Victorian Government Loses Fight to Keep Covid Health Advice Hidden
In the news this week, the incredible lengths taken by the Victorian government to hide the health advice on which its extremist Covid policies were supposedly based.
The Herald Sun reports,
The Victorian government has lost its bid to keep secret the coronavirus briefings used to justify sending Victorians into the world’s longest lockdown.
The Court of Appeal on Thursday refused the Department of Health’s application for leave to appeal a landmark Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruling in June last year to hand over the documents to Liberal [conservative] MP David Davis.
Mr Davis had been fighting for the release of the documents, including emails behind lockdown decisions between then-Public Health Commander Finn Romanes, and the chief health officer Brett Sutton, since first lodging a Freedom of Information [FOI] request in September 2020.
The state government now has to hand over the documents, unless it takes its appeal to a higher court. A Victorian Government spokesperson said the Department of Health would “take the appropriate time to consider the court’s judgment.”
Over the past five years, the Victorian government seriously argued that the requested briefing documents were “not in the public interest” in its effort to keep them under lock and key.
Other excuses proffered included that releasing the requested documents would inhibit senior public officers from speaking freely in future written communications, and that “the work involved in processing the request would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations.”
Several government officials pulled the same trick that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to try to obstruct the release of Pfizer Covid vaccine trial data, claiming impossibly long timeframes for the release of the requested briefing documents, which are estimated to total approximately 7,000 pages.
From News.com.au,
Then Covid-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar claimed it would take an estimated 169.4 to 208.4 working weeks (about four years) to process Mr Davis’ combined FOI requests, in a statement dated October 2021.
Michael Cain, the department’s manager of FOI and legal compliance, then claimed it would take 61 to 74 work weeks, in a statement dated November 2023. He argued the cost would run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Unable to force release of the documents via the FOI process, MP David Davis, leader of the opposition in the Upper House, took the matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
Read More – Victorian Government Loses Fight to Keep Covid Health Advice Hidden
