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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. 

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?

The Senate inquiry to draft terms of reference for a future COVID Royal Commission is having its first public hearing today (Thursday, 1 February 2024) in Canberra.

This committee will report on what the appropriate terms of reference will be to give all Australians a say and have a fully empowered Royal Commission into the COVID mismanagement.

Panel at Inquiry

  • Institute of Public Affairs (Submission No. 14)
  • Australian Institute for Progress (Submission No. 39)
  • Redfern Legal Centre (Submission No. 9)
  • Australian Human Rights Commission (Submission No. 18)
  • Civil Liberties Australia (Submission No. 13)
  • People’s Terms of Reference (Submission No. 45)
  • Nurses Professional Association of Queensland (Submission No. 46)
  • Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Federal Office) (Submission No. 46)
  • The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Ltd (Submission No. 41)
  • Suicide Prevention Australia (Submission 21)
  • COVERSE (Submission 34)

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?

With the origin of COVID now known to be the result of gain-of-function research, funded by the United States through Anthony Fauci’s NIH and conducted in Wuhan China to escape regulatory barriers, it’s even more important that Australians have input into the Terms of Reference for a COVID Royal Commission.

If any member of the public, medical profession, whistle-blower or other interested party wishes to make a submission I urge them to have their say to the committee via this link:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/COVID19RC47

With Moderna setting up mRNA vaccine production in Australia, it is concerning that both the Morrison and Albanese governments have provided 16 vaccine indemnities since the COVID outbreak. That means the bill to compensate those who are harmed by these products falls on taxpayers, not the pharmaceutical industry that rolled out their products with indecent speed.

There are 400 new mRNA vaccines under development to replace the off-patent conventional vaccines. Responsibility for harm from these products must rest with the makers, not the public.

The emerging pattern of adverse events and deaths correlating with the COVID injections is overwhelming. It must be objectively examined and not simply dismissed. There is no reason why these COVID injections should not be given proper scrutiny in the same way we scrutinize health effects from lockdowns, economic hardship, inadequate healthcare provision or even inappropriate treatments for the virus. Is there? What is in the Pfizer contracts that we should know about?

Transcript

As a servant to the many and varied people who make up our one Queensland community, I would like to update my constituents on the committee inquiry One Nation secured looking into terms of reference for a royal commission into SARS COVID-19. The committee has set 12 January 2024 as the deadline for submissions. If any member of the public, medical profession, commercial entity or interested party wishes to, they can make a submission. It can be confidential if you want. I’ll post a link on my social media and on my website, and I urge whistleblowers, senior medical practitioners and academics to have their say. I’ve received many suggestions for terms of reference and, firstly, can I say: please tell the committee. That’s the process. 

Let me talk about the terms of reference. Firstly, the origin of COVID. An article in today’s Australian by Sharri Markson sets out proof—and I do mean proof—that COVID was engineered as a result of gain-of-function research funded through America’s National Institutes of Health and its former director Anthony Fauci. The research was conducted in China because it was out of reach of America’s regulations, and it was cheaper. Gain-of-function research is supposedly so that health authorities can create new viruses and then an antidote or a vaccine so that if nature supposedly produces that virus, there will be a vaccine ready to go. 

Secondly, vaccine indemnity. I spoke this week about a little-known fact: Australia has provided 16 vaccine indemnities in recent years. Now, an indemnity doesn’t prevent a person who has been harmed from suing, it just means any damages are paid with taxpayer money and not big pharma money. Pharmaceutical companies keep the profits and taxpayers pay for the damages. Even more troubling, the Albanese Labor government has provided Moderna with a blanket immunity for every vaccine they make in the new Australian factory. There are 400 mRNA vaccines under development. Not all will be made in this plant, yet many will be. The Morrison and Albanese governments are normalising vaccine indemnity. I want to know why. The terms of our contract with Pfizer must be examined, as we were still signing hidden purchase contracts as recently as last month. 

Surely this pattern of adverse events and deaths tracking injections upward and downward proves causation of vaccine deaths by their tens of thousands. The science is now overwhelming. This can’t be ignored and must be investigated. (Time expired) 

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.

The Labor government has done everything it can to avoid the scrutiny of a Royal Commission into COVID despite promising a Royal Commission on several occasions. Instead, PM Albanese has announced an inquiry that is guaranteed to be a whitewash to try an appease the Australian public who have been waiting for the Royal Commission.

I asked the minister why the government is afraid of a Royal Commission. Her answer was instead directed at the inhouse inquiry which is essentially three insiders investigating their mates. This is a travesty after the suffering, disruption and death that the COVID years brought to Australia.

This inquiry is a cover-up. Australians deserve a Royal Commission to bring the truth to light and prevent the same mistakes from happening again.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Minister, why do you fear a COVID royal commission, and is your support for the Chief Medical Officer and the TGA unequivocal?

Senator Gallagher: In relation to the second part, yes, absolutely. In relation to the first part, there is nothing to fear about the COVID inquiry.

Senator ROBERTS: There certainly isn’t.

Senator Gallagher: Hopefully genuine learnings will come out of it and we’ll all be better prepared for the next time we have a pandemic like that.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister.

Principal Medical Officer at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has been absent during our previous senate estimates sessions despite my requests for her presence.

I asked her questions about her other roles and responsibilities, including her role as supervising GP and her other board positions. I also asked about her knowledge of pilot adverse events and what research underpins her position that such adverse events as myocarditis are predominantly caused by the COVID infection rather than the COVID injections.

It’s been a long wait to ask these questions of Dr Manderson and her staff appeared anxious to shield her from my line of inquiry. What do they have to hide?

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. 

At the June Senate Estimates I asked several questions of the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA).

I asked what the TGA was doing to help Australians access a potential new antibacterial to overcome antimicrobial resistance, medicinal cannabis, and off-label Ivermectin. What this trio of medicines has in common is that they are not profitable for pharma because, in the case of the first two, they cannot be patented and patents are how pharma makes its $billions.

Ivermectin is an award-winning drug with a huge body of evidence supporting both its anti-parasitic and anti-viral activity. Because it’s been around for over 70 years, is off-patent and inexpensive, there is little interest from pharma in sponsoring the drug. See how it works? These medications should not be left behind because of pharmaceutical company profit margins.

From the answers provided by the TGA, it’s clear that health products that don’t add to the wealth of pharmaceutical companies have no chance of approval under this Government. The TGA should be acting in the best interests of the Australian people, not the profit margins of big pharma.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Given the backflip, Mr Fletcher, by the TGA that now allows the prescribing of ivermectin, which can be used off label as treatment for COVID—the TGA makes it clear that it does not endorse
it as a treatment but now allows it as a treatment for COVID—what is the attitude of Ahpra towards those doctors now who were cast aside because they supported ivermectin?

Mr Fletcher: Any regulatory action we have taken or would take in relation to a health practitioner would always take account of the public health advice at the time that the alleged concern occurred.

Senator Roberts: The public advice was wrong.

Mr Fletcher: It would be on the basis of the advice that was in place at the time.

Senator Roberts: Isn’t it strange that ivermectin started off as a highly regarded, very safe drug, given in four billion doses around the world, and then we were told that it was a dangerous drug, and now it’s remarkably safe again with a worldwide profile of being a safe treatment for COVID-19?

Prof. Murphy: Senator, I do have to intervene. There is no change. There is no recommendation that ivermectin be used for COVID. The regulatory changes—

Senator Roberts: I didn’t say that. I said to the contrary. I said the TGA does not endorse them.

Prof. Murphy: No, it’s not—

Senator Roberts: I did not say that there was an endorsement.

Prof. Murphy: No, there isn’t an endorsement. But the change in the regulation has nothing to do with any change in its efficacy or otherwise for COVID simply to reflect the changing circumstances and there’s no need to keep what’s a very unusual restriction on a drug. The TGA as decided it’s no longer proportionate, but there’s still no evidence of any value.

Senator Roberts: So what changed with the TGA?

Prof. Murphy: What changed with the TGA? We’ll get the TGA to address that.

Senator Gallagher: They’re due this evening.

Senator Roberts: Okay. Ahpra never did its own research on the COVID injections and relied on what it was told by the TGA. You said that a little while ago. The TGA never did its own research. In answering a
question that I put to them at the last estimates it relied instead on what it was told by the FDA. It has never assessed the patient-level data.

Prof. Murphy: This is not a question for Ahpra.

Senator Roberts: I’m getting to that.

Chair: Senator Roberts, could you put it as a question?

Senator Roberts: Are you aware that the TGA, which you rely on, has never assessed the patient-level data.

Mr Fletcher: As I said earlier, the sources of public health advice to us are the TGA, ATAGI and the public health officials in each state and territory and the Commonwealth health department.

Senator Roberts: Are you aware that the TGA relied on the FDA and that the FDA itself, in America, never did its own research and relied simply on what Pfizer told it? According to its own records, Pfizer only ever
did limited research and knew the vaccines injections were of limited value and had a significant risk profile. Pfizer lied when it said the vaccines were safe and effective, and Ahpra peddled this lie. You enforced that lie.

Chair: Senator Roberts, this is not a question. It’s very hard for me to maintain order if you don’t put questions.

Senator Roberts: Are you aware of the facts that I’ve just said about Pfizer? Are you aware of those facts?

Prof. Murphy: These are questions for the TGA. It’s not a question for Ahpra.

Senator Roberts: I want to know is he aware of what the TGA based their decision on?

Chair: Senator, if officials at the table indicate that this is not the appropriate place within the program to ask a question, we do need to respect that. My understanding of what Professor Murphy has said is that there is a time for these questions, and that is when we return to the TGA.

Senator Roberts: Thank you, Chair. I notice your silence. Why isn’t Ahpra aware of the false, fraudulent science underpinning the use of the vaccine?

Senator Gallagher: We don’t agree with that.

Senator Roberts: Thank you for answering, Minister. Why does Ahpra still support the use of the injections now that there is a body of respected, peer-reviewed science condemning the use of the so-called
vaccines? Is it because the TGA—

Senator Gallagher: It’s not a matter for Ahpra.

Senator Roberts: How can so many deaths and serious injuries attributed to the vaccines continue to be ignored by Ahpra?

Prof. Murphy: Again, that is not a matter for Ahpra.

Senator Roberts: Ahpra are silent, okay.

Senator Gallagher: It’s not ‘silent’. It’s not a matter they have responsibility for. Witnesses come here to answer questions on areas they have responsibility for.

Senator Roberts: You’ve just taken responsibility for their response. That’s fine. Given that Ahpra—

Chair: Senator Roberts, we have dealt with this issue over the last few days. It is appropriate for the minister to respond to our questions put to the witnesses if that question is not put in the correct place or is not
within that purview. It’s appropriate for Senator Gallagher to respond. Do you have another question, Senator Roberts?

Senator Roberts: Given that Ahpra is a board, I would suggest that board members are jointly responsible for the outcomes of their directions to health practitioners which now include the countless death and serious
injuries that have befallen many otherwise healthy people who took the injections believing they were safe and effective, when they were not. Are you aware that board members will be culpable?

Senator Gallagher: They will not. It’s not their—

Senator Roberts: Can you give me the qualifications of every board member—their medical qualifications?

Senator Gallagher: I reject your assertions. I just want to be very clear. I’m not going to speak for everyone, but my position here is that we do not agree with the assertions you are continuously putting in this hearing.

Senator Roberts: That’s fine, Minister. I hear you. The board members—can you give me their qualifications, Mr Fletcher?

Prof. Murphy: The Ahpra board is a board that regulates the operations of the agency. The decisions around registration standards are made by the national boards, like the Medical Board, which is comprised of community and qualified practitioners. The board of Ahpra is simply a governance board of the bureaucratic operations of Ahpra. The decisions—

Senator Roberts: A governance board?

Prof. Murphy: It does not govern the regulatory decisions. Those decisions are made by the relevant professional national boards, as Mr Fletcher has pointed out on many occasions.

Senator Roberts: State bodies?

Prof. Murphy: National boards. There’s a national Medical Board, a national nursing board—

Senator Roberts: So why do we need Ahpra? They’re not accountable.

Prof. Murphy: Ahpra is the organisation that brings the work of those boards and sets up a national regulation system to enable practitioners to be regulated across the country. It is a means of bringing them together. This is professional registration, so each of those boards—

Senator Roberts: And deregistration. I’d like the qualifications, Mr Fletcher, on notice, of your board members, their qualifications in medicine, specifically what qualifications they have, and I’d like to know who
appointed them. Can you take that on notice?

Prof. Murphy: It’s on the website.

Senator Gallagher: It is on the website, look it up. In relation to profession-specific, as Professor Murphy said, there is the Medical Board, which has representatives; there’s nursing; there’s a whole range of them. They used to be the state and territory boards; they came together to be national boards. They would have different representatives.

Senator Roberts: Can you tell me who appointed each of the members?

Mr Fletcher: The national board members are appointed by state, territory and Commonwealth health ministers.

Senator Roberts: And Ahpra?

Mr Fletcher: The Ahpra board is also appointed by state and territory health ministers and the Commonwealth health minister.

Chair: Thank you very much, Ahpra. We appreciate your favourable response to our request to join us at Senate estimates.