Posts

The Chaos of Lockdowns Impacting Australian Industry

There’s a long tail to the COVID response that’s affecting a lot of things. There are many changes to the way we work — working from home for example — and the way in which we interact with employees that are a direct impact of the changes made during COVID. The Australian Industry (AI) Group clearly showed in their submission the anxiety levels and the mental health impact on their members and the everyday Australians who work for them. The mixed messaging, the lack of consistent and clear communication made a challenging situation almost impossible to tolerate.

The AI Group made this statement: If we don’t come to grips with the consequences of the sometimes damaging and divisive actions of states to lock down everything from buildings and suburbs to entire states, we ignore the impacts across the community. Their testimony on the disruption to state borders, not just in border communities but to national businesses, makes clear that it was extraordinary. State and territory border closures were so disruptive they should only ever be used as a last resort. Many businesses were impacted also by localised communications and differing ‘rules’ between states which caused chaos.

The Albanese Government’s limited COVID inquiry excludes state governments from its scope. The AI Group feels this is a big exclusion given the fact that state and territory governments were responsible for implementing a lot of the measures which were contradictory and often capricious. The AI Group supports a Royal Commission into COVID with broad terms of reference.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Ms McGrath, thank you for your submission and also for appearing in person. It’s so much better to have people here in person, when possible. Your submission states: 

If we don’t come to grips with the consequences of the sometimes damaging and divisive actions of states to lock down everything from buildings and suburbs to entire states, we ignore the impacts across the community. 

What are some of the damaging outcomes that support your call for lockdowns to be included as a term of reference? 

Ms McGrath: That was the element that really had the most impact on our members. Our members, of course, are people and, as was the rest of Australian society, they were dealing with the challenges of the pandemic and worrying about their own health. I think we’ve clearly shown in the submission the anxiety levels and the mental health impact on our members and their workforces. The complexity of the shutdowns, the mixed messaging and the lack of consistent and clear communication made a challenging situation almost impossible to bear. 

Senator Roberts: Basically, what you’re saying is that there are enormous economic impacts that possibly could have been avoided—and I think many of them could have been. Those economic impacts led to anxiety and increased mental health problems, as well as economic impacts on employers. Also, you mentioned contradictions. Something that has been said repeatedly across the whole community by individuals and businesses is that each state had different science. 

Ms McGrath: They did. That’s why I referenced the bushfire response. If we think about the language that we use around bushfires, such as ‘prepare to leave’, and even just how we classify, from mild to catastrophic, the nature of a bushfire, we had none of that nomenclature when it came to the COVID pandemic. It meant that whoever was in front of the camera often used terms loosely, such as ‘essential workers’ or ‘authorised workers’. These all had different terms; often they were used interchangeably. It created great confusion amongst our members, who were trying to manage a very stressed workforce. 

Senator Roberts: I will mention that we have here the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, which was released in August 2019. This is a thick document, so it was comprehensively done, yet it was tossed out of the window and wasn’t even referred to. I think that led to some of the contradictions. Would you like to comment on that? 

Ms McGrath: I’m not aware of that document; I’m sorry. 

Senator Roberts: Let’s move on to another question. The High Court’s decision on the Western Australian border closures, the section 92 judgement, was instrumental in perpetuating border closures and certainly relied on health advice that closures were justified by the health dangers of COVID. Are you familiar with that decision? 

Ms McGrath: Not particularly, but I am aware of the impact of the state border closures. 

Senator Roberts: Basically, it says that border closures are within a state’s constitutional powers, providing that the state’s response is proportionate to the threat. The High Court decided that, based on the medical authorities’ advice, COVID was a serious threat, yet the health authorities at the time knew it was not. In fact, they gave me, in writing, their conclusion that showed that COVID was of low to moderate severity. If you think about the vulnerable that are a very small subset and you remove that, COVID was less severe than many past flus. Those health dangers have now been proven to be overstated, as I said, which really shows that the High Court made an interpretation of section 92 that was, in hindsight, not only not supported by the facts but also contrary to the facts; the High Court was misled. I note that your submission goes to the section 92 judgement, but it doesn’t offer a better way of doing closures. Can you expand on your thoughts around state border closures, please? 

Ms McGrath: As I said in my opening statement, they really should be of last resort. The disruption to state borders, not just in border communities but to national businesses, was extraordinary. The communication often was very localised. Victoria would talk about what was happening in Victoria, not understanding that there perhaps were companies in Queensland that had trucks that needed to come to Victoria; therefore, the message was never conveyed directly to them. The role that the Ai Group played in COVID was to try to gather all these instructions and directives, translate them into easily accessible language and make sure that all our members had access to them, regardless of where they were located. 

Senator Roberts: Do you consider that the responses to COVID were excessively politically motivated? Maybe that was intentional or maybe it was in ignorance. Some states ran focus groups to determine what the people thought was necessary, and yet we, the people, aren’t health authorities. It seemed to be driven by political purposes or political ends in some states, and that might have contributed to the contradictions. 

Ms McGrath: I’m not in a position to comment on that. I think there are many reasons for the contradictions. One is that the people making the directives were very stressed in their own right and so perhaps were not cognitively prepared for that sort of communication. As I’ve said, everyone was making very many decisions on the run. 

Senator Roberts: Your submission notes that JobKeeper benefits were paid to some companies that didn’t need the money; they made excessive profits during COVID and then refused to pay the money back. Is the answer clawbacks to recoup JobKeeper money or is the answer much tougher criteria for JobKeeper, including targeting small and medium businesses over large businesses? 

Ms McGrath: When it comes to JobKeeper, as we said, carefully calibrated support is best. The challenge with JobKeeper is that it was made very quickly and was quite broad based. When it comes to public policy, as you would know, that sometimes has unfortunate consequences. 

Senator Roberts: Your submission mentions mandatory COVID vaccination policies, yet it doesn’t say what about them should be investigated. Where does Ai stand on mandatory injections? 

Ms McGrath: We don’t have a position on mandatory injections; our position is to support members adhering to whatever regulation applies to them. What we found challenging was, again, a mix of communication styles and a mix of messages that came out, which caused a lot of stress in understanding what their obligations were. 

Senator Roberts: Just as a statement, your submission talks about the need for local manufacturing of personal protective equipment and related equipment to remove the need for stockpiling materials that degrade over time. One Nation fully supports that; we cannot be reliant on foreign countries for such products. Has Ai come up with any policy with regard to ensuring that we have the security of our own manufacturing? 

Ms McGrath: Not particularly. We work with ICN in each state and with a number of different local manufacturers in sovereign manufacturing. 

Senator Roberts: One of the responses to COVID from the previous government was to hand out a lot of money. We were warning at the time that this would lead to inflation and, sure enough, it has. We’re still living with the consequences of the COVID response; would you agree? 

Ms McGrath: There’s a long tail to COVID that’s affecting a lot of things. 

Senator Roberts: A long tail to COVID or to the COVID response? 

Ms McGrath: I’m sorry; to the COVID response. There are all sorts of things—as you say, inflation, which is happening globally, but also work from home policies—and changes to the way that we work and the way that we interact with employees that are a direct impact of many of the rules that came through COVID. 

Senator Roberts: On the second page of your submission you state: The existing Commonwealth Government COVID-19 Response Inquiry does include in its terms of reference a review of the responsibilities of state and territory governments and national governance mechanisms, such as National Cabinet. However, it includes the specific exclusion from the scope of the inquiry of ‘actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments’. Given the fact that the state and territory governments were responsible for implementing a lot of the measures that were contradictory and often capricious, that would seem to be a very big exclusion. 

Ms McGrath: We agree. 

Transcript

Chair: Senator Roberts. 

Senator Roberts: The COVID injections or vaccines raise many questions. The TGA admitted to me in Senate Estimates that it did not test them here in this country but relied on the FDA in America. The FDA in America had already admitted previously that it didn’t test them but relied on Pfizer; and Pfizer’s trials were shut down early because of the number of deaths that they had. So, when you haven’t got something consistent, it puts people under a lot of pressure, not only employees but also employers. That puts you in a difficult position, because not all supermarkets forced their employees to get injected; I think IGA didn’t. But I can imagine a Coles or Woolies employee thinking, ‘I can’t go in the back door to the supermarket, because I’m an employee and must get injected; but I can go in the front door any time I want to and stay for as long as I like as a customer.’ How do you make sense of that? 

Ms McGrath: As I’ve illustrated, there are many complexities, particularly in communication and rules, that really added to the stress of the whole situation, and employers and employees were all coping with the same challenges. 

Senator Roberts: And customers. 

Ms McGrath: And customers. 

Senator Roberts: And sometimes they were in all three roles. Your final comment on page 6 of the January submission says, ‘A root and branch review is required to ensure that governments work cohesively and respond holistically during the next inevitable pandemic, and Ai Group supports any moves towards consideration of appointing a COVID Royal Commission.’ A ‘root and branch review’ is pretty serious stuff; it would be very detailed and comprehensive and would cover everything. 

Ms McGrath: Yes. 

Senator Roberts: Is that because it was so variable and there were so many contradictions and inconsistencies that it just didn’t make sense to many people? 

Ms McGrath: Yes, it didn’t make sense. Sometimes, there would be a minister or health officer making an announcement and we’d wait for the actual orders, and they would not be consistent with what had been announced. We would have to try to find a way to convey that to the government and ask them which directive we should listen to, and then they would try to reverse it. But it was just incredible, I think. 

Senator Roberts: I can empathise with you. I remember watching Yvette D’Ath, the Queensland state health minister, laying out the law in January 2022 or 2023, saying, ‘People in cars must wear masks.’ Someone asked, ‘What about if the driver is by himself?’ and she hummed and said, ‘Yes’. There was no science behind that: sitting alone in a car, with windows up, wearing a mask. These things were not driven by science. 

Chair: Is that a question, Senator Roberts? 

Senator Roberts: It is a statement, backing up Ai Group’s concerns. 

/by

Consumers Health Forum Seeks a Broad Royal Commission into COVID

The Consumers Health Forum (CHF) seeks to understand how society in Australia has been impacted by COVID and the COVID response. This not-for-profit organisation was founded approximately 40 years ago and is funded by the Australian Government – as the primary national healthcare consumer organisation under the Health Peak and Advisory Bodies Program.

CEO Dr Elizabeth Deveny seeks to support Australians experiencing ill health as a consequence of the pandemic. She agrees that deferred healthcare needs to be examined in a Royal Commission, as she believes a good COVID response needs to be an enduring one. There needs to be a coordinated response to support unwell Australians to return to health — regardless of whether the cause is from COVID, or the government and health authorities response to COVID.

The CHF seeks a broad and independent Royal Commission into COVID. She says hearing from people impacted by the COVID response will provide Australians with a voice and help restore trust. There will be those who are still suffering trauma or whose lives are still in turmoil. Allowing private sessions will give those witnesses, regardless of their background, an opportunity to come forward and disclose their evidence without exposing them publicly to negative impacts.

The current inquiry commissioned by PM Albanese is run by those who advocated for the very same COVID response the inquiry is supposed to be critiquing. Understandably, Australians need proof of impartiality to have the confidence to trust a Royal Commission. Dr Deveny suggests the selection process should involve the community and build from that point. We need to lift up the voices of health consumers to ensure that the Australian health system meets the needs of every citizen.

Transcript

Coming Soon

Supporting Health Consumers to be Better Informed

In 2019 the government published the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza. This substantial document was the result of 8 years of consultation. When COVID arrived, the government tossed this strategic plan in the bin — just 4 months after it was published.

I asked Dr Elizabeth Deveny, CEO of the Consumers Health Forum (CHF), if her organisation was consulted on this strategic health framework. Dr Deveny will respond to my question on notice.

I then asked Dr Deveny if the CHF is interested in investigating the reporting of adverse events and excess deaths due to the COVID ‘vaccines’. Since COVID ‘vaccines’ were rolled out, excess mortality is around 26,000 above normal annual mortality. The DAEN (Database of Adverse Event Notifications) is a surveillance system that receives reports of adverse events or side effects from medicines, vaccines, biological therapies and medical devices. It’s monitored by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Adverse events, including deaths from COVID ‘vaccines’ were reported to the DAEN — although we know there’s always under-reporting of these events. I outlined for Dr Deveny how official downgrading of approximately 1060 deaths originally tied to these experimental and novel COVID shots meant a large number was removed from the database, leaving 14 deaths attributed to the injections.

Dr. Deveny noted that consumers frequently struggle to find the appropriate channels and methods for lodging complaints about negative healthcare encounters. She believes that the current reporting procedures are not easily navigable for users. Consequently, many incidents involving medication, vaccines, biological therapies, or medical devices go unreported.

The CHF is advocating for improved mechanisms, especially during emergencies, to ensure Australians can easily report concerns about their health. They believe that individuals should be able to express their worries and receive guidance promptly. Both the government and the Australian public need to understand the repercussions of adverse events, as they impact everyone financially. As taxpayers, Australians deserve to comprehend the full effects of health interventions and their outcomes. The CHF supports transparency and is calling for a comprehensive Royal Commission into Australia’s COVID response to empower and inform all health consumers.

Transcript

Coming Soon

/7 Comments/by

Ex Qantas Captain, Graham Hood’s Powerful Witness Statement

Thank you Hoody for your courage in speaking the truth at the second public hearing to set the Terms of Reference for a future Royal Commission into COVID.

“I urge this Senate and I urge this government with these words: Government you must listen. This country is in dire straits. The spirit of this country has been systematically destroyed and I’ve witnessed it firsthand. I’ve done what many of you don’t have the time to do. I’ve been face to face with people who’ve lost loved ones that they know were from vaccine injury. And I don’t know whether these excess deaths are being caused by vaccines or ‘long COVID,’ or whatever else it might be. It could be an additive in food. I don’t know, but nobody else seems to know either and that’s why we must stop. We must investigate. We must do a proper debriefing. We must apply proper human factors. And we must bring the people that I mentioned that have been locked away with censorship, back out of the dark with their data so that we can start healing the people of this country. And if we don’t do that we have neglected an opportunity that will go down in history as one of the greatest human factor failures in the world.”

/16 Comments/by

The Government’s Health Department Hides from a Royal Commission into COVID

,

In January, the Senate held a committee inquiry into appropriate Terms of Reference for a Royal Commission into COVID. This is the Royal Commission the Prime Minister promised during the election campaign, which Senator Gallagher also promised. Instead the Prime Minister called a review of the government’s response, which excludes state and territory responses.

Many have slammed the Prime Minister’s COVID review panel as a “toothless tiger” and support a Royal Commission instead. Doctors, unions, human rights lawyers, vaccine injured, and Royal Commission experts were among the witnesses who provided submissions and gave evidence at the Senate inquiry tasked with proposing Terms of Reference for a future COVID Royal Commission.

Why did the Government Health Department not partake in this inquiry? Could it be to avoid scrutiny from the Committee that would result from making a submission? Judge for yourself.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: The department and its agencies did not make a submission to the Senate inquiry into appropriate terms of reference for a possible future royal commission into COVID. I would have thought, Minister, that the department that ran our COVID response would be the first to put forward its position on the matter. Why the silence? Is the department hiding from committee scrutiny? 

Senator McCarthy: We do have an inquiry underway—an independent one—looking into COVID, so I reject outright your question. 

/by

Sky News with Rita Panahi

,

Robodebt had a Royal Commission called three months after Anthony Albanese was elected.

Four years after we first heard of COVID and two years after Albanese was elected, we still don’t have a COVID Royal Commission.

Is PM Albanese only interested in “transparency and accountability” when it’s politically convenient for him?

/5 Comments/by

Australia’s Best Research Tool for Adverse Events

Australia’s best research tool for interpreting adverse events from the COVID vaccines, plus FOI information and more. All in the one spot and it’s free.

A lot of work has gone into this resource. ‘OpenDAEN’ is an easy-to-use database of TGA-reported COVID-19 Vaccines Adverse Events (de-identified) on a non-commercial, non-profit website.

https://opendaen.info/home

/1 Comment/by

NSW Council for Civil Liberties Abandons Civil Liberties

Founded in 1963, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) charter “is to protect the rights and liberties of Australian citizens and to oppose the abusive or excessive exercise of power by the state against its people.”

In their submission to the COVID Royal Commission terms of reference inquiry, NSWCCL says “we are an organisation that champions the rights of all to express their views and beliefs without suppression.” They then continue in their one page submission to say:

1. an inquiry should cover “the extent to which public health interests were adversely affected by misinformation about COVID disseminated by Senator Roberts and people associated or aligned with his views.” (I guess they mean about adverse reactions to the jab, the Wuhan lab leak theory, ineffective masks and the made-up 6 foot social distancing rule, all true?)

2. There should be an “inquiry into appropriate means for protecting the public from misleading information”

3. The government’s proposed Misinformation and Disinformation Bill doesn’t go far enough.

4. “it is not appropriate for a Royal Commission to be held in respect of the COVID-19 pandemic”

How can an organisation that calls itself a champion of civil liberties and fights for free expression argue:

1. an entire section of the community should be silenced

2. the government should have unprecedented power to shut people down

3. Australians should not be able to have a say at a Royal Commission into the largest invasion of civil liberties in modern history?

/16 Comments/by

Vaccine Mandates: Human Rights Destroyed by Emergency Declarations

In light of Professor Brendan Murphy’s, the Secretary Department of Health & Aged Care, evidence during the June estimates that mandates are no longer justifiable, I asked the Human Rights Commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, for their latest guidance on COVID vaccine mandates.

Commissioner Finlay’s response was that this advice has not changed throughout the COVID response in terms of general human rights principles. What this means is that although governments can restrict individual human rights in an emergency, those restrictions need to be proportionate, non-discriminatory and targeted to risk.

This goes to the heart of the problem. Decisions were made that put Australia onto an emergency footing in 2020. Yet this has dragged on beyond what is reasonable. The response has not been proportionate to the risk of the COVID infection, which the Chief Medical Officer in March of 2021 admitted was low to moderate.

Discrimination remains to this day against those who exercised their right to say no to injections, despite the coercion. We must have a system in place whereby civil liberties are rightfully returned. The Australian Human Rights Commission should be at the forefront of calling for this, yet they appear to be captured, with the exception of Commissioner Finlay, who has come out strongly in support of human rights principles.

Commissioner Finlay is looking forward to the COVID Inquiry that was recently announced, after the Senate approved my motion to establish an inquiry to recommend and report on the Terms of Reference for a COVID-19 Royal Commission. She sees the need not only to look at the economic and scientific impacts and advice that were given throughout the COVID response, but the human cost too.

Transcript

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, do you want to see if you can get some questions done?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes. As the chair said, my questions are fairly short and straight to the point. What is the latest guidance from the commission on COVID vaccine mandates? Where was that published?

Ms Finlay: I would refer you to the answer we gave you in relation to this at the previous estimates. The advice remains the same in terms of the general human rights principles that we rely on in our approach to both
vaccine mandates and all other restrictions that were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator ROBERTS: I must compliment you here and express my appreciation and admiration for your stand on being so clear on the Voice and on misinformation and disinformation. I also want to thank everyone for being here tonight so I could do that. Are you aware of the evidence from the Secretary of the Department of Health and Aged Care, Professor Brendan Murphy, at the previous estimates in regard to COVID mandates?

Ms Finlay: In a general sense.

Senator ROBERTS: On 1 June, Professor Brendan Murphy said – at this stage in the pandemic there is little justification for vaccine mandates. That is the most senior health bureaucrat in the country who said that. There doesn’t seem to be any updated guidance from the commission on vaccine mandates despite the fact they are still in effect at employers and are clearly a breach of human rights that’s not proportionate to any supposed benefit. Why haven’t you come out clearly on this issue?

Ms Finlay: I would answer that in two respects. The first is that the guidance in terms of the general human rights principles remains the same. We are not medical experts. I think we discussed that at the previous estimates. Our advice is based on those general human rights principles where in emergency situations governments can restrict human rights but those restrictions need to be proportionate, nondiscriminatory and targeted to risk. So the advice remains the same because of the general principles of international human rights law that we rely on in informing our views about these things and those don’t change.

Senator ROBERTS: So you as a commission essentially follow blindly? The Chief Medical Officer advised me in March 2021 that the severity of COVID was low to moderate, not severe. So it was not a crisis.

Ms Finlay: No, our advice doesn’t follow blindly. Again, I would refer back to the evidence we gave previously and note that, for example, the most recent TGA advice in relation to their vaccination safety report
repeated the same advice that we discussed at the previous estimates in terms of the benefits of the vaccination outweighing the risks. It’s on the basis of that that the general principles of human rights law then apply.

Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate that you probably haven’t got any latitude to investigate, but the TGA told me at Senate estimates in February, I think, that they did not test the injections. They relied on the FDA in
America, which did not test injections. It relied on Pfizer, which shut down the trial because of the horrendous results.

Ms Finlay: I can’t provide any information on that—

Senator ROBERTS: No, I wasn’t expecting that. I’m just—

Ms Finlay: but I would refer to the second aspect of the answer that I was meaning to get to, which is that we welcome the opportunity for these issues to be explored at the COVID-19 inquiry that’s been announced. Certainly we have made public comments in relation to that inquiry about the need to not only look at the economic and scientific impacts of advice that was given throughout the pandemic but at the human cost of the
pandemic as well.

Senator ROBERTS: That’s refreshing to hear. Thank you.

/6 Comments/by

Scaremongers Calling for MASKS Again in Queensland

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

This isn’t about health, it’s about fear. That is all that masks are useful for.

Will any government want to explain to Australia why we’re apparently on the 8th wave when the 6th booster is available?

/18 Comments/by

Royal Commission ‘Terms of Reference’ Motion Passes the Senate!

Since July 2020, I’ve been speaking about the fear, the oppression and the inhuman cruelty of our COVID response. Each of the measures in the COVID response was designed to add to the fear and anguish to keep the population scared and compliant, with measures that contradicted the government’s own rule book that had just been updated in 2019.

Developed over many years of successes and failures, this document clearly had arrived at the right way to handle COVID. It’s called the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza. Why was this Australian-made policies and procedures manual thrown out for a foreign military-style countermeasures response that involved national cabinet, secret contracts, clandestine meetings and authoritarian decision making?

No wonder the government is exempting itself and the mainstream media from its own misinformation and disinformation bill.

I promised to hound down those responsible and I will be relentless in keeping that promise. An inquiry must look at what we knew about the risk to human life at each stage of our response and compare that risk to the benefit achieved from the Commonwealth response to that risk.

The Chair of the L&CA References Committee spoke well and said he would welcome the task.

One Nation does not accept that the “toothless” inquiry the Prime Minister announced is in any way fit for purpose. If now is the appropriate time for the PM to call his inquiry into COVID, then surely now is also time for a Royal Commission.

Appointing COVID insiders, who championed the COVID response, to conduct an inquiry into themselves and their mates is a travesty of justice. We can’t ignore our sworn duty as the House of Review any longer and asked the Senate to start the process by passing this Motion.

Once the Terms of Reference are sorted, then the people of Australia will have an opportunity to use their voices to shape a Royal Commission.

Should the PM choose to defy the will of the Senate, the option of a Senate Select Inquiry is available to the Senate, which has similar powers to a Royal Commission and with the added benefits of a faster turnaround, lower costs and greater accountability.

Transcript

I move:

That, noting that a fully empowered Royal Commission with appropriate terms of reference is necessary to learn from the unprecedented government response to COVID-19, the following matter be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References committee for inquiry and report by 31 March 2024: 

The appropriate terms of reference for a COVID-19 Royal Commission that would allow all affected stakeholders to be heard. 

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I speak in favour of this motion. One Nation’s motion seeks to arrive at a fair terms of reference for a royal commission into the Commonwealth response to SARS-CoV-2. Those terms of reference could alternatively inform a Senate select committee of inquiry. 

COVID resulted in the largest health response in Australian history. I put this motion forward as an invitation to all senators in this place, from all parties. Every single senator has heard from a stakeholder that the COVID response affected. This inquiry would ensure that none of those voices are missed by future terms of reference for a COVID royal commission. To be clear, the inquiry this motion seeks would not pass judgement on the COVID response. Its scope is simply to hear submissions from stakeholders to ensure that a future royal commission has properly informed terms of reference so that stakeholders will have an opportunity to have a say at such a commission. 

Death, injury and suffering have been caused not just from the virus but from our response to the virus. Only a royal commission will sort out how much harm the virus did and how much harm we did to ourselves—and there was a hell of a lot of harm. Firstly, this harm was caused through the use of politicised fear. COVID has taken an unknown number of lives during the four years the virus has been present in Australia. I say ‘unknown’ because the number of people who actually died from COVID as opposed to dying with COVID is unknown. Knowingly increasing the death count to dial up the fear simply to ensure compliance with health directives appears to have been deliberate government policy at state and federal level. We treated people as though they were not human beings—rather, a problem to be managed. 

Government did not manage the virus. Government managed us. They controlled us, the people. An inquiry must go back and look at what we knew about the risk to human life at each stage of our response and compare that risk to the benefit achieved from the Commonwealth response to that risk. From that process, we can create rules to guide our response to the next such event—fairer rules that dignify and sanctify human life. The anguish we felt was not just fear of the virus; it was fear of the governments. The public never knew what the governments were going to do next, let alone why. There was no excuse for that. 

If we do actually have a handbook to be followed in a case like this, it’s called the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza. This document was last updated in August 2019, just before COVID, and was produced as a result of consultation with the states and territories. What happened to this? Let’s see what’s in it: 

The Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza (AHMPPI), the national government health sector pandemic influenza plan, outlines the agreed arrangements between the Australian Government and State and Territory Governments for the management of an influenza pandemic. To support an integrated and coordinated response … 

I would have thought that that seems to fit the bill exactly. In 2009 the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza was used to guide Australia’s response to H1N1 flu—swine flu. 

Next I’ll quote this from that document: 

The key factors in this plan’s approach include: 

  • The use of existing systems and governance mechanisms as the basis of the response … 

There is no national cabinet, no secret decisions and no new body—with no rules or structure—that uses secret data that the public still cannot see. I’m starting to see why the government put this in the bin. I quote again: 

  • incorporation of an analysis of risks and benefits— 

Oh wait; there it is, a risk-benefit analysis; what a marvellous idea— 

… to support evidence-based decision making … 

Evidence based decision-making—wouldn’t that have been nice these last four years? We had this rule book in 2019, developed over many years of successes and failures, which clearly arrived at the right way to handle COVID. Why didn’t we use it? Now, that is a question for a royal commission. 

Secondly, harm was created as a result of making decisions on the optics, not the data, in direct contravention of the government’s own handbook. From page 11, under ‘Proportionate response’: 

In the past all pandemic planning was aimed at responding to a worst case scenario, similar to the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. The 2009 pandemic showed clearly the need for the flexibility to scale the response to be proportionate to the risk associated with the current disease.  

Our response was supposed to be set to the actual harm that was occurring, not the fears around the worst-case scenario, which, as it turned out, never occurred. Around the middle of 2020, it should have been clear to our health officials and to this parliament, as it was to me, that the scary videos of COVID deaths coming out of China were not representative of the strain of COVID active in Australia at the time or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Even worse, information came out at the time suggesting those videos were possibly faked, a suspicion confirmed in 2022, when some of the producers of the videos posted behind-the-scenes videos and photos of their work to social media. And yet this is what we set our response to—the fear, not the reality. 

No attempt appears to have been made to determine just how dangerous Australian COVID really was. That was another of many direct contraventions of the rule book. Instead, the government leveraged dodgy Chinese videos to ramp up the fear. When that didn’t convince the public, the states started making their own fake propaganda videos, portraying the worst-case scenario, here in this country, something they had agreed not to do the year before. When people took to the streets to protest the measures being taken, the government responded with yet more fear. Then came the military and the police. We have all seen those videos of elderly Australians being tasered, shoved to the floor, knocked out, and a pregnant mother arrested in her own home for sharing information about a protest. We have seen protesters being shot with rubber bullets and hunted down in parks, and the Premier gloating. Each of these measures was designed to add to the fear and anguish, to keep the population scared and compliant, with measures that contradicted the government’s own rule book. No wonder the government is exempting itself and the mainstream media from its own misinformation and disinformation bill. Using any measure, the COVID fear campaign would have been struck down under that legislation and the government left to argue their case based on data, as the government were required to do but they didn’t. 

Thirdly, harm was caused economically—severe harm, right across the country. The Commonwealth COVID response was the most expensive federal government line item since World War II. Taxpayers have been left with a bill in excess of $600 billion, a bill that keeps going up with every interest payment on the money we borrowed to pay for our response. Not all the money was borrowed, though. The Reserve Bank printed a large amount, or, as the Reserve Bank prefers to say in answer to questioning from me, it created money out of thin air using an electronic journal entry. That money printing is a direct cause of the inflation and cost-of-living crisis Australia now faces. Lives were destroyed as a result of our economic mismanagement during COVID. Businesses were closed. Personal wealth was taken from everyday Australians and handed to the predatory billionaires who were behind every COVID curtain. Worldwide, $4 trillion has been redistributed from everyday citizens to predatory billionaires, and this figure continues to rise. 

Fourthly, marriages and families were destroyed. Children had stability, love and support taken away from them. Elderly people were left alone to die. All the while, troops were on the streets enforcing lockdowns that were unprecedented in the history of our beautiful country, as part of an international American, British, Canadian, Australian COVID defence countermeasures consortium. A royal commission must determine if the cruelty was justified. An inquiry must look at the medical decisions taken. It will not be easy to peel back the layers of medical disinformation coming from university academics and research scientists that have a track record of saying whatever they are paid to say. There were so many alternatives to the pharmaceutical response our secretive National Cabinet decided upon. Why were these banned, ignored or ridiculed? What went on behind this veil of secrecy to pursue untested, fake vaccines above all else and the secrecy around big pharma’s unproven antivirals like remdesivir, or, as it’s known after killing many people here and overseas, ‘Run, death is near’. Turning to the injections themselves, I don’t call these injectables vaccines because they do not comply with the definition of vaccine in use before COVID. The fact that the definition of vaccine was changed to make room for these dangerous injections should have been a red flag to everyone. A vaccine is supposed to prevent you getting the disease and prevent you transmitting the disease. It should provide long-term protection such that even if someone does get the virus, the body fights it straight off. None of that is true with the COVID injection. These fake vaccines do not prevent people from getting COVID and do not prevent people from spreading COVID. They cripple immune systems, making people more susceptible to future infections. Any protection from severe symptoms is for such a short period of time that it’s nothing more than a substandard treatment, a treatment that has caused more harm than good.  

This is not my opinion. It is among the findings of a landmark, published, peer-reviewed Cleveland study that found that every dose of the COVID jabs administered to the sample of 50,000 health employees made them more likely to get COVID. A separate re-examination of the Pfizer stage 2-3 clinical trial data that took 18 months, peer-reviewed and published by the Brighton Collaboration, found that the Pfizer vaccine was associated with a 14 per cent worse health outcome than the unvaccinated control trial. If the TGA was doing it job, these injections should never have been approved.  

The bad news about our medical response to COVID keeps coming. Only last month a panel of international scientists revealed that the COVID-19 mRNA injections are contaminated with plasma DNA from the manufacturing process. This can cause inflammation of organs and it can cause cancer. Last week I was sent a mainstream television piece which talked about turbo cancers being at record high levels. Medical researchers and doctors interviewed were apparently baffled about the cause. Let me help those researchers out. Here we have a substance that is contaminated through bacterial plasmas known to cause cancer, is full of spike proteins that are a whole class of medication which have not been studied for adverse health effects, and contain a substance called SV40 that directly inhibits our body’s resistance to cancer. The injection studied in the clinical trials was not the same product that was used in Australia. That has killed 14 people here and is suspected in a thousand more, and doctors have reported a thousand more deaths. Post-mortem data shows a direct link between the injections and turbo cancer, while at the same time Australia has had 30,000 excess deaths in the last year directly correlated and traced under much scrutiny to the COVID injections. New turbo cancers are at record levels. Australians whose have been in cancer remission for years have suddenly seen their cancer return. Despite the facts now coming out, doctors say they are baffled. The one person more than any other that must be referred to a royal commission is Dr Baffled.  

Finally, One Nation does not accept that the quickie COVID cover-up that the Prime Minister announced is in any way fit for purpose. It’s not. Asking these commissioners, three COVID insiders, who championed our health response, to conduct an inquiry into themselves and their mates is a travesty of justice that has been roundly condemned right across the Senate. None of us know the guarantees that Prime Minister Albanese gave pharmaceutical salesman and World Health Organization sugar daddy Bill Gates at their meeting in Admiralty House last year and early this year. Surely the need to cover up the evil committed in the name of health was discussed. Did Prime Minister Albanese agree to do just that?  

I’ve been speaking about the fear, the oppression and the inhumane cruelty of our COVID response since July 2020. I promised to hound down those responsible, and I will continue relentlessly to keep that promise. If now is the time for the Prime Minister to call his COVID cover-up, then now must surely be the time for a royal commission. We can’t ignore our sworn duty as the house of review any longer. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation, and the whole nation wants answers, or we will never heal and, worse, we may well go through all of this again. I ask the Senate to start the process today, pass this motion and let’s get the terms of reference sorted. 

/6 Comments/by