Interviews

These are the stories of ten Victoria Police officers who served in the Vietnam War between 1964 and1972. Plucked from policing the streets of Melbourne, they were expected to serve their mandatory period of national service before returning to Victoria Police with no support, psychological evaluation, or job retraining, often policing protests against the very war they never wanted to serve in, and had just returned from.

Many of them rose to the highest ranks within Victoria Police, with some experiencing debilitating and life-long complications from their time in the military.

In 2023, Victoria Police formally apologised to them and recognised their service in a series of events called ‘Saluting Their Service’.

Guests:

1. James Stuart ARCHBOLD MM
Retired Senior Constable VicPol 14923
Corporal 3790920
Military Police

2. Iain Mcculloch FINDLAY
Retired Sergeant VicPol 15929
Corporal 3796498
Military Police

3. Gordon Kenneth BEACH
Retired Superintendent VicPol 15138
Corporal 3790002
Military Police

4. Dr Raymond Neil SHUEY AM, APM
Retired Assistant Commissioner VicPol 14696
Lance Corporal 3790218
110 Signals Squadron

5. Ivan William RAY
Retired Inspector VicPol 14897
Corporal 3791124
Military Police

6. Brian Eric FOX
Retired Senior Sergeant VicPol 17250
Private 3794305
5 Royal Australian Regiment

7. Trevor Charles THOMPSON
Retired Assistant Commissioner VicPol 15045
Private 3790257
Royal Australian Army Service Corps

8. Eric James HORNE
Retired Chief Inspector VicPol 11324
Captain 3106899
Command and Staff Training Unit
Citizen Military Forces

9. Maureen Joy SMITH- widow of Ronald Wayne SMITH
Retired Senior Constable VicPol 14881
Lance Corporal 3788016
532 Signal Troop

10. Ian Graham PAYNE
Retired Inspector VicPol 15150
Corporal 3791889
Military Police

This project was produced with the assistance and support of:

Community Advocacy Alliance
https://caainc.org.au

Australian War Memorial
https://www.awm.gov.au

Victoria Police
https://www.police.vic.gov.au

Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia
https://www.vvaa.org.au

Retired Police Association of Victoria Inc
https://rpavictoria.org

Adam Creighton is an award-winning journalist and now Washington Correspondent for The Australian. He has been a vocal critic of lockdown policy by governments around the world back when it was dangerous to stand out from the journalist crowd

He joined Discernable to discuss:

• Insane Covid-19 policies that wrecked the world
• Is there pressure in mainstream media to take a particular stance?
• Did the Australian ‘larrikin’ ever really exist?
• TRUMP the frontrunner for the Presidential race
• Democrats can’t stop Biden
• Biden’s cognitive decline
• Why is DeSantis’ popularity waning?
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr would beat Biden
• Did Bernie Sanders sell his soul?
• Massive salaries for Inclusion and Diversity Officers
• Keynesian economics may just work after all
• Forecasts and models are ‘fake’ and pointless
• Living standards are declining
• You can’t appeal to ‘the ordinary man’ anymore
• The threat of New Media

ADAM CREIGHTON
https://twitter.com/Adam_Creighton

Rob McMullan returns to Discernable to discuss the ongoing drift in society toward ’empathising’ and ‘caretaking’ which ultimately leads to mass dependence. Is Australia destined to become a nation of compliant serfs who are comfortably satiated but totally without agency?

Rob foresees a two-tiered society of Elites and Serfs…a ‘dependent mass’ and an ‘inner city elite’ as opposed to a mixed and dominant middle class.

Unless and until an inevitable retaliation takes place.

ROB MCMULLAN
https://twitter.com/TheMcMullan

Three cancelled medical professionals joined us to tell their stories of censorship by the Australian medical system. All three were de-registered by their professional licensing bodies for expressing views divergent from the ‘allowed’ opinion.

Since their expulsion from medicine, many of their views have become accepted fact though that does little to restore their careers.

Dr Paul Oosterhuis practiced Critical Care medicine for more than 32 years in Sydney, Australia. On 3rd September 2021, the Medical Council of NSW suspended his medical registration based on four anonymous complaints submitted to the regulator in relation to his Facebook posts.

Dr Robert Brennan taught anatomy and biomedical sciences for a decade before entering medical school and forging a career in mental health care. On 20th September 2021, the Medical Council of NSW suspended his medical registration based on five complaints (four named and one anonymous) in relation to distributing flyers/pamphlets warning about concomitant harms of lockdowns and other Covid-19 measures.

Ros Nealon-Cook was a registered psychologist with more than 20 years’ experience until 23rd September 2021 when the Psychology Council of NSW suspended her psychology registration, citing 10 anonymous complaints, related to a video she had released outlining serious concerns around harms to children due to the government pandemic response measures.

Watch this joint interview to hear about alarming adverse event signals, nudge units and medical manipulation, groupthink and peer pressure, medical ethics and faulty science, population psychology, and the state of Australia’s medical fraternity.

THE CAPE BYRON LIGHTHOUSE DECLARATION
https://lighthousedeclaration.org
https://www.instagram.com/lighthouse_dec
https://twitter.com/Lighthouse_Dec
https://www.facebook.com/LighthouseDeclaration

ROS NEALON-COOK
https://twitter.com/rosalina_nc

DR PAUL OOSTERHUIS
https://twitter.com/dragonfishy
https://pauloosterhuis.substack.com

DR ROBERT BRENNAN
https://rmachine.substack.com

John Pesutto is the State Liberal Member for Hawthorn, Liberal Leader of the Victorian Opposition and Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs. He lost his seat in 2018 but re-won it in the Nov 2022 state election, before quickly being elected as party leader.

He joined Discernable to answer questions around what the Liberal Party actually stands for, why they made moves against their own MPs Moira Deeming, Renee Heath and Bernie Finn, what they will do about housing affordability, energy availability and equity programs, and ultimately why younger voters should consider voting for the Liberal Party.

JOHN PESUTTO
https://vic.liberal.org.au/team/john-pesutto

Kos Samaras has over 25 years of experience in advertising and politics. Between 2005 to 2019 he served as Victorian Labor’s Deputy Campaign Director and is now the Director of Redbridge Group Australia, a social and community research company.

He specialises in combining research and socio-political analysis to illustrate emerging trends within the Australian community. He joined Discernable to discuss why the entire continent is turning red (voting for Labor).

We discussed:

• Kos’ history as Deputy Campaign Director for Daniel Andrews
• Why the Redbridge Group published proprietary data on Twitter for free
• The importance of strong political oppositions
• Lockdowns are political, not scientific
• Why the Liberals are dying
• How Liberals held seats in Sydney
• The winning formula for the Liberal Party
• Why Daniel Andrews is so angry
• Kos’ struggle with depression
• Political infighting
• How the Greens are taking over
• Sydney’s property market hurts Labor in NSW
• Melbourne has poorer migrants and a dispersed Millennial class
• Transgender and minority groups
• Councils that fake surveys and won’t collect your bins
• Empathy for the unvaccinated
• Questions from Twitter
• The Indigenous Voice to Parliament
• Labor will lose the next QLD election
• The new elites
• Who is going to pay for ‘Labor’s debt’?
• What is Stoicism?
• What Kos has learned from surveying people
• Low Information Voters
• What makes a good politician?
• Asking Kos to argue against himself

KOS SOMARAS
http://www.redbridgegroup.com.au
https://twitter.com/KosSamaras

Trung Luu spent 24 years investigating crime scenes as a sworn member of Victoria Police. In 2022 Trung was elected to parliament as the Liberal Party’s first Vietnamese MP in Victoria.

He travelled to Australia by boat as a young refugee and has since built a life and family in the western suburbs of Melbourne. In this sit down we discussed the Liberal Party’s attempted expulsion of Moira Deeming MP, the refugee perspective of other refugees arriving by boat and ‘skipping the queue’, freedom of speech and privacy in Australia and the banning of certain people and subjects.

Dr Tien Kieu was a Labor MP in the Daniel Andrews government 2018-2022. During that time he continued to publish academic papers as a theoretical physicist.

His story today comes in three parts: refugees, politics and science. For conversation on the politics and ethics of Covid-l9 lockdowns and government support of minorities in general and communism, skip to 20min 42sec. For our discussion on quantum mechanics and theoretical physics skip to 57min 40sec.

What is the core promise of Jesus Christ and Christianity? Rather than settle for common caricatures, we invited Bishop Paul Barker to take us to the very centre of the faith where he explained the scandalous claims it makes.

What is faith? Is it testable? Does it lean on any empiricism and science or is it purely a ‘leap of faith’?

What about social justice – is that the key message of Christianity?

What does ‘believing’ mean? Is it merely mental assent or something more?

Who is Jesus Christ? Does it really matter or is the rest of the Bible helpful without him?

How ‘good’ do you have to be to get into heaven? What about really bad people?

These are the questions that were in my mind approaching this interview, and I found it both surprising and refreshing to hear such a unique exposition of the Christian faith, instead of the strawman we hear in popular culture.

The second half of the discussion centred around cultural relevance, whether the world is devolving its standards, and whether all faiths will remain true to their sacred beliefs and texts or become secularised due to cultural pressure. We explored the failings of the modern church, and the loss of the core message of grace.

At Discernable we continue to explore different perspectives, beliefs, values and opinions by presenting them in their best light possible so you can make up your own mind.

For 4 years Dr Jereth Kok has been suspended from practising medicine for posting memes, satire, and other Christian religious opinions on social media. Many of these posts centred around transgenderism, sexuality and abortion.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) used an emergency mechanism reserved for use on dangerous doctors who represent a risk to ‘the public interest’.

Suspended without trial or hearing has meant 4 years of ‘legal limbo’ for Dr Kok who has been found neither guilty nor innocent by AHPRA. He has since been forced to retrain into an alternative career, so regardless of the eventual tribunal outcome he is unlikely to return to medicine.

AHPRA have disclosed that their investigation began when they received 2 anonymous complaints about Dr Jereth Kok’s social media posts, and that those two complainants have never been his patients.

In this interview we explored the offences alleged by AHPRA, using AHPRA screenshots of Dr Kok’s social media posts. Most of them are inarguably absurd, satire, or vanilla statements and the remaining are expositions of his Christian views.

We went on to discuss the dangerous reality being set by bodies like AHPRA in censoring doctors and homogenising the ideology of the entire industry, resulting in anti-scientific practices that ignores long-established principles of modern medicine.

DR JERETH KOK
https://www.hrla.org.au/jk-day-court