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).

In May 2024 he won, with the VCAT Judge Caitlin English ordering the government to release the documents due to a “high degree of public interest” and the fact that processing the request would not substantially or unreasonably divert the resources of the Health Department from its other operations.

Apparently desperate to keep the briefing documents under lock and key, the Labor government sought leave to appeal the decision, but the appeal was refused.

The Herald Sun reports that a Victorian Government spokesperson said the Department of Health would “take the appropriate time to consider the court’s judgment,” and that it is unclear whether the government will comply, or will attempt another appeal in a higher court.

More than 115 briefs supporting the Dan Andrews government’s public health orders should now be released, reportedly averaging 40 to 60 pages each.

At the height of the pandemic, Victorians were subjected to curfews, masking, and vaccine mandates, were not allowed to go further than 5km from home, were confined to zones under the ‘ring of steel’ policy, and were locked down for over 260 days, the longest cumulative total in the world.

Victorians are still living with the effects of these policies, saddled with over $150 billion of lockdown-driven debt, learning loss among school-aged children, and ongoing mental health impacts.

Nearly three-quarters of Victorians supported the Andrews government’s extreme measures in the first year of the pandemic, polling shows.

However, by 2024, only half of Victorians thought the Andrews government handled the pandemic well, according to a recent report by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

The report details a plethora of human rights infringements, including the government banning protests, arresting and charging pregnant mother of three Zoe Buhler for a social media post, and the confinement of thousands of Melbourne residents in public housing flats under police guard, for weeks.

The Andrews government’s response to complaints over its pandemic police carnage was always that it made ‘no apologies for saving lives.’ Under Andrews’ successor Jacinta Allen, the Labor government has continued in this vein.

If there’s really nothing to apologise for, then the Victorian Government should have no qualms about releasing its top-secret health advice. 

Republished from the author’s Substack