Federal Court filing - are the provisional approvals for the COVID-19 vaccines justified?

Today, we filed our most major action yet, a judicial review in the Federal Court against the Secretary of the Department of Health. This case came out of nowhere about three months ago or so when two great friends and brilliant legal minds, Serene Teffaha and Benedict Clemens, referred it to me.

Through them, I was introduced to Julian Gillespie, a former barrister, and Meryl Dorey, the Founder of the AVN, who had already been working on it for several months. We then got both Junior and Senior Counsel on board, and it has been non-stop work ever since.

Read the Originating Application as well as other documents filed in Federal Court here.

I often say that, as a human rights lawyer, and more importantly, as a human, the law is only one tool in the toolbox. However, it’s one of the tools I’m privileged enough to have real training in, and as much as it can be difficult, this action represents my most direct efforts yet to use it.

It is also quite a privilege to, after only a few months running my own firm, run a major action in the Federal Court, on an extremely important issue of immense public interest, with Senior Counsel on board who wrote some of my University textbooks.

I did not expect this at all, but I do remember well what my client said when offering me the case – “we don’t necessarily want a lawyer with the most experience, we want a lawyer with your values”.

Indeed, those are always the helm of my boat. - Peter

If you would like this case to be live-streamed on the Federal Court’s YouTube channel, please email nswreg@fedcourt.gov.au and respectfully note that you would like to view the proceedings.