On Thursday the 11th December at about 9:45am, Barry Young made his long awaited return to the Wellington District Court in front of a crowd of around 100 people. Mark Freeman summarised the day.

Whistleblower Barry Young says he’s not trying to break the law or harm anyone: he’s trying to do the right thing.

Mr Young appeared in the Wellington District Court on Thursday and Friday in his case, in which a judge will determine whether his leaking of anonymized mortality data related to the Covid-19 vaccine is protected under legislation. It’s a test case for the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022. Mr Young is the former administrator of one of Health New Zealand’s payperdose Covid vaccination databases, and claims the data showed a sharp rise in deaths after people were vaccinated. 

Before the hearing started, Mr Young told an enthusiastic and noisy crowd of well over 100 supporters that with the truth he will not lose. “I will force them to see that our people are dying and we need to stop this horrible, horrible vaccination. We need to end it right now.”

He has a right to do the right thing, he said. “The Protected Disclosures Act says that by doing the right thing I am allowed immunity. I am not to be retaliated against. So why are we here? We’re here because they retaliated.”

“We have to expose this. We have to show the world that this should not be happening. And this is corruption. This is breaking an act of Parliament, and it’s happening in real time before your eyes. The fact is I made a legitimate protected disclosure. Under the terms of the act, I ticked every single box. I was allowed to disclose it, and they retaliated immediately.”

Health New Zealand have confirmed they never once looked at his data, he said.

At the end of the second day of the case, Mr Young’s lawyer Sue Grey told supporters the case is about whether the whistleblowers’ act applies to normal people who work for the government who disclose information in good faith or whether they have to be a professional who does a complicated legal or epidemiological analysis.

The act was made to facilitate whistleblowing, she said. “There was no dissent. All of the political parties recognised that there should be considerable protection for whistleblowers, and much more than there had been so they felt safe.”

This is the first case that’s tested the act, Ms Grey said, adding that the Crown has  indicated it’s likely to appeal if it gets a decision it doesn’t like.”

“The next steps are basically clarifying exactly what evidence is relevant and then the judge clarifying exactly what issues he wants legal submissions on and making a time frame for when that has to be done. It’s going to take till the end of January to get through that process, and then it will normally be a month or so for submissions after that.”