VICTORIA’S NEW AG-LAWS – BACKYARD GARDENS ARE AT RISK …
Last week’s post on Victoria’s Agriculture Legislation Amendment Bill stirred up a bit of controversy.
A couple of people have queried whether the new laws could in fact be used to target backyard veggie gardens.
The concern I have on that front, relates specifically to the Bill’s changes to the Catchment and Land Protection Act, and the powers its “authorised officers” hold to “enter and search land”.
Under Clause 81 (2) of the Act, the powers currently don’t apply to a dwelling, or if the owner/occupier of the land refuses entry.
The Bill’s changes, however, remove the right of the occupier/owner “of the land” to refuse entry, leaving only the qualifier that “it does not apply to a dwelling”.
The effect of this change is twofold (by my reading). It not only removes the owner or occupier’s right to refuse access to their property without a warrant. It also decouples the reference to land in the original Act to that of simply the “dwelling”.
This is significant because according to most legal definitions I found for a dwelling – NOT given in the Bill or the original Act – it refers only to the “habitable structure” on the land, NOT the land itself.
That was certainly the ruling of a 2017 court case – DPP v Distill [2017] EWHC 2244 (Admin), – where an Administrative Court ruled that a domestic garden does NOT form part of a “dwelling”.
This means authorised officers may not be able to enter your home, but they DO have the power to enter your land and gardens.
If the Bill’s drafters HAD wanted to exclude the land as well, they could have used “residential land” or “residential property” instead of “dwelling” – but they didn’t.
You also only have to look at the context of the Bill, specifically the way it drastically waters down people’s property rights under the original Act – e.g. See Bill’s repeal of 81(4)(b),(c),(d) and (ea) and amendment of (f).
The Bill also adds a sub-clause to 81(ac) to the Act. This establishes the basis on which officers can “enter and search land” as:
“for the purposes of ASCERTAINING whether or not a regionally prohibited weed, regionally controlled weed or established pest animal is present or not present on the land.”
Currently officers can only enter if they have “reasonable grounds” for believing a ‘noxious weed’ or pest animal is present. That protection is removed by the Bill, leaving the door wide open for ‘fishing expeditions’ and other abuses.
The whole Bill sets a terrible precedent for property rights in Australia generally.
As George Washington once said:
“Freedom and Property Rights are Inseparable – you can’t have one without the other”.
Stephen Andrew letter to Premier says mandates threaten rights
Fear and scapegoating have always been the means with which tyrants have exercised power and control over their people. From Robespierre and his COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY during the French Revolution, it has been a trusted strategy that we have seen played out many times over the centuries. It works the same in any country, and it is working that way today in ours.
Vaccine mandates are not just discriminatory, they are profoundly dangerous. They threaten the rights and freedoms of ALL Australians, not just the unvaccinated ones. We must resist the governments and corporations who are aggressively driving this agenda. They will not rest until the well-established principle, that a ‘free person’ is one who, at the barest minimum, owns the rights to his or her own body, has been reversed – permanently. This was a cornerstone of Roman law and modern Western jurisprudence.
A mark of ownership of a master over his slave was not the ‘brand’ or ‘mark’ he was forced to bear, but rather the act of FORCING him to bear that ‘mark’. If vaccine mandates, of any kind, are allowed to stand in this State and Country, it will be ‘game over’ as far as our individual rights and freedoms are concerned. Because, despite what many would like to believe, the government has no intention of handing any of our lost freedoms back – no matter how many restrictions, mandates or ‘jabs’ we are willing to accept.
As former Lord Chief Justice, Jonathan Sumption put it last year:
“The public has not even begun to understand the seriousness of what is happening in this country, many .. perhaps most .. of them don’t care or won’t care until it’s too late”.
Folks, it’s nearly too late …
Please read my letter to the Premier of Queensland on this issue, which I believe is the most important letter I have ever written as a State Parliamentarian:
Stephen Andrew statement on medical segregation
Well it’s started, just as many predicted as far back as February 2020. Two big players in Queensland’s private sector economy, Deloitte and Suncorp, have sent emails to all their staff, telling them that from 1 January 2022, vaccination will be mandatory for ALL employees, including delivery drivers, contractors, consultants, and anyone else wishing to access their premises.
In what looks to be the State’s first two test cases for workers not directly involved in the frontline or service sectors, the two multi-national giant corporations’ announced exclusionary workplace policies this week, that will send shockwaves around the state. If allowed to stand, the decision of these two mega-wealthy companies could see medical segregation in the workplace become the norm for Queensland – permanently.
The two, one a member of the ‘Big Four’ global accountancy firms, and the other a billion-dollar bank, have told their workers, they will be banned from coming to work and from attending work events unless they can provide bosses with proof they are “fully vaccinated” – whether this will include quarterly booster shots as well is not clear.
Deloitte reportedly told workers that following discussions with other members of the “Big Four”, the policy was agreed on, although only Deloitte have announced it publicly. Deloitte also hilariously told its workers in their email, that the company remains committed to the principle of workplace “inclusion”, so at this stage, they are not planning to actually sack workers who don’t comply – just EXCLUDE them from the workplace!
This exclusion and segregation of workers from their workplaces and fellow workmates, forcing them to stay cooped up at home and alone, is truly abhorrent. Numerous studies have shown that human interaction and peer bonding are vital for people’s mental health and self-esteem, especially when it comes to young people.
The mental health bill for all these crimes being committed in the name of “public health”, will be catastrophic – far outstripping that of C***d.
Anyone who cares about the well-being of their fellow Queenslanders, and who has accounts or does business with these two companies, should let them know in no uncertain terms that policies of hate and vilification have no place in this State.
They are reprehensible and should be strongly condemned by the whole community.
Stephen Andrew statement on democracy descending into despotism
We are witnessing shocking scenes in Melbourne as the “Lucky Country” descends further into despotism. Australians are now watching in horror as their once stable Western democracy disintegrates further into utter chaos and despotism on the streets of Melbourne. Victoria’s heavily militarised and Orwellian-named “Public Order Response Team”, today moved in tight military formation against crowds of protestors, as they fled to the sanctuary of their city’s ancestral Shrine of Remembrance, only to again be chased down by police dogs, shot with rubber bullets and gassed. Crowds that included many elderly Australians and young children.
Across the airwaves, media talking heads, government spokespeople and a host of so-called ‘labor leaders’ swung into gear, working feverishly to ‘quarantine’ and ‘emotionally distance’ the protesting construction workers from the rest of Australia, smearing them as nothing more than “far right extremists” and ‘domestic terrorists’. Clips of the protestors were all carefully edited, framed and editorialised on, in such a way as to create, reinforce and then ram home this narrative in the public mind. The fear being that other Australians, sitting at home, might actually start to feel sympathy, or even worse, make ‘common cause’ with these men, their families and supporters.
How different everything was last year when BLM protestors were rampaging through our streets, defacing public memorials, yelling obscenities and burning Australian flags. Then, our elites were all falling over themselves in the rush to pay fealty and respect to the protestors’ ‘woke’ agenda.
Will anyone ever forget the sight of Victorian police officers kneeling before the screaming, mostly white, hordes, bowing their heads in abject shame and deference. It was like some ritualised act of self-loathing, and a clear sign of our ruling elites’ complete repudiation and contempt for this nation’s history, culture and people. It’s the same ‘repudiation’ and ‘contempt’ we see on their faces today as they all march in lockstep against a group of people they regard as ‘relics’ from the ‘old Australia’ – the Australia they long ago consigned to the dustbin of history.
For all the conservatives out there who have also attacked the protestors, Professor James Allan, summed it up best when he wrote in yesterday’s Spectator:
“..there is nothing in being a conservative that precludes one from thinking that a situation is so bad – because the lawful authorities have gone so far off the rails – that protest and disobedience of the law is fully warranted.”
“Think about this from the point of view of elected politicians who have become way too big for their elected boots, and started to exhibit some of the traits of the despotic, heavy-handed petty tyrant. A citizenry full of those who refuse to practice civil disobedience (or make out that a citizenry of conservatives who think their primary allegiance must always and everywhere be solely to the law and to whatever those with the lawful authority to make legal rules say) is a society that takes the same path … as ‘sheep to the slaughterhouse’.”
Stephen Andrew statement on the future of the union movement
John Wilson, the former Queensland State Secretary and ex-President of the Trades Hall Council is incandescent with rage at what he calls the ‘sell out’ of the working class by Australia’s Union Leadership over the past 18 months.
“They’ve SAID NOTHING and they’ve DONE NOTHING” he thundered. “They are FULLY on board with this agenda”.
“They are PART OF this SELLOUT – they’re part of it and there is going to be a reckoning.”
“They will not survive this”. “They are finished”.
Wilson’s words came as Victoria’s construction workers and tradies unleashed their own fury at unions, specifically the CFMMEU, for their failure to initiate any stop-work actions over the mandatory vaccination orders their members are now subject to. Construction workers in Victoria have been told by the Dan Andrews government that they must have at least one jab by this Thursday, or face the loss of their jobs and livelihoods. Many have mortgages to pay and kids to support and the orders have been a devastating blow to the hard-working members of the industry. They are absolutely furious that their union reps are basically sitting on their hands and letting it happen.
Not a single union – not the Building unions, the Nurses Unions, Firefighters Union, or Police Union – have stood up for their workers over these draconian mandates in clear violation of the Nuremburg Code. Go to any union websites and like every other institution in the country, they are completely silent on the issue.
After being slammed by their rank and file in recent days, a couple have mouthed a few weak platitudes on people’s right to choose, but not a single one has seriously stood up and challenged the government or fought for their members’ rights.
Wilson, whose father was a life member of the Maritime Union, boasts a long family history of ties to the Australia’s union movement, says now he is done with the lot of them.
“There is going to be a reckoning in this country” he said. “When the tide turns, as it is now, there will be a reckoning and it will be ‘Goodbye’ to the trade union movement in this country AND the Labor Party – and good bloody riddance to the lot of them”.
“They are ‘scabs’ to the working class of the trade union movement. They’ll go to their graves as ‘scabs’ to the working class.”
Stephen Andrew statement on Great Police Purge
The coming “Great Police Purge” will drive out many critical-thinking, evidence-based police officers with good instincts. George Christensen has an excellent Facebook post up today, about a number of serving police officers who have told him they are being forced to either resign quietly or face disciplinary charges when the deadline for getting the ‘jab’ ends next month. Presumably, any refusal to resign by police will also mean the loss of their entitlements and benefit payments as well.
Clearly the QPS is hoping to purge all its non-compliant workers under cover of darkness, with threats, incentives and watertight confidentiality agreements. If they succeed, it will be win-win for the government, with the public never knowing exactly how many good police officers were lost in this great purge of “the unvaccinated” from the workforce. This creation of what amounts to a new ‘leper class’ within our borders, banishing them to second-class status and stripping them of their rights just seems so cold-blooded and dangerous, it is hard to believe it is actually being allowed to happen in this country.
The Post also contains a very moving letter from a Qld police officer of two decades’ service. He describes himself as a “critical-thinking, evidence-based” officer, who has always relied on “good instincts” and “gut feeling” to guide him in his personal and professional life. In other words, just the sort of person the “powers that be” are hoping to rid themselves of, I imagine.
The letter sends an important message to those shocked by some recent police actions, saying “We SEE YOU and We HEAR YOU” and “we are doing everything we can to right the ship”.
“There are good police that still serve the people and not agendas” he writes. “I know of many other police and their families who feel the same as you, so please don’t lose hope and faith, we are fighting.”
The letter recounts how, in a stunning act of treachery, the Police Union has led the pack when it comes to vilifying “those members who refuse to be vaccinated”.
They have been active in also stirring up hate and division within previously harmonious work groups, by saying things like:
“(WE) FULLY SUPPORT THOSE POLICE WHO DO NOT WISH TO WORK WITH OTHER UNVACCINATED QPS STAFF”.
It is a very sad letter, with the officer saying that he and his family’s lives “are in ruins right now” as they are struggling to come to terms with “losing everything we have worked so hard for”.
“My wife spent the whole day, two days ago, sobbing on the floor trying to come to terms with what is actually happening,” he writes.
“It’s hard for me to comprehend that everything going on is said to be for health, when families like mine are being torn apart”.
Read the full letter here:
Stephen Andrew statement on Freedom Rallies
Libertarians, democrats and, yes, ‘anti-vaxxers’, were joined yesterday by hundreds of nurses, ambos, construction workers and police, all facing job losses as a result of the draconian government health mandates. The rallies followed last week’s protest in Melbourne’s CBD by construction workers over the restrictions and mandates their industry is being hit with.
Meanwhile, the language coming out of the mouths of Australia’s mainstream media and political leaders has become increasingly ‘ugly’ and ‘menacing’. Jacquie Lambi, announced on Sky News recently, that she was coming for “you anti-vaxxers” “lock, stock and barrel”. This new sport of spewing state-sanctioned ‘hate speech’ at ordinary citizens and workers, has left many Australians horrified. She is far from alone in this, unfortunately.
The levels of vitriol we are seeing directed at Australians by their elected representatives and media, has been unedifying, to say the least. What Lambi and other elites like her, fail to realise, is that all this vilification is doing, is entrenching people’s resistance even further, and drawing increasing numbers of supporters to their side in sympathy.
In other words, it is completely counterproductive to the governments’ goal. Many who were not opposed to the ‘jab’ at first, and others who were merely cautious or hesitant, have told me they are now firmly and passionately opposed to it. For them, the vax-mandate issue has become a matter of political and moral principle, or what one old gentleman yesterday called, “common human decency”. Another said even if the ‘jab’ had nothing but saline in it, they wouldn’t take it now.
Let’s face it – Australians have never liked bullies. Imagine their shock on discovering Australia’s governing classes are infested with them.
What many elites seem to forget is that even where people have received their jabs, a lot of their friends, co-workers and family members may not have. Attempts to create a leper or pariah class out of their loved ones, therefore, is not going to sit well with them – not by a long shot.
The government and elites are trying to position the “unvaccinated” as ‘less than human’, and therefore not worthy of compassion or human rights. We all know where that sort of thing leads – widespread persecution, human rights abuses and a rapid descent into tyranny.
It’s sad to see that some of these people that were hailed as hero’s 18 months ago, are now facing job loss at the hands of “no-jab, no-job” mandates, along with many others who cannot finish their occupational study due to the same issue.
This can’t be allowed to happen in Australia.
Mirani Southern Region Volunteer Award
State Member for Mirani, Stephen Andrew, is calling for nominations for the Mirani Southern Region Volunteer Award. The prize is a Cruise Whitsundays Travel Voucher for the Whitehaven Beach Cruise (2 Adults + 2 Children) plus $500 towards accommodation at the Big 4 Adventure Whitsunday Resort. To nominate someone making a difference in the community, use the nomination form below.
Selection criteria
For the Mirani Volunteer Award: Local Hero award, the nominee must be an Australian citizen who volunteers in one of the towns or regional localities from the southern end of the Mirani Electorate between Ogmore South and Raglan Creek.
For the Volunteer Award, the person must:
Be a volunteer
Be based in the southern end of the Mirani electorate (as above)
Benefit those who live, work and study in the southern end of the Mirani electorate
Volunteer Nomination
Nominate a volunteer for their achievements with a local community organisation. In your nomination, please include the:
Benefit and impact of the nominee’s volunteering to the community, as well as their achievements
Attributes, skills and experience of the nominee
History and range of volunteering activities undertaken by the nominee
Extent to which the nominee has balanced their volunteering activity in addition to family, work and other commitments
Challenges and complexities associated with their volunteering activities
The winner will be chosen from the nominees and announced at the Mount Morgan Wattle Day Festival on Sunday 12 September 2021.
Nominations close COB Wednesday 8 September 2021
More information
For more information on the Volunteer Award, contact the Mirani Electorate Office at Mirani@parliament.qld.gov.au or call 07 4806 0700.
NOMINATION FORM
Stephen Andrew statement on vaccine profits
Vaccine profits are starting to mount as the COVID-19 vaccine is on track to become to the most profitable drug in world history. Giant pharmaceutical corporations, like Pfizer, Moderna, China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Sinopharm Group Co, are making obscene levels of profit from the monopoly they hold on the Covid-19 vaccine market.
According to People’s Vaccine Alliance, a group of non-profit, non-governmental organisations including Oxfam and UNAIDS, more than a dozen executives and investors became billionaires overnight last year, thanks to their ownership of Covid-19 patents. The new billionaires include many CEOs of firms like Moderna, the CanSino Biologics and German firm BioNTech, which helped develop the technology behind the Pfizer vaccine.
BioNTech increased its production capacity to 3 billion doses in 2021 and is working with 15 partners, including Merck, Novartis Sanofi and Baxter to form licensing and manufacturing agreements and establish a global vaccine manufacturing network worth trillions.
US Drug company, Pfizer, told investors last week that thanks to Covid-19 vaccine sales, the company had nearly doubled its second-quarter revenue and boosted profits by a staggering 60%. The pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla, celebrated by announcing an increase in price of the Pfizer vaccine, raising it from $USD19.50 to $USD24 per dose.
Bourla is also now pushing for people to get a third “booster” shot of the vaccine, saying boosters will be needed within 6 to 12 months of people getting the second shot. During a February earnings call, Bourla told analysts the company could make significant profits by charging higher prices and implementing routine booster doses for new variants of the virus, assuring investors the company didn’t see this as a one-time event, but “as something that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future”.
Australian biotechnology giant CSL notched up its fastest profit and revenue growth in years, after its flu vaccine was bought by the tonne by the federal government. Net profit surged a massive 45 per cent to $US1.8 billion ($2.32 billion) in the six months to December 31, while revenue leapt 16.9 per cent to $US5.7 billion.
All told, governments and non-profits around the world invested billions in developing these vaccines. Add to this the cost of advance purchase deals, and public investment in Covid vaccines climbs even higher. Big Pharma has been the big winner without a doubt, and it has all been handed to them 100% risk free, with blanket immunity for any injuries or deaths caused by their fast-tracked product. The only industry in the world to be handed such a gold-plated pass. It begs the question, though – if a company is not prepared to stand behind the product it sells, then why should the Public trust either them or their product?
No liability. No trust.
