Change, and every former Premier could be awarded with top honours for showing up to work. But unless our political class cleans house, Australians will continue to view them with the contempt and distrust they deserve.
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnettt’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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Agreed.
It must also be in our interests to have as President someone who expresses fondness for the UK rather than the open antipathy or worse which the Democrats have shown for many years.
More reasons than that to want the Donald in the White House.
Very relieved the Donald succeeded. The wokecratic Democrats are the most dangerous political movement in the world driven by crazy dogma lacking any semblance of sense and hell bent on autocratic authoritarian rule. This is entirely aside from being completely under the thumb of hidden hands including Pharma.
Very scary people. Trump might seem crazy sometimes but he has made a lot of sound decisions for the good of the USA.
Imagine what life in the UK would be like if Krazy Kumala were to be US president and the current Labour autocratic authoritarian national socialist party in parallel the UK.
The Democrats lost because they corruptly pretended Biden was not a demented senile man having elected him with a running mate who has a history which seems to me too weird for words and left it too late to do anything about the mess they created for themselves. A well-deserved crushing loss for US Democrats.
I will also be gratefully collecting my winnings from William Hill but I should have instead bought bitcoin before the voting started as a friend did.
“and, in any event, Kamala Harris, like her boss, is no friend of Britain’s”
Nancy Pelosi demonstrated in technicolour that US Democrats are hostile to the UK in threatening to block a UK-US trade deal.
I loved the photo of an armed American Patriot sitting in Pelosi’s office chair with his feet up on her desk. Even though the whole Jan 6th protest was a sad waste of their patriotic faith in Drumpf the AntiChrist, it was a shocking reminder that the people have more power than they realise.
Did you know that “Donald” means “World Ruler”, which is why he likes to be called “The Donald”.
This ties in with the Roman Emperor Nero, who didn’t start persecuting Christians, in whom he had no interest whatsoever, until his Hebrew “sages” complained that the annoying prayers of Christians were interfering with the Hebrew sages “readings of entrails” predicting Nero’s future.
Their entrail readings also told him that he would be “World Ruler” only if he moved his capital from Rome to Jerusalem. When he suggested this to the Roman Senate, they laughed him to scorn, so he got his sages to help him set fire to Rome.
It will be interesting to see the relationship between the Trump government and the Labour government going forward, and the amount of grovelling that involves. It’s when you see Lammy’s congratulatory message to Trump side by side with his various rude and contemptuous messages slagging off Trump from the past you have to think how the hell is he and people like him even in such jobs. Howard Cox wrote a good piece here;
“The legacy press, those Downing Street special advisors, and, of course, Labour’s front bench must have rushed to their anti-nausea tablets to quash a sick feeling deep in their collective gut when they learned Donald Trump, the 45th President of the US, has been re-elected as the 47th.
This political bombshell, not seen by pollsters but predicted by betting organisations, is a colossal nightmare for Sir Keir Starmer! His contriteness must now be more than sincere; it has to be convincing when he next meets the new leader of the free world.
This historic election result for the Western world’s supreme power is, without any doubt, the best outcome for the UK. For starters, it should help secure us lower energy costs, scrap the Net Zero fantasy, maintain fossil fuel supplies, deliver economic trade without punitive tariffs, improve global security, establish more robust border control, ensure the protection of free speech, help fight the worldwide spread of extreme Islamic terrorism, and end military conflicts around the globe.
But sadly, these widely popular common-sense outcomes will only materialise here if our mendacious Labour Government follows Trump’s healing fiscal plans and recognises that the further increase in spending of our bloated nanny state and their anti-business, economically illiterate policies have to be dumped. And that means cutting taxes. Watch Trump put that economic growth strategy into practice once inaugurated.
With that customary clueless stare into those political headlamps, Keir Starmer and the UK’s less-than-intelligent foreign secretary immediately and rightly so, tweeted congratulatory messages to President Trump.
David Lammy, who, as a backbench MP in 2018, with amoebic intelligence, called the ‘Donald’ a neo-Nazi sociopath. And he even attempted to defend his crass comment before this year’s General Election. He must now be quaking in those infamous less-than-appropriate white trainers that a popular right-wing administration is now to run America.
He has to eat diplomatic, humble pie and grovel remorsefully with a genuine apology. Failure to sincerely do so must mean Starmer should sack him. Frankly, he needs to go now. He is walking noose around Starmer’s neck; now Trump is in the White House.
Britain’s top foreign envoy abroad, in such an unstable world involving our closest ally, the United States, not only unnecessarily insulted the prize winner of the 2024 presidential election, but in doing so, he had stupidly accused the people of the US of returning someone unsuited for the most powerful elected office in the world.
Trump holds grudges big time, so watch this space to see how David Lamentable can rise to the occasion. I can’t see him lasting long after Christmas.”
https://x.com/HowardCCox/status/1854223664050225537
Peter Whittle speaks truth ( 5mins );
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoB7W8qF4L4
David Lamentable?
Lamey?
Lamee?
Peanut Brain?
Mogwai, I was quite depressed the other day by the below-the-line comments following the article on Kemi Badenoch’s win, that included an attack on me as a ‘globalist troll’! It was unpleasant, and I honestly found myself wondering whether I should support the site any more, as so many of the btl comments don’t do the site any favours and certainly bring me down periodically. But your posts, which I have come to like (I usually agree, and you’re very articulate) will keep me here. The piece from Howard Cox is good stuff! I do sometimes speculate on who you are…, but – thank you.
Hi Deborah. What a pleasant surprise your reply was and thank you for your kind words. No, please don’t go. I think we ladies are few and far between enough anyway ( I’m estimating those of us that comment with any regularity make up <1% of posters on this site, as the vast majority of account-holders are evidently men ) so we need numbers increasing not dwindling further.
There’s already quite the ‘anti-women’ sentiment pervading this place as it is.
I have to say I’ve felt exactly the same way. It would appear that certain individuals have an inability to simultaneously disagree with a fellow poster and debate respectfully. The particular individual you’re referring to though, I’ve already classified as suffering from ‘Mogwai Derangement Syndrome’, an affliction whereby certain sufferers troll you round the comments sections, hurl insults and slanderous allegations your way and try to beat anyone who disagrees with them into submission using their ever-present ‘CAPS LOCK RAGE!!’, just to further broadcast the fact they’re completely unhinged and exceedingly unpleasant.
So I get where you’re coming from. Just ignore them because they get satisfaction in reeling you into a stupid, childish spat, then you’re reduced to their level and it’s a win for them. But yes, “certain individuals” are indeed odious. Best thing to do is stick around and post even more. It’s guaranteed to get up their nose.
Says the Queen of Obscene Insults and Rabid, Frothing-at-the-Mouth Rage at anyone who dares to criticize or disagree with her. Now here she is masquerading as Sweet Reason. Give over!
Luckily, the Daily Sceptic editors appear to have put their foot down about obscenities.
Ooooo.
Someone does not like Freedom of Speech/
LOL. Heh, heh.
Don’t let ANYBODY on this site bring you down. If you are up for it give as good as you get or just ignore the flap heads. We don’t always agree with everybody but civility costs nothing.
Well said Hux
It’s called FREEDOM OF SPEECH,
and this website’s courageous founder also founded
THE FREE SPEECH UNION,
fighting valiantly to preserve
ALL OUR HUMAN RIGHTS TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
No one has any right to special protection against criticism or insults. NO ONE.
I never whine or complain about downvotes or insults directed at me, as long as they are not obscene, so why should you?
“I never whine or complain about downvotes or insults directed at me, as long as they are not obscene, so why should you?”
Freedom of speech?
LOL. Heh, heh.
David Lammy has infamous white trainers?
Not surprising. He has earned them.
He demonstrated that in trumps as he behaved like a dictatorial white imperialist colonialist of a long past age towards the Chagosians in tramping over their property rights and without even consulting them handed their land to Mauritians whose government has never ever owned nor had a claim over the Chagos Islands.
Clearly he has been well-taught and has adopted the worst kinds of practices and he does not even seem to realise it.
If only I had enough money to help the Chagosians to sue David Lamey and win a claim to recover their property [the Chagos Islands] from the dictatorial white trainered imperialist colonialist that he is.
Also of course an extremely stupid act of giving the islands away when completely unnecessary.
The Chagosians want to be under British protection so this country could have retained Diego Garcia on the Chagos Islands which could have been ruled by the Chagosians under the protection of the British Crown.
I agree with Toby. I would have voted for Trump too.
I hope the same will happen in Britain, although Labour is the epitome of woke, so I expect they will double down on their efforts to turn the country into a vibrant, multicultural, net-zero dystopia. They won’t change and they are beyond help. Only this morning, reading the analysis on the BBC website about why Kamala lost, their conclusion is that it was because she “couldn’t get her message through”. Not that the message was crap, oh, no, that’s just not possible. She just didn’t articulate it quite right. So I think we have some hard times ahead.
Call me shocked. Yet again the Lefties wailing that it wasn’t their policies that lost them an election. Remember that Jeremy Corbyn won the election other than getting the most votes.
Starmfuhrer should learn how to win elections like that. The world would be a better place.
And on Channel Four tonight, it was because she didn’t have enough time to get her message across.
Not as hawkish on the Uketopia?
Are you serious or stupid?
This conflict, started by NATO with 2 coups and 15K dead Russians and endless expansion, will end up going nuclear.
ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS TO VOTE TRUMP IS THAT HE MUST, WILL, HAS TO, END THIS CONFLICT. He can do so in 1 day – by withdrawing ALL funding. Gone. Without US money and NATO equipment, the Uketopia (US 51rst state) will have one or two weeks left.
What exactly was Hunter Biden up to in Ukraine?
Does everything a Biden touches end in corruption and disaster?
Remember what Obama promised during his own election campaign years ago? He railed against the War in Afghanistan, and declared that the first thing he would do if elected President would be to bring all the troops back home.
“That is the first thing I will do! And you can take that to the bank!”
The crowd went wild with cheers, but the first thing he did after getting elected was to announce “A Surge”, ordering masses more US servicemen and women to go get maimed and killed in Afghanistan.
Then he was given the Nobel Peace Prize, not long after.
The blob will not relinquish their intentions. Perhaps we can expect another global ‘pandemic’ or similar requiring global ‘collaboration’?
Of course. As the saying goes: “If at first you don’t succeed ……“
I watched Bannon’s War Room every day for 3 years after the 2020 steal. The Democrat corruption was massive, obvious and proven in hundreds of situations. Every one of these was ignored by the MSM.
That truth will now be properly aired, so get ready for criminalisations of many major figures.
Trump is arguably the finest American President in history.
Some inconvenient facts about his 2016 tenure for the haters:
1. No foreign wars.
2. No deaths of US Military personnel
3. Booming economy
4. Energy independence, energy exporter.
5. Strong dollar
6. China and Russia behaved
7.Record employment for blacks and Hispanics
8. Jerusalem recognised as Israel’s capital, embassy moved
9. Golan Heights recognised as sovereign Israel territory
10. Complete absence of Palestinian terrorism
11. Iran supressed, JCPOA cancelled.
I could go on.
I believe Trump will disdain Starmer and his gang, but differentiate with the people of Britain.
Interesting days ahead …
It’s going to be especially galling for Keir-Ching! to know that every policy area he raises with Trump (and vice versa) will be filtered through Nigel Farage
Why I would have voted for Trump. First 10 …. are are more.
And he thinks abortion is something other than healthcare?
I’m pretty optimistic that Trump will seriously degrade the power and influence of deep state actors, and their acolytes. Even if Trump is assassinated, JD Vance will carry the battle forwards. I hope our own ‘deep state’ and associated acolytes are sweating now.
I felt euphoric when he won but I was also aware that it is because we live in an age of diminished expectations. You see this pattern when empires fall. People come along promising to care for the people or bring back old glories but it can’t be done. At least he is is so volatile and unpredictable and sufficiently deranged that he might put a few spanners in the works of the Satanists. On the other hand this is a man who loves to boast about Warp Speed vaccines and he hasn’t recanted. It is a sad indictment on our sense of the possible that such a figure makes us happy. I suppose that you could retort that RFK Jr will be working with him which is a good start on the path to redemption.
Here is an interesting opinion from one of the Heroic Jews, Henry Makow of Canada, who boldly tells the truth about Jewish involvement in Globalism:
“Trump was reinstated to lead the USA into WW3. Gold and oil were down today because people think Trump will stop the “endless foreign wars.” But Trump is a Cabalist Jew. He is following a fanatical script that requires the destruction of the Old Order. He is leading the Masonic Zionist faction (Nazis, NATO, Israel, Ukraine) against the Masonic Communist faction (Russia, Iran, China, BRICS) in a repeat of WW2.
Israel is in deep trouble. Netanyahu just fired his Defence Minister Gallant because Gallant balked. Similarly, Wagner chief Progozhin balked when he realized there was AN OCCULT AGENDA THAT PRIORITIZED KILLING SLAVS OVER WINNING THE WAR.
Nevertheless I am elated that Trump has won. I much prefer the Zionist method of execution (a blinding white nuclear flash) to the Communist form of execution, the slow destruction of the soul, plandemic and police state. The first is over in a second, while the latter lasts for generations.
I am surprised the election was as close as it was. Americans truly are brain-dead to give Harris 67 million votes compared to Trump’s 72 million.”
(from Nov 6 – Deep State S-elects Trump; How I Knew it Would”)
henrymakow.com – Exposing Feminism and The New World Order
It doesn’t seem to matter to Will Jones that she’s an abortion enthusiast who can only speak of it in terms that implicitly deny what it is; does it not matter to you either?