By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
HAVE our state police forces been privatised? Or do they, like other government departments, just operate “commercially” as a convenience, as claimed by various constitutional law experts quoted by media fact checkers.
In the video above Cairns law activist Romley Stewart confronts the operator of a Queensland police vehicle that appears to be parked illegally with a speed camera mounted on the roof. The operator of the vehicle eventually emerges and is told he is running a “commercial operation” and is “not government”.
Romley checked the police car’s registration plates and found that the vehicle was registered as “commercial”. But according to law academics quoted by Australian Associated Press (AAP) fact checkers, the Corporations Act specifically states that public authorities are not corporations. Then why do police register their vehicles as commercial? Why are they not registered as government vehicles?
The fact checkers say the Corporations Act defines an exempt public body as being a public authority, or a Commonwealth, state or territory agency. “Section 57A of the Act states a corporation can be “a company”, “a body corporate” or “an unincorporated body that … may sue or be sued, or may hold property” but not “an exempt public authority”.
So why do these Commonwealth, state and territory agencies run themselves like private corporations with ABNs and highly paid chief executive officers and layers of corporate management identical to those in the corporate sector?
Incidentally, Stewart explains in his blog how the officer was in breach of the law including dangerous operation of a vehicle, refusing as a public officer to perform a duty and disobedience to statute law. He also failed to provide a police number, which is reason for a complaint.
So, is it really the case that various government entities having ABNs and the Commonwealth of Australia being registered with the US Security Exchange Commission as a foreign private “administration” is, as the experts claim, inconsequential and only for the purpose of selling bonds to American buyers or conducting other business?
Whether or not this situation of a commercially-registered vehicle collecting fines could be used against police in a court of law is an interesting topic, and Cairns News would be interested to hear from anyone else who has pursued the matter of “police in commerce”.
Meanwhile, Geelong man Gary Oraniuk, has written to his local newspaper about the “private status” of Victoria Police, and how that relates to a story on Judge Gaynor of the County Court ruling against the actions of police officers against protesting members of the public during the Covid scare.
Victoria Police were forced to drop all charges against Nicolas Patterson and Adam Roob after Judge Gaynor described police action, seen in police video footage, as unwarranted violence against Patterson and his friends. Judge Gaynor found police statements on the event to be inaccurate compared to the video footage.
Oraniuk believes Daniel Andrews effectively raised his own private militia, by unlawfully giving Commissioner Shane Patton instructions as to what to do and to whom-as evidenced by former policewoman Krystal Mitchell, who said Andrews met with Patton every day and instructed him, effectively, on whom to go and beat up.
“Andrews’ statement that ‘Victoria Police are now independent of the Parliament of Victoria’ means that he privatised the police, because if the police are not operating under the auspices of a lawful Parliament then they are not operating lawfully and have no lawful authority,” Oraniuk maintains.
As explained by Nick Patterson during the Covid protests, Victoria Police’s own Act, the Police Act 2013, explicitly states that police cannot be directed by the State Government.
He said the privatisation was evidenced, in part, by the fact that the police vehicles carried private registration plates, not the maroon-bordered state registered plates one would have seen on the police vehicles of old, and the new police vehicles were of various makes and models – Ford, Holden and BMW for the Highway Patrol.
“They are not fleet vehicles, once again – as of old – and I am told by someone who says they know that individual police own the vehicles. If this can be definitively proven, then the government has some serious questions to answer, because, as it goes with every government department, those departments (including the police) are operating under ABNs, are registered for GST, the ABN registration meaning that all these departments are businesses.
“And if you look in Section 2 of the Victoria Police Act 2013 you will find that the Police Minister cannot tell the hierarchy at VicPol to do anything at all. Victoria Police is a private company then.”
Oraniuk, as we previously reported, issued a commerce-style Lawful Notice to former Premier Dan Andrews seeking recompense for masks the government required him to wear, to which his office responded by sending a package of masks with accompanying literature.
“Some three weeks later the postman arrived at my address, which is the address of 16 public housing units, with the postman having large white government-issued envelopes with mask and literature accompanying those masks,” he said.
“The envelope constitutes proof of service/delivery, and Dan’s acceptance – at least as far as I am concerned – means that everyone in Victoria forced to buy masks is entitled to recompense from the Victorian government for every mask they had to buy.”
