TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
Prof. Augusto Zimmerman:
Thank you very much. After this amazing presentation, I can't wait to hear myself. Must be doing a good job then. And I also have to explain that I have a different accent. That's because I lived in Western Australia for 16 years. And I have been writing many books with Professor Gabriel Moens.
The point is that some academics, they decide to make a career just by being ineffective and cowardly, cowardly, I would say.
So these are the fake conservatives, because I think a person who really has strong views and moral character has to be bold enough to challenge the status quo when it's necessary. And I have made sort of a holy alliance with Professor Gabriel Moines, and you have been for many years writing books together.
I just can't have his ability to write novels. But Professor Moens has two novels already published and he is a sort of a new George Owell.
One book is about COVID, a novel about COVID, and the other one is about Black Lives Matter and the attempt to assassinate the American president. And actually the books are available here. And if you would like to see how Gabriel is a wonderful novelist, I must say that it's very enjoyable and I love to read his novels. And he's trying to convince me to start being a novelist, but I haven't had enough courage so far.
But the topic is about our latest book. It's called The Legal Right to Disobey Law.
It's actually a lawful right. There are some laws that in our opinion are defective. Why is that so? That's because the purpose of having government and having laws is not to remove certain prerogatives and rights that actually are not given by government. It's actually given by God. So we make this point very clear in a book that a government using its powers to oppress people ceases to have legitimacy.
But I don't think Professor Moyes and I have discovered this thing. It's something that we explain the book is part of a Western legal traditions. And so the book started with, for instance, with the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks who had an idea of natural law saying that if a law violates a higher law, then this law is invalid. So unjust laws are not laws at all. They must be disobeyed because they violate a higher principle.
So we start with this approach and then we move on to Christian approach and we can quote many passages in scripture where God ordains civil disobedience. One example that we give is the midwives in Egypt when they refused to kill the Hebrew babies. And they were very clear that that was not possible for them to do because they would commit a terrible crime.
And the Nazis actually didn't have the excuse to be giving as just obeying laws when they were brought to trial after the Second World War. There are some things that people can never do when they just claim to be following the dictates of an evil, unjust government.
So we have this example in the book, the Nuremberg trials, and also the trials of the bodyguards or those who protected the borders in East Germany by the saying. So the East German guards who killed people who tried to cross the borders in the time where East Germany was a communist state, they were also condemned for killing innocent people who just tried to escape from communist oppression.
So that's a good example that we give in our book. Another thing that we do in our book is that Professor Moens is the most highly qualified academic in this country. And there is a doctrine that even though I'm not a Lutheran, but I found out in my research that justifies civil disobedience on the basis of a higher authority defying or challenging the commands of a nivo ruler. It's called the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.
And magistrate doesn't mean what you mean now. It just means an authority, an expert in the field. And I can't find anybody who is more an expert in the field than Professor Gabriel Moens. I mean, the fact is that he has a collection of letters after his name.
Apparently you spent your whole life collecting degrees, Gabriel. You have about 20 after your name. So you need to have about three or four lines just for his degrees.
So it is a PhD and MBA, whatever, JDs and the most highly qualified human being on planet, Professor Gabriel Moens. And it's a really honour to be working with him.
Just (to) give an idea, when I did my PhD, which was on the concept of the rule of law, I was very clear that the rule of law is as much social, cultural, and political achievement as it is a matter of legal institutional design.
I would say I'm not idolising the Australian Constitution. I think the Australian Constitution used to work in a proper manner because we had decent people in positions of power. Because if you read the constitution, you'll see that the governor general has lots of power. He could dissolve the parliament, he could dismiss the cabinet. He could do lots of things that if that constitution, our constitution were exported to some parts of the world, the governor general would have the powers of a dictator.
So what makes our constitutional work and our laws in general is what I describe as a culture of legality. And the fact that in the past people had politicians a certain appreciation for us and certain respect for the people.
But now what they want is to destroy you. Now they are evil people and they want to undermine you. Definitely what's happening in this country is even population replacement taking place at this very moment.
I live in a part of Sydney where I don't see you anymore. Basically we don't see Australians anymore. It's a very strange thing because when I came to this country, I was expecting to experience the Western system and to experience the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. We no longer have democracy. There is no longer protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.
Actually, the government in Australia has effectively become, and I get excited about this. You tell me when I have to stop, please do, because there's lots of things and not good things to say about our absolutely appalling politicians. So the solution in Australia is actually political.
When people talk about the law and about judges, I always say it's not going to save us. They're not going to save us. What's going to save us is a renewal of the political class, having a chance to vote better and to reestablish checks and balances and separation of powers that are so important.
So I don't see a problem with the minister who actually, let's say a health minister who actually understands the area of health. That would be actually good to have a health minister who actually knows the subject.
And in Western Australia, just give an example, the governor of Western Australia is the former vaccine commander. So I mean, the word commander means a lot to me because it means that they have declared war on us. So they're not even hiding that they hate us and they want to kill us because otherwise the title wouldn't be of a commander.
Commander is a war title. You are declaring war on people. And that's the title that was given to the current governor of Western Australia. So we have to make some changes in the system that are very important in order to reestablish checks and balances and separation of powers.
We also mentioned a character who was very influential in America, and I would say also in the United Kingdom called John Locke. And of course he's important because the American Founding Fathers really loved him and the American Declaration of Independence is based on his teachings. Actually, it's almost like plagiarising him by saying that we are born with inelible rights, rights to life, liberty and property. That's actually all found in one of his books, Second Truties on Civil Disobedience, or sorry, Civil Government. I think about disobedience all the time these days, but the book is actually called The Civil Government, Second Truties.
And he says that the purpose of the government is to protect your unendable rights, which means that these rights are not given by government. If the government cannot give these rights, first of all, government can only have any legitimacy whatsoever if these rights are protected.
Once the government removes these rights, it becomes a criminal gang. There's no difference between a criminal organisation and a government when the government is using its laws as an instrument of oppression and tyranny. And that's what Australia has become.
We have a prime minister who suffers from not only a low IQ, but he's also a despicable human being and it can be recorded. That's no problem with that. I'm not afraid of him, not afraid of him, but we need to teach these people a lesson. We have to say to the oligarchs in this country, I don't call them elites, elites are people like us.
You have to have more degrees than Professor Moens to be called elite. He's an oligarch because he's using his power to remove your rights and to oppress you.
This country has changed remarkably over the years and for the worse, for the worse, it's now the time to disobey unjust laws. And by doing so, do you know what? You'll be honouring God because I have together with Professor Moise proven in our book that it is your not just legal right, it's your moral duty to disobey unjust law. You actually can compromise your salvation by obeying unjust laws. So if the law tells you that you have to do something that is intrinsically wrong, morally reprehensible and evil, you have the moral duty to disobey. And we are going to explain, we explain this in a book. If you read the book, you're going to see that there is a lawful duty of the citizen to disobey unjust commands of an evil government.
And these people are despicable. They actually have not even hidden their agenda. Think about the climate change approach. They have always say that we are the cancers of planet earth, that is important to reduce the size of the world population.
When I was a commissioner, I'm not going to give names because I don't want to get into trouble, but the then premier who was from a conservative party claimed that we are overpopulated.
In Western Australia, I don't see anybody on the streets. It's actually quite a depressing place to live. That's why I moved to Sydney to see people finally around. And so he was claiming that we were overpopulated.
And then you had a health minister now who's in Western Australia, whose life is built upon killing people, promoting the killing of individuals, starting with abortion and now progressing into killing the elderly. And they use elphemisms now.
They don't call this euthanasia anymore. They call these mercy killing. So they are in the business of killing you and it's time to react before it's too late.
There is time for this, but the solution as a law professor, I must say, is political rather than legal. You have to start voting better. Let's make a revolution in this country, a revolution for Jesus Christ and bring back Christianity to this nation and the restoration of fundamental rights and freedoms and the rule of law. Thank you very much and God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.
Jewel:
Thank you, Gabrielle. Oh, if we could have some politicians like that, wouldn't it be nice that we could just simply let them get on with the job and we didn't have to put them under scrutiny because they really do need a very long, cold, hard look at what they're doing and their agendas and who's pulling the strings in the background you've got to have a look into.
We've just got so much work to do, but if we keep turning up, talking to each other, we will prevail. I'm doing this for my 10 grandchildren. I want to leave this place a better place for their future. I think there are a lot of grey hairs in this room who feel exactly the same way that I do. Here's a very important grey haired man.
Now, the last time that Gabrielle spoke here, he told me that I had made a major mistake.
I published a photo of him that was 30 years ago, apparently. And honestly, it looks exactly like he does today. But Augusto sent me, "Here are the latest photos," he said, and he sent them to me and it was exactly the same photo from 30 years ago. So you have not aged in 30 years at all. That's not grey hair. You're just a blonde. Okay?
