As rankings of Angus Taylor controversies go, this one would likely not even break the teens. It doesn’t involve the energy minister seeking money for coal-fired power plants via renewable energy funds, or documents of bizarre providence regarding the Sydney lord mayor’s imaginary travel expenses, or the illegal destruction of endangered native grasslands. If nothing else, one must admire the magnificent variety of dramas which so bedevil him.
However, it’s still worth noting that one potential scandal has been offloaded with the winding up of Agricultural Managers Limited (AML), a mysterious entity which resided in the not-especially-agricultural surrounds of the Cayman Islands.
The paper trail is both exhaustive and exhausting, but Jommy Tee has been keeping tabs on developments over at michaelwest.com.au. And it should be added that the appeal of keeping one’s company in a tax haven like the Caymans is that the details remain tantalisingly opaque, so it’s impossible to know whether the sole shareholder of AML was ol’ Angie at the time of wind-up.
Then again, Taylor copped to being the company’s sole director in 2010, but what’s happened since is anyone’s guess, since he’s failed to answer questions about his involvement whenever asked, beyond claiming that he gave up all involvement in Eastern Australia Agriculture (the company that made a cool $80 million selling ghost water to the government in 2017) and its offshoots, which include AML, when he entered parliament in 2013.
If the company’s deliberately bland name rings a bell at all it’s because it was involved in the failed attempt to buy out Cubbie Station and its lucrative water rights. Once that fell over the company has apparently languished, until finally being put out of its misery last December.
Anyway, it’s just nice that Angus can focus his energy elsewhere. As the man himself would no doubt say: “Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus.”
Scamtacular!
While there are many fine, perfectly valid debates about certain government apps which have questionable functionality and worryingly porous privacy protections, the busiest place in the scammosphere remains the social medias, especially Facebook, where entrepreneurial fraudsters are advertising positions to the newly jobless that require only a can-do attitude, a disciplined work ethic, and a willingness to share their passport and banking details with strangers.
Yes, nothing brings out crims like a crisis and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been alerted to over 2000 online coronavirus scams. Furthermore, InDaily reports that March 2020 had seen Australians defrauded out of a staggering $14.7 million, almost a third more than in the same month last year.
In normal times we’d be decrying this as a horrible situation where desperate people are being preyed on by the unscrupulous, but right now the scamming industry is one of the few productive sectors of the economy. Say, are they eligible for JobKeeper support yet?
Vax populi
When the extent of the current global pandemic first became clear to me, I, in a flush of uncharacteristic and indefensible optimism, opined that one of the good things that might come out of the disaster was an end to the anti-vax movement.
Surely, I thought, even the most jab-averse people would be clamouring to get a vaccine all up in their T-cells after watching friends, neighbours and colleagues sicken and die — or, at least, if they wanted to ever go to a goddamn pub again.
And yet we are confronted again by the unpleasant fact that people’s opinions are generally not changed by facts — and if that seems implausible to you, then you’re ironically part of the problem.
The Conversation revealed some of the world’s most depressing research, which found that 23% of Americans asked whether they would be willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 once a vaccine was available said “nup”.
Bizarrely, those who called themselves “sceptical of vaccines” were the least likely to get the shot (62%), more than people who literally considered themselves actual anti-vaxxers (44%).
In round numbers, these results are about where vaccine scepticism was hovering before the pandemic and raises a fun question of “what happens if we get a vaccine but need it in more than 77% of the population in order for it to provide any benefit?”
Now, it’s worth adding that this is a single study and that it was done in the US where protesting against the very notion of public health is a thing, so whether it can be applied the enclaves of Byron Bay and your auntie’s Facebook page remains to be seen.
Of course, we don’t have a vaccine, and don’t even know whether one is possible. But it’s reassuring to know that even if researchers manage one of the greatest triumphs in scientific history, a sizeable number of people will be ready to school us sheeple in how it causes 5G mobile towers to pop up.
And anyway, Australia’s got a proud history of embracing science and standing up to anti-vaxxers and the risk they pose to the rest of the population by… still letting them play rugby?
Oh sweet Jesus, we’re all going to die.
“what happens if we get a vaccine but need it in more than 77% of the population in order for it to provide any benefit?”
So how does this work ? Most people I’m sure assume the whole reason you get vaccinated is so you don’t get the disease/virus/whatever – but now we’re told it won’t work unless nearly everyone gets vaccinated ?
You may well make derisive comments about people who are sceptical, but it really sounds like people who are pushing for everyone to get vaccinated are shills for Big Pharma, and we all know how trustworthy those companies are when pushing their products.
India is an interesting case study. Between 2005 – 2018 they mandated 50 vaccines to every child up to age 5. What followed was a polio epidemic that paralyzed nearly a million children and Indian doctors laid the blame at the feet of the polio vaccine regimen. Polio rates dropped precipitously when the vaccine program was abandoned. The most frightening epidemics in the Congo, Phillippines and Afghanistan have all been linked to vaccines.
I would love for the issue of vaccines to be cut and dry but it just aint.
Do you have a citation for any articles describing the million cases in India?
You’d have to give some pretty good references to get that assertion out of tinfoil hat territory.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/23/facebook-posts/anti-vaxxers-spread-conspiracy-about-bill-gates-an/
Facebook posts
stated on April 13, 2020 in a text post:
The Gates Foundation “tested a polio vax in India between 2000 & 2017 and paralysed 496,000 children.”
IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT
The Gates Foundation has long supported polio vaccination efforts in India.
There is no evidence that 496,000 children were paralyzed due to a polio vaccine.
Numbers from the WHO show that there have been 17 cases of vaccine-derived polio in India since 2000.
Your above link is complete media contrivance and the usual suspects saving face. It is true there were 496,000 children paralysed in central and southern India. Then there were 30 children per 100,000 with paralysis in Uttar pradesh and Bitah with a total population of three hundred million. Would you like a calculator for the “real” figures?
The ref was from a facebook publication by Uniting Healthcare Professionals Against Mandatory Vaccination which quotes environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr.
com/uhpamv//rfk-jr-has-thrown-down-the-gauntlet-in-calling-out-bill-gates-promising-to-eradi
Obviously polio is the connection. But we are underlining the effects of the vaccine that are linked to the numbers of paralysis cases occurring in children that were given the vaccine.
The strongest and most clear statement regarding the new flat earthers who feel that their superior research, trumps all the scientific research and safeguards that have been put in place to ensure that our immunization program is as safe as possible is: “Correlation does not prove Causation:”
There is a center for the tracking of all adverse reactions and or harm caused by vaccines of all types based in the UK and funded by WHO.
The numbers quoted by the group of anti-vaxxers of which Robert Kennedy Jnr is a spokesperson are false and in fact refer to the number of polio cases in this impoverished area of India.
Along with a lot of anti-vaxxers, they do not seem to have any trouble with letting their convictions get in the way of facts.
In remote areas the use of Salk oral vaccine, which does not have much in the way of the necessity for a cold chain, is still sometimes used.
The US and Australia do not use the Salk vaccine, which is an attenuated virus, anymore, because the risk of getting Polio from the vaccine which is calculated to be 1 in 1,500,000 is higher than the risk of being unvaccinated in either country.
There is an injectable vaccine against polio that is dead virus particles and is used much more commonly in developed countries, however, it requires stringent cold chain handling or it is useless.
With the outbreak of Polio in PNG last year, Australia sent the Salk vaccine because it is easy to administer dissolved on a sugar cube and did not need the cold chain.
As with Boris the BoJo, I too wish that those who have major doubts about vaccines should have the opportunity to experience the infection for themselves.
Covid19 is creeping closer and closer to the Trumpster himself.
That’s not strictly true, as the increase in polio was not the result of ‘vaccines’ as an entire category of medicine, but rather the use of outdated oral live virus vaccine, rather than the injectable form: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570019/
And despite the issues with this form of vaccine, India was nonetheless able to be certified as polio-free by the WHO in 2014, which speaks to its ultimate efficacy. So yes, we need to be careful in the formulation and testing of vaccines to prevent adverse outcomes, but no, we don’t need to be skeptical of vaccination itself as a cornerstone of public health.
“Dramas which so bedevil” Taylor – after he’s courted them?
IF a vaccine for Covid 19 is reported to be available, personally I would check the mouth of the gift horse before partaking. There is an enormous rush to develop a vaccine for positive public health reasons – but I am pretty sure also for profit reasons. The number of shots of the vaccine needed to build sufficient herd immunity across the globe would be staggering.
The issue is not the value of vaccines – it is how many short cuts were taken in development and to what extent are the side effects known. There have been new vaccines in the past that turned out to be more dangerous than the disease. If a dangerous vaccine is rushed into use then it may have the effect of damaging faith in vaccines generally.
“There have been new vaccines in the past that turned out to be more dangerous than the disease. ” To quote Margaret Thatcher, name three.
I am not talking about vaccines that came into general use. I am talking about problems found through proper testing of new products. I would have to do a bit of research for your three examples, but I saw a reference recently to one of the vaccines for the earlier SARs outbreak being aborted during testing because of nasty outcomes.
My comment is simply about the dangers of bypassing proper testing of vaccines (or any other drugs) because of perceived urgency or profit. The classic that did reach the general market from our past is Thalidomide (I know, not a vaccine, but a very clear example of the consequences of inadequate testing)
When I first ventured abroad in the 60s it was the norm & mandatory to have an up to date vaccination schedule in the same pouch as one’s passport – the minimum was smallpox, cholera & typhoid with hepatitis (just the one, oh halcyon days!) & typhus recommended for anywhere beyond the Mediterranean.
To travel to Latin America yellow fever was also compulsory.
ERRATUM – that should have been tetanus, not typhus.
Over 50yrs ago, one tends to forget…
Though I note, in passing (hopefully not just yet!) that typhus is making a roaring come back – another forgotten disease of poverty that had been relegated to the history books.