Five years on from the declaration of a global pandemic, I’m weary of Covid inquiries. They tend to go either of two ways. They either run through bureaucratic checkboxes and give everyone a medal for having locked down the fastest and vaccinated the most. Or, they spend months reviewing submissions and focus group transcripts to come to very obvious conclusions, like “closing schools for prolonged periods is damaging for kids” or “people don’t trust public health authorities if you attempt to force everyone to take an over-hyped vaccine“.
A new report from the Australian Human Rights Commission examining the effects of the state and federal Covid response fits in the latter category, offering predictable insights like “human rights impacts were not always considered or protected”, and that many Australians felt they were “collateral damage” to Government policies.
However, being the only Australian review to have taken extensive and nuanced consideration of human rights, it is worth a look for what it reveals about how the flamekeepers of human rights in this country think about emergency management, conflicting rights and trade-offs.
Collateral Damage
The report, titled Collateral Damage, centres on the personal stories of more than 5,000 Australians following a national survey, community consultations and stories shared through an online portal.
It is the first national review to spotlight the Covid experience of everyday Australians to such an extent, after the Commission received thousands of enquiries and complaints relating to the pandemic.
Overall, it contains some useful insights. Where Government reviews have tended to assume that the right of the community to be protected from a virus automatically trumps the right, say, to bodily autonomy, the Commission makes no assumptions, discussing the human rights trade-offs of key policy decisions in detail, and in the context of Australia’s commitment to international covenants and treaties.
That said, the Commission found a high level of community support for privileging community well-being over individual rights. In the survey, 74% of participants agreed that the greater good of the community should always be considered before individual rights, and only 10% disagreed. When asked specifically whether the Covid vaccine should be mandatory for all except those with medical exemptions, a slimmer majority of 57% of participants agreed, and a sizeable proportion (29%) disagreed.
The report criticises the “disproportionate” nature of Australia’s Covid response, especially the inappropriateness of “blanket and inflexible policies that failed to consider local realities”, and the lack of compassion in the way that extreme measures, like travel bans, vaccine mandates and lockdowns, were implemented.
The Commission found that two in five Australians felt they had been disadvantaged by the Covid situation, while one in five said they had benefited from it (another two in five were neutral). Victorians, who were subject to the world’s longest lockdowns and some of the most extreme pandemic measures ever seen, were the least likely to think the pandemic had been handled well.
Unsurprisingly, people in vulnerable and low socioeconomic circumstances, including First Nations people, suffered the most, while people who could easily work from home and suffered no financial losses were more likely to feel they had benefited.
“In our research, we heard devastating stories of severe economic hardship, families unable to say goodbye to loved ones, women trapped in violent households, and communities left isolated due to blanket policies that failed to consider local realities,” said Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, who co-authored the report.
“These experiences should never be ignored or repeated.”
These experiences, like a pregnant woman who didn’t want to get the vaccine, but relented because she couldn’t afford to lose her job. At 17 weeks pregnant, she experienced a stillbirth and had to deliver her baby alone in the hospital while her husband was refused entry due to a positive Covid test.
These experiences, like a woman who was “isolated and stuck in a DV [domestic violence] relationship” during lockdowns.
These experiences, like the man who watched his father’s funeral “in a suit and tie in my kitchen over a streamed video link” due to movement restrictions.
These experiences, like the daughters who placed their mother into aged care right before lockdowns and had to watch her through a glass window as she descended into a state of despair from the isolation, pleading to be let out.
These experiences, like a man stranded in Japan for two years with his Australian-citizen daughter, separated from family and disrupting education plans because of federal and state restrictions on movement.
These experiences, like refugees on temporary visas whose places of work were closed during lockdowns, but who could not access financial support due to lack of citizenship, leaving them unable to support themselves and their families, but also unable to return home.
Notably absent from these experiences are the voices of the Covid vaccine-injured, which did not feature anywhere in the report, despite submissions having been made.
Vaccine injuries and mandates: a blind spot
In a short section on vaccine side-effects, the Commission says it received “many story submissions in which people spoke of injury, harm and anger arising because their fears of vaccine side-effects were dismissed and that their claims of vaccine injury were ignored or undermined”.
Nevertheless, it is “important to acknowledge that the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration] continue to advise that vaccination against COVID-19 is the most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from infection, and that the protective benefits of vaccination far outweigh the potential risks”.
That may be the case for the majority (although the effectiveness of these shots is seriously questionable), but it’s not for the people who are injured, which is the entire point of these people’s stories.
The report references almost 139,654 adverse events following immunisation (AEFIs) reported to the TGA’s safety database as at October 29th 2023, contrasting this figure against 68,864,839 doses having been administered, as though the comparative rarity of reported AEFIs somehow diminishes the impact or significance of the injuries experienced.
There is no mention of the underreporting factor of surveillance systems like that used by the TGA, which suggests that the AEFIs experienced in the population may be 10-100 times greater than those recorded. There is no mention of the fact that approximately 22,000 of the reported AEFIs were classified by the TGA as ‘serious’, and there is no mention of the 1,007 reported deaths at that point in time.
While the TGA likes to emphasise that AEFIs reported to its database, including deaths, may not be causally linked to the vaccines, the reverse is also true. Injuries and deaths may be causally linked to the vaccines, and there is no evidence to prove that this is not the case, as in almost all cases the TGA does not attempt to determine the causality of reported AEFIs or deaths associated with Covid vaccination, rather assigning a causality status of “possible”.
The Commission closes this section with a statement on the importance of adequate compensation for AEFIs, as though mandating a drug that causes life-altering injuries and death is acceptable as long as some money is handed out.
What the Commission is describing here is a death and injury lottery. You cannot work, travel, visit your loved ones, or access public venues and services unless you participate in the lottery. Your chances of injury or death are a point of contention, but rest assured that some of you, the unlucky ones, will pull a short straw.
If we were to discuss vaccine mandates in these terms, it would be a very different conversation.
Another issue raised by participants on the subject of vaccine mandates was the human right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without free consent (Article 7 of the ICCPR, to which Australia is a party). This is a non-derogable right, meaning that it cannot be infringed upon, not even in an emergency.
However, the Commission assures that the Covid vaccine rollout was not experimental, and therefore this concern is invalid.
“While COVID-19 vaccines were developed rapidly and were initially granted provisional approval, they were not a form of medical or scientific experimentation. The vaccines used in Australia were all approved by the TGA using the recognised assessment and approval processes,” states the report.
Ironically, this section is followed by another titled “lack of information”, in which participants describe not being able to find information relating to the effects of vaccination on their pregnancies or pre-existing conditions. This was because the vaccines had not been tested in these populations yet.
The Commission appears to have forgotten that the vaccines were rolled out during Phase 3 of the trials, i.e., they were experimental by definition, at least until the trials ended in December 2022-June 2023, and arguably well past these dates due to the lack of medium to long-term safety data.
As would be expected of any drug being rolled out before the completion of trials (and fast-tracked at that), some side–effects were not discovered until the shots had already been administered en masse, such as the potentially deadly risk of TTS with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Other side-effects and post-vaccine conditions are still only being discovered now.
Presumably, that’s why Australia’s Health Minister at the time, Greg Hunt, said on national television that the world was engaged in “the largest global vaccination trial ever, and we will have enormous amounts of data.”
The problem is that authorities and pharma companies want to have it both ways – and the Commission allows it. They want to say that the vaccines are safe but give pharma companies a liability shield in case they’re not. They want to say ‘we built the plane while flying it’ but also claim that the plane was already built and had passed all safety checks before leaving the tarmac.
It cannot be both ways, and we can’t have a proper discussion about human rights trade-offs without admitting that.
Considering the lack of information available about the vaccines, their experimental nature and blanket mandates requiring vaccination for participation in the economy and public life, informed consent was simply not possible for most Australians during the Covid vaccine rollout.
Informed consent requires that the recipient of a vaccine has the legal capacity to consent, is acting voluntarily in the absence of coercion, and has been given enough information about the risks and benefits to make a choice.
The report goes some way in addressing the lack of opportunity for informed consent, featuring the voices of people who felt “forced”, “bullied” and “coerced” into getting vaccinated, and acknowledging that “some people felt that they were not actually given a meaningful choice”.
This was such a problem that the Government had to publish directions to healthcare providers on how to handle people fronting up to their vaccination appointments saying that they didn’t consent, but they were being forced to get it to keep their job.
The report also discusses the short timeframes imposed on people to get vaccinated before consequences for refusal kicked in, and privacy concerns relating to the implementation of vaccine passports.
While the Commission emphasises that “it is preferable to encourage compliance rather than punish non-compliance” and that “vaccine hesitancy concerns should not be undermined or dismissed”, the door is left open for vaccine mandates to be implemented under a human rights framework in the future.
“Mandatory vaccinations should ideally be considered only after other, less invasive, strategies have been implemented,” states the report.
“Broad-based mandates run the risk of failing to consider individual circumstances and hence opens up the possibility of discrimination. More should be done to prevent feelings of coercion, as this erodes government trust and has ramifications for future emergency response.”
This reads a little la-la-land to me. People tend to experience feelings of coercion when they are being coerced. Mandates are coercive, and necessarily are incompatible with informed consent.
The Commission stopped short of acknowledging this hard truth, but any discussion of future mandates needs to start here to avoid spiraling off into doublespeak nonsense about voluntary mandatory vaccinations – people aren’t stupid, and are disinclined to trust authorities speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
Human rights as priority in emergency planning
The Commission recommends that all levels of government adopt an Emergency Response Framework, anchored by seven key principles:
- Human rights as a priority, embedded in decision-making from the outset.
- Meaningful consultation with all communities, especially vulnerable groups, as a one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective.
- Proportionate responses that are constantly reviewed and adapted.
- Balancing risk with compassion, ensuring timely and accessible exemptions.
- Tailored communication, addressing diverse needs and combating misinformation.
- Empowering and supporting local communities to help create more effective and considered plans.
- Planning beyond the crisis to avoid abrupt withdrawal of critical supports.
If adopted, this framework would be an improvement on what we lived through over the past five years.
“This isn’t about who is to blame, but how we can do better. We cannot wait for the next crisis to learn these lessons,” Commissioner Finlay said.
“We must rebuild trust, strike a balance between individual freedoms and public health, and place human rights at the heart of emergency planning.”
However, the vaccine mandate blind spot remains, and trust will not be rebuilt without accountability and restoration of free and informed consent.
Until authorities and mandate-pushers face the music and reckon with the human impact of their policies, we are unlikely to see meaningful human rights considerations in the development of emergency policies – especially vaccination policies – in the future.
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnett’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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Wow!
We have waited a long time for someone in the Commons to find the backbone to make such a profound, well-researched and much needed statement. We now need the rest to check their offices to see if their backbones are hiding in a cupboard and if so drag them out and for once put them to use.
“the benefits of the vaccine are close to non-existent.”
“It is no surprise, when there is so much control by an entity (big Pharma) that has been described as ‘psychopathic’ for its profit-making conduct, that one analysis suggests that third most common cause of death globally after heart disease and cancer is the side-effects of prescribed medications, which were mostly avoidable.”
I suppose the likelihood is that the WEF puppets will duck and dive, go AWOL and hope that this speech will be forgotten by New Year, or engineer a suitable crisis to deflect attention elsewhere but the gauntlet has been laid down.
It is very rare I say this but,
Thank you Andrew Bridgen MP.
I am very much looking forward to the naming of the BHF merd and lots of publicity shaming yet another sham charidee.
I have just had a trawl through the BHF website. Very concerned for its staff. Full stream bloody woke. Interestingly it has enjoyed a very successful Scamdemic:
I cannot find where the income came from and it appears to be hidden within “donations and legacies.” How the hell did income increase by 148% in one year? It is difficult not to conclude that the additional monies must have arrived from the usual suspects – big pharma and Lord Bill, especially as they clearly divorced themselves from proper science with their readiness to adhere to the extremely dangerous ‘safe and effective’ narrative.
What a deplorable organisation.
From the Annual Accounts 2022 (chart, page 10):
The increase in net income principally reflected the significant bounce-back in retail trading, following the enforced closure through periods of lockdown of our shops and stores for much of the prior year and a record breaking year for legacy income.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/what-we-do/bhf-annual-report-2022.pdf?rev=cc73d5ab18314f8aa4d14440d4c320e6&hash=EE2F84E00B356C98419E65150702D68A
Along with increasing levels of poverty forcing people who didn’t before to use charity shops (big increase locally), perhaps the unusual and unexpected [sarc] increase in cardiac deaths is reaping benefits for them…
Thanks for that.
That research must be published too.
Thankfully, it has also just gained enormous impact and credibility.
In this paranoid world in which we live (sadly), I too salute Andrew Bridgen for his courage … but also feel this may be the start of “The Big Reveal” – whatever that is. Anyone?
I admire your optimism, but suspect the MSN will focus on Caulfield’s rebuttal rather than the meat of Bridgen’s speech!
I am not sure “optimism” is the right word in this context. My very limited understanding of The Big Reveal is that it is part of the strategy of the Global Elites (Gates, WEF et al). In order to instil despair and begin the moves towards civil unrest, certain disclosures would be made, which would reveal the fundamental breakdown in the system… but I don’t understand any more about the strategy.
I am not sure even where I heard about The Big Reveal…
And let it not be forgotten that the constant clamour from every “opposition” party in Parliament has been for “Sooner, Harder, Longer.”
Joined by a majority, perhaps, of Tory backbenchers.
There are none of them that have not been allerted to what has been going on, by some of their own constituents.
You don’t need more than just a simple fact of conspiracy to cover-up to start investigation. if there is no link (between the jabs and heart inflammation), what’s the motive? the public has to know. Let’s hope that eventually something will come out of it
I wonder how many MPs were in the chamber to hear this speech at 7.04pm yesterday evening.
I think there were about 3. Speaks volumes, but how demoralizing is that?
I’ve let my MP know he and his colleagues missed an important speech.
Kudos to Bridgen. An excellent speech despite the House being virtually empty (natch), and a couple of other MPs concurring with various points, needs to be spread far and wise. Also worth watching is Maria Caulfield MP’s rather rushed and scripted rebuttal – a truly classic example of The Narrative’s ‘jabs saved millions of lives/safe & effective’ BS plus other outright lies. Wonder how much she got for saying it. (From 19.25.22 – end):
https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d0cc6561-6ab9-46ea-8d6d-f07ac0cf136d
I emailed him recently to express support. Imagine he feels pretty lonely. Interestingly his Wikipedia page is full of references to alleged corruption- no idea whether they are true or not and don’t care, but if true pale into insignificance compared to the Covid fraud.
you have to be courageous to go against the grain and to speak up. You have to be even more courageous to publicly admit that you were wrong. that’s why the House is almost empty.
A criminal investigation needs to be started, the offices of these institutions must be raided and incriminating materials removed and placed in the hands of independent investigators. When it is proven (as it will be) that data on the clear dangers of this poison have long been available and intentionally withheld, criminal charges must be brought against those who withheld these data – and particularly against those who signed off on and allowed continuation of the poisoning. The investigation must extend to the regulatory agencies who allowed this, with full knowledge of all the damage.
MPs must front run this – someone is going to carry the can for this, one day or another, in one form or another. The regulatory agencies, health care institutions and, of course, big p-harma itself are most at fault – hold them to account.
Many people who stopped at 2 or 3 shots thought they were okay after so many months had passed. They are now undoubtedly worrying whether they may yet join the ever-increasing group of ‘died suddenly’ ‘passed peacefully in his/her sleep’. People in this position, increasingly anxious, will also increasingly feel they have little to lose. Ignoring the elephant in the room that died suddenly of cardiac arrest is nothing other than sowing the wind…
Unfortunately, we cannot even trust our own police force to investigate – even when they are presented with irrefutible evidence. When it is demanded that they close down the vaccination centres and impound the ‘vaccines’, they protect the perpetrators and arrest those seeking to stop the harms continuing.
We have a police force???…WOW, who knew?
I believe there were just 3 people in the chamber last night. I can only conclude the following points:
Covid hypocrisy and lying by western “leaders” continues relentlessly – as the likes of Trudeau, Biden, Arden, Johnson, Dan Andrews and other double-dealing tyrants condemn Putin and Xi Jinping while their behaviour is markedly worse.
And still the dopey public, led by the nose by the likes of the BBC and Daily Mail/Telegraph, continue to fall for the scam.
This corruption will not be resolved until Bill Gates is evicted from W H O, Gavi, CEPI and all other such advocacy groups where conflicts of interest lead to fatal results for the blind presuming masses
One cheer – I’ll save the other two until the arrests start and charges are brought.
Well done Andrew Bridgen and Danny Kruger in raising this vitally important matter, not just for the UK, but around the globe.
It’s devastating what the UK Boris Johnson government unleashed upon the world when it adopted the recommendations of Neil Ferguson et al’s Imperial College Report 9 in March 2020, i.e. to suppress the virus “until a vaccine becomes available”.
Vaccines were subsequently rushed out, despite the fact the virus/disease wasn’t a serious threat to most people – how did this happen, how was a ‘vaccine solution’ evaluated and approved?
It subsequently emerged that Neil Ferguson is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this serious conflict of interest wasn’t disclosed in Report 9.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been dominating international vaccination policy for years, and is a major funder of the World Health Organisation, as well as being instrumental in the founding of the Gavi Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also provided funding for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine trials.
Bill Gates was the leader of ‘the race for a coronavirus vaccine’ in 2020, see for example his GatesNotes: What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine, published on 30 April 2020.
Why is this software billionaire dominating international vaccination policy, and having the likes of then prime minister Boris Johnson at his beck and call?
The grossly disproportionate and ill-targeted Covid response is a diabolical shambles.
The damage wrought around the world is immense, including in my country, Australia, where millions of people have been coerced to have the Covid needles, including children. Millions of people have been mandated to have the jabs, e.g. No Jab, No Job.
Informed consent has been trashed, and personal autonomy and bodily integrity destroyed. Mandated medical interventions in a supposed free country, it’s a travesty.
This is the biggest crime of all time, bring on the investigation and the trials.
I would have thought that an NDA does not apply for the purposes of Whistleblowing when it is in the public interest.
I’ve never once caught a glimpse of my MP in the House so don’t expect he was there to hear this.
The useless great lump is still promoting the boosters, even to those who are pregnant. He reckons the unjabbed careworkers were rightfully sacked, so no chance of an apology, reinstatement or compensation from his direction. (I tried)
I look forward to his defenestration at the next election, unless he takes the coward’s way out and resigns first.
All credit to Mr Bridgen for his stance in this unpopular cause; I salute him.
Exactly the same here. Ian Liddell-Grainger, shame on him, MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset. “Useless great lump” perfectly describes him too; has completely ignored perfectly legitimate pleas to open his eyes and look more closely at all or any of this, for more than 2 years. Utter waste of space and oxygen.
Hats off to Mr Bridgen.
Thanks for printing the Bridgen speech, which I watched because the whole of it was on John Campbell’s YouTube channel as well.
I have written to my MP (Andrew Murrison), who is himself an MD, underlining the importance of Bridgen’s speech, expressing my concern and asking why none of this seems to be being investigated by our (interest-conflicted public health bodies. I shall be interested to get his reaction (if any).
So Andrew Bridgen gets it. Only another 649 MPs to go…
Christopher Chope does as well.
648…
Surely no-one is suggesting our MPs could be diverted from their duty in any way by any outside influences?
.
UK MPs defend accepting ‘lavish’ Qatari gifts before World Cup
MPs argued trips to Qatar were an opportunity to raise human rights concerns with the government.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-mps-defend-accepting-260000-in-qatari-gifts-before-world-cup/
.
Well done and thank you, Andrew Bridgen.
Well done Andrew Bridgen. We need a Nuremberg type trial and convictions for crimes against humanity.
Much to be wished, although I was hoping that my investment in tar and feathers futures might work out well.
Well it’s taken a very long time for any of “our” MPs to dare talk “the vaccine narrative” down and expose the corruption at the heart of Big Pharma and the National Health Bureaucracies it funds.
Are Sunak and Barclay listening?
I doubt it. They daren’t admit that the Government coerced the population to participate in a mass medical experiment and has pushed dangerous “vaccines” on people who didn’t need them and as a result has injured millions and killed thousands.
It’s mind-boggling…
There should never have been a ‘vaccine solution’ for this disease it was known from the beginning wasn’t a serious threat to most people…but at the same time the threat was beaten up to justify the ‘vaccines’.
Billions of people around the world have been deliberately misled about this virus/disease, and been set up to be exploited by the lucrative Covid industry, created out of thin air.
In Australia, millions of people have been mandated to have the jabs, e.g. No Jab, No Job. In some states such as Victoria and Western Australia, life was made very difficult for those critical thinking people who refused to consent to the jabs, being cancelled out of civil society,
It’s been the most shocking experience of my lifetime, seeing how discrimination could be so easily implemented, and for people to be manipulated to turn on each other.
Rogue governments have facilitated this most egregious assault upon the people, how do we bring them to account
“There should never have been a ‘vaccine solution’ for this disease…”
Exactly. And in those few words the whole essence of the scam and probably the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated is captured.
Andrew Bridgen has partially restored my faith in democracy. Hats off to you, sir.