Mark Freeman
Whistleblower Barry Young says he’s not trying to break the law or harm anyone: he’s trying to do the right thing.
Mr Young appeared in the Wellington District Court last Thursday and Friday at a closed court hearing in which a judge will determine whether his leaking of anonymised mortality data connected with the Covid-19 vaccine is protected under legislation. It’s a test case for the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022. Mr Young is the former administrator of one of Health New Zealand’s pay-per-dose Covid vaccination databases and claims the data showed a sharp rise in deaths after people were vaccinated.
Before the hearing started Mr Young told an enthusiastic and noisy crowd of well over 100 supporters that with the truth he will not lose. “I will force them to see that our people are dying and we need to stop this horrible, horrible vaccination. We need to end it right now.”
He has a right to do the right thing, he said. “The Protected Disclosures Act says that by doing the right thing I am allowed immunity. I am not to be retaliated against. So why are we here? We’re here because they retaliated.”
“We have to expose this. We have to show the world that this should not be happening. And this is corruption. This is breaking an Act of Parliament, and it’s happening in real time before your eyes. The fact is I made a legitimate protected disclosure. Under the terms of the act, I ticked every single box. I was allowed to disclose it and they retaliated immediately.”
Health New Zealand have confirmed they never once looked at his data, he said.
At the end of the second day of the hearing, lawyer Sue Grey, who is assisting Mr Young in his representation, told supporters the case is about whether the whistleblowers’ act applies to normal people who work for the government who disclose information in good faith or whether they have to be a professional who does a complicated legal or epidemiological analysis.
The act was created to facilitate whistleblowing, she said. “There was no dissent. All of the political parties recognised that there should be considerable protection for whistleblowers and much more than there had been, so they felt safe.”
This is the first case that has tested the act, Ms Grey said, adding that the Crown has indicated it’s likely to appeal if it gets a decision it doesn’t like.
The hearing has been adjourned until next year. The next steps are clarifying what evidence is relevant, the judge clarifying what issues he wants legal submissions on and making a time frame for when that has to be done, Ms Grey said. “It’s going to take ’til the end of January to get through that process and then it will normally be a month or so for submissions after that.”
