Who has special interest?

On Thursday, Her Honour determined that neither the AVN nor Mr Mark Neugebauer have standing to bring our dispute to the Federal Court. Our case was dismissed on a technical legal point before we had a chance to bring our substantive evidence before the Court.

The legal team, AVN Founder, Meryl Dorey, AVN Legal Advisor, Julian Gillespie, and proposed co-Applicant, Mark Neugebauer all met in the wake of the decision. We are by no means defeated.

Yesterday’s decision was a huge call by the judge.

We are yet to see Her Honour’s reasons, but the decision itself suggests that she agreed with the Secretary’s arguments that neither an organisation which has spent 30 years advocating for vaccine safety, nor a foster father to a 7 year old boy who has lost his career due to refusing the mandated jab and is being told by a South Australian Minister that he must be vaccinated against his father’s will, have a sufficient “special interest” in the vaccine decisions we are challenging before the Court.

If they don’t have a special interest, who does?

Although we need to see the full reasons, we believe this decision will be appealable. We believe that our prospects for success are much greater before a full bench of the Federal Court (three judges on the bench), where appeals are heard, than before a single judge as was the case here.

We believe we have a duty to ensure that this decision does not stand as a precedent to block other interested parties from seeking to challenge decisions made by governments and ministers in the courts. We have devastating evidence ready to go, but we must surpass this “special interest” question before we can canvass our evidence properly in court.

Not only will the hearing of an appeal be done urgently, but an appeal also allows us to put this matter before the Full Court. That’s a powerful place, where three of the best judges in Australia will not only hear our appeal but will also see that we lost our urgent hearing date of 20 April for a case that is by all accounts, not only urgent, but of historical significance both in its facts and its legal principles.

If we win there on this issue of Standing, we can push even harder for our case to be dealt with as soon as possible, and indeed we shall be requesting the same Full Court hear and determine the rest of our substantive case so no further time is lost, while ensuring the case receives the attention of three senior justices, so our critical evidence is comprehensively adjudicated upon, for determining the most historic drug safety case ever before presented to an Australian Court, or indeed before any other court in the world.

So, despite a setback, we play on, until we get the result you all deserve.