A woman fined for carrying an anti-Daniel Andrews sign during Victoria’s deadly second wave has had her case against the state’s health bosses thrown out of court.
Kerry Cotterill was initially fined for failing to comply with stay-at-home orders for protesting in September 2020.
The Cranbourne West woman was walking within 5km of her home and carrying a sign with a hand-drawn image of Premier Daniel Andrews with “Toot to boot” written on it.
She was also wearing a mask that had the words “Ban Dan” on it.
Ms Cotterill said she was exercising and demonstrating against the lockdown at the same time. Under the rules in place at the time, exercising was a permitted reason to leave the home while protesting was not.
Police issued the infringement for her protest and though it was withdrawn, Ms Cotterill took the state’s chief health officer Brett Sutton and deputy public health commander Finn Romanes to court.
Ms Cotterill argued the stay-at-home directions in place were invalid because they went against the implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution.
But on Tuesday her challenge was thrown out of Victoria’s Supreme Court by Justice Richard Niall, who said the restrictions served a “legitimate purpose”.
He said the arguments were “directed at the wrong target” and Ms Cotterill failed to make out her challenge to the directions.
The justice said the alternative that would allow people to leave their homes or gather to engage in political communication would introduce a degree of uncertainty to the directions.
“They would introduce a degree of uncertainty that would be inconsistent with the purpose and intent of those directions … I am not satisfied the directions go too far as to be invalid,” Justice Niall said.
A hearing will be held later to determine costs.
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