Australian Politics
Japanese burger chain wins legal stoush with landlord over Covid pandemic rent reduction
I am quite a fan of MOS burgers so I am pleased that they had a win. Making their landlord pay for losses caused by government policy is regrettable, though. Compensation should have come from the government
The dispute between MOS Burger Australia Pty Ltd and its landlord in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal revealed the extent of its massive sales slump at its store at 79 Adelaide St in Brisbane’s CBD.
In April 2020, sales slumped 92 per cent compared to the previous year, to $12,091, the court heard.
The next month sales were zero and in June they fell 93 per cent compared to the 2019 figure to just $10,217, the tribunal heard.
MOS applied to the tribunal to get rent relief from landlords Telado Pty Ltd and G & J Drivas Pty Ltd because the sales of the CBD store slumped in the six months to September 2020.
They claimed relief under state laws passed in 2020 aimed at helping struggling small businesses during the pandemic.
The three members of the tribunal ruled they were satisfied that Mos Burger met the requirement of being a small business during the pandemic.
The tribunal ruled that MOS was entitled to pay 50 per cent of its rent for each month between April and September 2020.
It ruled that MOS should be able to waive payment of $106,043 in rent due to the pandemic, so it was allowed to pay $185,953 in rent instead of the usual rent of $291,966.
The landlords, Telado and G & J Drivas, unsuccessfully argued that MOS was 40 per cent owned by two large Taiwan-stockmarket listed companies so should not be considered a small business.
MOS is part-owned by An-Shin Food Services Ltd, listed on the Taiwanese stock exchange and Teco Australia Pty Ltd whose board members include the chairman of Teco Electric & Machinery Co Ltd, a company also listed on the Taiwanese stock exchange.
For 2020, An-Shin had revenue of $US187m ($$250m) and Teco had revenue of $US74m ($$99).
There are still three other MOS stores open in Queensland – in Sunnybank, Westfield Mt Gravatt and at Australia Fair on the Gold Coast – which sell Wagyu beef burgers as well as katsu and karaage chicken burgers, or burgers with lettuce instead of a bread bun.
The chain opened its first Australian store in 2011.
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NSW police officers under investigation over arrest of Canberra Raiders hooker Tom Starling
Police officers involved in a scuffle during an arrest in 2020 of Canberra Raiders hooker Tom Starling, are now under investigation.
Starling, who received facial injuries in the arrest, was initially charged with seven offences, including attempting to take a police officer's gun, during the incident.
A police officer was left with a cut to his hand while allegedly intervening in a fight involving Starling, 22, and his two brothers in 2020.
In January last year, all the charges relating to the incident against him were dropped except for one: hindering an officer.
In February of this year, the final charge against Starling was dismissed after a magistrate said police breached their duty when they "assaulted" him.
In a statement issued today, NSW Police confirmed they were "continuing to conduct inquiries in relation to the conduct of officers" who responded to the incident.
Previously, the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney was shown CCTV footage of police punching Starling in the face multiple times, a scene Magistrate Covington at the time called a "free for all". "One that is more typically seen in a street fight as opposed to officers in their duty," he said.
"Clearly what occurred was nothing other than Tom being assaulted himself."
Magistrate Covington also said Senior Constable Daniel Drew admitted to the court that he had "no reason to punch" Starling.
Today, Tom Starling's mother, Joanne, spoke to Radio 2GB about the incident that she said had turned her family's lives upside down.
"I was there and I witnessed the majority of it and to see that on the front page of the news was just devastating," she said.
Joanne told the radio station it had been a "tough few years" not just for her but for her extended family and friends who she said had stood by her.
Raiders coach Ricky Stuart also told Radio 2GB he applauded the decision to investigate the officers' actions.
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New Premier has the chance to correct an ICAC injustice
Eight years ago, lawyers representing the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption stood in the Court of Appeal and conceded defeat. They accepted that ICAC, the state’s guardian of integrity, had no lawful basis for declaring four men corrupt.
Margaret Beazley, who was then president of the Court of Appeal, prepared a draft declaration recognising that ICAC had made findings against these men that were a nullity and beyond its jurisdiction.
But before this could be finalised, the NSW government, then led by the Liberal Party’s Mike Baird, intervened after being lobbied by ICAC.
Baird introduced a retrospective Validation Act that papered over ICAC’s wrongdoing. Conduct that was unlawful one day was rendered lawful the next.
This drove a wedge between the NSW Liberal Party and principles of governance that go back to Magna Carta, a document that was sealed 808 years ago this week.
The consequences have been profound.
For eight years, NSW has denied justice to four innocent men who had turned to the courts for a remedy after being subjected to conduct by a government agency that had no basis in law.
Baird’s Validation Act is a clear departure from the principles that protect individual liberty against the unlawful predations of a mighty state. That is what Magna Carta and the rule of law are all about.
Clause 29 of the Great Charter says, in part: “To no one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice.”
The Federal Court’s Justice Steven Rares has described clause 29 as the source of concepts such as the right to justice according to law and the right to justice without delay.
The Validation Act has another problem: when parliament considered this unprincipled scheme it was not even given the full story about what was at stake.
It had been presented as a response to an unrelated High Court decision involving prominent silk Margaret Cunneen SC. The court had made it clear that ICAC had misunderstood the limits on its own jurisdiction.
The problem is that nobody told parliament the Validation Act would have the effect of reversing the outcome in a court case that was close to conclusion.
One of those with first-hand knowledge of what happened is Labor’s Adam Searle, who left parliament at the last state election and has returned to the Bar.
On June 22 last year, when this affair was again before parliament, he made a statement in the Legislative Council that should cause a great deal of unease.
This, according to Hansard, is what Searle told parliament:
“I was one of the Opposition members tasked with interacting with the government and the office of the then Premier. A question raised in those discussions was whether anybody else, apart from Ms Cunneen, was before the courts.
“I did not take a file note, but my strong recollection is that we were assured that there was no live matter before the courts. Maybe that was a mistake; maybe it was deliberate.
“The point is that there were people before the courts and the parliament was not told. Maybe if it was told it would not have made any difference, yet it may have. We will never know.
“But, at this point in time, the evidence is overwhelming that these people were wrongly dealt with,” Searle told parliament.
The disastrous impact of this statute on the personal and business lives of the four men was uncovered in 2021 by the parliamentary committee that oversees ICAC.
The committee’s report, like Searle, made the point that parliament was never told about the four men who, under the law expounded in Cunneen’s case, had already secured an admission of defeat from ICAC.
The committee’s report says: “The existence of this litigation and its settlement by the ICAC was not disclosed to members of the NSW parliament when they debated and voted on the Validation Act.
“Had there been a relevant disclosure, this group of persons may well have been excluded from the operation of the Validation Act on the basis of the agreed settlement of their case against the ICAC.”
There is an argument that the entire Validation Act should be repealed – not just because parliament was kept in the dark, but because this law retrospectively “validates” unlawful conduct.
But while repeal might be the perfect solution, this should not be allowed to become the enemy of a prompt remedy for those who had their victory snatched away eight years ago.
The injustice they have suffered is blatant and extreme.
Just three of those four men are still alive – John McGuigan, John Atkinson and Richard Poole. The fourth man, Travers Duncan, died last year.
After eight years of injustice, how much longer must they wait for the restoration of rights that were guaranteed by Magna Carta?
In 2021, the ICAC committee did not seek a full repeal of the Validation Act. But it did not want it to apply to those who went to court only to have their victory snatched away by a parliament that was never told of their unique position.
Last year, One Nation’s Rod Roberts introduced a Bill that would give effect to the ICAC committee’s modest yet unanimous proposal. The Coalition government, under the leadership of Dominic Perrottet, did nothing.
Last month, Roberts reintroduced that Bill. The Labor government of Chris Minns faces a choice: does it stand for fairness? Or will it follow Perrottet’s example and do nothing?
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mRNA vaccines fast-tracked for Australian agriculture
After the spectacular failure of mRNA vaccines in human trials, the agricultural industry is pushing ahead with mRNA vaccines for livestock engaged in the food industry.
Whispers of stock ‘dying suddenly’ will no doubt become a complaint of farmers in the future, summarily ignored by government in the same way officials refuse to listen to serious concerns about dam-building restrictions, price hikes on Ag products, ridiculous fees and charges, incomprehensible red and green tape, biosecurity regulations that do nothing, and – fresh out of Western Australia – expensive negotiations with Indigenous groups who have never set foot on the land they claim to ‘own’.
In one example that mRNA is on its way Down Under, on May 2, 2023, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) announced funding for a project to ‘test mRNA vaccines that can be rapidly mass-produced in Australia in the event of a lumpy skin disease or other exotic disease outbreak’.
The Manager for Animal Wellbeing, released a statement saying:
‘This project will develop a mRNA vaccine pipeline initially for LSD, but potentially for other emergency diseases. This will enable capacity for rapid mass production of a vaccine for LSD in the event of an outbreak. No LSD vaccines are registered for use in Australia yet. While some vaccines exist overseas, the path to registration in Australia for traditionally-produced [vaccines] is longer than that of an mRNA vaccine.’
Why are traditional vaccines, which have safety records that outstrip mRNA vaccines, subject to longer approval periods than mRNA vaccines? That sounds like a significant structural failure within Australia’s health body that, instead of being fixed, has the potential to be exploited by manufacturers looking to cash in on mRNA.
mRNA vaccines are quick to produce and ‘nimble’, which is why pharmaceutical companies like them – but that doesn’t mean that they are safe, effective, or suitable for consumers whether those are humans or livestock.
A 2022 article in PubMed Central notes: ‘Recently, the successful application of mRNA vaccines against Covid has further validated the platform and opened the floodgates to mRNA vaccine’s potential in infectious disease prevention, especially in the veterinary field.’
No doubt this is why we keep hearing bleatings of ‘emergency’ and ‘outbreak’ in the same breath as mRNA, as if to remind us of the mantra used during the Covid era to embark on what the former Health Minister referred to as the ‘largest clinical trial – the largest global vaccine trial ever’. Look how that turned out.
The fall-out of Covid mRNA vaccines is likely to continue for the best part of a century as a percentage of vaccinated individuals ‘die suddenly’ or suffer from long-term debilitating illnesses. These are quickly becoming a burden for the health industry and state finances after vaccine manufacturers hand-waved responsibility because it was an ‘emergency’. Most nations are setting up compensation pools of cash to cope with the growing list of individuals who claim to have been harmed.
Another excuse used to feather the nest of mRNA vaccines is that they are thought to provide the solution for influenza-style viruses which traditional vaccines have proven ineffective against. Everyone wants to see an effective vaccine against respiratory viruses, but it’s almost as if the doe-eyed vaccine industry has put on a blindfold for the last three years. mRNA Covid vaccines did next to nothing to combat or control the influenza-style Covid and do not, based on what we have seen, offer any advantage to traditional vaccines for this problem beyond the feel-good marketing headlines. There is a strong argument that for the majority of the population, they did more harm than good.
Instead of suspending all mRNA vaccines until we understand what went wrong, they are being given priority treatment by regulators and championed by manufacturers who love the competitive edge of speed their production offers. Governments, particularly the (broke?) Victorian state government, are funnelling tens of millions into mRNA development to keep capitalising on the political popularity they enjoyed during the Covid era.
MLA note that mRNA vaccines should be ready for use within two years and while everyone is busy stressing that this will be a ‘voluntary’ option for the farming community, vaccines inside the agricultural industry rarely are if a producer wishes to sell their product into domestic and international markets. If we go down the mRNA vaccine production line, it is extremely likely that Australians will be eating mRNA-vaccinated livestock within a couple of years with very little understanding of what this will mean health-wise.
Anyone who criticises mRNA vaccines or their potential future within the agricultural industry are paraded through the press as ‘conspiracy theorists’ with publications quick to send out the fact-checkers to insist that it’s pure fear-mongering to suggest fragments of these vaccines will end up in the food chain.
Except, it was a ‘conspiracy theory’ to suggest that the human body would continue making Covid mRNA vaccines long after the injection, or to raise concerns that it would leave the site of the injection. Not only did the fears described as ‘conspiracy’ prove to be true, the behaviour and side effects of Covid mRNA vaccines are reaching well beyond what anyone predicted.
How sure are we that in the rush to saturate the market with mRNA vaccines, that proper long-term testing will be conducted, particularly when it comes to lingering in meat and milk? Will it impact high-risk activities such as calving, given there is a strong suspicion that Covid vaccines are responsible for a spike in human miscarriages?
Keep in mind that we are still being told Covid vaccines are ‘safe and effective’. The Australian government, sitting on a pile of unwanted vaccines, is spending public money on marketing campaigns, encouraging Australians to go and get their booster shots at the same time other countries have removed Covid vaccines.
At least some States in the US are taking note, rushing to pass legislation to ban the use of mRNA vaccines for animals involved in the food industry whose meat or milk is produced for human consumption. Idaho is one example where it will be a misdemeanour to use mRNA vaccines – and that includes the Covid vaccines.
Australians need to be aware that mRNA vaccines are coming for the agricultural industry and they will likely be compulsory. America is having a serious conversation about whether this should be allowed, and Australia needs to do the same thing. It is perfectly reasonable to require extensive long-term safety data before we revolutionise agriculture.
This conversation will not happen on its own. Australia’s agricultural elite resemble a body of yes-men nodding furiously toward mRNA. Family farmers – disempowered, constrained, and demoralised – have no voice in this matter. Their wishes will be bulldozed by a small collection of billion-dollar farming entities, several of which are foreign-owned.
If Australians care about what they eat, it’s time to start making a racket.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/mrna-vaccines-fast-tracked-for-australian-agriculture
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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