Emergency Powers: [2] Uncomfortable Knowledge, Essential for Robust Democracy.

From my April 2022 paper COVID-19 Emergency Powers: The New Zealand State, Medical Capture & the Role of Strategic Ignorance

Chapter 2. The complete PDF is available at www.TalkingRisk.NZ and a brief review is published on Rumble.

This conversation is distinctly uneasy, but it is of the essence that democratic societies support and encourage citizens, experts and public servants to raise politically, culturally and socially controversial and contradictory questions. It was the Roman historian Tacitus (55-120 AD) who stated, ‘If you would know who controls you, see who you may not criticise.’ For comment, critique and consensus must not be the exclusive bastion of the same government institutions who develop the laws, rules and regulations. For that is tyranny.

Drawing attention to the larger landscape of risk from manmade technologies, or novel entities, the production of science and the veracity of democracy is important because the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are but one subset of a technology landscape that is expanding at an increasing rate.

Technologies in the twenty-first century and applied by big data, big pharma, big media, big biotech and big food, aggregate as power across large transnational institutions, and they develop and resource institutions, that, lacking civic and democratic transparency and accountability, serve the interests of those institutions. These institutions have much greater access to the machinery of government than most civic groups. We see institutional power acting to concretely influence representative democracy in the twenty-first century, in the form of Brexit and in the actions of the World Economic Forum.

In such environments, where the networked landscape between government and business is deeply integrated, and where large platforms are funded to develop glamourous conference opportunities; rather than promoting dialogue that can strengthen democracy, the ties, the commercial in confidence agreements and business deals, are more inclined to block it. These democratic dilemmas are well established in the scientific literature (including here and here) and not the stuff of conspiracy theory.

It is therefore particularly essential that in times of controversy that the state engages with the public and with dissenting experts. Where there is absence of social movements to counteract industry-regulator relationships, regulatory policy tends to follow in the direction established by industry. Commercial industries dedicate resources to the production of science that is designed to ensure that products are not regulated or underregulated. and therefore, kept on the market. Public contestation, and publicly resourced science is the antidote to that power. As Professor David Michaels has noted,

law and regulation are the underpinnings of the free market system (…) the state fosters a safe space for market growth.

Yet if there is no evidence, of harm, regulation will lag. Because business, is business. Powerful institutions have the capacity to tactically and covertly evade norms of accountability and transparency, particularly through opaque secrecy provisions, and engage in co-governance activities which erode human rights and human health.

In 2021, consultation commenced on the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill. The enfolding of private data into singular identity systems carries with it significant human rights implications, and the potential for political and financial misconduct are significant, as these technologies are opaque, and government contracts will likely be undisclosed to the public. At the same time there is discussion of transition to complete digital currency platforms which would place tremendous political and reserve power with reserve banks and the state.

Lacking rigorous democratic provisions, there is capacity for institutional abuse at scale. The proposed Digital Identity bill did not grant regulatory teeth to the proposed governance entity, nor provide resourcing pathways and a mandate to proactively patrol the local and global digital environs to ensure that the governance board could anticipate and prevent abuse.

Not providing regulators with the financial clout to actively monitor and chase down the regulated is the oldest trick in the book. In Digital Identity systems, some of the regulated will be the most powerful global institutions in the world and the digital world is dauntingly opaque and highly predatory. Without a legal obligation to act at multiple levels to ensure ongoing observation and reporting on the activities of the potentially contracted bodies, either globally or locally, public protection cannot be achieved. The policy that led to the drafting of the Bill was narrowly consulted upon, and the public were excluded. Some four thousand submissions indicated that a large sector were sceptical of the capacity of the legislation and potential governing institutions to protect the public interest.

This may help explain why the strategic and tactical actions of the Ardern government to achieve over 90% take-up for a novel and risky COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, is but a canary in a powerful, highly technological coalmine. The scientific literature did not support vaccine mandates. Historically, the mRNA technology would not have fitted the definition of a vaccine and that in normal circumstances, this technology would have undergone substantially more pre-market testing.

Vaccine mandates were contrary to historic principles of public health; ignored the important role of herd immunity, and the scientific recognition that coronaviruses mutate rapidly and would be expected to evade the mRNA vaccine in a relatively short time. But still the mandates were imposed and enforced, with the Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield denying nearly all requests for exemptions to the mandates, including in people who had previous adverse reactions.

The Ardern governments’ deliberate action to manufacture consent within the population to accept extraordinary rights-limiting regulatory and enforcement mechanisms based on a technology with very short-term safety data, sets an extraordinary precedent for future pandemics. Solutions which depend on claims arising from the pharmaceutical and other industries with direct finanical interest in outcomes, create an environment with remarkable potential for abuse. The BNT162b2 or Comirnaty genetic vaccine accounted for 45% of Pfizers revenue in 2021, the 3 billion doses producing an income of USD36.8 billion, In 2022 the revenue was expected to be $32 billion from the genetic vaccine and $22 billion from the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

Contestation, debate and protection of the public interest are essential themes coursing through democratic nations. An effective democracy is always uncomfortable. The protection of human and environmental health inevitably involves a clash with economic interests. Such uncomfortable discussions will continue long into the future, as Toby Ord has discussed at length. Humanity’s existential threats will predominantly revolve around the stewardship of technologies in the public interest, and the restriction and regulation of technologies that harm and/or that lead to excesses of power.

New Zealand may be moving away from democracy more swiftly than publicly recognised, as, ironically, technologies have accelerated extensive webs of communications between nation-states and powerful institutions. These webs extend far beyond the reach of the general public, they are entrenched and highly resourced. As the technologies, mechanisms and public-private institutional relationships continue to be financed, similar resourcing to promote technologies and mechanisms to buttress democracy and support civic responsibility has not been provided. Instead, as Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler have noted

the New Zealand style of government is already authoritarian.

Without instituting, updating and safeguarding our democratic institutions, New Zealand culture ultimately pivots to genuflect to special, and often economic interests – much of which lie offshore and are spectacularly unaccountable.

Continue Reading: [3] COVID-19 & The Democracy Deficit here

References in full are on the original PDF at TalkingRisk.NZ