Dr James Allan: Dictator Trump? That’s Just Silly

In Saturday’s edition of Quadrant, Roger Partridge lambasted Donald Trump as an enemy of America’s constitutional democracy. On Sunday, James Allan, Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland and the author of Democracy in Decline, took his friend and colleague to task.

Let me start this reply to Roger Partridge’s column (‘Trump’s War on Constitutional Democracy‘) by laying my cards on the table. I know Roger Partridge. He is one of the best lawyers in New Zealand. He, like me, has grave worries about the sort of judicial activism or judicial usurpation of the role of Parliament that he sees over across the Tasman (and which, in enervated form, is on clear display here in Australia too).

Dr Clare Craig: Asymptomatic Spread is Still a Myth

In 2020 and 2021 anyone claiming Covid was like influenza was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. In 2024, the NHS is trying to treat influenza with all the crazy superstitions used for Covid. The concept of asymptomatic influenza and the blind faith in masks would, in any other time, have been laughed at. Yet, here we are, drowning in these myths, perpetuated by authorities and swallowed whole by the public. These ideas were crazy for Covid and they are crazy for influenza.