Menu
ASF’s inaugural conference brings together thinkers and community leaders to share learnings, formulate plans and help establish new and emerging networks and organisations to restore a thriving Australian society founded on science and freedom.
Join our exciting line-up of health professionals, scientists, economists, lawyers, journalists, and community leaders to discuss a range of hot issues including healthcare policy, democracy and human rights, education, the media, and the role of grassroots organisations.
Peter Fam is a human rights specialist lawyer and the Principal lawyer at Maat’s Method, the only non-government-funded human rights law firm in Australia. Peter also serves as a Director of Children’s Health Defense Australia. Peter has a background in human rights-focused civil litigation in both the private and government sectors, having worked on large-scale cases in Australia’s highest courts and in most jurisdictions. Peter focuses primarily on tort law, administrative law, privacy law, discrimination law, and other areas of civil litigation with a human rights focus. Peter also has particular expertise regarding the international human rights framework that Australia is a signatory to. Peter’s goal is to defend and advocate for the inherent dignity and rights every man and woman holds by virtue of their humanity.
Paul Oslington is a Professor of Economics and Theology at Alphacrucis University College in Sydney. Previously he was a Professor of Economics at Australian Catholic University, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of New South Wales, and held visiting appointments at the University of Oxford, the University of British Columbia, and Princeton Theological Seminary and University. His MEc(hons) and PhD in economics were completed at the University of Sydney, and DTheol at the University of Divinity in Melbourne. He works on international trade, labour markets, the history and philosophy of economics, and the interdisciplinary field of economics and religion. Publications include the books The Theory of International Trade and Unemployment (Elgar) Adam Smith as Theologian (Routledge), Political Economy as Natural Theology: Smith, Malthus and their Followers (Routledge), Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics (OUP), an edition of Jacob Viner‘s The Customs Union Issue (OUP) and articles in articles in major journals of economics, religion, and intellectual history. He is on the Economic Society of Australia NSW Branch Council and was previously Vice-President and organizer of the Society’s national conference.
Dijana is a visionary CEO and accomplished entrepreneur, known for her transformative leadership in the healthcare and business sectors. With a proven track record as the CEO of Australian Medical Network, Australia’s fastest-growing health network, she has guided the organisation’s exponential growth. Drawing from her past role as a health management executive, Dijana is driven to make a global difference and combines corporate expertise with an entrepreneurial edge, driving positive change and innovation. A sought-after speaker, writer and business leader, she shares insights garnered from diverse industries. Holding an MBA from Macquarie Business School, Dijana addresses various topics, ranging from healthcare policy and governance to global business trends and business leadership.
Sanjeev Sabhlok began his career in 1982 as a senior civil servant in India. He migrated to Australia in 2000 where he worked in the Victorian Treasury for 15 years as a senior economist. He resigned from the Treasury in September 2020 to protest lockdowns and other coercive actions of the Victorian government during covid. He has a PhD in economics from the USA and has supported Prof Gigi Foster in a cost-benefit analysis of Australia’s covid lockdowns. He is currently undertaking a first-principles review of public health, to demarcate the appropriate role of public health.
Nick is a Professor in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University in Melbourne. He joined RMIT from Loughborough University (UK) in 2004 after several years of post-doctoral work. He worked as a project manager in housing and corporate re-imaging prior to commencing an academic career. He has had a productive research career which has included numerous competitive grants, industry funding and over 70 academic publications. His main research fields over the years have included design for construction safety, off-site manufacturing, and housing production. In 2016 Nick went part-time to start a family business as part of the family’s home-education plan.
Nick and his wife Natalie, a qualified Veterinary Surgeon, have home-educated their four children over a period of 20 years. Their approach is best described as a blend of Christian classical and practical life-skilling. Their eldest is in the workforce building an investment portfolio; their second is studying classics and Western civilisation at university on a scholarship; their third is busy with online university, and the youngest is keeping them young!
Their family life has always valued faith, truth, and freedom, with the children being introduced to defending their views from an early age, engaging in protest marches in the pram during the mid-2000s through to COVID marches in the 2020s.
Jason has taught for over fifteen years and is the Head of Mathematics at a K-12 school. This year his students ran a Cost Benefit Analysis on Australia’s Covid response with some surprising results. He also established an accelerated programme that enabled students to begin a Mathematics degree whilst in their final year of studies.
Prior to teaching, Jason held several positions in the IT industry in small to large businesses in private and public ventures. This included responsibility for the largest enterprise management environment in the country at over a hundred thousand devices.
He is a Spectator contributor, having authored articles on the effects of government policy and the impact of cultural change. He feels privileged to have the opportunity to make personal relationships which he has used to broaden student understanding in the fields of indigenous affairs, engineering, economics and global perspectives.
As president of a sporting association, Jason implemented mitigation strategies to minimise the impact of health orders across members and their families. This included counselling and financial support.
Jason is married and has three children. He is an avid runner, and bike rider and enjoys the beauty of Gods amazing creation.
Garrick Professor of Law, University of Queensland
James Allan holds the oldest named chair at the University of Queensland where he is the Garrick Professor of Law. He is a native-born Canadian who practised law at a large firm in Toronto and then at the Bar in London before moving to teach law in Hong Kong, New Zealand and then Australia. He has had sabbaticals at the Cornell Law School and the University of San Diego School of Law in the US, at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Dalhousie Law School in Canada (where he was the Bertha Wilson Visiting Professor of Human Rights), and at King’s College Law School in London, England.
Allan has published widely in the areas of constitutional law, legal philosophy and Bill of Rights scepticism. His books include The Age of Foolishness: A Doubter’s Guide to Constitutionalism in a Modern Democracy (Academica Press, 2022), A Principled Constitution? Four Skeptical Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2022, co-written with Larry Alexander, Steven Smith and Maimon Schwarzschild), Democracy in Decline (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and (as co-editor and one contributor) Keeping Australia Right (Connor Court, 2020). Allan also writes regularly for weeklies and monthlies including being a regular contributor to The Spectator Australia and Quadrant and a sometime contributor to The Australian, Law & Liberty and The Conservative Woman. As a majoritarian democrat, he was absolutely delighted by the Brexit vote and as a conservative law professor, he has spent almost all of his working life in orthodox left institutions.
Rinat Strahlhofer, the founder of Truth & Dare creative agency, is a former telco insider who was disillusioned with a high-flying marketing career at Telstra where she ran multi-million dollar campaigns. Rinat explains how today’s Tech titans have us addicted to devices they claim are safe because these devices, particularly 5G, are the linchpin for billionaire data miners and the surveillance state. Her agency is dedicated to shifting the culture of health and freedom with campaigns WeAreNotSAM, Smiles Welcome, Steaks Are High and LiVELY and more.
Abby Begeta came to Australia from the civil War in Bosnia, as a single mother and refugee, with her two young daughters just before Christmas 1995. She is a graduate of Curtin University, Perth (WA) – health science and Griffith University (QLD) – Law and post-grad in Law; and has worked in a variety of healthcare as well as legal settings since her arrival to Australia. She was an Olympic Torchbearer for Sydney Olympic Games 2000, nominated for her community work. She founded a Community not-for-profit group, Moving Forward Sunshine Coast, based in Queensland (the group is not affiliated with any political party, religion or business). Abby and her group organise community information events on the Sunshine Coast and invite eminent speakers from different backgrounds to present on the topic of their expertise. Some of her past speakers include Dr Peter McCullough (via Zoom), Senator Gerard Rennick, Senator Malcolm Roberts, Professor Gigi Foster, Garrick Professor Of Law James Allan, Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer, Emeritus Professor Gabriel Moens, Professor Augusto Zimmerman and many other well-known speakers.
Iain Walker is the Executive Director of the newDemocracy Foundation (nDF) in Australia, a role he has held since 2011.
The work of the Foundation is simply to find ways to do democracy better. While many complain about problems with the system, nDF aims to research, trial and implement processes that will result in trusted public decisions.
The methods used focus on exploring a complementary role for randomly selected everyday people (much like a criminal jury) alongside elected representatives. nDF’s processes involve giving citizens vastly extended time and access to multiple sources of information to see if they can find common ground.
Iain has led over 30 trial projects at the local government and state government level including projects for State Premiers on both sides of politics. The topics have ranged from long-term budgeting for the $4bn City of Melbourne Financial Plan to the potential for a high-level nuclear waste storage facility in South Australia. newDemocracy’s work in regulated utilities (water and energy) has been publicly judged by regulators to be the standard others in the industry must now emulate.
Internationally, newDemocracy was retained by the UN Democracy Fund to produce handbooks and pilot projects in the field of Citizens Assemblies, and we were also invited by the OECD to participate in their ‘Deliberative Wave’ working group which established standards in the sector.
newDemocracy is a founding participant in the global Democracy R&D group (https://democracyrd.org/) which works with other practitioners to explore the merits of similar trials being conducted around the world.
More information at www.newdemocracy.com.au
Prof Robyn Cosford was an integrative medical practitioner, naturopath and homeopath of over 35 years, with an Honours degree in Medicine and life membership of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine and Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine.
She was working in conjunction with the University of Newcastle from 1996 in the area of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and children’s neurodevelopmental and behavioural disorders, presented her findings at 3 international autism conferences, and convened 2 Mind of Child conferences in Australia in 1998 and 2002, introducing the area of biological treatment of autism into Australia. The influence of the gut microbiome and abnormalities have been a feature of ongoing research in conjunction with Bioscreen, which came out of the University of Newcastle research team.
Robyn is fascinated in the energetics of life, that we are body soul and spirit simultaneously, and how these interact within us personally, and in our connection with others and this Creation out of which we were formed. She has done extra training in EFT, various Christian, spiritual and energetic healing modalities, the use of magnets and so on.
As a mother of 5, she is passionate about the health of children, families and interpersonal relationships. It is for these reasons that she chose to surrender her medical license, ahead of being deregistered for writing mask exemptions, vaccine exemptions and Ivermectin scripts in defiance of the AHPRA ‘gag order of March 2021’, so that she could speak openly about what the current situation and the threat to the health and wellness of people and children in particular.
Since retiring her license, she has been on the steering committee for WCH briefly, has lectured at 2 WCH conferences, done numerous videos and interviews, co-authored a recently published Spikopathy paper, and is now Chair and a Director of Children’s Health Defense ( Australia Chapter).
Julie Sladden is a medical doctor and freelance writer with over 25 years of clinical experience in Australia and the UK. She is a passionate advocate for professionalism, ethics and transparency in healthcare.
When the Government imposed mandates in 2021, Sladden started writing and speaking against the Government overreach, censorship in medicine, and calling for a return of the foundational principle of informed consent in medicine.
Her articles have been published in The Spectator Australia, Brownstone, Epoch Times, The Light, and The Daily Declaration. In 2022 she was elected to Local Government as a Councillor for West Tamar in Tasmania.
Christian Mack is a devoted high school teacher and a loving father of two. He gained widespread recognition for his pivotal role in spearheading the teachers’ resistance against vaccine mandates in Australia. As a co-founder of the Reclaim The Line rallies held nationwide, Mack emerged as a unifying force, motivating tens of thousands through his stirring ‘Halftime Speech’ videos to discover their inner strength and unite against the oppression of mandates and lockdowns.
Unyielding in his quest for justice, freedom, and truth, Mack became a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. His unwavering commitment culminated in a historic event on February 12, 2022, when a record-breaking number of Australians gathered in Canberra for the largest protest in the nation’s history. Mack’s rallying cry echoed throughout the crowd, igniting a passion for change.
Mack’s insightful talk, titled ‘Courage & Conviction,’ offers a profound look into grassroots movements and the resolute determination required to confront tyranny. His legacy continues to inspire individuals to stand up and champion their beliefs, reminding us all that even in the face of adversity, courage and conviction can lead to remarkable change.
Gigi Foster (Professor, UNSW School of Economics; BA Ethics, Politics and Economics, PhD Economics) works in diverse fields including education, social influence, time use, lab experiments, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, she publishes in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets, and her innovative teaching was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. She has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily in economic matters with the Australian community, as one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, in the media and at live events. She co-founded Australians for Science and Freedom in 2023 and is an author most recently of The Great Covid Panic (Brownstone Institute 2021, with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker) and Do Lockdowns and Border Closures Serve the “Greater Good”? (Connor Court 2022, with Sanjeev Sabhlok).
LLB BJuris
Julian Gillespie is a lawyer and former barrister, who wrote the legal opinions and prepared the briefs for the Covid proceedings before Federal Court and then the High Court of Australia, seeking to show the decisions to extend Covid non-vaccines to children and then babies were always invalid at law, as the Secretary of Health lacked the legal power to make those decisions, which legally invalid Covid decisions ultimately resulted in thousands of preventable deaths and injuries.
Julian researches extensively on all matters connected to Australia’s response to SARS-CoV-2, drawing attention to the fact Australian governments collectively jettisoned years of scientific research for correctly responding to a pandemic, to instead follow unscientific WHO recommendations which favoured big pharmaceutical interests.
His other ongoing research includes the failings of AHPRA, which investigations will hopefully provide victims of the Covid-19 non-vaccines new avenues for legal redress for their injuries, and legal pathways for those families who lost loved ones to the Covid-19 injectables.
His current proceedings in the Federal Court now have Pfizer and Moderna as named defendants, for illegally failing to obtain GMO licenses for their Covid-19 injectables, which failures amount to serious criminal offences.
Light Beyond the Campfire, our community group was started in Avalon, in March 2022 by four friends – Sarah (wise leader and communicator with a creative heart), Nicole (food coach with many links to local, organic farmers), Neil (designer, educator and musician) & Vicki (connector and paediatric speech pathologist).
In response to the events of 2020, we sought ways to support one another and our wider circle of like-minded friends face to face, locally in real time! We began by showing Helena Norberg-Hodge’s inspirational film, “The Economics of Happiness”, to a gathering of 35 people, as a catalyst for us to imagine what type of community we wanted to create, alongside skills we’d like to learn and share. The group chose to focus on food, setting up a community garden and Saturday morning working bees, plus a localisation business directory linking each other to trade. Other initiatives include a medicinal herb garden, direct links to our farmers’ network, food foraging, practical reskilling projects, (make, build, repair), food preserving and natural law. These activities are further enhanced by seasonal harvest dinners featuring guest speakers like Patrea King and Prof. Gigi Foster and regular monthly meetings with workshops, films and speakers including Helena Norberg-Hodge of Local Futures and The Possibility Project.
Civil Litigator and Human Rights Lawyer
Katie has been a civil litigator for over 20 years, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. As a generalist civil litigator at first, Katie cut her teeth in employment, medico-legal, regulatory disputes and all jurisdictional courts work before specialising in class actions and large matters.
In mid 2021, Katie took a sabbatical for a year. In taking some time away from the construction team she was working for in Melbourne, Katie became concerned with what she saw as significant breaches to fundamental human rights and the failure to uphold cornerstone principles of the law.
Cutting the sabbatical short, Katie joined Voices For Freedom New Zealand, a grassroots organisation that assisted thousands of people who were mandated out of work and suffering other human rights violations, as their head of legal.
Katie has been involved in many of the cases around mandates in New Zealand and the mRNA Covid19 products on both sides of the Tasman. Katie was legal case manager on the kids’ case in New Zealand, which is when she met Julian Gillespie and Peter Fam (through mutual experts). Following which she quickly threw her support behind the AVN and Babies’ Cases in Australia when she joined PJ O’Brien & Associates. More recently Katie is the solicitor on the record for the GMO case against Pfizer and Moderna in Australia and has been actively engaging US, New Zealand and Australian governments to inform them on the UN and WHO Pandemic Treaties.
Katie’s focus is to ensure that the injustices and breaches of the fundamental legal principles that have occurred over the last four years not be allowed to occur again: for humanity’s sake, history cannot repeat.
Victor Dalziel, is a self-taught content creator, academic researcher, stylist, and amateur DJ, embodying a critical disposition. Victor has lived, worked, and studied across the world, from China and South Korea to the United Kingdom. With a master’s degree in international relations and a PhD in Philosophy [Sociology of Education], Victor’s journey has been an unconventional one. Victor’s superpower is remaining humble, softly spoken, and affable while maintaining a belly full of fire, passion, and rage!
Surviving on less than a shoestring, in early 2023 Victor embarked on a passionate pursuit of his creative vision on YouTube. In a matter of weeks, Victor’s content struck a chord with viewers, amassing over 5000+ views and garnering a rapidly growing audience. His unique blend of expertise and creativity, combined with a dry sense of humour connected with viewers from diverse backgrounds. However, it was at this early stage that Victor received a strike, coinciding with his channel temporarily disappearing from the platform. After a period of reflection, Victor has returned and found a new home on free-speech alternative Rumble.
Dara Macdonald is a Sydney-based lawyer and the co-director of the newly founded Free Speech Union of Australia. She also runs a free speech based private members club in Sydney called All Minus One and writes for various publications and on Substack.
Alexandra Marshall is the online editor for The Spectator Australia and contributor to an array of international and domestic publications. She is a host on ADH TV with two shows and regular commentator for GB News, Mark Steyn Online, and Sky News Australia. In addition to her role as a political commentator, speech writer, and journalist, she is a Young Ambassador for Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and the English-Speaking Union along with being a political advisor to Senator Malcolm Roberts.
Alan Davison is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. His academic career has mainly focussed upon music and visual culture and 19th-century European cultural history, but he maintains interests in the history and philosophy of science and trends in contemporary scholarship.
Alan actively promotes viewpoint diversity within our academic communities (as the lead for Heterodox Academy in Australia) and has published both scholarly and popular articles on trends in social sciences and humanities research. In late 2021, Alan partnered with well-known media figure Josh Szeps to launch the “Permission to Think” speaker series, which invites prominent scholars to look at the role of intellectuals and institutions during this age of outrage in public debate of complex issues, especially in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) disciplines. To date, guests in the series have included the likes of Jon Haidt, Alice Dreger, Katy Barnett and Steve Stewart-Williams.
Dr Stephen Chavura (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in history at Campion College, Sydney. He is the author/co-author of three books and regularly contributes to public debate in print and on podcasts. Dr Chavura has been a vocal defender of religious freedom and freedom of speech over the past five years. He was also a vocal opponent of the draconian vaccine mandates during the Covid panic and lamented seeing Australia descend to a manufactured hysteria not seen since WWI.
Robert Brennan lectured in anatomy and several other biomedical sciences before medical school and a career as a public sector medical officer in psychiatry. Recognising from the start that government pandemic health policy was motivated more by power, profit and political peer pressure than science, ethics or reality he became an anti lockdown activist from April 2020, the first Queensland medical practitioner to publicly speak out and the second in Australia to be suspended by the regulator for thought/speech crime.
Robert has spoken widely at rallies and in the independent media space. Today you can find him on TNT radio live and substack and with the organisation Australian Medical Network or AMN (previously known as Covid Medical Network or CMN, Australia’s first, latest, hardest hit and hardest hitting dissident doctor network in the covid era).
Dr Brendan Vote graduated from University of Queensland in 1990 and was a medical officer in the Royal Australian Air Force for six years before commencing his ophthalmology training in Dunedin, New Zealand. He completed vitreoretinal fellowships in Auckland New Zealand, Brighton UK and at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital before returning to Launceston Tasmania in 2004 where he provides services in vitreoretinal diseases, medical retina and cataract (especially complex cataracts). He is Clinical Professor in Ophthalmology at the University of Tasmania and has over 100 peer review publications. Brendan and his wife Michelle established in 2008 a public benevolent institute charity – Tasmanian Eye Institute, pursuing a passion for research and education and community service in Ophthalmology. Truth, integrity, medical ethics, patient advocacy and transparency are familiar drives for Prof Vote’s globally impacting independent research, such as into femtosecond laser assisted cataract surgery. His publications cover diverse fields including public health, infection control and cost-effectiveness analysis. Through Tasmanian Eye Institute Australia’s first dedicated ophthalmic gene therapy centre was built in Hobart in 2021 (PC2 compliant GMP CRISPR facility) and so Professor Vote understands gene therapy quality control, production and regulatory compliance requirements.
Mark Hornshaw is a lecturer in Economics and Management at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He is a regular speaker at the Australian Libertarian Society Friedman Conference and a long term home educator.
Matt Wong built a media studio that trades in the most valuable commodity of all…trust.
Their longform interviews have featured internationally and in mainstream media for their unique ability to break news in a deep and honest way. With both institutional trust and viewer attention spans at an all-time low, Discernable® specialises in
creating ultra-consumable content without diluting the message or relying on ‘clickbait’ tactics employed by legacy media.
Their panel news show ‘The People’s Project’ achieves consistent ratings to an under-served and highly engaged viewer segment by taking a straight-forward but well-informed approach to the news.
Standalone News Editorials expose the truth, and more often – humour, of significant events happening around the world.
Discernable® also produces white-labelled content for companies, charities and government agencies throughout Australia, wrapping up their messages in the broadcast quality video production Discernable® audiences already enjoy.
Discernable® guests, panellists and segment hosts are diverse in their beliefs, worldviews and allegiances but one thing we all agree on is that we are all on #teamhuman.
Ros Nealon-Cook is a former registered psychologist with more than 20 years’ experience supporting children and their families. Her previous career / education was in business and computer science which saw her working with numerous blue-chip companies globally. She retrained as a psychologist to support people in ways that were more aligned with her ethics and values. On 23rd September 2021, the Psychology Council of NSW suspended her psychology registration, citing 10 anonymous complaints. These related to a video she had released outlining serious concerns around harms to children (of all ages, including in-utero) due to the Australian Government’s pandemic response measures.
William Coleman (Adjunct Professor University of Notre Dame Australia) has authored and co-authored nine books – including “Their Fiery Cross of Union: A Retelling of the Creation of the Australian Federation, 1891-1914” – and has edited several more, including “Only in Australia. The History, Politics and Economics of Australian Exceptionalism. He has had held academic appointments at ten universities, including an Oliver Smithies Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, and one of twenty years length at the ANU.
Graham Hood was a career aviator for fifty-three years having been a Captain
for QANTAS over thirty-two years. When QANTAS decided to mandate the COVID shot for all its staff, Graham had some grave concerns. He could not abide an airline with such an impeccable safety record could take such a huge gamble given the experimental nature of the vaccine. Such were his concerns that on the 7/9/2021, he made a video expressing his concerns in the hope that it would shake some sense into the management. Within nine hours the video of had gone viral around the globe and his life changed in the most profound ways. Since then, having resigned his position in protest, he has become a substantial voice for the voiceless. Touring the country for eighteen months with his wife Michelle, Graham has spoken to over three hundred communities in seven states in an effort to reunite community and re-establish our fast-fading Spirit of Australia. He has learned the necessity of restoring manhood in a sustainable and healthy way and has seen men answer the call in their thousands.
Peter Rowan’s remarkable story begins as a teenager when he woke up to the profound realisation that he was living on this planet without a clear understanding of his purpose. This revelation set him on a life-altering journey of self-discovery and service to humanity. Through years of personal evolution, Peter arrived at a profound philosophy: the best way to make a meaningful impact on Earth is to serve humanity. With a spiritual perspective that transcends religious boundaries, Peter believes that aspiring to what we individually believe is morally right can be the key to unlocking the best version of ourselves. Peter has been at the forefront of numerous environmental, health, and education campaigns, tirelessly working towards what he considers morally right for humanity.
As a parent and author of the soon-to-be-published book “Magnificent Parenting,” Peter Rowan emphasises that every child can be gifted and talented if provided with the right environment. He offers valuable insights into nurturing the potential within our children. From co-producing a top-rated children’s television show to running a local newspaper with a circulation of 25,000 copies weekly, building houses from scratch, extensive home renovations, hotel and club management, education at various levels, and involvement in health matters – Peter has had a diverse journey. His interest in human health is not limited to theory but extends to active participation in dealing with critical issues such as COVID, vaccinations, and lockdowns. He is a patron to respected figures like Steve Keen and is fervently committed to economics, free speech, and minimal government interference in people’s lives.
Cameron runs the new Fresh Economic Thinking think-tank after being a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney for many years. He is co-author of the 2022 book Rigged: How networks of powerful mates rip off everyday Australians, and the upcoming book The Great Housing Hijack.
Phil Burcham (BSc (Hons) PhD [Pharmacology]) is a West Australian scientist who has worked as a pharmacologist and toxicologist in universities in Australia and abroad for over 30 years. With long-term scientific interests in the effects of foreign substances on the human body, he is very active in teaching pharmacology and toxicology to science and pharmacy students. He also helps to teach a popular fresher’s course entitled Drugs that Changed the World. He has published over 60 scientific publications as well as an introductory textbook entitled An Introduction to Toxicology (2014). He also serves on the editorial advisory boards of key pharmacology and toxicology journals. As one of thousands of Australians enduring nasty health effects of clumsily-deployed, ill-understood pharmaceutical products, Phil’s acquaintance with drug-induced harms is not merely academic.
Paul Frijters was the Professor of Wellbeing Economics at the London School of Economics: from 2016-nov 2019 at the Center for Economic Performance, thereafter at the Department of Social Policy, with emeritus visiting status since 2020. He is also currently a Professor of Economics at MBS College in Saudi Arabia.
He completed his Masters in Econometrics at the University of Groningen and a PhD in economics at the University of Amsterdam. He has engaged in teaching and research at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, QUT, UQ, the LSE, and now MBSC.
Professor Frijters specializes in applied micro-econometrics, including labor, wellbeing, and health economics, though he has also worked on pure theoretical topics in macro and micro fields. He has been the director of various large projects, including migration in China and Indonesia, and corruption in Australia. He devised a new cost-effectiveness methodology for wellbeing that has been adopted by the governments of UK, New Zealand, and (tentatively) Scandinavia.
Professor Frijters is a prominent research economist and has published over 150 papers and around 10 books. He is in the top 1% of cited economists and in 2009 he was voted Australia’s best young economist under 40 by the Australian Economic Society.
Dr Melissa McCann BPharm, MBBS, FRACGP, Grad Cert Allergic Disease, is a general practitioner based in the Whitsundays with a special interest in Covid-19 vaccine injuries, and her advocacy work for vaccine-injured and bereaved persons has culminated in a class action recently filed in the Federal Court.
Dr McCann started as a Pharmacist working on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, before commencing postgraduate medical education in Western Australia. Since completing her medical training, Dr McCann has worked in Albany and Nicol Bay Hospitals in WA, as well as the remote clinic of Onslow in WA via light aeroplane access. She then relocated to the Sunshine Coast in QLD with her husband and three children. Dr McCann completed her General Practice fellowship training in Gympie QLD, and finally relocated to the Whitsundays Dr McCann has called the Whitsundays home since 2013 and later opened her own general practice clinic which has now an established reputation for compassionate and competent care for the local community.
Libby Klein is a lawyer, company secretary and governance advisor, working mostly with Not-for-profits and charities.
In 2021, Libby was incredulous – and then incensed – to learn that doctors in Australia were being gagged from talking about early treatments and risks/benefits of vaccines.
This led her on a path of discovery, and she now spends most of her spare time researching the World Health Organisation, having figured out that the proposed new powers for the W.H.O., combined with Australia’s emergency laws, will mean the end of functioning democracy in Australia: the W.H.O. will tell us what we need to do in the case of a public health emergency, and we will be legally obliged to comply, with little or no role for our parliaments let alone individual citizens wishing to make their own medical choices.
Her conclusion: we must Exit the W.H.O. immediately.
Libby has honours degrees in Agricultural Science and Law, and a background in financial services. She is a fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia, a Graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a member of the Law Council of Australia Charities and Not-for-profits Committee, and honorary legal adviser to the Australian Medical Network.
She is the founding principal of Social Impact Legal and a director of Brightlight Impact Holdings, a global leader in impact investing. Libby has also previously served as a director of Christian Super, and of Churches of Christ Financial Services.
She writes at her substack Reclaiming Ethical Medicine.
Maryanne Demasi is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.
Dr David Richards is an Australian General Practitioner and Adjunct Professor at an Australian University in the faculty of medicine. He graduated from London University in 1984, having also completed an Honours Degree in Human Genetics and Immunology. He has peer reviewed papers for a major European Journal and presented at International Conferences on Genetics and Carotid Ultrasound.
Born Edinburgh Scotland, raised Canada, lives France and Australia: called to the Bars of British Columbia and Ontario; Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney (since 2016); Professor Extraordinary, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa (2009, ongoing); He has been a Visiting Professor (Comparative Constitutional Law) Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario, Canada (2014) and a Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto (2015); Fellow of many International Institutes and a Frequent Guest on media. He became an academic after being a Barrister where he appeared at all levels of Court in Canada including the Supreme Court of Canada; he has acted on many leading rights cases in Canada and since has consulted on leading cases in many countries. He often appears before Parliamentary Committees often as an invited presenter (most recently, March 2023 to the Australian Law Reform Commission in its Inquiry related to Religious Exemptions in Denominational Schools).
He was a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the Global Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa, Canada (2010-2022) a project of the Canadian Government and His Highness the Aga Khan. On this Board he worked with, amongst others, the late Kofi Annan and the Deputy Presidents of Jordan and Guatemala.
He was one of the drafters of the South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms (2010) and was a Special Rapporteur on Law and Religion in Canada and South Africa to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, Vatican City (2012); He has published many academic articles and book chapters; work cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa and in April 2019 the High Court of Gauteng (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Fiona is a midwife, an Occupational Therapist with over 30 years’ experience working across many fields in health care within both the public and private health care systems.
She resigned from her midwifery position due to objecting to both the mandated vaccines and the AHPRA directive to not question it’s safety.
Fiona is currently researching both the impact of and solutions to the injuries caused by the Covid mandates during the perinatal period and it’s affect on early development in children.
She is completing her Masters of Health research in Midwifery.
Dr. Priyanka (Pri) Bandara is a Sydney-based medical researcher & educator working internationally. As a former academic clinical and basic researcher at leading Australian institutions (School of Medicine -University of Sydney at Westmead and Royal Prince Alfred Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine-UNSW) she developed expertise in diverse areas: biochemistry & molecular genetics, molecular pharmacology, hepatology etc. Dr. Bandara subsequently served as a senior manager in the NSW health system coordinating a dynamic research team and a clinical team at Westmead Children’s Hospital. Challenged with health problems of her younger son, Pri put her career on hold to become a stay-at-home Mum in 2008. What she learned later about her own children’s health problems and the role of environmental factors in chronic diseases led her to focus on environment health. With the old adage “prevention is better than cure” as her motto, Pri became a passionate campaigner for protection of children from preventable environmental health hazards since 2012.
Rebekah Barnett reports from Western Australia. She holds a BA in Communications (Hons.) from the University of Western Australia, and has worked with Jab Injuries Australia as a volunteer interviewer. Find her work on her Substack page, Dystopian Down Under.
I am the CEO of Freedom Matters Today, publishing books on freedom from a Christian perspective, through our imprint Hidden Road Publishing. You can find out more on our websites, freedommatterstoday.com and hiddenroadpublishing.com.
It all started with an idea. I started Freedom Matters Today in September 2021, at the height of Covid Hysteria with the hope of inspiring, encouraging, and building community when governments were content on tearing everything down. It is, like all things, a journey, and the fight for freedom is just beginning. True freedom comes from God. Jesus said that if the Son shall set you free, then you shall be truly free. Freedom is at the heart of the Christian message.
True freedom is freedom from fascism and tyranny, freedom from fear and despair, freedom from sin and death, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from war and conflict, and freedom from past and prejudice. This year I have written and published 8 books on Covid Hysteria, fascism, population, and demographic change, including 3 novels. These are books for those who are free and for those who want to be. I have a podcast, broadcast every Monday. The current series looks at the identity of Jesus.
This is just the beginning. My vision is for a viable, credible, publishing alternative for a multiplicity of voices defending, calling for, defining, and fighting for freedom, challenging the narratives, asking the uncomfortable questions, and speaking truth to power both secular and religious.
‘Freedom from Fascism’ examines the secular and religious forms of mass formation psychosis, while ‘Is God on America’s Side’ tackles what many call Christian nationalism. War is the theme of my controversial book, ‘Is Russia our Enemy?’ and if you are interested in God but are repulsed by religion, then maybe ‘Following Jesus when the church has lost its way,’ is for you.
In my life I have been many things, a priest, a professor, a political economist, and a publisher and author. I have worked in Kyoto and Tokyo, Washington DC, and Sydney, among other places. You can support Freedom Matters Today by subscribing and buying our books but most importantly, by living as free people. Remember, freedom matters today because you matter to God.
Australians for Science and Freedom Limited is public company and registered not-for-profit.
Australian Company Number 664 313 160