Comment and Opinion

Australian Vaccination Network

• Articles about this disgusting organisation up to December 21, 2008
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2009
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2010
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to June, 2011
• The Australian Vaccination Network July to December, 2011
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to June, 2012
• The Australian Vaccination Network July to December, 2012
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to May, 2013
• The Australian Vaccination Network June to December, 2013
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2014
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2015
• This site had a holiday from 2016-2018
• From January, 2019

The AVO saga continues (15/6/2013)
The blatant attempt by Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network to abuse the law in order to stifle my right of free speech was dismissed in Lismore Local Court on April 26. Parties have 28 days to lodge an appeal in these cases and sure enough, at the last possible minute on May 24 Ms Dorey lodged an appeal. The grounds for the appeal as set out in the application read in full:

I am appealing because I contest the dismissal of an Apprehended Violence Order made in these proceedings.

That's all. I'm now expected to waste even more of my time responding to something which cannot even be clearly expressed given four weeks to write it out. She's appealing because she doesn't like the decision. Well, that's tough. She had three opportunities to present evidence in the original application (her original submission, the second statement she managed to convince the court she should be allowed to submit, and at the actual final hearing) so she can't really claim that there is any new evidence. As she has delayed the action against another defendant by requesting a change of magistrate because the one assigned might be biased, perhaps she is going to use a similar claim to support her appeal. I certainly hope so, because there's nothing the bench likes more than being accused of bias, and Ms Dorey's comment about the possibility of this in my case went down like a depleted uranium balloon with the magistrate.

The appeal is listed for mention in the District Court in Lismore on July 29.

I'm on the television (15/6/2013)
A couple of weeks ago a crew from the television program Today Tonight called in at Ratbag Castle to record some comments from me about the methods used by anti-vaccination campaigners to harass people in order to advance their disgusting anti-health agenda. Coincidentally it went to air on a day which I had spent in a courtroom listening to lawyers argue over whether the AVN could be forced to change its deceptive name. Today Tonight attracted the fourth highest audience across all Australian television networks that night, so a lot of people got to see and hear what all the people in the show said.

You might notice that in response to a question from the interviewer about why she was trying to get a restraining order on someone who lives 750 kilometres away Meryl Dorey made the slightly defamatory claim that I had encouraged people to send pornography to her (I didn't, of course) and she also admitted that the AVO application had nothing to do with the "V" part but was to stop me from saying things in public. I would have thought it unwise to go on a television show which usually attracts more than 5% of the Australian population as viewers and say such things while in the process of appealing a judicial decision about these matters. But I am not a lawyer.

Another point was the use by the narrator of the term "vaccine refusers". This is now the official term used in government publications to replace the expression "conscientious objectors". As the only basis for conscientious objection could be active and devote membership of a religious community, and as all major religious groups and sects in Australia have stated they they have no objection to vaccination and in fact actively encourage it, the word "refuser" is the correct word to use. (It surprised people to find that the obvious standouts, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science not only do not forbid vaccination but actively encourage it. This is why the anti-vaccination liars are trying to set up their own sham church to get around the law.)

The news just gets better (15/6/2013)
Sydney's Daily and Sunday Telegraph papers have been running a campaign called "No jab, No play" about the anti-vaccination campaigners for several weeks now, resulting in much angst among the refusers and much hate mail being sent to journalists. The latest story (June 16) doesn't appear to be online anywhere, but here is what it looks like:

Here it is in words for the benefit of search engines.

We have met Tasha David before, when she was allowed to make an anonymous attack on me on an Australian Vaccination Network web page. Read all about it here.

If you want to know where the paper got it's information about the AVN's finance woes, look no further than Ken McLeod's excellent "Meryl Dorey's Trouble With Finance" and the analysis by my other friend Christine Bayne.

They sentenced me to twenty hours of boredom (15/6/2013)
On June 13 and 14, the appeal by the Australian Vaccination Network against the demand by the NSW Office of Fair Trading that the AVN change its deceptive name was heard in the Administrative Decisions Tribunal. In television courtroom dramas there is always action, and the admissibility of evidence is decided in minutes. In reality, a hearing like this is mostly even more boring than the clichéd drying paint, particularly when the lawyers for the parties each have three very large two-ring binders of paper and take it in turns to read from the voluminous documentation discussing which parts of it will later be actually considered as evidence. At one stage I found myself reading the Administrative Decisions Tribunal Act for some entertainment.

I won't give a blow-by-blow commentary because all that really matters is the decision, but here are some of the highlights. The Internet meme LULZ applies.

• There was much talk from the AVN side about freedom of speech, despite there being an AVN representative present who was later in the day to be seen on television stating that she had initiated legal action against me in order to stop me speaking.
• A representative of the AVN, apparently acting on the advice of counsel, emailed both the OFT's barrister and the magistrate hearing the appeal on the evening between the two hearing days. The purpose of the email was to whine about people commenting on Twitter and Facebook while the proceedings were going on. Depending on your standing in the legal community, this action could be seen as either an extreme breach of protocol or an invitation to shout "Are you completely insane?".
• The magistrate (who just happens to be Deputy President of the ADT) made no comment about the legality or otherwise of live tweeting (the Act gives the presiding officer discretion, but there is no legal ban), possibly because she was still recovering from the shock of the whining email.
• After lunch the AVN's barrister told the magistrate she was wrong and tweeting was illegal. The magistrate replied "Thank you" and went on to talk about the evidence before her in the real matter at hand. I posted a message to Twitter reporting on the exchange.
• Part of the evidence offered by the AVN was the paper by Professor Brian Martin which had been tendered in the AVO action against me. Apparently Dr Martin was to be an expert witness on the consequences to society of allowing this harassment of the AVN (being asked to change the name) to continue. Without even referring to the precedent set by the magistrate in my case who said she wasn't even going to be bothered to read it it was assigned to the dustbin. As I was in a courtroom where loud laughter is discouraged I couldn't do the Internet LOL thing, but a wry smile flickered across my face. I wonder when a third magistrate will be asked to accept as evidence this self-serving drivel published in the AVN's own magazine.
• Despite the magistrate saying this was about the AVN's name and not about the Stop the AVN Facebook page, the evil harassment by the SAVN conspiring with the government was brought up. Several times.
• Despite this being a matter conducted under exclusively New South Wales law, the AVN's barrister (working without benefit of an instructing solicitor) was imported from another state. At one stage the OFT's barrister turned on his learned friend and told him that if he didn't understand the rules of the jurisdiction he should perhaps refrain from acting in the jurisdiction. The gallery silently wished that eating popcorn in a court room was permissible,
• One defence offered by the AVN was that they had been using the name for 16 years and changing it would destroy all those years of corporate history and brand recognition. I jotted down the names of a few companies who had changed their names over the years without suffering any obvious damage (Australia's oldest corporation changed from the first business name registered in the infant colony, the country's largest telecommunications company (two changes of name), the world's largest mining company (two changes of name), ...).
• One of the people in the public gallery had told another court that during previous court proceedings she had been so afraid of me that she had requested that extra security be provided. Despite a continuing claim that I am a threat she didn't seem to feel threatened enough this time to ask the court to exclude me from the room. Perhaps such a request was made in the overnight emails whining about tweeting, but if it was nobody mentioned it.
• There was much discussion of an open public Internet forum operated by the AVN, and the moderator of this forum was prepared to testify about how this demonstrated the AVN's commitment to open debate about vaccination where both sides of the issue could be expressed without fear or favour. At least four people in the room had been permanently banned from all participation in the forum for expressing opinions favourable to vaccination.
• The best however was the final throw of the dice by the AVN's counsel. He offered that a change of name was not necessary as the public were protected from being deceived by the name because they could rely on the notoriety of the organisation as a warning that its advice might not be the best there is. I will paraphrase that – the AVN is such a notorious supplier of misinformation that the name does not matter.

With only five minutes left before official court closing time, and with two days transcripts to review, along with a rereading of the admitted evidence, the magistrate unsurprisingly announced that her decision would be announced on a date to be fixed. That decision will be announced here as soon as it is known. It is always unwise to second-guess how judicial decisions might go, but I am quietly confident. As, no doubt, is the management of the AVN.

And another thing (15/6/2013)
Facebook occasionally makes suggestions about pages that it thinks your friends think you might like to like. This turned up on a friend's news feed. And I remember when the future of machine intelligence seemed so bright.

Extremists go extreme (22/6/2013)
During the week an official of the Australian Vaccination Network apparently forgot to take her medication and posted the following to Facebook:

Here are the words, with the major lies marked by the traditional yellow highlighter.

I was going to write something comprehensive about this insanity but I'm short of time and will leave it for later. In the meantime, you can see some comments by my friends Reasonable Hank and Shelley.

Doctors are terrorists? I haven't laughed so much about anyone being called a terrorist since the late and unlamented Hulda Clark tried to sue me. One of the charges was "Terrorist threats". Oh, and I love it when quackery supporters talk about "Western medicine". I wonder where they think chiropractic and homeopathy were invented.

Greening the vaccines (13/7/2013)
Last week I mentioned the distress that statements from the Greens Party had caused to the Australian Vaccination Network. The butthurt has continued, and the President of the AVN demanded the right of reply. He appeared on the television program Today Tonight to have his say.

Then the whining started again. The claim is being made that Greg Beattie was promised that he would have 60 seconds to make his point and that he would not be edited in any way. I've done a lot of media interviews and promises like these are never made, because they can't be kept. There is an obvious edit in Mr Beattie's piece (it's when the screen flashes white) and what was taken out was something that could have exposed the program to legal action for defamation. (I know this because the excised words have since been published by the AVN.) As an aside, if Meryl Dorey took out AVO applications to stop threatening phone calls, why didn't she accuse me of that in her application against me?

The whining continued with demands that the Greens repudiate Senator Di Natale, and part of this was based on the fact that the AVN had received support from Dr Bob Brown in 1997 when he was the Parliamentary leader of the Greens. Dr Brown has since retired, but his support then was on the matter of conscientious objection, and he took the civil rights position (which I happen to share) that it is wrong to close off the opportunity for people to object to having their religious principles compromised. He wasn't talking about creating fake churches or just saying that you didn't like something, but about firmly held religious beliefs. The AVN suggested that Dr Brown be brought back into the discussion to show that he still supported their crazed agenda.

Here is what Dr Brown had to say:

Suck on that, anti-vaccination liars. You've been caught out in another lie.

The idiocy continues (27/7/2013)
Just a reminder that I'm back in court on Monday, July 29, to respond to yet another attempt by Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network to abuse the courts and the legal system in order to stop me talking about her, her nefarious activities and the filth propagated by the AVN. Her ridiculous attempt to have an Apprehended Violence Order placed on me was comprehensively dismissed on April 26, but she has appealed the decision. Her grounds for appeal are, in full:

I am appealing because I contest the dismissal of an Apprehended Violence Order made in these proceedings.

The July 29 appearance is listed as a mention, which is usually just a five-minute process to set dates for submission of statements and a final hearing. I was not required to appear in any form for the seven (yes, seven!) mentions in the AVO proceedings but I have been ordered to appear this time. As the court house is about 800 kilometres from my home I have been given permission to attend by telephone. In my request for permission to be absent from the mention I set out some reasons why this appeal is baseless, so perhaps the order to have a real presence there means that more will happen than just everyone checking their diaries for a mutually satisfactory time for the next stage.

You can keep up with the excitement by following me on Twitter at @RatbagsDotCom or search for the hashtag #AVOmerde.

FFS! It's still going on! (3/8/2013)
The Great AVO Saga has been adjourned until September 18. This will be thirteen days after the anniversary of Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network filing an application with the court to have an Apprehended Personal Violence Order placed on me to stop me talking about her child-endangering activities. Here is a letter I wrote to the Attorney-General of New South Wales, the man at the top of the legal pyramid in my state.

Attorney-General of New South Wales
Mr Greg Smith.

Dear Mr Smith,

As you must be aware, some of your ministerial colleagues have taken recent and ongoing interest in the activities of the Australian Vaccination Network.

I have a long interest myself in the AVN and applaud the actions of the NSW Government in trying to bring this dangerous organisation to heel, but there is an aspect of the AVN's activities that you might not be aware of and which is of direct concern to your Department.

Meryl Dorey, immediate past President of the AVN, has on many occasions declared her commitment to free speech, but over the last few months she has been taking action which looks suspiciously like an attempt to use the courts to silence critics.

In September last year Ms Dorey applied for Apprehended Personal Violence Orders against three of her critics. The applications contained the usual requests for orders to keep away from the applicant, but also contained the request for an order that "The defendant must not mention the applicant in any online forum in any derogatory manner". This is clearly outside the ambit of an AVO. Also, Ms Dorey lives and works in Bangalow on the north coast of NSW. The three defendants live in Guildford, Wentworth Falls and Perth, so are many hundreds of kilometres away from her.

One of the applications has been granted with the consent of the defendant, with the request for silence removed. He decided that he no longer wanted to continue the action as the granting of an AVO would have no effect on his life or actions.

The application against me was dismissed on April 26 this year, after seven mentions in the Local Court. Ms Dorey lodged an appeal against the dismissal on the last possible day, and a mention has been listed in the District Court at Lismore on July 29. A final hearing for the third application (against the man in Perth) was to have been held on May 24 this year, but again at the last possible moment Ms Dorey had the date vacated in order to request a change of magistrate. The next mention in that matter is set down for August 22, almost eleven months after an interim order was placed on him.

You can see a timeline of the action against me at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2013/05may.htm#4avo (This was obviously written before the appeal was lodged, but as no interim order was ever placed on me I am free to comment.)

In summary, two applications for AVOs have been dragging on for nine months with no resolution in sight. The applicant was in no personal danger at any time from any of the defendants, all of whom live and work many hundreds of kilometres away from her. Her actions have delayed the process on several occasions (failing to appear for a mention and a mediation session, late request for change of magistrate, request to make a second submission of evidence, request for an extension of a non-existent interim order on me). I have no information about her grounds for appealing the decision in my favour, but she had three opportunities to present evidence (two submissions, plus the final hearing) so it is unlikely that she will be presenting anything new in the District Court.

I realise that you have a very limited capacity to direct the actions of judicial officers and the courts, but I feel you should be aware that the time and resources of the courts are being wasted by what is obviously a blatant attempt to abuse the legal process in order to stifle criticism of an organisation of which the government clearly disapproves.

Thank you.

And here is the reply I received:

Dear Mr Bowditch

Thank you for your email to the Attorney General, the Hon Greg Smith SC MP, about the Apprehended Personal Violence Order (APVO) applications made by Ms Meryl Dorey. The Attorney General has noted your correspondence and asked me to reply on his behalf.

I note your concerns that certain APVO applications are a waste of court's time and resources. However, I can advise that the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 (the Act) contains a number of different safeguards to ensure that only genuine applications are granted.

Section 53 of the Act provides that an authorised officer or registrar may refuse to begin processing an APVO matter if satisfied that the application is frivolous, vexatious, without substance or has no reasonable prospect of success, or if the application could be dealt with more appropriately by mediation or other alternative dispute resolution mechanism.

Section 19 of the Act provides that a court must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that a person has reasonable grounds to fear and in fact fears either 1) the commission of a personal violence offence against the person, or 2) conduct in which the other person intimidates the person or stalks the person, and that conduct is sufficient in the opinion of the court to warrant the making of the order.

Section 20 of the Act sets out the matters the court must take into consideration when making a decision. These include any hardship that may be caused by making or not making the order, and the accommodation needs of all relevant parties.

Under section 99 of the Act, a court may award costs to the defendant, against an APVO applicant. This provides a further safeguard against vexatious or frivolous applications. However, a court is not to award costs against a police officer who makes an application unless satisfied that the police officer made the application knowing it contained matter that was false or misleading in a material particular.

It is also important to note the Act provides that a defendant may, at any time, make an application to a court for the variation or revocation of a final AVO or an interim court order.

Having said that, I advise that the Department of Attorney General and Justice is currently completing a statutory review of the Act. The review is considering whether the policy objectives of the Act remain valid and whether the terms of the Act remain appropriate for securing those objectives. Various issues regarding APVOs including options to address concerns regarding frivolous and vexatious applications are being considered in the review. It is anticipated that the reforms arising from the review are likely to be extensive.

I hope this information resolves some of the concerns you have raised about APVOs.

Yours faithfully

for Director Community Relations Unit
NSW Department of Attorney General & Justice

In 2012 the AVN "won" a case against the Health Care Complaints Commission in the NSW Supreme Court due to  the relevant legislation being out of date (it was written in 1993 and the Internet had bypassed it). The discrepancy has now been fixed by Parliament, and sane people are now thankful that quacks and charlatans can be chased effectively. Homeopaths, sellers of quack cancer cures and other people practising pretend medicine should be appropriately grateful to Ms Dorey for exposing them to the force of the law. It looks like Ms Dorey's latest efforts in the courts might contribute to further legislative amendments, this time limiting the ability of kooks and dingbats to waste the court's time with "frivolous and vexatious applications" for orders outside the spirit of the law.

It's jihad time! (17/8/2013)
In 2000 I was accused of terrorism in a ludicrous lawsuit brought by the late and very much unlamented cancer quack, Hulda Clark. It seems that some memes never die, and the following was posted to Facebook this week by Meryl Dorey, past president of the Australian Vaccination Network and another person who thinks that wasting my time in court proceedings is a sensible thing to do.

Another thing that never gets old is the Pharma Shill Gambit. Here is Ms Dorey accusing me of financial corruption in 1999. (There was specific legislation then called the Secret Commissions Act, but the crime has now been covered by other laws.)

To: <AVN@onelist.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 05:53:46 +1000
From: "Meryl Dorey"
Subject: RE: Anti-vaccination Liars webpage

You're right Heidi (and I love the name of the page – vaxquax :-) Not only that, but he has given me the links to a lot of pro-choice sites that are missing on the AVN web site so he's done my research for me. I am very proud that the AVN site is at the top – we must be doing something right (of course, it's alphabetical too ;-).

Thanks for pointing this site out Jan – I don't really think there is much point in corresponding with the person who has done this – they are on somebody's payroll (or payrolls) – but we are in very good company and like Heidi says – anyone who goes to this page will get some great resources to choose from for information.

Take care,
Meryl

Also, Ms Dorey – you probably mean "jihad", not "fatwa". We don't have spiritual leaders who can call down curses on people. And if you are comparing yourself to Salman Rushdie, well, I'm going to have to respond to your hubris in Arabic - أعطي نفسك حديد صدئة العلاج. When you have to hide out from death threats for a few years you might be entitled to talk about fatwa.

AVO update (24/8/2013)
No, not the ongoing saga of the attempt to abuse the legal system in order to silence me, but a related case. You might remember that when Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network (she was the President at the time) applied for an Apprehended Personal Violence Order against me she also applied for orders against two other people. Of the three cases, one was finalised when the defendant accepted the order (he did this without conceding or admitting to anything – he simply couldn't be bothered with the continual court appearances), the application against me was dismissed on April 26 (with that decision going to appeal on September 18), and the third application was dismissed on August 22, with Ms Dorey being ordered to pay $11,000 towards the defendant's legal costs.

What made this a more delicious irony is that Ms Dorey was offered the chance to withdraw her application a few days before and to pay a small amount of Mr Buzzard's legal bill. She countered with a suggestion that she would withdraw with each side bearing its own costs provided that Mr Buzzard promised to do even more than was demanded in her original application. This was obviously rejected, and she ended up being ordered to pay about four times as much.

I assume she will appeal the decision in order to drag the process out further, but the deadline for lodging an appeal is the day after the appeal hearing is scheduled in my case. That will be an anxious week for Ms Dorey.

You can see Mr Buzzard's narrative of his adventures here.

Speaking to Parliament? Oh, really? (24/8/2013)
Purely coincidentally I'm sure, Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network posted this appeal for funds to Facebook the day after she was hit with a big legal bill for the case she lost the day before.

What caught my eye, however, was the statement "Last week, our President addressed the QLD Parliament". As the Qld Parliament was not sitting in the week referred to, I wondered if this was another case of speaking "at" Parliament, not "to", as was once done by ex-Dr Andrew Wakefield. And I was right. Greg Beattie was speaking to a hearing of the Health and Community Services Committee. You can see the agenda at the right of the page.

Speaking to a committee of Parliament is not the same as addressing Parliament, but since when have we ever expected the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the AVN?

The submission contained the usual lies and half-truths we have come to expect from the AVN, including the claims that polio has been renamed, smallpox went away all by itself and vaccines don't save lives. It also included the famous graphs that Mr Beattie seems to think should be produced on every possible occasion. (The graphs were apparently going to be offered as evidence in the appeal over whether the AVN should change its deceptive name, although what relevance they could have there is a mystery.)

You can read Mr Beattie's amusing submission here. If you print it out you could put it in the bathroom in case you run out of toilet paper.

Let's spit on the memory of a great man (24/8/2013)
While people are remembering and celebrating the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Had A Dream" speech, a committee member of the Australian Vaccination Network chose to vomit on his memory by comparing this pack of outrageous child-harmers to him, among others. What sort of hubris does it take to write something like this?

My brother reminded me that we can take heart from all those in history who have been mercilessly persecuted and never gave up; Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Mahatma Ghandi. Their principles and values burned within their hearts and gave them the strength to stand against overwhelming odds, and those same principles burn within you, the AVN and your supporters.

It actually goes beyond hubris, almost to the point of self-centred insanity. The person who wrote it, Tasha David, has a history of being loose with the truth, and you can see her (anonymously) inventing stories about me here. Her latest tirade can be seen here.

The picture at right (click for a larger view) is "The Mourning Of Icarus" by Draper Herbert James. Icarus suffered from hubris, but the difference between him and this vile organisation is that nobody will mourn the death of the AVN. It will be a cause for celebration.

Meryl Dorey's commitment to free speech (7/9/2013)
I turned on Facebook on September 6 to find that I was not automatically logged in. I had been logged out of the system for committing a grievous crime against "community standards". When I entered my username and password the following appeared.

When I hit "Continue" I got this:

Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network had been on a rampage over the previous couple of days, submitting whines to Facebook every time someone mentioned her name. The fact that she chose the anniversary of her ridiculous attempt to use the courts to silence me to yet again try to stop me from talking shows that she completely lacks any form of irony gene.

Ms Dorey's attempt to silence me through the courts was dismissed on April 26, but she has appealed that decision. The appeal will be heard on September 18, and I intend to publish something about Ms Dorey's war on children's health on my blog every day between now and then.

Here are the first three episodes:

• Free speech advocate hates free speech
• Meryl Dorey begging for money for lawyers (2010)
• The AVN lies about vaccines and aborted foetuses

Counting down!! (14/9/2013)
There's not much happening here this week because I'm getting everything together for the court appearance on Wednesday. For those who are new here, forgetful or out of the loop, this is the appeal lodged by Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network against the dismissal of her ridiculous attempt to have an Apprehended Violence Order placed on me. (People in other parts of the world might call these things "restraining orders".) You can see the history of the action here.

She chose the anniversary of the application (yes, it has been going on for more than a year) to whine to Facebook and get me suspended from posting, so from that that date until the court date I have been republishing a daily selection of articles about the AVN and her on my blog.

Here are the episodes so far:

• Free speech advocate hates free speech
• Meryl Dorey begging for money for lawyers (2010)
• The AVN lies about vaccines and aborted foetuses
• The AVN shows sympathy for women with breast cancer
• Meryl Dorey: Free speech hypocrite
• Meryl Dorey and the rape analogy
• Defending fraud: Meryl Dorey and Andrew Wakefield
• Meryl Dorey condones child abuse
• Meryl Dorey lies about SIDS and SBS. And me.
• The AVN – Lies, deception and threats

A gurgle from the plughole (16/9/2013)
The following release went out to journalists and media outlets today.

It's all over. Or is it? (21/9/2013)
I received the following from Lismore District Court this week.

Amid all the congratulations a message rolled in from Ms Dorey's great friend Tim Bolen, spokespustule for cancer quacks, insurance fraudsters and dentists who sexually molest patients.

poor peter:

I'd say, off hand, that she made a decision to to not further pursue you because someone told her that you just weren't important enough in the scheme of things.

Tim seems to think that prefacing every message to me with "poor peter" is either some form of funny joke or is an attempt to annoy and embarrass me. Wrong on all counts. What a sad man.

I'm in the paper! (21/9/2013)
A nice article in the Sunday Telegraph.

Meryl Dorey speaks at a rally. Picture: Glenn Barnes Source: News Limited

And the backlash! (21/9/2013)
It didn't take long. On September 21 Meryl Dorey published a blog post with the rather ironic title of "Silencing the opposition", in which she defended her actions to try to silence her opposition. She also had a lot of things to say about bias in the courtroom. It's a bit long for the front page, but you can read an annotated version of what she wrote here.

As she had so much to say about corrupt magistrates, I thought the state Attorney General should be informed of her concerns. Here is my email to him.

Attorney-General of New South Wales
Mr Greg Smith

Dear Mr Smith,

I emailed you in June about the way that Meryl Dorey, past president of the Australian Vaccination Network, had been abusing the AVO process in order to silence some of her critics. (Thank you for the informative reply from your office.) At almost the last minute, last week she withdrew an appeal against the dismissal of her AVO application against me. Her appeal added almost four months to the time taken to resolve this matter, with the final dismissal of the appeal occurring almost fifty-four weeks after the original application was lodged.

Ms Dorey has now published comments about the case (and her two other applications) in which she explicitly accuses the judicial officers involved of bias. Here are some quotes from the article:

"I believe it is my involvement with the AVN which has influenced the courts against me, causing them to be decided on the personal preconceived opinions of the magistrates involved, rather than on the merits and the evidence presented."

"I still believed it was possible to get justice from the courts, and that magistrates would pass judgment without allowing their personal preconceived biases to interfere. I was a babe in the woods in that regard."

"It is my firmly held belief, based on the evidence from both cases that actually went to trial, that my losses had nothing to do with the evidence presented to the courts. Based on that evidence alone – APVOs should have been granted without question. But both magistrates showed a strong disapproval for the work that I have done for the last 20 years with the AVN and I feel that they were unable to separate Meryl Dorey the mother, woman and victim of institutionalised and long-running abuse, from Meryl Dorey, ex-President of the AVN and vaccine rights advocate."

I should like to point out that in the hearing of the case against me, Magistrate Denes said "I make it very clear again. This case is not about vaccination, pro or otherwise. This case is not about the AVN, this case is not about someone's ability to challenge that online". She then went on to discuss how the evidence presented should and would be evaluated strictly in accordance with its relevance under the legislation covering AVOs.

You can see Ms Dorey's comments at http://nocompulsoryvaccination.com/2013/09/21/silencing-the-opposition/

I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done to stop Ms Dorey defaming judicial officers and impugning the integrity of the court system, but I feel you need to at least be aware of what she is saying.

Thank you.

(A copy of this email has been forwarded to the Shadow Attorney General and the Registry at Lismore Courthouse.)

While I was in a writing mood, I thought I should advise Getty Images that the blog post featured one of their copyrighted images, one that has to be paid for.

A copyrighted Getty image appears on the web page at http://nocompulsoryvaccination.com/2013/09/21/silencing-the-opposition/ with no acknowledgment of the source.

As the page is defaming both me and certain legal officers I would not be surprised to find that the author showed the same disregard for intellectual property as she does for defamation and contempt laws and simply "borrowed" the picture without bothering to ascertain ownership and publication rights.

Thank you.

I like to make sure people are informed. And I'm sure Ms Dorey agrees with me that freedom of speech is all about keeping people informed of things.

Let's help the people in the Philippines (16/11/2013)
It should have been impossible to watch news broadcasts in the last week without seeing scenes of horror from the Philippines as a result of the hurricane which destroyed everything in its path, including tens of thousands of people. Before you read any further you need to go to these places and donate some money.

A doctor friend of mine volunteered to help and at the time of writing is waiting for the call to get in the C130 to be flown into the disaster area. She quite reasonably announced this to her Facebook friends. She just happens to be an active member of the Stop the AVN Facebook group, so the response on the Australian Vaccination Network's page was predictable. The actual form of words wasn't though.

So people who volunteer to give up their time and income to help others are "pathological narcissists" for letting their friends know why they might be invisible for a while. That's just about the level of compassion we have come to expect from anti-vaccination liars. Note that those comments are still there on the AVN's page, so obviously the page administrators agree with the sentiments.

I have decided that this calls for a Kind and Gentle email to Meryl Dorey, immediate past President of the AVN. I won't email it to her because she blocks all emails from me but somehow manages to receive them to use in court.

Dear Meryl (I hope I can call you that after our long dance in the courts),

When hurricanes devastated Banda Aceh in 2004 and Haiti in 2010 you put out calls to your followers to get them to avoid giving donations to aid organisations that promote vaccination, and in the latter case even opposed groups that used drugs. I was wondering what advice you would be giving to AVN supporters following the hurricane in the Philippines that has killed at least 10,000 people. Are you still going to ask that no money goes to organisations that might accidentally vaccinate people? I notice on the AVN's Facebook page that people are lying robustly about an upcoming trial of a cholera vaccine so I assume you aren't concerned that this disease might be a problem in the storm affected areas. Are you still opposed to the use of drugs in the treatment of hurricane victims and do these drugs you don't want administered include the anaesthetics needed for emergency surgery, painkillers such as morphine, antibiotics and antiseptics? Is the AVN organising a supply of natural alternatives to these to be flown to the worst affected areas, you know, the places where pathological narcissists might be running field hospitals and treating broken people?

What, if anything, is the AVN doing? When will the relief teams from Chiropracteurs Sans Frontières be leaving?

On another matter, I see that people are lying again about Dr Offit and the 10,000 vaccines. You know as well as I do what he really said, but as Mark Twain once said "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes", a philosophy strongly supported by anti-vaccination liars everywhere. I saw this comment from you on Facebook:

I don't know if you are aware, but an AVN supporter recently challenged me to take all the vaccines in the up-to-5-years schedule for children on one day. As always, I accepted the challenge as I have done many times before, but also as always he ran away when asked to back himself up. I'm still ready to roll up my sleeve at the Australian Skeptics convention and get all those vaccines so I wonder if you would like to volunteer to administer them. It will be easier for you to go to Canberra than Philadelphia and it will only be 15, 30 or 52 vaccines (depending on who is lying at the time) rather than the 10,000 that you want to give to Dr Offit. Do we have a date? 12:35pm, Saturday November 23 at the CSIRO Discovery Centre. I'll be there. Will you?

You friend in litigation,
Peter

Going, going, maybe gone. (25/11/2013)
On Monday November 25 the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal handed down its decision on the Australian Vaccination Network's appeal against an order that they change their deceptive name. You can read the whole thing here, but here is the important part:

The decision of the Director General, Department of Finance and Services to direct Australian Vaccination Network Inc to adopt a new name is affirmed.

The trigger for starting this site in 1999 was that I found that this organisation committed to the deaths of children had adopted the innocuous name to hide its true intent. It took a long time, but finally they might have to do something very difficult for them – tell just a little truth. Surely that can't be too hard, even for a group of professional liars.

Speaking of the AVN ... (21/12/2013)
As part of the continued and welcome collapse of the AVN they stopped producing their magazine, Living Wisdom. Actually, they had stopped long before the final announcement but eventually had to face the reality that people had paid for magazine subscriptions and probably expected to get something for their money. It was announced that subscriptions to other magazines would be substituted so that everyone got their money's worth. It seems that this promise had as much truth in it as anything else emanating from the organisation, and as far as I know nothing ever turned up. Finally someone asked and they were told that the substitute would be the magazine shown below. As it contains an obvious and blatant lie on the cover (a lie expressed as a question) it fits in well with AVN philosophy, which is to tell as little truth as possible and then only in a whisper. I hope to see a copy of the rag, because I like to check these things to see if the pages are numbered consecutively, usually the only facts to be found there.

Liars gonna lie (21/12/2013)
I turned on Facebook this morning to find that I had been logged out. This is usually a sign of unpleasantness to come, and I was not disappointed.

The "Karen" referred to is a fake profile, and the conversation happened some weeks ago. Unfortunately, Facebook simply takes the word of liars, although you usually have to say a person's full name before this nonsense swings into effect. Within a short period of time several other people received temporary bans for responding to "Karen". Note that it is considered good manners to mention someone's name when responding. Here are some of the things that can get you banned by Facebook for replying to a sock puppet.

Now, if you think that's enough hypocrisy for today, with an anonymous sock puppet complaining about totally innocuous comments, consider this.

Last weekend this image was posted to a Facebook page named "Stop the Australian Vaccination Propaganda". It was posted by an anonymous liar calling itself "Doreen Darling", who almost immediately disappeared again from Facebook. A second anonymous liar calling itself "Sandra Sanderson" chimed in, accusing me of being a drunk. If they thought they would embarrass me they were wrong.

I rather like the picture of me, but a search of the Internet using Google's image search tools didn't turn up any match, so I asked where it came from. Here is "Doreen's" reply.

Let's get some facts. I finally found where it came from – it is a still from the television show Today Tonight that was broadcast on June 14, 2013. It is not "in the public domain" because the copyright belongs to Channel 7. There was no "source of this picture on the world wide web". "Doreen" was lying. (You can see the show here.) But that's what liars do.

Now do you see what I mean about hypocrisy? Supporters of the Australian Vaccination Network see no problem in using false names to write stuff about me which they fully intend to be defamatory, but run to mummy and cry when anyone does anything that they don't like. They lie to Facebook by submitting fraudulent claims of non-existent breaches in "community standards". They are vile, disgusting things that you would not want to tread on or you would have to throw your shoes away.

"Karen Little", "Doreen Darling", "Sandra Sanderson" and any other of the cast of characters invented to attack those who don't like people who want to see more dead children, please find a hot fire and die in it. But before you do, please answer the question in the image. Sane people want to know your motivation for your hatred of children.

Oh, and at least two people complained to Facebook about the picture of me before telling me that it existed. In neither case did Facebook take any action. Politely replying to a post and addressing the original poster by name violates community standards; stealing photographs and abusing people anonymously is perfectly allowable.

• Articles about this disgusting organisation up to December 21, 2008
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2009
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2010
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to June, 2011
• The Australian Vaccination Network July to December, 2011
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to June, 2012
• The Australian Vaccination Network July to December, 2012
• The Australian Vaccination Network January to May, 2013
• The Australian Vaccination Network June to December, 2013
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2014
• The Australian Vaccination Network in 2015
• This site had a holiday from 2016-2018
• From January, 2019