Law firms raising millions for anti-vax challenges

Two law firms are raising money for a court action that demands Scott Morrison stand outside the Polish Embassy and confess his ‘deception’ over vaccinations.

Anti-vax campaigner Monica Smit antagonising police before she is arrested in a video uploaded in December 2020.

Two law firms that collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to mount a failed challenge to NSW public health orders are now raising money for a court action that demands Scott Morrison stand outside the Polish embassy and confess his “deception” over vaccinations.

The ultimatum comes amid concern over increasingly aggressive moves by lawyers to solicit donations for anti-vaccination litigation and attack judges who rule against them.

Australian law firms have raised millions of dollars between them in donations to challenge vaccination laws despite having not won any case launched since the pandemic began.

Most recently, judge Robert Beech-Jones last week dismissed two lawsuits in the NSW Supreme Court challenging public health orders made by NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, including those mandating vaccines for health and aged-care staff, police, teachers and construction workers.

More than 40,000 people heard the decision as it was live­streamed on YouTube.

Wollongong solicitor Nathan Buckley, of G&B Lawyers, who represented several plaintiffs in the action, says he will appeal and has begun advertising for more donations to fund the case.

He has raised more than $700,000 in donations on GoFundMe for legal challenges, all of which have failed, charging out his services at $495 an hour.

UNSW constitutional law expert George Williams said the verdict was unsurprising and the chances of a successful appeal were “very, very low”.

A screenshot from solicitor Nathan Buckley's Gofundme page seeking donations for legal challenges against vaccinations for workers.

“It’s a well-written judgment, it’s a good judgment, it gives due regard to all arguments put, considers them carefully, and at great length,” Professor Williams said. “The law provides in clear, broad terms for the powers exercised by the health minister without a need for consultation – in fact they are provided in the broadest terms possible.”

Following the judgment, Mr Buckley attacked Justice Beech-Jones on social media, claiming he had “basically said it is OK to kill anyone you like”.

In a post on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, G&B Lawyers allege the judge ruled “no one in NSW has any rights. No one has a right to bodily integrity.”

The judgment says a person’s right of bodily integrity is not violated in this case “as the impugned orders do not authorise the involuntary vaccination of anyone”.

After Mr Buckley urged his followers not to “waste your time reading this”, Justice Beech-Jones was subjected to abuse, defamatory comments and death threats from posters on the page.

Last year, Mr Buckley was reprimanded by the NSW Legal Services Commissioner for having “acted unethically in the course of legal practice by sending correspondence which was threatening, abusive and/or ­discourteous”.

Lawyer Nathan Buckley who has been reprimanded for unethical behaviour from Legal Services Commission and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to challenge no jab no job laws.

Mr Buckley has now joined forces with Sydney solicitor Tony Nikolic, who represented other plaintiffs in the cases against Mr Hazzard, to pursue a new case on behalf of anti-vax activist Monica Smit.

Mr Nikolic last week filed a claim in the Federal Court demanding the Prime Minister apologise for “assaults and batteries across the nation” caused by mandatory vaccinations.

Both G&B Lawyers and AFL Lawyers are now trying to raise money for the national class action, which claims that laws requiring vaccinations of some workers constitute “a medical experiment on a size and scale never previously seen or observed across the whole of the world.”

It seeks an order, among others, that the Prime Minister and State Premiers be compelled to stand at the entrance to the Polish Embassy in Yarralumla “for the purposes of reading and recording to the Polish and to the Australian People” their apology for deceptions that “gave rise to assaults and batteries across the nation.”

The applicants state that the Polish Embassy has been chosen for the apology because “members of the government of Poland” had protested last month outside the Australian embassy in Warsaw at “the conduct of a totalitarian state.”

In fact the four men shown in footage that went viral on anti-vax sites are members of the Polish far-right political party Konfederacja, which has a history of promoting false anti-vaccination information. None are members of the government and only two are actually MPs.

In the statement of claim Smit and others claim various wrongs committed by Federal and Sate Governments, including the implementation of “a New World Order”.

The claim says Australia’s chief scientists were aware or should have been aware that Covid-19 vaccines were “a bio-weapon intended to visit and occasion damage and injury upon the population of the world.”

However, Ivermectin, a drug promoted by rebel MP Craig Kelly and others as a treatment for Covid-19, is stated to be “ no more a poison than is a chocolate bar purchased at the local service station.”