Motion Carried

at Port Hedland local council meeting

At the local council meeting held in Port Headland last night a motion was carried. I wrote about the upcoming meeting a couple of days ago here.

We tuned in last night. It started late Sydney (East coast) time and I must admit I drifted off at one point but it was really interesting to listen to the views of the councillors and the public who made statements at the meeting.

For overseas readers it was an insight into another part of Australia. It should be available for offline view at the livestream site here at some point. Previous council meetings appear to be available. However it wouldn’t surprise me if it somehow gets deemed “misinformation” with the current madness in Australia.

The actual motion has several parts:

A)      Deliver a letter to the Prime Minister endorsing the concern of MP Russell Broadbent

B)      Circulate relevant information to all local health practitioners regarding the concerns of DNA contamination in Pfizer and Moderna vials (at over 100 times the TGA advised safe limit)

C)     Circulate relevant information to all other local councils in Australia (that’s over 500 local councils)

D)     Contacting the Western Australian Department of Health requesting advice on what to do with any future shipments of vials

E)      That the CEO of Port Hedland Council contact the Western Australian Minister of Health with information

F)      As above for the Commonwealth Department of Health

G)     As above for the Commonwealth Minister for Health

The full details of the motion are in the meeting agenda here. Proposed draft letters were provided with the agenda.

Port Hedland

Port Hedland is in the North West of Australia. It has a population of about 16,000.

Port Hedland is the gateway and central hub connecting the Pilbara mining region and the Kimberley. It has a deep water port and is where most of the Australian Iron Ore is shipped to China. From this link:

The volume of iron ore shipped to China during June from Port Hedland, the top iron ore dispatch terminal in Western Australia, rose by 6.9% from May to touch a historical high of 48.5 million tonnes, according to new data released by the Pilbara Ports Authority (PPA).

People at the meeting made the point several times that Port Hedland is a place that keeps Australia going. There is no doubt that our exports of raw minerals, mainly to China, contribute to why we enjoy a relatively high standard of living in Australia, with one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Australia has let manufacturing and many industries slip dramatically and we rely on exports of raw materials.

Port Hedland is rich in indigenous culture and there was a high representation of indigenous people in the public at the meeting. Several reported unusually high number of deaths amongst their relatives. Often with rapid onset cancers.

There was a funeral director who make a public statement, an indigenous woman, and she reported the increases in mortality she had experienced since 2021.

I felt sadness several times during the various testimonies.

Indigenous people in Australia have a lower life expectancy. From the AIHW site there is information on health disparities for Australian indigenous peoples. One of the reasons for use of measures such as “standardised mortality rates” is to highlight the gross differences between populations like the indigenous community with the rest of the community. I have previously noted the limited usefulness of the standardised rate measure when we are looking for subtle changes in mortality. We have to look an individual age mortality rates.

Something interesting that one person mentioned was something to do with DNA of indigenous people being different and that they shouldn’t be treated medically the same as Westerners. I went looking for references to this. All races have differences in their genome. Indeed, there has been recent research investigating the indigenous Australian genome. There is an interesting diversity in the indigenous genome. From the linked article:

“Aboriginal people have long said you can’t treat us the same because we are so different. Having scientific proof to show this is true is remarkable,” ANU Associate Professor Azure Hermes, a proud Gimuy Walubara Yidinji woman and deputy director of NCIG, said.

“Clinicians must realise treatment options for Indigenous Australians can’t be viewed through a one-model-fits-all lens. We are not a single genetic group and can’t be lumped into one category.”

In my last article I picked out mortality for males aged 75-84. We try to have as narrow categories as possible because for analysis we want the constituents of that cohort to be as similar as possible. Otherwise, we can be fooled when trying to fit models. Clearly indigenous peoples should be separate categories. For example the health of indigenous men this age will be different to others. But we will never get that data.

If it turns out that indigenous peoples have been affected worse than the rest of the community by adverse events and death due to mandated medicines this will be a disaster.

Rolling out a one size fits all medication to the whole population was madness. Prior to the roll-out there should have been trials on subcategories of the population to look for differences in safety.

Carry of the Motion

The councillor’s bios are found here. Councillor Adrian McRae put forward the motion.

From what I heard at the meeting when it came to the vote all except two voted in favour. It was hard to tell what would happen until it came to the vote. One councillor against the motion had the opinion that it was not council’s role to deal with health issues. She said something like that is the role of the State and Federal government. Other councillors pointed out that health was indeed a responsibility of local council. Health inspectors that check food outlets are local.

If you put something dodgy into your body they have a responsibility at the local government level.

One councillor was ambivalent about whether there was danger from the described contamination but he was moved by the response of the public to the motion and so voted in favour of the motion.

The motion was carried. This is an interesting development. Let’s see what happens.