Am I Making Sense?

Some people believe the Australian Government is illegal – that an immense conspiracy has been running since 1972 (some believe it started earlier). One of their key pieces of evidence is a video which, they say, shows Prime Minister Julia Gullard swearing the wrong oath of office.

In this article I’ll conclusively prove that Julia Gillard has taken all the correct Oaths of office.

This is the third article in my series of articles that will examine every piece of “supporting evidence” that the conspiracy theorists use to support their claim. In the first article, Is the Australian Government a US Corporation I conclusively prove that the Commonwealth of Australia is NOT a privately owned company registered with the US SEC.

My second article, Is the Australian Coat of Arms a US trademark?, proves that the Australian Coat of Arms are NOT privately registered trademarks in the USA.

The Evidence showing the WRONG Oath being taken!

This video is the source of all the problems. It shows Julia Gillard, on 14th September 2010, swearing an oath to the Governor General, Quinten Bryce. The words she spoke are:

“I, Julia Eileen Gillard, do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will well and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia in the office of Prime Minister.”

Supporters of the conspiracy theory say that Gillard used the wrong words – the wrong oath – which doesn’t mention the Queen. And that Gillard used the wrong oath because she is part of the conspiracy and doesn’t want to swear allegiance to the Queen but just to the allegedly illegal private company called the Commonwealth of Australia. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The Evidence showing the RIGHT Oath being taken!

This is the video that the conspiracy theorists never show you. It shows Gillard, and the rest of her ministers taking the correct oath on 28th September 2010, after the election had been held. (The relevant bit of the video starts at 2:20)

The words of the Oath taken are:

“I do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful
and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second, Her heirs and successors according to law.”

They then sign bits of paper with the same oath written on it.

Why are there two different oaths?

The Prime Minister of Australia must take two oaths:

1. the oath that must be taken by all members of parliament
2. another oath that must be taken by the members of the Federal Executive Council.

OATH FOR ALL MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Every member of parliament must swear an oath or affirmation of allegiance, as specified in section 42 of the Australian Constitution:

The Schedule to the Constitution contains the wording of the oath and the affirmation.

All members of parliament take this oath on the first sitting day of parliament after an election.

OATH FOR MEMBERS OF THE FEDERAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

There’s a different section of the Australian Constitution which deals with the swearing in of the Federal Executive Council.

What’s the Federal Executive Council? Here’s how the Introduction to the Constitution (page 8 ) explains the Federal Executive Council:

The Federal Executive Council, which is referred to in various provisions of the
Constitution, and in the expression ‘Governor-General in Council’, comprises all past and current Ministers. However, only current Ministers take part in Executive Council business, and usually only two or three Ministers attend meetings of the Council with the Governor-General. Unlike the Cabinet, the Executive Council is not a deliberative body. Its principal functions are to receive advice and approve the signing of formal documents such as regulations and statutory appointments.

From the constitution:

Notice that the constitution just says they have to be “sworn” but doesn’t specify what they must say! Compare that to the wording in section 42 for the general oath which states the oath must be taken “in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution”.

If the oath had to be in a specific form the Constitution would have stated that as it did in section 42. The fact that section 62 doesn’t state the specific words means that the words can be changed without changing the constitution.

It is this oath that we see Gillard taking in the first video. The conspiracy theorists don’t know that the Prime Minister had to take this second oath, and therefore, they thought that it was the oath mentioned in section 42 of the constitution, but that the words had been changed without a referendum.

(I’ve contacted the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and was told that the wording for the oath or affirmation for the Federal Executive Council is not specified in the Constitution nor in any legislation and that, therefore, it’s a matter of choice for the government at the time, and successive governments since 1993 have adopted their own form of words.)

Conclusion

The video evidence proves beyond any doubt whatsoever that the correct Oaths have been sworn. The prime Minister has sworn allegiance to the Queen. Therefore one of the central pillars of the conspiracy theory has been demolished.

I don’t expect this to make any difference to the leaders of this conspiracy theory, though. I expect that they will ignore what they’ve read in this article and continue to blog about how the wrong oath has been taken. Why would they do that? I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. Personally, I think they like being the centre of attention – they like being an “expert” that people “respect”. What would they blog about if they didn’t have this conspiracy to talk about?

Another Oath taking

A reader brought this next video to my attention. It shows Gillard, and the rest of her ministers taking the oath for the Federal Executive Council on 24th June 2010, after Kevin Rudd had been deposed but before the election. (The relevant bit of the video starts at 2:20)

More information about the Federal Executive Council

Here’s a link to the official Federal Executive Council Handbook which explains all aspects of what it is and how it operates. Here’s the Wikipedia entry

State Parliaments

In case anyone wants to claim the same about the state parliaments here is a video of NSW Senators being sworn in July 12 2011.

If you know of any other videos of the swearing in of state parliaments please post the links in the comments section below.

The Constitution of Australia

This is a pdf of the current Constitution of Australia with the introductory notes mentioned earlier (it’ll ask you to save the pdf to your computer).

This is another good site where you can see the Constitution of Australia and some explanations of it’s evolution.

Read the other articles in this series

• Is the Australian Government a US Corporation
• Is the Australian Coat of Arms a US trademark?

The Australian Coat of Arms can be found in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database. Conspiracy theorists offer this as a key piece of evidence to support their claim that the Australian government is not legitimate, and that it is in fact a privately owned U.S. corporation.

In this article I’ll demonstrate that they are completely wrong about the Coat of arms.

The reason that the Australian Coat of Arms can be found in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database is that USPTO employees regularly copy new information from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) into the USPTO database so that people don’t have to search both databases.

What is the WIPO database?

The WIPO’s mission is to “to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world”.

It was created in 1967 and became part of the UN in 1974 – it’s helping everyone implement the 1883 treaty called Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (aka Paris Convention) in which countries agreed that respecting each other’s copyright and trademark laws was a very good thing.

One part of the Paris Convention, Article 6ter, relates to protection of flags, coats of arms and other emblems used by governments and countries.

WIPO maintains a database of all the things registered under article 6ter. Private companies can’t register anything in the 6ter database, only governments can.

Australian Coat of Arms in the 6ter database

Here is how you can see for yourself what Australia has registered in the 6ter database:

1. Go to the 6ter search page
2. In the “State” field select “Australia” from the dropdown list.
3. Click [Search]

This will return you these 8 items:

If you click on the links you will see that the first one is for the word “ANZAC” and the rest are variations of the Australian Coat of Arms and look like this:

Note the text below the emblem, in particular the “Circular Date: 25.07.1991″. This is the date that the emblem was registered with the database. This is an important date because these same emblems were registered with the USPTO database just 6 months later on 8/1/1992.

Why register the Coat of Arms with USPTO?

The Australian Government did NOT register their Coat of Arms with the USPTO! The USPTO simply copies everything in the 6ter database into their USPTO database – it took them 6 months to get around to doing it.

To see the Australian listings in the USPTO database do the following:

1. Go to the USPTO site
2. Half way down the page click on the Tess Search Tardemarks
   
3. Towards the bottom of the page click the “Browse dictionary” link
   
4. Click the [structured] button
   
5. Type one of the following serial numbers (89000474, 89000475, 89000531, 89000532, 89000533, 89000534, 89000535 ) into the “search term” field
6. select “serial number” from the “field” field
7. click [submit Query]

Doing that for 89000474 returns this:

Note the “Filing Date: January 8 1992” which is 6 months after it was registered in the 6ter database.

Note the “Owner: (APPLICANT) Commonwealth of Australia STATE AGENCY AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA”. It is a “State Agency” not a “Private Company”!

Note the “Other Data: Article 6ter Paris Convention – AUSTRALIA” which acknowledges that that’s where they got the information from.

I emailed the USPTO to ask them whether they copied entries from the 6ter database and they replied that they did, and referred me to this page on their website for a fuller explanation.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

“When the USPTO receives notifications from the IB under Article 6ter, the USPTO searches its records for conflicting marks, although the requests are not subjected to a full examination by an examining attorney or published for opposition. If the USPTO determines that a designation should be entered into the USPTO search records to assist USPTO examining attorneys, the designation is assigned a serial number in the “89″ series code (i.e., serial numbers beginning with the digits “89,” sometimes referred to as “non-registrations”). Information about the designation should be discovered in an examining attorney’s search.”

Note also that these governmental trademarks are given a USPTO ID starting with “89″ and are referred to as “non-registrations” because they didn’t actually register with the USPTO!

Here are few examples of items belonging to other countries starting with 89:

89001322 germany
89000309 emblem of Budapest
89000309 government of denmark
89000310 government of denmark
89000322 checkoslovakia
89001122 flag of Sweden

Conclusion

Surely I have presented way more than enough evidence to prove conclusively that the inclusion of the Australian Coat of Arms in the USPTO database DOES NOT mean that the Australian Government is a private corporation.

Sadly, I am certain that many conspiracy theorists will read this article and immediately erase it from their memory so that they can continue making the same ridiculous claims as before.

Read the other articles in this series

• Did the PM swear the wrong Oath?
• Is the Australian Coat of Arms a US trademark?

Since July 2012, Scott Bartle (and others) have been running a relentless campaign to convince people that the government of Australia is illegitimate and is a private US corporation.

Scott doesn’t propose any solutions or describe how a supposedly legitimate government would behave any differently to the current government. He does, however, manage to make a pretty convincing argument to back his claim. His website www.truth-now.net gives a long list of reasons why he thinks the Australian Government is illegitimate.

In fact, he goes as far as to claim that the genuine Australian Government has been replaced with a private corporation registered in the USA which has private shareholders that are pocketing our taxes.

Unfortunately he doesn’t tell us who the shareholders are, or how much money they are pocketing, and how they are managing to keep this theft secret from all the auditors, media and Treasury Department employees. That’s because he can’t – because it’s all rubbish.

In this article I’ll prove, without a doubt, that the government of Australian is not a private corporation registered in the USA. I strongly suspect that Scott Bartle knows this and that he is deliberately deceiving people – I could be wrong though, perhaps he’s just poorly informed and has made an innocent mistake; I’ll leave it up to you to make up your own mind.

Is the Australian Government a Private Corporation Registered in USA?

Scott’s main evidence to support his claim that the government of Australia is a private corporation registered in the USA is given on his site here (I’ve copied the main parts below in case he decides to remove it from his website).

Scott claims that because the “Commonwealth of Australia” is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the USA, it proves that it’s a private corporation registered in the USA. This is so wrong that its not funny!

Here are all the ways in which Scott Bartle is wrong about this:

1. The SEC is not where private corporations are registered

The SEC is not where you set up a legal business entity in the USA. A business entity must first be created/registered with one of the state governments. Once it is registered with a state government it only needs to list itself with the SEC if it is selling securities to investors, such as shares, bonds etc.

If the Commonwealth of Australia is a US registered business then we must be able to find it in one of the state databases of registered business names. Unfortunately, unlike Australia, the USA does not have a central database in which all business names are located, therefore you have to search within every single state database (or pay a private company to do it for you). Here is a page that lists the urls for all 50 state business name databases so you can search them yourself if you wish.

I’ve only searched the database for Washington D.C. because that is the address given on the Commonwealth of Australia listing in the SEC database. The “Commonwealth of Australia” was not found in their database and is therefore not registered as a business in D.C. (Check for yourself by going here and creating a free login account; then click the [Business Filings Search] tab; then select the “search type” of “Entity Name”.) (Here’s a checklist of what you need to do to start a business in D.C.)

The SEC’s mission is to protect investors. It does so by requiring entities seeking investors to lodge their financial records with the SEC so that potential investors can find them easily to check whether they should buy the investments.

The entities don’t have to be US companies to be listed with the SEC, even foreign companies are required to be listed with the SEC if they are issuing securities in the USA.

Does Scott Bartle know about this?

Here’s more detailed information from the SEC’s own site.

2. Foreign Governments can voluntarily register with the SEC

3. Two different SEC forms

Private and public corporations have to submit SEC form 10-K (see explanation, see technical explanation) whereas foreign governments have to submit SEC form 18-K (see explanation, see technical explanation).

You can see here that the Commonwealth of Australia is submitting form 18-K/A (18-K/A is an amendment to the original 18-K form).

Here is a direct link to the latest 18-K submitted by the Commonwealth of Australia. You can see that the very first thing it says at the top of the form is:

FORM 18-K
For Foreign Governments and Political Subdivisions Thereof

Then at the bottom of the first page it states:

The Commonwealth of Australia files Annual Reports on Form 18-K voluntarily in order for the Commonwealth of Australia to incorporate such Annual Reports into its shelf registration statements.

In other words, it doesn’t have to list with the SEC – it does it voluntarily to make it easy for potential investors in government bonds to find our annual report.

Does Scott Bartle know about this?

In fact the Commonwealth of Australia hasn’t submitted an annual report since 2009. What is Scott’s explanation for this?
(See all Commonwealth of Australia filings with SEC here.)

If the Commonwealth of Australia was a “corporation”, as claimed by Scott, then its listing would look like Apple’s listing which you can view here. Notice Apple submits Form 10-K not Form 18-K.

4. No I.R.S. Employer Identification Number (EIN)

All US companies are required to have an EIN ( see details on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website. The IRS collects taxes and an EIN is like an employer’s tax file number.)

If the Commonwealth of Australia was a private corporation registered in the USA it would be required to have an EIN and to list it on its annual report to the SEC – but it doesn’t.

You can see on Apple’s listing below that it has an EIN. (Check the real documents for yourself here: Apple, Commonwealth of Australia.)

Does Scott Bartle know about this?

Proven beyond a doubt

 

 

 

You can see from the evidence provided above that the Commonwealth of Australia is DEFINITELY NOT a private US corporation as claimed by Scott Bartle.

But even in addition to this indisputable evidence you just have to think for a moment in order to realise how ludicrous his claims are. For example, if the Commonwealth did have private shareholders then:

1. Who are the shareholders? And how many shareholders are there?
2. How much money are the shareholders receiving each year?
3. How are the shareholders able to keep these profits hidden from the accounting people who scrutinise the government’s revenue and expenditure, including:
   1. Treasury department public servants who prepare the budgets and accounts
   2. Auditors who check them
   3. Academics who study them
   4. Finance reporters who report on them.
4. What about opposition political parties?

Are they all corruptly co-operating in this?

If this was true then this would have to be a massive conspiracy involving thousands of people over many decades.

1. How could you get so many people to co-operate with this?
2. Every time some new finance reporter or academic or finance department accountant came along you would have to convince them to get involved in the corruption. What’s the probability that you’d be able to do that over many years?
3. If you were first planning this corruption would you be confident that you could convince everyone you needed to convince? Would you take the risk that someone would blow the whistle? Would you be able to convince thousands of people to take the risk?

More reasons why Scott Bartle is wrong

There are many more reasons why Scott Bartle’s claims are wrong and his proof is wrong, but this article is already long enough so I’ll write more articles in the near future that will provide more irrefutable evidence disproving Scott Bartle’s claims and get you wondering what his motives could be.

What are Scott’s motives?

Any intelligent person will have to wonder what Scott Bartle’s motives are. Is it just an innocent mistake? Or something more sinister?

Personally I find it hard to believe that its just an innocent mistake when the picture on his own website clearly shows that the SEC listing is an “Annual report for foreign governments and political subdivisions”.

What do you think?

If you’ve found any mistakes in my analysis I’d be very grateful if you’d let me know about it so I can correct it.

And of course, I’d love you to leave a comment!

More articles on this topic:

Is the Australian Coat of Arms a US trademark?
Did the PM swear the wrong Oath?

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