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AVN's New Name Approved      


As of Friday, March 7th, the Australian Vaccination Network, Inc. will now officially be known as the Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network, Inc. We will still have the same domain address (www.avn.org.au) and will still go by the acronym "AVN".

 

This name change has been the result of a long process which involved the introduction of an amendment regulation empowering the Minister involved to take this step.

 

In this instance, the Minister issued a directive ordering us to change our name. It was then discovered that the Act did not give him the power to make this order so the directive was subsequently rescinded. The Minister then issued an amendment regulation to enable the original directive to be reissued which he then did.  

 

Government Ministers are allowed to introduce amendment regulations provided the regulations do not:

  • change the scope or power of the underlying act; or
  • give the Minister any additional powers.

The reason for these restrictions is that amendment regulations are not voted on or debated in Parliament. In this instance, both the scope and the power of the act and the Minister were clearly changed so the AVN believes this regulation was introduced in error.

 

Genuine thanks go to our members!

 

The AVN national committee thanks our very supportive members for voting unanimously to pass the resolution changing our name at the special general meeting held on March the 4th.

 

Skeptics vs Sceptics

 

For those who are wondering about why we have spelled the word "Skeptics" in the American way rather than as we originally intended to spell it (and as Magistrate Hennessy of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal (ADT) suggested in her decision), in the Australian way, "Sceptics", we have an interesting and still evolving story to tell.

 

As stated above, in her ADT decision, Magistrate Nancy Hennessy said very clearly that the AVN was not an anti-vaccination organisation. Instead, she found, after long and careful examination of our organisation, that we were simply sceptical of vaccination. As a result, she suggested that one of the names which she would consider to be appropriate is the Australian Vaccination Sceptics Network.

 

We subsequently reserved that name with the proper authorities, being unable to register it at that time because that would have required a special general meeting of our membership which was still in the planning stages.

 

Somehow, the information about our name reservation was obtained by members of Stop the AVN - and we want everyone reading this to realise that this information was not publicly available anywhere on any database.

 

Immoral and hypocritical actions

 

Within a matter of hours, Dr Rachel Dunlop, Mr John Cunningham, Mr Dan Buzzard (against whom our former President, Meryl Dorey, held an interim Apprehended Violence Order [AVO] for 10 months) and Ms Tracey McDermott had registered the following names:

 

  • Australian Vaccination Sceptics Network (ABN 33 627 009 978)
  • Australian Vaccination Skeptics (ABN 82 084 251 657)
  • Vaccination Sceptics Network of Australia (ABN 26 113 403 635)
  • Vaccination Sceptics Australia (ABN 12 806 631 921)

 

The irony is that these individuals- all members of the hate group, Stop the Australian Vaccination Network (SAVN), and in some cases, long-time board members of the NSW Skeptics, can in no way be described as being sceptical of vaccines. Their sole reason for registering these names was to try and prevent us from abiding by Magistrate Hennessy's court order and their representatives stated this several times in media interviews.

 

All's well that ends well

 

Regardless of the process, we are very happy to state that we now have a new name that describes what our organisation represents at least as well as our old name did.

 

The endless government complaints continue unabated, but at least we now know that our name will be above reproach into the foreseeable future.

 

The Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.
PO Box 177
BANGALOW NSW 2479
PH: 02 6687 1699 FAX: 02 6678 0894
www.avn.org.au
info@avn.org.au

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