The Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2020 has drawn fire from expert legal minds and politicians. 

The Bill would allow Premier Andrews alone, the ability to declare a pandemic empowering the Minister of Health effectively unlimited power to rule the state by decree, for an indefinite period, and without effective judicial or parliamentary oversight.

The Bill also allows the Minister of Health to make ‘any order’ that the Minister ‘believes is reasonably necessary to protect public health’, the content of the orders is effectively unlimited. The Bill expressly allows the minister’s orders to discriminate based on an attribute within the meaning of the Equal Opportunity Act, these attributes include, among many others, political beliefs.

The Bill has been described as ‘the biggest challenge to the rule of law this state has faced in decades’ by president of the Victorian Bar, Christopher Blanden QC.

The statement was included in a sensational letter from the Victorian Bar to its members after the Minister of Health’s Bill summary claims the department and an ‘Expert Reference Group’ (ERG) undertook consultation and names the Victorian Bar as one of the external stakeholders ‘consulted’.

The Victorian Bar claims that this is a gross misrepresentation and states it was not consulted. 

The president of the Victorian Bar participated in a 45-minute Microsoft Teams meeting organised by the Department of Health on June 28, 2021. The ERG and numerous other bodies attended. The broad issue of the declaration of pandemics was raised and there was no further contact.

The Victorian Bar was never provided with a draft Bill. Two members of the Victorian Bar Council were registered to attend a one-hour ‘consultation workshop’ with the ERG on September 28 about the ‘development of a new pandemic specific part of the PHW Act’. This workshop was cancelled at short notice and never rescheduled.

The Victorian Bar’s concerns were joined later in the week by an open letter from 14 top lawyers, including 13 QCs, who hold grave concerns about some of the Bill’s content.

The Bill also contains other concerning provisions, including conferring very broad power to authorised officers without effective review or oversight, also granting police power to enter premises without a warrant and abrogating privilege against self-incrimination.

The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, says if anyone wanted proof the Andrews Labor Government would do anything, and say anything to seize more power, Victoria’s most senior legal minds have provided it.

“At the same time, Mr Blanden accused the government of misleading Victorians on the consultation process, saying proper advice was not sought,” Mr Walsh said.

“Misleading, in legal speak, is saying the premier and his government have lied about who was involved in the ‘consultation process’. 

“Mr Blanden, on behalf of the state’s legal profession, also described the way this proposed law is being rushed through parliament as ‘an attack on democracy’.

Mr Blanden has told media that this bid to ram such divisive and controversial laws through parliament, “doesn’t add up to good democracy in my book. It’s a disgrace. What’s the  urgency?”

“If you’re going to interfere to this degree with people’s basic rights, then there ought to be some reasoned debate about whether it’s justified,” he added. “Not just that you do a deal with a couple of crossbenchers and because you’ve got the numbers, you shovel it all through and you effectively stymie debate. It’s quite disgraceful really.

“If the Stasi (the East German secret police) had these powers, they would still be in force,” he said.

Mr Walsh said democracy has already gone out the window in Victoria, with Daniel Andrews ‘drunk on power’ and determined to entrench himself in a position where not just the parliament itself is at risk, but the individual liberties of every Victorian.

He said this debate was no longer based on the pandemic, it is simply Daniel Andrews using COVID-19 as a smokescreen to hide behind while he destroys the very fabric of our society and trashes the Westminster system by which we are governed.

“Daniel Andrews is staging a coup d’état by stealth and if Victorians and Victoria’s parliamentarians, all of them, regardless of party, don’t realise that, and realise it fast, it will be a long road back to democracy,” said Mr Walsh

The Bill has already rushed through the Legislative Assembly (Lower House) in an unbelievable two days. One reading has passed in the Legislative Council (Upper House) with the final vote coming in the very near future, which is likely to pass unless Victorians decide democracy is important.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 4 November 2021.

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