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.
I tabled a graph based on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which shows a significant spike in excess deaths. This significant increase in 2021 and a further spike in 2022 are unexplained. The graph excludes respiratory diseases and COVID, which takes out the ‘COVID confusion’ and allows us to look at other factors, such as heart disease, strokes and organ failure. The Chief Medical Officer has a primary responsibility to keep Australians healthy (and alive). He must be called on to explain why 10,000 Australians more than average have died from causes that were not COVID related.
The spike in deaths correlates to the rollout of the COVID jabs. CMO Kelly testified the jabs were not the cause, but offered no explanation of what the alternative cause could be.
They don’t have any answers for us and that is simply not acceptable. I promised to hound down those responsible for our COVID catastrophe and I will keep that promise.
The principle of Occam’s Razor, whereby the most obvious explanation is the most likely, is being deliberately ignored by agencies and advisors to the government who are reliant on the flow of funding from the companies that made these jabs. Is it any wonder there is a flat out refusal to confront the truth of what is becoming a scandal of the century?
It’s time Dr Baffled was referred to a Royal Commission.
Senator ROBERTS: I need to get through all my TGA questions.
CHAIR: I will endeavour to move to five-minute blocks to assist the committee progress. We will go as quickly as we can.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here. My questions are to the TGA. I would like to table these graphs.
CHAIR: We’ll consider them, Senator Roberts. We’ll distribute them. I am happy for this to be circulated to officials, but the decision on tabling will have to wait, Senator Roberts, until we have a source for the document. I don’t want to—
Senator ROBERTS: The Australian Bureau of Statistics.
CHAIR: I just need a link so we can verify the information. We’ve had issues today already with the content tabled. It can be circulated for officials to consider as part of your conversation, but it won’t go on the website until we’ve had time to consider it.
Senator ROBERTS: Sure. This is a graph of all causes of mortality in Australia over the last 10 years, with respiratory and COVID removed to focus on all other causes of death graphed as a percentage of the population. The source is the recently released ABS, or Australian Bureau of Statistics, Causes of death report, which added 2022 data. You’ll also note that the COVID measures themselves in 2020 did not have a noticeable impact on deaths, meaning there was something else in play here. You can see that the deaths bounced around the FRP, which is typical, of natural variation around 0.59 per cent deaths each year. In 2022, it shot up. That is clearly significant. What is more, the provisional deaths are still not included in the 2022 deaths. According to the Bureau of Statistics in Senate estimates last time, I think, they said that those deaths are 15 per cent below where they will end up once the coroner’s investigations are completed. That peak that you see there is clearly significant. It is going to be higher. That’s 10,000 deaths per annum unexplained and another 5,000 to 10,000 once the provisional deaths are changed with the autopsy included. This is about half to two-thirds of all casualties in World War II. If this is not cause—
Senator URQUHART: We traversed this morning. I think Senator Rennick asked similar questions this morning when you weren’t in here. I’m not sure whether they are the same and we’re going over the same ground.
Senator ROBERTS: No. I also have papers here that are available online by statistician Wilson Sy. There is a statistical evaluation of COVID-19 injections for safety and effectiveness in the New South Wales epidemic. There is also an evaluation entitled ‘Australian COVID-19 pandemic: A Bradford Hill analysis of iatrogenic excess mortality’. He provides many graphs that clearly show correlation up and down with the injections. If this excess death in 2022 is not caused by the COVID injections, what the hell is the cause?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, please try to keep your language parliamentary.
Senator ROBERTS: At the moment, it is 10,000. It will be 15,000 to 20,000 once the coroner’s report has come in. I will not leave this estimates session without an answer as to why so many people are dying all of a sudden.
Prof. Kelly: I might start, Senator. Thank you for your question. I would point out that we have provided multiple answers to these similar questions over the last few months in questions on notice. It was actually, in fact, very closely related to questions that came from Senator Rennick this morning. Your question really goes to excess deaths and the reason we are having excess deaths in Australia in the past couple of years. I will pass to my colleague Dr Phillip Gould for an explanation briefly.
Dr Gould: Senator Roberts, the statistic that you refer to around a 15 per cent underreporting of deaths in the ABS statistics is incorrect. The ABS has advised that since 2022 they’ve actually updated the way they report on deaths. That 15 per cent that was quoted to you—I understand it was quoted to you—was based on deaths which the coroner would not have included in the ABS statistics. In the data you are referring to, that has been amended.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for that. I didn’t know about that. I was going on what the ABS told me. That’s still a huge spike. It’s clearly significant.
Dr Gould: On that point of fact, that 15 per cent is not correct.
Senator ROBERTS: That is a huge spike. No-one has told us what is causing it.
Prof. Kelly: We did talk about it this morning. The perception you’re trying to put forward is that because there was vaccination at that time and there is excess death, that is not—
Senator ROBERTS: I’m not putting forward a perception. All I’m saying is that is statistically significant. It is a huge increase in deaths. I’d like to know the cause.
Prof. Kelly: And we don’t dispute that, Senator. I take the point that you are trying to make that there is some relationship between that graph you’ve got there and the temporal association with vaccines. We do not accept that as a premise. What we did talk about earlier today is a peer reviewed paper that has now been published that I mentioned at the last estimates. It clearly demonstrates there’s no link between the vaccines and all-cause mortality and that there is an extremely strong link between protection from COVID related mortality from vaccination. That is going back to the issue earlier of it being effective. It clearly is effective. It is not associated with this increase in mortality. There has been an increase in mortality; we don’t dispute that. You’ve removed respiratory mortality from this. It is an even more spectacular rise when you include that. In 2022 in particular, there was an increase in excess mortality respiratory related.
Senator ROBERTS: Respiratory diseases have been removed because of COVID. We know that all of the respiratory diseases have been removed. This is something other than COVID.
Prof. Kelly: Well, it may actually still be related to COVID, but it is not a respiratory disease. If we take into account that it goes to 2022. In this year, the testing for COVID has decreased, so there will be undiagnosed COVID out there in the community, which may be associated with longer term issues, in which case—
Senator ROBERTS: Which tells me that you don’t see it as a threat. Otherwise you would still be testing.
Prof. Kelly: It’s still a serious disease. We know that there are some long-term effects. Many other countries in the world have seen cardiovascular death, for example, related to COVID. We haven’t seen that as much here in Australia. There are many of those other causes that Dr Gould went into earlier that have been potentially associated with long-term effects of COVID.
Senator ROBERTS: I will move on. Wilson Sy’s paper, by the way, shows clear up and down close correlation. I’m happy to give you the references to them later, if you want.
Many doctors have been targeted or notified by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (AHPRA) simply for questioning the COVID injections.
These injections have since been found to be unsafe, not effective, and testing was inadequate. Doctors were targeted by AHPRA simply for fulfilling their professional duty by proactively warning of risks and providing information in reaction to questions from their patients. In providing patients with the advice and information required to give informed consent, health practitioners were providing a standard of care that is universally accepted as competent. Is political interference acceptable?
When questioning AHPRA recently, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) jumped in and said they do not accept any of my three statements. The government still maintains, in the face of overwhelming international evidence, that the vaccines are safe, effective and that they work. During Senate Estimate in February, I asked Professor Skerritt for details about the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) testing of the COVID injections in Australia. He responded that they did no testing here. He said the TGA relied on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In turn, the FDA have stated they did no testing. Why? Because they relied on Pfizer’s in-house tests, yet Pfizer’s trials were shut down because of the poor results.
There have been strong criticisms of their methods and falsified results. The post marketing release of papers exposes both the flaws and the risks of these mRNA injections. If health practitioners are choosing to practice their duty of care as professionals in providing the advice that allows their patients to make an informed choice around the medicines they take, then this should be celebrated. Any health authority or regulatory body that vilifies or punishes this standard of care is acting only on behalf of pharmaceutical interests and not in the best interests of patients or the healthcare profession.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here. Ahpra has made many unjustifiable decisions against doctors and other allied health professionals. Many doctors have told us this. What proportion of Ahpra members are practising doctors? Why is there such a lack of medical input into Ahpra’s investigations of doctors?
Mr Fletcher: Thank you, Senator. There are about 130,000 registered medical practitioners in Australia. I can give you the exact number on notice. It is roughly that figure. The regulation of medical practitioners in Australia is overseen by the Medical Board of Australia. That board has two-thirds medical practitioner members and one-third community members and is chaired by a medical practitioner.
Senator ROBERTS: Many doctors in Australia were suspended for commenting on COVID vaccinations. Many of the concerns expressed have now been shown to be evidence-based. Can you please explain Ahpra’s actions which deprived Australia of valuable medical manpower at a key juncture when doctors were sorely needed?
Mr Fletcher: I think we have previously advised the committee that there were, in fact, 31 practitioners suspended associated with concerns in relation to COVID-19 and the pandemic. There has been no further use of our IA, or immediate action, powers or suspensions since we last met with the committee. There are 15 practitioners who are currently suspended. In nine of those cases, there is an investigation ongoing. In six of those cases, a referral has been made to the tribunal. We make a referral to the tribunal—it is the independent tribunal in each state and territory—where there is a concern about possible professional misconduct. Those tribunal matters are either at a hearing stage or awaiting an outcome. That’s the current status of practitioners who have been suspended. Of the ones who are no longer suspended, there have been two where we’ve completed tribunal proceedings and the tribunal has taken action. In other words, it has upheld the view that there was a finding that required action on the part of the tribunal. Six of those practitioners have either surrendered their registration or moved to a form of non-practising registration. We’ve closed those matters on the basis that there wasn’t a public interest in continuing to pursue those matters. One has surrendered, awaiting a tribunal outcome. Five have had their suspension lifted. Another restriction was imposed by a board. That might be a condition on their registration or an undertaking that they’ve agreed to accept in relation to certain requirements on their registration around additional education, training or supervision.
Senator ROBERTS: Are we able to get the details of those cases on notice?
Mr Fletcher: I can certainly provide that data to you, yes. We need to be careful not to identify individuals. We can certainly give you some of the general themes in relation to the actions we’ve taken.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, please. I know a number of doctors who have said, ‘To hell with it’, and they’ve left medicine. They are very good doctors. That is because of the way Ahpra has chased them. Ahpra has been reported as having targeted 20 of the 60 addiction medicine physicians in Victoria. It also targeted a leading addiction medicine physician in Queensland. The Queensland doctor’s and the Victorian doctor’s stories were covered in the press. In both cases, they were reinstated. Why was that? Please explain this vendetta against addiction physicians across the country. How can Ahpra suddenly forget their case against community minded doctors who are supported by the media?
Mr Fletcher: Senator, I can’t agree with the opening statement in your question. We don’t target medical practitioners. We don’t target any registered health practitioner. We respond to—
Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me. A lot of doctors think you do. A lot of doctors.
Mr Fletcher: Well, they are wrong to think that. We don’t target practitioners. What we do is respond to concerns that are raised with us, often by members of the public, sometimes by employers and sometimes by other practitioners. We assess each of those in the context of the concern that has been raised and the context of that person’s practice. If there is a concern that we have about a potential future risk for patient safety, that’s when a board would take regulatory action. So we don’t target practitioners. We certainly don’t have a campaign against particular areas of medical or clinical practice.
Senator ROBERTS: So how is it that some doctors have been targeted by Ahpra or notified by Ahpra simply for questioning the COVID injections, which have since been found to be unsafe and not effective and were never tested? Why is it that those doctors have been questioned by Ahpra simply for giving informed information and asking patients to give informed consent?
Prof. Kelly: Before Mr Fletcher answers, we don’t accept—
Senator Gallagher: We don’t accept that proposition.
Prof. Kelly: any of those or all of those three statements. The vaccines are safe.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, let’s have a look at the one they tested.
Prof. Kelly: They are effective—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you need to let the officials answer.
Prof. Kelly: and they do work.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s have a look at the one they’re testing. I asked Professor Skerritt, and he said, ‘No, they did no testing here.’ That was in February Senate estimates. He said they relied on the FDA. The FDA said they did no testing. They relied on Pfizer. Pfizer shut down its trials because of the poor results. They’ve been heavily criticised. Where is your testing of the COVID injections?
Prof. Kelly: There was a full regulatory assessment, Senator. Our colleagues from the TGA, when you get to ask them, will assure us of that. They were safe, they were tested and they were effective.
I raised some concerns — matters that I was asking about for the first time — with the Human Rights Commission on the topic of the Voice referendum. Commissioner Finlay of the Human Rights Commission made several statements criticising the Voice and raising potential human rights implications. You’ll see in this video that Professor Croucher is unwilling to revisit any line of questioning she has answered to other senators in previous estimates.
Despite Commissioner Finlay’s concerns being shared by the majority of Australians, who voted down the referendum, the Commission published a statement on 30th of March that rejected Commissioner Finlay’s human rights concerns. I’ve requested on notice all internal email correspondence in relation to drafting that statement and Commissioner Finlay’s remarks.
The Australian public expects true impartiality and independence of the Human Rights Commission. We haven’t seen this on COVID and now the Voice except for Commissioner Finlay.
Transcript
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.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/DM0I5HfODuE/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-01 12:52:462023-11-03 14:20:38Impartiality Under Question at Human Rights Commission
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?
In the May/June Estimates, I asked questions about former MP Craig Kelly being booted off Facebook (META) for posting alleged misinformation about COVID, which turned out to be accurate. Initially, Home Affairs denied involvement in censoring parliamentarians, however it transpired they were involved. These questions are following up to those asked in the previous Senate Estimates, where we have confirmation that Home Affairs censored a sitting Parliamentarian.
An international advertising agency was employed to identify posts that were contrary to the government’s narrative on COVID. Over $1,000,000 of taxpayers’ money was paid to M&C Saatchi to act as the thought police against the Australian people.
These referrals enabled social media companies to make what Home Affairs calls ‘their own determinations’ about flagged posts and accounts should they go against the platform’s own guidelines.
This is significant. Home Affairs claims it’s not in the business of censorship, but what else would you call such an arrangement? If the Labor government legislates its bill to combat misinformation and disinformation, we will see even more of this dystopian censorship.
Judging by the strained and carefully worded answers in this video, Home Affairs would like us to believe it had no influence on the censorship of Australians online during the COVID response. We’re not so naïve to believe their collaboration with social media companies such as META, which resulted in de-platforming an elected member of parliament, was anything other than authoritarian overreach.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for being here today. At the last Senate estimates, I was given many assurances by the witnesses from the Department of Home Affairs that no parliamentarians would have been referred for censorship under your COVID-19 program. We now know that that was false. The Department of Home Affairs did refer the post of a sitting parliamentarian to the social media companies for censorship, and we’re meant to believe that the senior witnesses at this table knew nothing about it. Either the Senate was misled or the witnesses at this table do not actually know what’s going on in your department, as they refer parliamentarians for censorship. Is your department out of control?
Ms Foster: Our department is happy to respond to your question. Mr Smyth can take you through the detail.
Mr Smyth: I think, as referenced in previous hearings, the department is not in the business of censoring. We referred posts to social media platforms to take action at their discretion as to whether or not they felt that particular posts breached their service standards. I know that, from the previous hearings in relation to whether or not there were posts that were from particular members of parliament, the secretary at the time said that he would be surprised. You are quite correct that there were referrals for a particular member of parliament that were made. They shouldn’t have been made, and the department has looked at its processes. But we do not now engage in any of the same activity. That activity ceased in late May of this year.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re enabling censorship and you were serving the social media giants—Meta, in particular—with the provision of their own services.
Mr Smyth: As I previously said—
Senator ROBERTS: Is that correct?
Ms Foster: No, that’s not correct, Senator.
Mr Smyth: we are not in the business of censoring.
Senator ROBERTS: But you enable censorship.
Ms Foster: No, we provide referrals to social media companies in order that they can decide whether or not the activity meets their own service standards.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re providing a service to Meta. Do you charge them an invoice?
Mr Smyth: No. The issues that were at play at the time related to public health and safety. We operated on advice and criteria that were provided to the department from the Department of Health. That was then assessed through a service provider that we had— M&C Saatchi. The department then reviewed the references from M&C Saatchi as to whether or not they were likely to have been in breach of the service standards of particular platforms. The platforms were then informed of that, and they made their own decisions.
Senator ROBERTS: Isn’t Meta big enough to look after itself? Can’t it do its job? Are you helping them?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I want to draw you back to the question—as being relevant to outcome 1.
Senator ROBERTS: They referred it, it seems to me, Chair—
CHAIR: Yes, absolutely.
Senator ROBERTS: with the intent of taking it down.
CHAIR: The relationship is obviously relevant. Direct questions about Meta might be better directed to them and is outside of outcome 1’s relevance.
Senator ROBERTS: You referred it with the intent of it being taken down, Mr Smyth.
Mr Smyth: No, we referred it with an intent as to whether or not the platform could determine whether it breached their own service standards.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you in the business of helping large global multinationals conduct their own affairs? Surely—
Mr Smyth: We’re in the business of looking after public health and safety, and it was in the middle of a global pandemic where a lot of people were dying.
Senator ROBERTS: Have you received legal advice on whether your department has breached the implied freedom of political expression with this program?
Mr Smyth: No.
Senator ROBERTS: Why not? This is pretty significant.
Mr Smyth: Because the posts that were referred to were a decision of the platforms themselves as to whether or not they would take any action.
Senator ROBERTS: The department has paid more than a million dollars to M&C Saatchi for their part in this COVID-19 censorship referral program. Did M&C Saatchi determine what was misinformation or did the department? Did M&C Saatchi or the department determine whether or not it complied with Meta’s guidelines?
Mr Smyth: The funds that were paid to M&C Saatchi from March 2020 to July of last year were $256,000 in relation to the COVID information. There was a previous contract that was already in place that was around $500,000-plus.
Senator ROBERTS: I have a question on notice—BE23-193—about M&C Saatchi payments. This is your response:
Of these payments, World Services Australia (trading as M&C Saatchi) has been paid a total of $1,000,911 (GST inclusive) from 1 July 2019 to 31 May 2023 for their work to produce analytical reporting on COVID-19 malign information in the Australian social media environment.
I jump in there to say that some of what is known as ‘malign’ is now vindicated.
This can be broken down into the following payments by financial year:
2020-21: $757,470 – that’s three-quarters of a million.
2021-22: $127,908
2022-23: $115,533
That’s a lot of money going to an international advertising firm.
Ms Foster: You’ve asked us to take that on notice. We will be happy to do so.
Senator ROBERTS: This was your reply.
When people said they thought the government was censoring posts around COVID, that wasn’t a conspiracy theory; it was actually true. You were helping Meta to censor posts that have now proven to be correct.
Ms Foster: I think the officer has provided this evidence a couple of times already. We were referring posts to social media companies for their own decision.
Senator ROBERTS: In accordance with their guidelines—helping them out? Right. Minister, the pending misinformation/disinformation bill legitimises suppression and censorship with no definition of truth. It relies on ministers’ rules. I want to read a quote from Mr Pezzullo—
Senator Watt: I don’t think I would agree with your characterisation.
Senator ROBERTS: There’s no definition of ‘truth’ in your pending bill.
Senator Watt: The entire statement you made—I wouldn’t agree with your characterisation of this bill. I think it’s a bill designed to deal with an increasingly important issue in society, which is the use of social media platforms to spread misinformation and disinformation. That’s what I would say this bill is about.
Senator ROBERTS: But the government is exempt. The mouthpiece media, the mainstream media, is exempt. Social media is not and individual citizens are not. How can that be fair? I will read from Mr Pezzullo in the last estimates:
If we’ve inadvertently—and it would be inadvertent—made a referral of a sitting member or a senator, then I would find that regrettable because, in a sense, you’re held to account by your peers and by your electors; it’s not my job to hold you to account.
Since when has it become the government’s job to hold senators to account on what they say?
Senator Watt: Mr Smyth has already acknowledged—I can’t remember the exact words he used, but it was to the effect that it was regrettable that this had occurred on one occasion. The department looked into that issue after it was raised at the last estimates. Mr Pezzullo said that it would be regrettable if it had occurred, and Mr Smyth has already addressed that this morning.
Senator ROBERTS: Let me make it clear. I’m not talking about the department anymore. I’m talking about Labor’s pending misinformation/disinformation bill.
CHAIR: If that’s what you’re doing, that’s not relevant to outcome 1. I’ve given you—
Senator ROBERTS: I’m using—
CHAIR: No. Senator Roberts, I’ve given you two direction about asking relevant questions in this section. If you don’t have relevant questions then we do need to share the call.
Senator Watt: Chair, I make the point that not only are Senator Roberts’s questions not relevant to this outcome; they’re not relevant to this committee, because this bill that he is referring to is actually being led by the Minister for Communications. Perhaps Senator Roberts could take up those questions at that estimates hearing.
Senator ROBERTS: He will do.
Senator Watt: That is on now—today.
CHAIR: It is happening today and tomorrow, so you do have an opportunity to ask those questions to the appropriate officials.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Senator Watt. Thank you, Chair.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/CR_KYCMyru0/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-10-24 14:12:462023-11-08 09:02:21Home Affairs Collaborated with Social Media During COVID
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.
In Senate Estimates, Professor Brendan Murphy, former Chief Medical Officer for the Australian Government and now Health Secretary, rejected the suggestion that the TGA ever took a position on vaccine mandates.
You can listen to him saying here that the government only supported mandates in limited circumstances earlier in the COVID injection roll-out. He says they were only needed in health, disability and aged care settings due to their high vulnerability.
National Cabinet had no strong position on community-wide mandates. Professor Murphy claims that everyone, including other departments and jurisdictions, took their own position. The TGA did not promote the COVID injections or mandates. Incredible!
The TGA authorised Moderna’s injection for young children with co-existing health conditions despite the fact the study is only being conducted in healthy children. That study is also not yet completed. ATAGI’s guidance is that the ‘vaccine’ is recommended ONLY for high-risk children with a comorbidity. Under questioning, the TGA admits it does not require patient level data and relies on a dossier from the sponsor (the pharma company). The ATAGI advice was that this shot be reserved for use in ‘at-risk’ children, i.e those with immuno-compromising pre-existing conditions.
I asked the TGA about reporting performances in the DAEN database of adverse events including fatalities. I wanted to know whether adverse event notifications were higher in those parts of the country where reporting is required compared to those without mandatory reporting. I’m advised that reporting rates are not higher in the jurisdictions where it is obligatory to report. The TGA has advised that consumer reporting of adverse events directly to the TGA increased by 28-fold in 2021 compared to 2020. Similarly, health professionals submitted nearly three times as many adverse event reports to the TGA in 2021 compared to 2020.
Strict independence of scrutiny for these products is clearly needed and is now being called for by a highly regarded epidemiologist.
Mortality figures for cancer are higher since the injections were introduced. The COVID products were not tested for carcinogenic properties simply because those responsible have taken the position that the substances involved don’t warrant such studies. The TGA did review Pfizer product on paper only for genotoxic and carcinogenic potential. In its dossier, Pfizer justified the absence of studies into cancer risk based on the exposure threshold concept. However, there is an absence of repeat dose toxicity data and the assessment of the stimulation of cytokine release.
Pfizer’s dossier, as sponsor of the product, adequately justified the authorisation of its use in Australia by the TGA, and so we joined what former Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, called the largest human trial and the largest vaccination trial that the world has ever engaged in.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s talk about approval of paediatric COVID vaccines. The TGA approved the Moderna COVID paediatric vaccine on 19 July last year for children aged six months to five years. According to your website, this was based on the results of the KidCOVE clinical trial run by Moderna in the USA and Canada. The approval was for all children, but ATAGI’s guidance is that the vaccine is recommended only for high-risk kids having one of a list of serious comorbidities. Is that correct?
Dr Langham: I believe so. I would have to check the current ATAGI guidance, though. I can take that one on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. The KidCOVE clinical trial is listed on clinicaltrials.gov as ‘a study to evaluate the effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine in healthy children’—healthy children—’aged six months to 12 years’. On what basis did TGA authorise the use of a vaccine, tested on healthy kids, for use in Australia on high-risk kids with serious comorbidities?
Dr Langham: What we’ve learned throughout the pandemic is that the disease of COVID is most damaging to those with other comorbidities, and particularly people who have immune systems that don’t work well. Our recommendation, or the recommendation of ATAGI and the recommendation of the TGA, would have been to be able to support young children with precisely those conditions by demonstrating that the virus was safe and efficacious in a healthy population.
Senator ROBERTS: The study was to evaluate effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine in healthy children, yet you’ve approved it for children with comorbidities—no basis.
Dr Langham: Again, it is the sort of thing that can be extrapolated. It was very important to be able to provide a protective therapy for young Australians who were at risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Senator ROBERTS: You just extended the study into a completely different field without testing?
Prof. Murphy: You can’t do the clinical trials—those trials have to be done in healthy children. You wouldn’t be able to do that first in-population trial in people with severe underlying diseases. You’d have to get healthy volunteers. The ATAGI advice considers all of the other risks of COVID as well. The safety can be shown in healthy people but the ATAGI advice is relevant to the risk of severe COVID. There’s no disconnect there.
Senator ROBERTS: Your approval was in July 2021. That clinical trial finishes in November 2023, so it is not even finished yet. The TGA must have worked from interim documents. Did the TGA evaluate the patient-level data, or did you just take Moderna’s word for it, like you took Pfizer’s word for it?
Mr Henderson: The Moderna vaccine was approved through the provisional pathway, which is a wellestablished pathway. It was an established pathway before the pandemic. That allows for approval based on interim clinical data, and data will be supplied on a rolling basis over a period of time.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you evaluate the patient-level data before you approved it?
Mr Henderson: We have answered questions in relation to patient-level data. At the TGA, we do not require patient-level data. We do require clinical data that is sufficient evidence from the sponsor of the vaccines.
Senator ROBERTS: So you relied on sponsors of the vaccines?
Mr Henderson: We relied on the dossier provided by the sponsor, with clinical data provided.
Senator ROBERTS: Would this be misfeasance on the part of the TGA?
Mr Henderson: Sorry, Senator, I’m not sure—
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on. Quality of reports in the DAEN: the DAEN reports can come from medical practitioners and also the general public. How many of the reports of deaths from COVID vaccines recorded by DAEN came from members of the public and how many from medical practitioners?
Mr Henderson: I don’t have those exact numbers with me. I will take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Why is the first question you ask, when a person makes a report: ‘Are you a medical practitioner or a member of the public?’
Mr Henderson: It is to allow us to have as rich a dataset as we can.
Senator ROBERTS: Why is the first question that one?
Ms Duffy: It allows the triaging of the subsequent questions as you go through the form.
Senator ROBERTS: Checking these reports—my staff have checked the reports—suggests there is a waiting room at the DAEN database holding reports that have been made but not yet checked and registered, which seems logical. How many reports of COVID vaccine harm are waiting to be checked? How many of those are reports of death or serious injury?
Mr Henderson: Again, I don’t have those numbers with me. I will take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Were more reports to DAEN made by states with mandatory adverse vaccine effect notifications—which I think is New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, which is only 62 per cent—as against states without mandatory reporting of vaccine harm?
Mr Henderson: Senator, could you repeat the question?
Senator ROBERTS: Was there a higher proportion of reports of adverse events from states with mandatory adverse vaccine effect reporting notifications?
Mr Henderson: I would have to take that detailed question on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: There is now a call for a vaccine safety office from an epidemiologist. He is pretty highly regarded, from my understanding. He is calling for independence in the scrutiny. When we have a provisionally approved medication, surely, it’s even more important to have a very strict reporting of adverse events?
Mr Henderson: We have a very comprehensive and rigorous safety monitoring system at the TGA. We use a number of mechanisms to look for safety signals, as well as talking to our international regulator colleagues and sharing information in relation to safety issues with the vaccines.
Senator ROBERTS: Have you done any testing on what percentage of doctors and the public are reporting adverse events?
Mr Henderson: No, we haven’t done that study. I will take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s go to carcinogenicity of the vaccine. The European Medicines Agency, EMA, had a 140-page assessment report for the Pfizer vaccine. On page 55, it says: No genotoxicity nor carcinogenicity studies have been provided. It then says: The components of the vaccine are lipids, an mRNA, which are not expected to have genotoxic potential. The carcinogenicity part of that statement was skated straight over. I want to ask you about that. Did you receive any genotoxicity or carcinogenicity studies in support of the Pfizer application?
Mr Henderson: I do not believe that we did, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: The words ‘carcinogenicity’ and ‘cancer’ do not appear in your 42-page assessment report. Did you review the Pfizer product from the perspective of cancer?
Mr Henderson: I believe there was no need for that. I will take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: According to the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in their latest release of the provisional mortality statistics, we know that it under-represent deaths—this was from the head of the ABS the other night—by 15 per cent because it does not include autopsy reported deaths, only doctor reported. The figures for provisional mortality from cancer were as follows: based on average for January-February over the last four years, 3,637; January- February cancer deaths in 2023, 3,803—plus 15 per cent; and for 2021 it was 3,816. Both years are above trend. It should be remembered that trend includes autopsy deaths and the provisional mortality figures do not. Yet the provisional mortality figures for cancer are above the past figures. The problem is worse than these figures suggest. Let’s review: we have injections that were approved without carcinogenicity testing. We now have a spike in cancer. Can you please show me where you have investigated this spike and ruled out it being from the COVID injections? Have you even considered that?
Prof. Murphy: There is no evidence that increase in cancer risk is vaccine-associated. As Professor Langham said, there have been many billions of doses of these vaccines administered. If there was a significant association with cancer, I think the international data would have shown it. There is no evidence that there is an association.
Senator ROBERTS: The reference to lipid nanoparticles in earlier conversations around COVID vaccines suggested that the nanoparticles stayed near the injection site, then passed out of the body. Am I remembering that correctly?
Dr Langham: Senator, that’s correct. We’ve dealt with this on a number of occasions, in answer to other questions on notice as well.
Senator ROBERTS: Documents released in the Pfizer-gate court-ordered document dump showed that Pfizer knew at the time of seeking approval for their product that the lipid nanoparticles not only collected at the injection site but significant concentrations were also recorded in the adrenal glands. A table in the Pfizer test data showed they accumulated in the ovaries, the liver, the kidneys, the brain and the adrenal glands; they go all over the body. Did you know at the time of the Pfizer application that lipid nanoparticles collected across the body?
Dr Langham: Senator Roberts, what you are describing is a particular aspect of the pre-clinical studies by which an element of the lipid nanoparticles was labelled with a fluorescent label. What is seen in those studies is the fluorescent label and not necessarily the lipid nanoparticles.
Senator ROBERTS: Is it still your position that this build-up does not have an adverse health effect?
Dr Langham: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Why did former minister Greg Hunt say, ‘The world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial’? Why did he say that as health minister?
Dr Langham: I can’t speak for Minister Hunt’s comment; I am sorry.
Senator ROBERTS: We have dealt with other agencies and employers who relied on you, as the TGA. They cite your advice as the basis of their policies and decisions: CASA, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Fair Work Commission, Fair Work Ombudsman, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, judiciary, the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, state and federal health ministers, the chief medical officer and the chief health officer all drove vaccine mandates. The national cabinet cited you guys. Millions of people have been gutted, based on these horrendous facts and injuries, all pointing their finger at you. Do the members of the board of the TGA understand the concept of misfeasance in public office?
Prof. Murphy: There is no board of the TGA. The TGA is part of the department of health.
Senator ROBERTS: Do the heads of the TGA understand the concept of misfeasance?
Prof. Murphy: We very much understand the concept of misfeasance, and we totally reject any suggestion that has taken place. I should point out that the TGA has never taken a position on vaccine mandates. The TGA’s remit is to assess the safety and efficacy.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you support them or not?
Prof. Murphy: The Commonwealth department has supported them in limited circumstances, particularly early on, when transmission reduction was much more beneficial. We certainly supported them for aged-care workers and disability workers. The Commonwealth department has not taken a strong position on community-wide mandates. Some of the state and territory governments have taken a much stronger position.
Senator ROBERTS: Who from your senior leadership advised former Prime Minister Scott Morrison to buy the injections, at billions of dollars, to then give them to the states, to indemnify the states, to also then provide the health monitoring data so that vaccine mandates could be introduced? The state premiers then said that they mandated vaccines on the basis of the national cabinet, which the Chief Medical Officer is associated with. Then we saw the former Prime Minister mandate vaccines in Defence, the Australian Electoral Commission and aged care. Then the former Prime Minister said repeatedly, daily, for two weeks, ‘We have no vaccine mandates in this country.’ It was a blatant lie. Did you do anything to stop him lying?
Prof. Murphy: I can’t comment on what the former Prime Minister said. I know he supported vaccine mandates in aged care and disability. That was very much a national cabinet position because of the high vulnerability of the residents and workforce in those settings. I don’t believe national cabinet took a community-wide mandate approach. Various agencies—state, territory, Commonwealth and private sector agencies—made their own decisions about that. I don’t think it is fair to say that the TGA has been promoting vaccine mandates. It’s not their remit and they have never done it.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you do anything to stop it?
CHAIR: Thank you, Professor Murphy. Senator Roberts, I do need to share the call. Are you able to place the remainder of your questions on notice at this point?
A cheap, safe, award-winning, generic medicine, one that has been around for decades and was readily available, was shown to save people’s lives during an outbreak of a virus. Do you think it was a good decision for Australia’s Therapeutic Drug Administration (TGA) to arbitrarily ban its availability and off-label prescription in order to save it for skin conditions? Why not just buy more of it?
Despite substantial bodies of evidence from around the world, Australia did not recognise the available proof supporting Ivermectin’s use because no ‘sponsor’ (read pharmaceutical company) brought it to the TGA. What they did do was convene a Commonwealth-funded Clinical Evidence ‘Kangaroo Court’ which declared Ivermectin had no value in the treatment or prevention of COVID19.
This completely ignored a generation of evidence that Ivermectin was an effective early stage treatment for coronavirus.
The TGA continued to ignore the new data that showed Ivermectin was an effective and safe early treatment for COVID until the jab rate was over 95%, then they allowed its use. Here’s the kicker — the TGA admits in this video they made this decision because they were worried that people would not seek vaccination if they believed Ivermectin could help them.
Regulatory capture by pharmaceutical industries is a well known concept but I’m reassured that this “doesn’t happen at the TGA”. Yet in the same line of questioning, the TGA admits that if a pharmaceutical company sponsor does not promote a drug with them, and pay the fee of course, they don’t bother to show the initiative themselves.
This is purely a transactional process, as the TGA itself admits in this senate estimates. It’s clear that there is something very wrong with the system.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My questions are to the TGA. In the last Senate estimates, I asked Adjunct Professor Skerritt if the TGA was inquiring into the opportunity presented by albicidin, a natural antibacterial derived from a sugarcane virus that does not cause antimicrobial resistance. Dr Skerritt’s response was: We are very closely monitoring the science. In fact, I’m the keynote speaker next Thursday at the Australian Antimicrobial Congress…We haven’t had a submission relating to that product because it’s still very early days, but we are monitoring…antimicrobial resistance because…it’s a serious threat.
I was concerned that was a non-answer, so I asked the minister about it, in question on notice 1449. His response was: ‘The department of health is not conducting a review into albicidin.’ Can you clear this up, please? Are you treating albicidin as a prospective revelation in the battle against antimicrobial resistance, thoroughly deserving of active research and development?
Dr Langham: The normal manner in which the TGA evaluates and assesses a product for use is through a process whereby a sponsor brings us a product, with all of the relevant research, clinical trials and a dossier of its safety and quality, and that has not happened at this stage. Until someone comes to us with this, we’re not able to do anything in terms of furthering what could potentially be a really important treatment; we’re not able to further that, in terms of making it available to the public.
Senator ROBERTS: Does the department of health have any role, ability or authority to sponsor?
Prof. Murphy: Generally, no. Occasionally, we have taken the role of sponsoring in very difficult circumstances, when there’s a drug that’s registered and available and the sponsor doesn’t want to sponsor it. But with an experimental new drug, we would never take that role. Occasionally, there are avenues for us to support drug development through MRFF and NHMRC research. There have certainly been programs that have looked at therapeutic advances in that space. But with a new agent or a new molecule, it would be quite inappropriate for us to take a role as a sponsor.
Senator ROBERTS: The TGA is 96 per cent funded by pharmaceutical companies through fees. Albicidin is a naturally occurring substance. Can it be patented? I would say not.
Prof. Murphy: We’d have to take that on notice. It depends on the use, and patent law is quite complicated. I can’t answer that.
Senator ROBERTS: My point is: would it get a sponsor to make an application? Drug companies rely a lot on patents and making excessive profits.
Dr Langham: You would expect so, absolutely.
Prof. Murphy: If it were proven to be highly effective, I would imagine that a drug company would be very interested in pursuing it, but—
Senator ROBERTS: Drug companies have shown that they’re only interested in profits—the major ones.
CHAIR: Please put that as a question, Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, it is a question.
CHAIR: What was the question?
Senator ROBERTS: Isn’t that the case?
Prof. Murphy: No. Private companies all make a profit, but profits can often come by sponsoring highly effective new agents; that’s where they make their biggest profits. This is all highly speculative and I don’t know that we can progress it much further.
Senator ROBERTS: The CSIRO has produced a guide to controlling antimicrobial resistance that assumes massive government power, including close monitoring and regulation of homes, pets, agriculture, waterways, new vaccines against diseases that used to be controlled by antibiotics and, of course, conferences. Antimicrobial resistance is being set up to be a massive government and pharmaceutical company gravy train. Why are you ignoring a probable solution to antimicrobial resistance? Do you want the power to order more vaccines, to wield more intrusive powers and to make more sales for big pharma, which is the history of the last few years?
Prof. Murphy: We reject that assertion. We completely accept the assertion that antimicrobial resistance is a significant problem. One of the ways that we have been, for many years, trying to combat it is to try to encourage prescribers in the use of antibiotics to reduce their use of antibiotics, which is not in the interests necessarily of the pharmaceutical industry. We are very keen to make sure that we limit the use of antibiotics to those situations where they are absolutely essential. There’s a lot of unnecessary prescription of antibiotics, and some of that is a real problem. We certainly have a lot of interest in antimicrobial resistance, and any new agent would be of interest to us. But we are not in a position to sponsor something like that.
Ms Duffy: We are in collaboration with the CSIRO in advancing their work and we have been involved in a number of CSIRO roundtables on this project that they’re going through, so we are working in lockstep with them.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s turn to medical or medicinal cannabis. My office is getting reports that prescriptions of dried medical cannabis issued under the pathways scheme are being endorsed with the phrase ‘for vaping’, and that requires patients to also buy and use a vape. A doctor that my office spoke to has advised that this is a TGA instruction; is that correct?
Dr Langham: Medicinal cannabis products, with the exception of two of them, are not regulated as ‘medicinal products’ by the TGA. They are available under a special access scheme, and it’s a condition of the special access scheme that the practitioner who is approved to prescribe adopts all of the undertaking to ‘consent’ patients, to understand the research, to advise on side effects and so forth. The TGA does not regulate any of the medicinal cannabis products in Australia.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you require someone who uses medical cannabis in dried form to purchase a vape— the device?
Dr Langham: It’s not our advice, no, and it would be coming from the medical practitioner, if the medical practitioner felt that there was a substance that was better done as an ointment, a tablet, a spray or a vape. I don’t know whether you’re able to add anything on vaping devices for that.
Ms Duffy: In terms of the method of delivery, it would be up to the treating practitioner to identify the most appropriate method for that patient.
Senator ROBERTS: To list a product under the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods for prescription under schedule 4, there’s a prescribed process, which is not legislative. The steps, time frames and levels of proof of safety are all in regulation issued by the secretary under delegated powers, and much of the process isn’t even regulatory but administrative. Is that an accurate statement?
Dr Langham: I’d need help on what’s in the act and what’s in the regulations.
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: I didn’t understand all elements of that question.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you want me to repeat it?
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: To list a product under the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods for prescription under schedule 4, there’s a prescribed process, which is not legislative. The steps, time frames and levels of proof of safety are all in regulation issued by the secretary under delegated powers, and much of the process isn’t even regulatory but administrative. Is that an accurate statement?
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: I don’t know that’s an entirely accurate statement. Some of the process is set out in primary legislation and some of it is set out in delegated legislation. But, yes, there are some administrative policies that support the administration of the act.
Senator ROBERTS: Does the suspension of these processes by the minister and/or the secretary during COVID prove that the ARTG—the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods—process is whatever the secretary or the minister says that it is?
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: That’s simply not the case. The secretary’s powers are bounded by the act and instruments made under the act, including regulations, which are made by the Governor-General.
Senator ROBERTS: COVID vaccines were not manufactured under good manufacturing process, GMP, so even this basic requirement for the approval of a drug is just a preference and not a legislated requirement, is it not?
Mr Henderson: For the provisional approvals of the vaccines, they needed to provide evidence that they were manufactured under good manufacturing practices.
Senator ROBERTS: But they weren’t. Could you get us a copy of that evidence, please?
Mr Henderson: I’ll have to take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, fine. Referencing section 26BF of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, this ‘allows the minister to direct the operations of the secretary in respect of the scheduling and listing of products’. Minister, isn’t it true that the minister could down-schedule medicinal cannabis to schedule 4 and move the products approved for prescription under the pathways program onto the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods right now, if he wanted to? He might not intend doing that, but it is within the minister’s power, isn’t it?
Senator McCarthy: I’ll take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that the minister could regulate right now to move medicinal cannabis to schedule 4. Thank you, Minister.
CHAIR: I believe that the witness is taking that on notice; is that right?
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: Yes. We can take it on notice, but I’ll just add that I don’t believe that power supports that. The usual process is that there has to be a legislative instrument, made under a power much further down in the act, to amend the Poisons Standard.
Senator ROBERTS: The way that I’ve been advised, I’m pretty confident that it’s just a ministerial regulation.
Dr Gilmour-Walsh: We can consider that further, but that’s not my general understanding.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, my office checked all the state legislation on prescribing and found much commonality. There is the use of a simple statement such as ‘prescriptions can be issued for anything listed in schedule 4′. There is no separate state list of drugs. If medicinal cannabis were down-scheduled federally, the states would need to introduce legislation to over-rule that decision and then get that legislation through their own parliament; is that correct?
Senator McCarthy: I’ll take that question on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Minister, could the bill introduced by Senator Hanson to down-schedule medicinal cannabis be regulated right now, today, if the minister chose to do so? In other words: the legislation is not needed and the minister could just regulate.
Senator McCarthy: I’ll take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Let’s come back to today. Today is a wonderful day to celebrate. Today is 1 June 2023. From 1 June 2023, the prescribing of oral ivermectin for off-label uses will no longer be limited to specialists such as dermatologists et cetera. It’s back and can be used off-label. I must note, to keep the secretary calm, that the TGA says that it does not endorse off-label prescribing of ivermectin for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. It doesn’t do that, but it can be used for that. Craig Kelly, a former member of parliament, contacted the office of the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh—Uttar Pradesh is a state in India—and asked for guidance on how Uttar Pradesh had successfully used ivermectin to control the COVID virus in Uttar Pradesh. He received great information on their success. If a member of parliament, at the time, could reach out like that to be better informed, why didn’t the TGA reach out and be better informed on ivermectin?
Prof. Murphy: The TGA relies on the body of scientific evidence. Professor Langham can talk about that. We rely on the published scientific evidence and not the statement of a politician in India. Professor Langham, do you want to comment?
Dr Langham: Thank you. I guess it comes back to my earlier point that a drug, a medicine or a product that is on the ARTG is there for a specific indication. In this case, the specific indication for ivermectin—for which there’s been a dossier provided, evaluated by the TGA as robust, good clinical science—is that it is useful for the treatment of certain parasitic illnesses, be they gastrointestinal or skin based. No evidence has been presented to the TGA by the sponsor to demonstrate in any way, shape or form that ivermectin is useful in treating COVID-19. If the sponsor would like to do so, we’d be happy to consider that, because that’s the only way that the TGA is able to expand that indication.
Senator ROBERTS: Could I table these for discussion, please, Chair.
CHAIR: You can submit them to the committee for consideration. It’s going to take a while to work through them, by the look of it.
Senator ROBERTS: What is being distributed is an affidavit from Dr Pierre Kory in the United States. He has gone through this for many years and he has compiled many references—I think it’s over 96—that praise ivermectin’s use in treating COVID. It’s been used in many countries and has stopped COVID in its tracks. It has been not only a treatment but also a prophylactic, to prevent the spread of the disease. This is my last question: are you aware of any successful programs overseas that used ivermectin to control the pandemic? Now you’ve got the evidence, Professor Langham.
Dr Langham: Obviously, there’s a very dense article here and a lot of different publications are being referenced. For me to pass judgement on this particular body of evidence, I’d need to take that on notice and get back to you.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m pleased to hear you say that, because I wouldn’t want it done on the spur of the moment.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/792LxTu1Tgs/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-10-09 10:19:212023-10-09 10:21:57TGA is Risking Your Health to Act as a Sales Agent for Big Pharma
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.
