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.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/itGnz_OrtNY/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-16 08:56:402023-11-16 08:56:44Vaccine Mandates: Human Rights Destroyed by Emergency Declarations
I asked ASIO if they would investigate the origin of COVID, which is now known to be the Wuhan bio-lab and involves illegal USA Dept of Defense research?
The answer was clearly an emphatic NO.
Our head of intelligence has no interest in digging into events that led to COVID and worse still, the deadly COVID response.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: I just want to come back and follow up on a question from Senator Rennick. In World War II we lost 34,000 troops in addition to 70,000-plus casualties and about 10,000 deaths in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. We were told by the previous government that it was nonsense, initially, that it came from Wuhan gain-of-function research. We now know that’s the case. In America they set up—you’re probably aware of this far more than I am—a Department of Defense medical countermeasures consortium involving Australia, Canada, the United States and Britain. It was a military operation, and we now know gain-of-function research was the origin of COVID. The number of deaths we’ve now had, around 30,000 to 40,000 deaths, rivals World War II. We know this was a military operation in that military departments from those four countries were involved. Surely it’d be something you’d research.
Mr Burgess: You’re saying it’s something we know. I don’t agree with you on that. I don’t know that, and I’m not taking any further action on the COVID matter.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s killed almost as many people as troops died in World War II.
Mr Burgess: I recognise the impact COVID had on the globe. As for the matter of whether it’s a threat to security and ASIO are investigating it, I can tell you we’re not investigating its origins.
Senator ROBERTS: I want to be clear: COVID didn’t cost those lives; the government’s injections cost those lives. Surely you want to know whether gain-of-function research led to the spike protein also in the injections.
Mr Burgess: I stand by my comments. We’re not investigating it.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/CWkhhVQ-Z_8/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-16 07:35:322023-11-16 07:35:35ASIO Not interested in Investigating COVID and Wuhan Bio-lab
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/151123-Capture.png?fit=898%2C508&ssl=1508898Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-15 18:21:192023-11-15 18:21:22Scaremongers Calling for MASKS Again in Queensland
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.
