Professor Scott Prasser is Australia's foremost expert on royal commissions. He gives us the pros and cons of having a royal commission, what it actually means, and lays out whether it's even possible to happen.
TRANSCRIPT:
(This is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
So this is, this is, uh, everything you wanna know about Royal Commissions, but we're afraid to ask, okay, why am I interested? Royal Commissions? Some people collect stamps, some people collect, uh, dinky toys.
I collect Royal commissions. Why did I collect Royal commissions? Because when I was a student University of Queensland, I got selected to go and work on a Royal Commission in Canberra.
And as a boy from Ipswich, I thought it was really odd going to Canberra. Uh, being flown down first class as a nine year old was great fun, and being met by a show driven car, this is back in 1974, by the way, and working on a Royal Commission into the public service in a place full of public servants seemed to me a really odd thing that Canberra, I find a very odd place.
So I'm gonna give you a very quick history of Royal Commissions and come to the big question at the end. Can we, should we or might we have a Royal Commission on the shambles that we've had in the last couple of years? So what are they?
Royal commissions are temporary bodies. They are appointed by executive government, right? Parliament can't appoint a Royal Commission. No one can appoint a Royal Commission except executive government. That is cabinet premier, prime minister, ministers, right?
I'll go into a bit more detail. Their members are from outside government. They're not members of government. They're not public servants. They often can be former judges. Existing judges no longer wanna do that sort of job. Um, they're people from outside of government.
That's what gives them their sense of independence. They have public processes. That should be t o t terms of reference. Everything is public. They have public hearings. Their reports are made public.
The evidence on which the reports are made are made public, right? So it's very public process. The complete antithesis of what government is, which is secret. Now, I've worked in government for lots. I know, uh, their Advisory Royal Commissions only make recommendations. They don't make decisions.
They don't adjudicate, right? They're advisory bodies. They're advisory bodies to executive government. They're not judicial. I'm, go on a second. They'll report back to executive government with recommendations and, you know, six volumes of reports, or it may be, and it's up to executive government to decide what to do with them.
Now, Royal Commissions have some really special features. They're really appointed by the governor or Governor General, who issues what is called Letters patent, right? Says this is the terms of reference by her Majesty, blah, blah, blah. Okay?
That's what, that's what makes it a Royal Commission, okay? Um, but, uh, they only, Governor only does that on advice of his or her ministers. That's how our system works. No, right? Um, they, Royal Commissions in Australia, unlike Royal Commissions in England, believe it or not, from the word go, had legislation they're based on.
So the Governor can appoint a Royal commissioner, but Parliament had to pass a law to give the Royal Commission power. And Royal Commissions have lots of power. They can make you attend and give evidence. If you don't do it, they'll put you in jail.
They can make you give evidence, even incriminate you. They're not, they're not, they don't work on courts of law evidence. They're inquisitorial bodies, okay? They can, uh, procure documents from your house or your computers.
They can, in some cases, phone tap you. Right? So, Royal Commissions are really, really powerful bodies. Uh, Britain didn't have anything like it really until quite recently. So we, you know, Australia has always had these sort of bodies. Canada, the same, New Zealand the same, right? Um, they're called sorts of things.
They're called Royal Commissions. They're called commissions of inquiry. And so on. Every state in Australia has a Royal Commission legislation, and the Commonwealth has Royal Commission legislation. The, a matter of fact, the, the, the Commonwealth Royal Commission Act was passed in 1902.
So just after we started Federation, it's the 12th Act of Parliament passed by, by the Commonwealth Parliament, okay? And they appointed a Royal Commission, and I'll tell you about that in a minute.
And then they realized it had no power. So, oh boy, we better pass legislation. So they copied the New South Wales legislation. Uh, Andrew, um, Alfred Deacon was the Attorney General. You can read his debate.
It's eight paragraphs long. That's the Royal Commission Act. Uh, and that's how we've got the Royal Commission Act 1902. Okay? That's still in existence. It's got a lot bigger since then. Okay? Uh, it reports to the Governor, but really reports to executive government. And, and you, you'll see over and over again, they're being called judicial inquiries. Uh, Daniel Andrews, when he pointed that inquiry into the hotel quarantine issue down in, in ca in Melbourne, he caught a judicial inquiry.
There is no such thing as a judicial inquiry in our system of government. The judiciary does not run inquiries. We have separation of powers. What people get confused about, sometimes they appoint a judge, uh, or a retired judge to be a Royal Commissioner.
They're not judicial. They don't, they don't make decisions, okay? So people get that confused. And people like me write letters all the time and say, you're wrong. And they ignore me. Okay?
Types of Royal Commissions.
There are two types of Royal Commissions policy, Royal Commissions, which investigate or give advice on all sorts of things. We've had lots of 'em in Australia. We had lots of 'em before Federation.
The states colonies had Royal Commissions. And the Commonwealth standpoint, Royal Commissions, Royal Commissions to give advice on pension schemes, on child endowment, on Australian, on postal services, on all sorts of things. On the film industry, on the wireless industry, ship building, sugar industry, pearl diving, rollway gauges, all sorts of royal commissions into things. Okay?
They're policy ones. Um, and then we have Inquisitorial Royal Commission. These are ones probing corruption or why something happened, why a bridge collapsed, or why a bushfire got outta control.
These are inquisitorial and almost all royal commissions now are of this type of, this type, the qui. We don't appoint many Royal Commissions into policy issues. The last one in federally, let's see, 1997 inquiry into grain handling.
There was a Royal Commission into grain handling, chaired by an economist, okay? Not a judge, right? So that's important. Why do they get appointed? Well, the reason why Royal Commissions really got established is because initially there wasn't much of a public bureaucracy around.
So we wanted to get expert advice. We appoint a Royal Commission, we get experts in and to give expert advice, to look at new policy areas, to review institutions, uh, and so on.
A very famous one was the Royal Commission 1908 into the Australian Postal Services and Telecommunications. Why? Because the Commonwealth government had got control of all the state postal services 'cause we've got one Postal service telecommunications, and it was very badly run. So they had a Royal Commission, and visited all around Australia. And I got to one of the witnesses, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
They got him to come out from America where he was at the time, to give evidence to this Royal Commission in Australia about where will telecommunications go. And he was asked, is this just the far as we go? He said, no, there will come a time where people will be able to talk and see each other by telephone. Right? 1908. And he also said, if you're going to, if you're gonna run a postal service for goodness sake, pay them a decent salary and get the best. That's probably the second bit of advice. So, really important, um, why do governments appoint them into corruption? Because, because we don't trust government, right?
This is not you, but this is not you. So we need an outside body to investigate an allegation of corruption where we can all see what it's doing. We can see all the hearings and processes. That's why we do it.
The public service today is politicized. Now we have the overseas doctor scandal in Queensland. We had two Royal Commissions into the issue. The first one got closed down 'cause it was bias. The second one did the work.
Okay? Royal Commissions are prestigious, okay? A politician is not prestigious, like use Castle Apology to use Castle. But also everything in pol, everything in government is political. So even if you appoint a Royal Commission to invest some sort of corruption, government are doing it for political reasons to show action and activity. And we care. And we're gonna do something about, you know, Mr. Beattie, when you're appointed, oh, we're gonna tackle the overseas doctor scandal. We're gonna appoint a Royal Commission or Morrison, when we have a Royal Commission into the bushfires, you know, we're gonna tackle this issue. We're gonna show that we're concerned.
And sometimes governments appoint Royal Commissions just on the eve of an election, right? Because, you know, the, we're just gonna report after the election, and who knows what will be happening then. All right? Okay.
So let's think about it. So, all sorts of problems about Royal Commissions jurisdiction, a Commonwealth Royal Commission can't investigate state issues, right? So it can only do that if the state government agreed to have a joint Royal Commission. So there's quite a lot of joint Royal Commissions occur, but the states have gotta agree to it otherwise.
And a State Royal Commission can't investigate the Commonwealth, right? The jurisdiction, they do have a lot of powers. I've said before, Royal Commissions have lots of powers. So I've never been called as a witness, but I wouldn't like to be. Um, they can be unpredictable. Now, you know, the famous one I like is unpredictable, is the Fraser government, as you all remember, appointed the Royal Commission into the federated ship, um, painters and Dockers Union, you know, right?
To get the Labor Party there was corruption, but it was to get the Labor Party. But it got the Liberal Party because it, it highlighted the bottom of the harbor tax schemes, which a lot of Liberal Party type Western Australia type people were involved with. Uh, I was working in government at the time. And boy, it, it completely boomerang back on the, on the government, right? So you, you point a Royal Commission, you never know where it's gonna go.
So beware, be careful Fitzgerald pointed by the Bjelke-Petersen government, but destroy the Bjelke-Petersen government. All right? Okay. Okay. So those sort of stories, Royal Commissions take time. The average length is about two years.
Some take four years. The one in two institutional child sexual abuse, four years, caustic and Royal Commission, four years, the recent one in aged care, about 22 months. So don't, don't expect instant answers, right? They're not those sort of bodies.
Some of them come up with impractical or very costly proposals because they're Royal Commissioners. They're not necessarily people who, um, fully appreciate all aspects of an issue. So Royal Commissions can get things wrong, okay? Um, sometimes, um, I think in recent times, there's, there's been, we've been averaging a Commonwealth Royal Commission one every year for the last eight years, right?
Including our most expensive 350 million bucks for a Royal Commission. Just think about it. And there's another one on the disability. It's gonna cost 500 million bucks. Now, uh, I think the Morrison government has been flicking too many issues to Royal Commissions, right? It's, it's deflection, uh, it's a difficult issue.
So instead of resolving the issue politically in debate, let's flick it to a Royal Commission. And so the, the, the Royal Commission on Aged Care, the Royal Commissioners disagree with each other.
So a third of the recommendations, there's no agreement. See what I mean? Um, they can't solve everything. Okay? Where do they come from? Obviously this is a, a British Westminster system inheritance. Uh, the first Royal Commissioners argued to be the one, William the Conqueror set up, you know, William the Conqueror.
He conquered England. 1066 few years later, he said, what have I got? So he appointed a Royal Commission, Royal Commissioners, to go around all the villages of England and do a check on who owned what, how many cows were there, how many servants there were, how many slaves there were, and all sort of stuff.
And this was regards the first Royal Commission. And it produced what is called the Domesday Book, which is a record of all the families, of all the ownership in England at that time.
So it's a Royal Commission appointed by the king to go out on the King's Commission to find the truth about an issue. So they fell in disregard. The big growth of Royal Commissions in England occurred in the 19th century, where you had Royal Commissions into the poor law, sewage systems.
It was sort of the basis of modern British society in a sense. Our first Royal Commission in Australia, 1902, a ship was coming back from the Boer War. Lots of Australians went to the Boer War before we had Australia, don't forget.
And on the way back, 17 soldiers died on the ship. So this caused a lot of publicity, and therefore, the new federal government appointed this Royal Commission I told you about before. Uh, the press at the time said it was a whitewash, right? Okay.
Then the second Royal Commission we had was, where should we have the capital? We appoint a Royal Commission. 'cause you know, should it be Sydney, should it be Melbourne? Should it be Brisbane? I don't wanna go in Brisbane. Um, and so they had a Royal Commission, and it recommended Aubrey or tome.
So it was ignored, right? So two messages come across there. We've had, we're now up to 138 Royal Commission. Federally, there's several hundred state Royal Commissions as well. Okay? So up to 138 of our Royal Commissions. Here's some examples.
The Menzies government, Mr. Menzies, from 1949-1965 Royal Commissions, the Holt Gordon McMahon Governments are sort of people who followed his footsteps from '66 to '72 to Royal Commissions.
Mr. Whitlam, Labor Government, three years, 13 Royal Commissions, Royal Commissions into human relationships, Royal Commission to FM Radio, Royal Commissions and Maritime Industries. Um, and so, you name it, we had a Royal Commission, okay? Uh, Mr. Fraser, seven years in office, eight Royal Commissions, the, uh, Hawke Keating government, uh, 13 years in Office, 12 Royal Commissions, alright? And Mr. Howard, a bit of sanity returns: four Royal Commissions.
John wasn't big on Royal Commissions. Uh, the Rudd Gillard government won, but the most expensive one, okay? But Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison, I hope we don't have any more ministerial changes. I can't put it on the form.
Um, we're really now up to seven. We're really now up to eight. They disappointed their eighth one a few months ago, okay? So, you know, it's definitely, they're definitely in vogue.
Here are the recent Royal Commissions we've been having. The red one is the Rudd Government one. The rest are all the ones appointed by essentially the Abbott, um, Turnbull Morrison government. And you can see the years behind them, right?
Some of these are highly political. The Royal Commission Home Insulation Program was to embarrass the previous government, right? I'm not saying it didn't do some say some important thing, but that's what, that's what the goal was. Um, the, the, the Royal Commission of Trade Union Government was to get Bill Shorten.
Okay? Now, it also pointed some problems. There are some problems of unions, but that's the game. Um, the Royal Commission into Protection Detention of Children in Northern Territory. That was that Four Corners program, you know, that caused that, that was to get the government off the hook. We're doing something. Okay?
Um, Royal Commission Banking, Mr. It took, it took, um, Turnbull 12 months to make, to come to that decision. He was pressured, and pressured and pressured, finally got one. Right?
It only cost 50 million bucks. So don't worry too much, okay? Royal Commissioner of Aged Care, it was the first thing Morrison announced when he became Prime Minister in August, uh, 2018, he announced the Royal Commission, right? Okay.
And just remember back then everyone thought he was gonna lose the election. Just think about it then. Um, Royal Commission into, um, people with disability just announced a month before the election, a month, okay? And now we've got Royal Commission Natural Disaster arrangements, Bush Fires, where he got involved, and now we've got the Royal Commission of Defense and Veteran Suicide. Okay?
So lots of Royal Commissions on the go now, now we come to this Covid issue.
So I'm trying to paint a picture of what Royal Commissions are and where they come from. You know, they are politically driven, is one of the points I'm trying to get across. They can make mistakes.
Be careful what you wish for is my sort of message in a sense. Now, I agree with a lot of the discussion here tonight that should there be some sort of review into the shambles we've had in the last two years. And I'm, I agree with your civil disobedience.
I don't obey any of the rule, by the way. Um, but I have lost my license three times. So that's, that's another story. Um, so do we need a review? And I was talking to someone in Canberra the other day.
You know, this is a place with like 98% vaccination or something, and they're still running around, locked up or mask on and so on. He said, Scott, he said, there's gotta be some sort of review about the way governments have mishandled this issue as well as the spending and the damage to small business. You know, my family's small business. I understand what you're saying. And to me, governments have overreacted and overreached this whole thing, right?
And that's been driven by many decisions that are not based on medical evidence. Wearing a mask in a car would have to be the stupidest thing you can do now. Now, I, I do drive a sports car, by the way, and I did see someone there a week or so ago, driving along in an open sports car with a mask on. Now that, that just beats me for everything. Now, Andrews at the moment is got, uh, he's been ordered by the information commissioner in, um, Victoria to release 175 documents of the medical evidence for some of the decisions that have been made. Now he's going to contest that in court. All right?
Okay. Okay. So just remember that, yeah, the, the secrecy about things, the, the misinformation about when we told how many people have been tested for it, but we dunno how many people are ill from it. I'm not a medical person.
Uh, I'm not like the good doctor. I'm a doctor, doctor of sort of thing. It just seems to me very odd. And then there's civil liberties. Now, I'm, I'm a conservative. Um, uh, so, but I'm a little bit affronted by seeing, uh, a woman's house invaded and being handcuffed in front of her family because she's texting somewhere to go for a protest meeting. Uh, now, now, I, when I went to university, people were protesting about Vietnam.
I was never in that camp. And I thought, well, fair enough. If you wanna protest about it, you can, I I can't get over the civil liberties issue. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and I wrote an article recently and some academic sent me, and I said, oh, police brutality. He said, oh, what police brutality talking about? I said, what are you, you mean a, a mounted policeman in New South Wales on Ahor in the horse, rounding out a pregnant woman with a baby in a pram as well, because she was resting in a park. What, what do you call that? What, what do you call that? So, and, and, and the silence from the federal government on this matter.
The silence is unbelievable. It is deafening, you know, deafening, okay? Uh, the lack of accountability, uh, of the, the cost, uh, to, to who, who's responsible? The federal. Now, by the way, I'm in the believer of the camp.
The federal government should have run the show from the beginning and under quarantine powers in the Constitution. They could've. Yes. Okay. Right? And we would've had not different laws for each state and different closures and so on. And, and this is a reflection of what happened in the pandemic we had.
So, accountability, uh, has been out the door. Next we have parliament. Now, now, you might remember when Joe and the boys were in camp, in, in, in town, the academia in this place, and I'm a graduate from Griff University, the academia, uh, oh, how shocking.
Parliament's only sitting 65 days a year, well, sitting 30 days a year now in Canberra last year, except for two days, and spent 60 billion bucks. I don't regard that as being very much good for parliament, right?
And the national cabinet is the stupidest idea I think you've ever heard then. Then there's the cost in the economy. I walk around the shops and see them closed. Now, now this, oh, look at Melbourne. It's, um, it's like that movie on the beach, except they've, they could do it all again. They've got a perfect scene for it, haven't it? There's no one, there's no one working. Um, and the, and the funny money issue, we've we're, we're into, into my economist friends town. We're in for a big shock, okay?
Federalism. Now, I'm very, I federal, Australia's a federal system. But that doesn't mean we have so many different laws for each state and different border closures. Now, for those of you don't know, back when we had the pandemic in 1918, 1919, the Commonwealth Government tried to broker an arrangement with the States, okay?
And guess what? The states lied and didn't share information and all that sort of stuff. And, and the director general of Commonwealth Quarantine, it was a guy called, his name was John Howard Ton. He was a doctor, and he convinced Billy Hughes, the Prime Minister, to set up the Commonwealth Department of Health, even though the Commonwealth has got no constitutional powers on health except quarantine, and this is really important.
And because the Commonwealth realized that we didn't have data, we had states telling lies to each other about who got sick and who wasn't. Victoria said, no one got the pandemic.
Apparently people were just dying for some other reason. Um, so federalism, so, you know, one of the things we've been trying to do in Australia is we've, we've been pretty good at, at doing a lot of things collectively and making some good decisions.
What we've seen now, um, is some real problems. And, uh, Steve o and ABC repeated my story. Um, uh, last year, uh, my closest friend, uh, who had leukemia for 10 years was in Mater Hospital, rang my family, rang my wife and I, and said, Scott, I'm gonna go off the treatment. I'm, I'm gonna die in the next five days. He's, and this wasn't in lockdown period, right? And wishing you all the best and blah, blah.
And I could not visit Morris Harvey in Mater Hospital. His wife at one state and four children were refused to go and see him, but his wife was told to come out and get his dirty linen. Finally, his wife could see her husband with one child at a time.
Now, you tell me the logic of that. Now you just tell me, and I can't get over. You know, we have this, we're caring society. The, the people who, uh, the husband couldn't be with his wife, wife when she was having a baby.
The people stuck in New South Wales that can't come back. The misery on the coast borderlines the personal misery. Um, it's unbelievable. And it seems we seem to have adopted an attitude.
While we don't care, as long as we're all safe, oh my goodness, it's terrible. So I think there's lots of problems. Yes. That's what I'm trying to get at. Now, coming to a Royal Commission, people say, let's have a Royal Commission problem.
One, which government is gonna have a Royal Commission to investigate itself, right? It might, that's one thing, right? Secondly, if it's gonna have a Royal Commission, it would have to be a commonwealth initiated one, because 80% of the problems have been at the state level, right?
But they've had all the, the grit to do. Now, can you imagine the Commonwealth and states coming to an agreed terms of reference for a Royal Commission to say he did a s****y job, huh?
Well, I just can't see very hard to do, and it'd be tremendous argy-bargy going on about the terms of reference to, to be so watered down to be meaningless.
That's two problems. So who's gonna do it? Who's gonna nominate it? It's gotta be nominated by executive government. Can't be nominated by parliament, can't be nominated by the people can't be doing that.
It's gotta be executive government. Mr. Morrison or the state, or the state are gonna do it. Terms of reference would be hard to develop. Thirdly, what processes would it use? Would it, um, procure all the documents? Um, what would it, would it have public hearings? Would it call before our, our brilliant Chief Health Officers, uh, that we've had around it?
Actually, I think the Palaszczuk government's very good at moving Jeanette. She's moved her from the most powerful position to the most powerless position. I think that's very clever. Um, as governor. So how would it work? I mean, I can't work out how it could work. Next problem, membership.
Now you've got six states, two territories, and one commonwealth government. So let's say you're having a commonwealth state territory, Royal Commission, everyone will want to have someone on that Royal Commission to protect their backs, right? Okay.
Then you would have the professions fighting doctors, uh, wish doctors. What society of doctors, nurses, uh, should surgeons be on or so on and so forth, should doctors, for people from university to be on, who would be on the Royal Commission?
It would probably be 25 people. 35 people just imagine trying to get agreement from that. The governments would've to have reps, you know, they'd have to appoint someone on it to, to keep an eye on it, you know, keep a, make sure it didn't do any damage. Um, what about the disadvantaged people?
What about the small business owners who've gone broke? You know, um, or people who've lost a loved one and couldn't say goodbye, um, and so on. So to me, it, could be very hard to do, right?
And then just say it came out and said, government X did a terrible job. It's a recommendation. It's not a law. Who's gonna implement the recommendation that the Chief Health Officer in?
Um, I, I think my favorite one is the South Australian one. You know, don't touch the football, okay? You don't touch the football. The chief, our officer in South Australia should be sacked immediately for giving stupid advice, not based on any medical whatever.
Okay? Nothing. So, so to me, you know, how would a Royal Commission work? That's, that's my point. I'm trying to make. I'm not, I'm not saying there shouldn't be something.
Are there some alternatives we could appoint? We could appoint an inquiry. I'll be quite happy to chair it up. Okay? The Prasser Inquiry's got a nice ring to it. Uh, but I wouldn't have any powers. I couldn't, I couldn't, unless I'm appointed as a Royal Commission. I can't get that information.
I can't, the, the Department of Health won't give me the file, the Royal Commission give me the file, okay. Or put you in jail, okay? Um, a public service review. Well, you know who, you know, public service today is politicized. It's, it's it's jobs for the boys and girls, okay? Right. A think tank.
There are some think tanks, but again, no powers. There's left wing think, think tanks and right wing think tanks and so on. University, the university should have been doing a study of this whole process, right? It would've been a fantastic case study.
There's a famous book called Implementation written by a guy called Aaron Wildavsky in America. Uh, it's, it's a classic where he tracks down what happens to an employment scheme developed in Washington DC and what, and how many people it actually employs in Sacramento, California. Uh, it's supposed to employ 64,000 and employs four or something like that. Um, now the university, you notice how silent the university people are on, in my field.
I'm a political scientist where, where is the criticism of, you know, so a guy down in Melbourne, Monash, you know, brought card criticizing him. I said, well, hold a second, Jim, where's the criticism of Daniel? Okay, where, where's the, where's the, you've gotta give it to both sides.
And I give it to both sides. Come where's, where's the criticism? So universities and also universities that, oh, that would be a bit too practical for them to do. Oh, we've gotta get an a R C grant, I suppose, you know, to do any research, you know, for the professors of no teaching load. Um, I suppose yeah, could, okay. Alright. Um, then there's the Productivity Commission, great body Productivity Commission, but it's an economic body. Okay. And guess, you know, and, and it's, it's, it gets us terms of reference from the government, federal government. Okay? So it does good, good work, but it's that sort of body. Um, a state government could set up an inquiry, um, uh, you know, maybe if there was a, if we had an opposition with some guts and they got into power, they could set up an inquiry to investigate what the other mob did. Uh, there's gonna be a, uh, uh, there's gonna be an election in South Australia, so maybe someone can investigate the Marshmallow government or something. I'm not sure. Um, but I, I can't see any state government having one, can you? No. No. Right.
So what I'm saying to you, I'm sorry to say, I can't see in our present political system, and given the perpetrators are the ones in government of the present problems, which I think, you know, my wife just, I'll just go at the back and she's talking to the TV again, you know, and yelling at the TV and upset about the, what they're saying. I've just sort of accepted that we're in this state of complete terrible government. Yes. And I can't see any way out for this, except this event tonight should be run at a university.
Yes. Right? Yes. Right. It should be run at a university. I don't see any universities running anything on anything. Okay. Unless it's on transgender studies or something, or whatever. So, uh, or, or, or the climate change. I'm in the skeptic camp. I'm sorry to admit this.
Um, so, um, I, I, I think there ought to be some review. Um, yes, Scott Presser and people, my people at Center for Independent Studies, they could do something, um, where we're in the sort of liberal style camp, but it, it wouldn't have the same credibility, and we wouldn't get access to the powers or the witnesses, and we'll be, we'll be criticized, our typical right wing, think tank, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? Right. You can be a left wing think tank. It's all right, by the way, but right wing, think tank no good. So we're in a terrible situation that, um, we've sort of lost faith in our governments to even get at the truth about where we have been.
And I, I'm, I'm in the camp that I think we overreacted in the first place. I think it should be managed for specific groups. Definitely. Uh, Sweden to me, seems to have got it. It seems funny. Sweden, which I used to call the world's largest prison farm, um, has, has really shown the way on freedom, you know, and they've, they've really, in Denmark and, and so on. Even my friend in Germany, uh, said, we can't believe, Scott, that you people can't travel interstate.
You know, this seems really, really strange to people overseas. So, look, on Sunday, on Sunday, a person used to work for me, uh, got married, okay? We were invited to the wedding in Sydney. But as you know, to go to Sydney, we'd have to then not, couldn't drive. Uh, we would have to, uh, isolate and we came back and so on. So we didn't go.
So we saw the thing, and, and she only had 10 people at the, at the wedding. It's been canceled three times. She ran more. I said, just go ahead and get married, for goodness sake.
This is my ne this may go on forever. So she did, and it was fantastic. And, but we really said we couldn't get there all because of an overreaction. And governments have, uh, spiked up the fears and spiked up the concerns and have really given misinformation. We do need some sort of review, but I'm sorry to say, I can't see it happening. Okay. Or happening properly.
