When a team of legal researchers went looking for the Covid era legislation recently it had disappeared completely from online government sources and they were unable to get copies of some of the most important documents. They had assumed that there was a legislative requirement to keep old copies, but there isn’t, or rather, in the case of public health emergencies, there isn’t a requirement, so long as the documents no longer have legislative force.
Rather interestingly, in early 2020 the legislative requirement for the West Australian Government to keep copies of old legislation available after a Health Emergency was scrapped from the 2016 Health Act. At the time, some voices were raised in Parliament protesting that this may make the government less accountable. Surely not.
The legal researchers assure us that they are not conspiracy theorists:
We have no intention of adding to the abundant conspiracy theories circulating in COVID’s wake. We are not suggesting that the WA Government is hiding anything incriminating about these Directions. We do, however, consider that this sequence of events reflects poorly on the WA Government in transparency and accountability terms, and that this warrants acknowledgement both within and beyond the current independent review process.
We see it as beyond question that the vaccine mandates imposed in October 2021 formed a significant part of the Government’s overall COVID-19 response, and that their text should remain permanently publicly accessible. We would have thought this statement self-evident, if not for the unequivocal assertion to the contrary Julie received from the DOH: ‘as the Directions were revoked, they are not available publicly’. What follows is a brief summary of why we regard the DOH’s position as unacceptable.
It was very fortunate, however, for the government’s reputation that they had edited this 2016 legislation for a health emergency to enable them to delete old copies of legislation, for now they can pretend it all didn’t happen and we can all go back to lives and no one will mention that the Nuremberg Code was infringed when they coerced everyone in the State to take an experimental medication. Thank goodness for that; the reputation of the government is preserved.
Unfortunately, substacker Excess Deaths has a copy of the legislation available that anyone can read:
Here is the document:
7.06MB ∙ PDF file
Next time, if things appear to be going wrong with your government interaction, please proceed to your nearest ‘conspiracy theorist.’ We are quite resourceful.
Oh, look, it did really happen:
Addendum: clarified that they edited the 2016 legislation in 2020, in order to remove the requirement to keep the legislation.
Haha. Let's go!
Wow am I glad I know the right people :p