This is an update on developments with efforts to prosecute the Victorian Government for the 800-plus Covid deaths due to its massive mismanagement, or worse.
The following gives some context of the effort needed to make prosecution happen:
- A year after the Covid outbreak in the Chinese mega city, Wuhan, the Mayor has finally been removed. He’s been held responsible for his mishandling of the Wuhan outbreak which triggered the world-wide pandemic.
- In the US state of Michigan, the ex-Governor and eight other government officials are facing criminal charges, including manslaughter, after a 2014 health crisis in the city of Flint resulted in 12 deaths.
The point of these examples is that holding government and government officials accountable for their wrongdoings is always a long and hard journey. Governments routinely cover up—even in rule-of-law democracies.
In Victoria, the Coate Inquiry into the deaths is viewed by us and others as a cover-up. The inquiry report admits that it’s failed to identify who made the decisions that led to the botched quarantine and deaths.
In Victoria, the responsible prosecuting authority, WorkSafe, has not initiated prosecutions against the state government. We wrote to Worksafe in September 2020 providing a legal trigger requiring them to prosecute. Worksafe finally replied on 17 December saying, ‘we need more time!’ Ummm? Nine months since the disaster unfolded in March and they need more time?
We wrote back to WorkSafe on 18 December providing details on how hotel infection management should be handled. It’s not hard to discover what to do. The Hong Kong health authorities issued detailed infection control procedures in 2007. We provided WorkSafe the link. It’s not difficult to organise a Victorian prosecution. Compare the Hong Kong procedures with the failed Victorian management and there’s the prosecution evidence!
Given this failure to prosecute, we wrote to WorkSafe on 4 January 2021 asking for information about its investigation processes. We asked, for example:
- How many witnesses have been contacted, interviewed and statements taken or witnesses refused to be interviewed?
- How many statutory directions requiring information and documentation have been issued?
The response to this request so far is—you guessed it—stony silence!
But we are persisting. Our campaign will grind on, and on many levels. You may have seen some of our social media adverts seeking justice. Click on the images:
Who started the fire/put out the fire?
Show us your phone records
You haven’t seen the ads? That’s okay, because so far more than 113,000 people have viewed them since our launch in mid-December. More videos are in production. And we now have a dedicated website to the cause: www.notabovethelaw.com.au
If you want to be kept up to date on campaign activities, register here. And this section here gives details of our campaign including source links and so on.
We don’t expect fast results in our campaign. WorkSafe’s lack of action so far is concerning. But look at Michigan. It’s taken 6 years for the 42 criminal charges to be launched. People being charged include the state of Michigan’s former Governor, its health director, medical executive, emergency manager and communications director. Charges include extortion, perjury, obstruction of justice, wilful neglect of duty and manslaughter. The parallels to Victoria seem striking.