Vaccination critic wins in court in New Zealand

In New Zealand, the government under WEF acolyte Jacinda Ardern claimed to be the “sole source of truth.” In addition, the Medical Association—as elsewhere—took action against the doctors who had raised their voices against the government’s Covid measures three years ago: their licenses were promptly suspended by the New Zealand Medical Association.
If doctors dared to uphold the principles of their profession and speak out against the destruction of informed consent for medical procedures, individualized treatment, and the Hippocratic Oath, it was clear what most of them faced. Not surprisingly, this resulted in the silence of the many, which paved the way for the excess mortality and disabilities that followed forced vaccination.
“Punish one, educate a hundred” (Mao Zedong)
The suppression of dissent is far more contagious than Covid and, to begin with, more dangerous for an open society. Sucharit Bhakdi in Germany or Andreas Sönnichsen in Austria can sing a song or two about this, as TKP reported here and here respectively. Many other doctors who have raised objections to this madness are included here, so to speak, pars pro toto.
Now a similar case arose in New Zealand, where authorities and courts took action against “opponents of the measures”—that is, “right-wing extremists,” if one follows Colette Schmidt from Standard: The New Zealand Bar Association took a leaf out of the Medical Association’s book and decided to intervene against them. Lawyer Sue Gray was brought before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal.
As in the similar cases mentioned above, the allegations were rather vague. If you, for example, click on the article linked in the previous paragraph, you can read the following—in my translation and with my emphases (the article went online in mid-November 2021):
After several individuals and at least one group complained about Gray, [the New Zealand Law Society] said in a letter this week that the professional standards committee “has decided on its own initiative to address the general concerns surrounding Mrs Gray’s activities.”
What is particularly strange about this case—and the parallels to the “cases” of Bhakdi and Sönnichsen cannot be overlooked—is that even though specific complaints to the Law Society led to an investigation of “general concerns” about Sue Gray’s “activities.”
Opponent Gray vs. the government: This is brutality
This case becomes even more “piquant” when one considers the following facts, which are mentioned in passing in the aforementioned Stuff media report:
Sue Gray is co-leader of the NZ Outdoors Party, has a large following on social media, and regularly posts anti-vaccination content, including false claims about Covid-19 deaths and promotion of alternative and unproven treatments.
She recently represented four security staff in a High Court case against the government’s mandatory vaccination requirements, which the employees lost.
A short chronological insertion at this point: Stuff’s first media article about the Sue Gray “investigation” is dated 12 November 2021; the second article, linked in the paragraph above, about Gray’s representation of four plaintiffs, is dated 8 November 2021. In other words, Stuff “journalists’” chain of causation is wrong.
Added to this is the insane “attitude” that defendants cannot (or are not allowed to) choose their own legal representation, and that representation of defendants in court, whatever the case, falls under the category of “general concerns related to Mrs Gray’s activities.”
The case in question concerned the dismissal of four airport employees who had lost their jobs due to their refusal to be vaccinated. In his reasoning, Judge Francis Cooke said he was “convinced that the [Pfizer/BioNTech] vaccine is safe and effective and has significant benefit in preventing symptomatic infection with Covid-19, including the Delta variant.” He also said that it “significantly reduces severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths.”
Sue Gray is also accused by Stuff of posting “anti-vaccine content” on social media.
Reprimand by the Law Society
The Law Society’s decision was prompted, among other things, by Glenn Jeffrey’s complaint. Jeffrey, a former photojournalist, said he felt confident that the Society took the complaints seriously after receiving confirmation of the opening of the investigation:
I hope she is disbarred, I hope she is deprived of the opportunity to practice law in New Zealand. She has brought New Zealand’s legal system into disrepute with her lies and baseless accusations against people and the vaccine rollout.
Sue Gray’s “crime” was that on social media she mentioned a connection to the corona injections in the case of a teenager who died shortly after the “vaccination.”
In a statement following Gray’s post about the Auckland teenager, the NZ Outdoors Party claimed that the Covid-19 vaccine deaths were “state-imposed genocide.”
Modus operandi: splitting hairs and threatening professional bans
Complaints received by the Law Society are referred to an independent committee for investigation, and such proceedings can be lengthy. Complaints deemed serious enough can be referred to the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal, the standing disciplinary committee.
The Tribunal can suspend a lawyer or remove him from the “Roll of Barristers and Solicitors”—i.e., the license to practice as a lawyer—which would prevent the person concerned from practicing as a lawyer.
The allegations against Sue Gray were—vaguely enough—that she had breached the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2008. These state that a lawyer “must not engage in conduct that brings the profession into disrepute.”
It remains unclear to what extent private statements on social media can be judged as such “conduct… that brings the profession into disrepute,” as Gray also explained on Stuff:
Gray responded to the complaints in a letter to the Society and said that her comments about the teenager were made on her NZ Outdoors Party Facebook page and not in her role as a lawyer.
The comments were “posted in my personal capacity as a political leader.”
In other words: The Law Society intervened against an “inconvenient” politician and thereby ignored the required neutrality as a professional representative. Is it appropriate at this point to speak of the political persecution of dissidents?
Stage victory in court, exposure of the Law Society
Sue Gray represented herself at the hearing, and the decision was in her favor. Almost two years later, the judge’s ruling sounds as if Gray was the victim of a political “witch hunt”:
On Friday [4 August 2023, note] it was stated that although Gray’s conduct gave “a poor impression of her judgment and the positions she took,” her freedom of expression must be protected:
“When weighed against the right to freedom of expression, we do not consider that the remaining allegation can rise to the level of unsatisfactory conduct,” the decision states.
The court ruling is also significant because it also applies to the authorship of comments on social media:
The complaints pointed to Gray’s posts on social media claiming that the Covid vaccine was the direct cause of the deaths. Many of these posts could not be linked directly to Gray, as a number of [IT, ed.] administrators published posts under her name…
“Mrs Gray’s position is that all these statements were made in her capacity as a politician or as a private citizen, and none of them were part of her role as a lawyer. There is no complaint before the court about her conduct in court or her conduct as a lawyer for a client,” the judgment states.
“Lawfare” was yesterday; today it is about reversing the burden of proof
Although lawyers have a duty to express themselves in a “careful and measured manner,” the judgment at the same time reveals an extraordinarily deep insight into a broader context, as the court also stated:
Had the posts published in Mrs Gray’s name been better managed or approved by her, this would have prevented the more extreme statements from being associated with her.
It is extremely dangerous—because here we are no longer talking “just” about “lawfare,” that is, the mobilization of the judiciary against politically or otherwise undesirable persons, but about the reversal of the burden of proof.
“In rule-of-law states the principle applies that the state must prove guilt. Until then every accused is considered innocent,” as Wolfgang Kyodl precisely formulated this in Weltwoche in response to similar demands from Federal Interior Minister (sic) Nancy Faeser.
So let us read the paragraph from the already quoted judgment again, but now in the English original:
If posts made in Mrs Gray’s name had been better managed or approved by her, it would have prevented the more extreme statements from being linked to her personally.
The court acknowledged that these posts were not (partly) made by Sue Gray, but found it “appropriate” to reprimand her for them and hold her responsible. Namely for not making these statements.
Epilogue: Swan song for the rule of law
Applied to Central Europe, this “logic” also once again calls into question the absurd legal dispute between the chairman of the Green club and the “pub owner”—who argued about a similar question.
Seen in this light, the judgment is a welcome decision, but it points to far greater problems with such an understanding of a Western rule of law—and above all the principle of “in dubio pro reo,” which has been fundamental since Roman antiquity. Not to mention the legal prosecution of a political competitor, no matter how motivated it is.