Thank you Hoody for the great introduction.
If you’re interested in the hearing from all speakers at this AMPS event, including internationally-renowned cardiologist, Dr Aseem Malhotra, watch below.
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Taking an experimental vaccine wasn’t a requirement when they signed up to the degree and debt, the rules were changed on them. That HECS debt should be cancelled.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: The Greens want to talk about cancelling HECS debt. Well, let’s talk about the HECS debt of students who started their degrees and then were forced to abandon them because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Any student who started studying their degree at university before COVID-19 arrived and subsequently was forced to abandon their studies because of an inhumane COVID-19 injection mandate, whether the mandate was at the university or at a placement that they were required to undertake as part of their degree, should have that HECS debt immediately cancelled. When they signed up to their multi-year degrees, there was no requirement for them to take an untested, experimental, gene therapy based injection.
The President: Senator Roberts, if you could resume your seat for a moment. The substance of your response needs to focus on the motion put forward by Senator Faruqi, which is to suspend business to debate the bill the Greens want to put forward, so you do need to respond to why you agree or disagree or make other comments around the urgency of that suspension motion.
Senator Roberts: Thank you. I’m getting to that point right now. Halfway through their degrees, that rule was changed on them, and they had no say over it. Their debt should be cancelled immediately.
That’s why One Nation will be opposing this motion to suspend standing orders: we want a proper debate. We want a royal commission. We want it dealt with properly so that students who have been kicked out of university, stopped their studies or stopped their placement get a fair say and have their HECS debt cancelled.
Now is the time to take stock, to end all private and government mandates, suspend all hasty approvals and re-examine every fake vaccine and every drug approved using emergency approval. Now is the time to call the royal commission Minister Gallagher promised last year. Now is the time to start the painful-yet-necessary process of taking power from those who misused it and taking liberty from those who manipulated the response for their personal profit.
Transcript
As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, One Nation has today advanced a matter of public importance calling for a royal commission into Australia’s COVID response. The rush of real science in the last few months makes it clear that COVID-19 has been a tragic and criminal exercise in stakeholder government. The stakeholders have milked COVID for their own personal and corporate benefit, at the expense of everyday Australians, destroying confidence in our health system. For corporations, the objective was profit from the sale of tests, PPE and fake, deadly vaccines that government and private mandates maximised. This profit accrued from fast-tracked TGA approvals that saved pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and caused a new cost in human suffering, death and injury.
Nothing could illustrate this point more than the heartbreaking testimony last week of Deborah Hamilton at the Senate inquiry into Senator Hanson’s bill to ban COVID injection mandates. Deborah lost her daughter immediately after her COVID injections, which her employer mandated for her to keep her job. Her employer and their parent company had Vanguard investment fund as a leading shareholder and financier. Vanguard is the leading corporate shareholder in Pfizer. Vanguard mandated vaccines they make a profit from. When predatory billionaires and their trillion-dollar investment funds murder a beautiful, vibrant 21-year-old Australian in their unquenchable thirst for profit, it shows corporate ownership and influence have gone too far.
For media the payoff was advertising accepted in return for government’s aggressive propaganda-level promotion of the COVID narrative, messaging broadcasts to citizens who were captives in their own homes. Academics took their research grants and delivered the outcomes they were asked to deliver. So much science in the COVID period was delivered with a high degree of confidence, yet in recent months much of the science underpinning our COVID response has been proven to be dodgy, deceitful and dangerous—inhumanly so. Bureaucrats saw the opportunity to spread their power in a way that was previously never allowed. Bureaucrats who were there to oversee drug companies failed in their duties so badly that malfeasance must be a term of reference for a royal commission.
We know the TGA did not check the Pfizer clinical trial data. The TGA took Pfizer’s word for the trial results, and Pfizer lied repeatedly. When leading international virologists analysed the trial data in a peer reviewed and published paper they found the Pfizer vaccine caused 14 per cent more harm than it saved and should never have been approved. Our politicians—Australians elected to have nothing but the best interests of their constituents at heart—engaged in policy decisions that did more damage to Australians than any foreign enemy has ever achieved.
To emphasise why our COVID response cannot be allowed to go without scrutiny, let me review the COVID developments that have come to light in just the last month. One: ivermectin won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015 and was shown over and over again to be a remarkably effective, safe treatment for early-stage COVID. It would have saved thousands of lives. Ivermectin was never horse paste. It was an obstacle to drug company profits, and our authorities sided with drug companies over the best interests of the people.
Two: COVID injections cause eye damage. Stanford University published a study in Nature journal last month using medical data from 4.5 million people showing that retinal vein occlusion, including blindness, significantly increased during the first two weeks after injection and persisted, in the case of Pfizer and Moderna, for two years. Our vaccine approval process was bypassed. It was smashed.
Three: Hamburg and Munich universities’ investigation of long COVID using mouse and human post-mortem tissue found an accumulation of spike protein in the skull marrow and parts of the brain months after infection or injection, leading to a conclusion that spike protein damages the brain and contributes to long COVID, whether the source is the COVID infection or a vaccine. The TGA has now approved the Moderna injection, which uses spike protein, for permanent use. What the hell are they doing!
Four: COVID injections harm menstrual cycles. A study published last month in the British Medical Journal studied three million women in Sweden and concluded the Pfizer vaccine contributed to a 41 per cent increase in menstrual complications. This information was first collated in 2020 and was simply ignored when the fake vaccines were approved.
Finally, the World Health Organization took time out from promoting child grooming to declare COVID no longer a global health emergency. Now is the time to take stock, to end all private and government mandates, suspend all hasty approvals and re-examine every fake vaccine and every drug approved using emergency approval.
Now is the time to call the royal commission Minister Gallagher promised last year.
Now is the time to start the painful-yet-necessary process of taking power from those who misused it and taking liberty from those who manipulated the response for their personal profit.
Jail the bastards. We want justice.
I travelled to Canberra to attend a hearing into Bills that would make discrimination on the basis of vaccination status illegal. This would immediately end any of the mandates that are still in place. Let me know what you thought of the evidence.
Doctors across Australia have told us that they’re being intimidated into complying with the so-called government health advice – even against their own judgement.
Isn’t that bullying, and more over, isn’t that breaking the law?
They just took the word of Big-Pharma and assumed the American FDA had done the work. We never checked the individual patient data here in Australia.
I’m not satisfied CASA is doing it’s due diligence, that it’s Medical Officers are properly dedicated to the job or that they are actually looking after pilots. I’ll share more of the details on my website when my questions on notice are answered.
With each new day we find more evidence of conflicts of interest, lies from the supposed “experts” and none of these bureaucrats want to acknowledge it. We need a Royal Commission to bring their lies out into the daylight.
Transcript (click)
Senator ROBERTS: Can you tell me how many medicines were approved under the provisional approval pathway during the COVID period 1 July 2020 to date? My numbers are 13 vaccines and six drugs; is that correct?
Dr Skerritt: Are you talking specifically about COVID treatments and COVID vaccines?
Senator ROBERTS: No, any vaccines or drugs that have been approved using the provisional pathway.
Dr Skerritt: I will start with COVID vaccine treatments. There have been seven COVID vaccines and eight COVID treatments. I’ll just check whether I’ve got the numbers for other medicines during that period. You’re talking about the provisional approval pathway?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Dr Skerritt: From 1 July this year there have been five provisional approvals. From the period 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022 there have been 23. That would include those COVID treatments. What it does show is a lot of other medicines, such as cancer medicines, such as medicines for rare conditions, have also been approved. In the financial year 2021, from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022, there were five. Over the period you’re talking about, that would add up to 33.
Senator ROBERTS: How many drugs have been approved under the normal process during that same period?
Dr Skerritt: During the same period? I will add the three financial years and I’ll check my mental arithmetic. So 36 this current financial year, and 117. These are either new approvals or new indications approved. And 95 the year before. So, it is a significant percentage, but not most of them.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the maximum provisional approval period six years because it can take that long to get drugs approved under the old approval system?
Dr Skerritt: A provisional approval is only valid for two years and then the company either has to come back and show why they cannot obtain all the data within the period and apply for an extension.
Senator ROBERTS: No, the maximum provisional approval?
Dr Skerritt: They can apply for further lots of two years.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the maximum provisional approval—
Dr Skerritt: Overall the maximum period is six years, but it’s not six years off the bat.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s two years with extensions.
Dr Skerritt: They are possible extensions; they’re not guaranteed.
Senator ROBERTS: How much money do you save pharmaceutical companies by switching from full approval to express approval? I understand it’s hundreds of millions per approval?
Dr Skerritt: It actually costs the pharmaceutical companies more in regulatory fees for provisional approval.
Senator ROBERTS: No, I didn’t say regulatory fees. How much are you saving the pharmaceutical companies by giving them express or provisional approval rather than going through the six-year period for getting proper approval?
Dr Skerritt: No, you’ve misinterpreted the system. It’s not a six-year period to get full regulatory approval.
Senator ROBERTS: It varies. I accept that.
Dr Skerritt: Most of our approvals are submitted as a standard approval, especially, for example, if it wasn’t a public health emergency or it’s a drug that already has others in the same category. They’re submitted as a standard approval.
Senator ROBERTS: Dedicated trials for their drugs, I understand, can be hundreds of millions of dollars. How much time and money would they save by going express?
Dr Skerritt: We would not give a provisional approval to a medicine unless there were clinical trials.
Senator ROBERTS: How much money does it save if they do a provisional without doing a formal or normal approval process? How much money does it save the drug company?
Dr Skerritt: I don’t believe there are necessarily savings. The situation would be different for every drug. It’s really important to emphasise there were very extensive clinical trials for the vaccines and treatments that have been through provisional approval.
Senator ROBERTS: My understanding is that it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to get the full approval process. Without the dedicated trial, they could save hundreds of millions of dollars per drug?
Dr Skerritt: I don’t necessarily agree with you.
Senator ROBERTS: When does the provisional approval for Pfizer expire?
Dr Skerritt: The two-year period will be two years from the anniversary of the first approval. I would emphasise that in certain countries—
Senator ROBERTS: What is that date?
Dr Skerritt: The products are now fully approved.
Senator ROBERTS: What is the date of provisional approval expiry?
Dr Skerritt: For the very first approval, for 16 years and over, the two-year period finishes on 25 January 2023.
Senator ROBERTS: I have in front of me a document called the Australian Public Assessment Report for Tozinameran, from Comirnaty (Pfizer), dated December 2021. Is this the approval application for the paediatric version of the Pfizer vaccine?
Dr Skerritt: No, it is not. An Australian Public Assessment Report is a summary of the assessment that we did of the application. You mentioned Pfizer. The actual application is over 220,000 thousand pages of paper from Pfizer for that particular group of vaccines.
Senator ROBERTS: I reference page 61, which states:
Limitations of the current application data. Safety follow-up is currently limited to median 2.4 months post dose 2 in cohort 1, and 2.4 weeks for the safety expansion cohort.
What is the safety expansion cohort?
Dr Skerritt: Remember, also, this was going back to the time of approval. We now have hundreds of millions, actually more than a billion, people who have been vaccinated with that vaccine and experience going on since December 2020, when the first vaccination was done. The safety expansion cohort is in a clinical trial where individuals are monitored closely and the data reported back to regulators for periods of months, leading to years, after their vaccination.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you recommend this substance based on 2.4 weeks of safety testing or did you get more in? If so, over what period? How many months?
Dr Skerritt: Remember the initial approval from TGA was based on that two months of follow-up, but we also had the experience of other countries that had more than a month before starting mass vaccination campaigns. When we approved Pfizer on 25 January2021, we were in almost daily contact with the British, who by that stage had vaccinated millions of British people by 25 January 2021. Real-world evidence played a very important role in both the approvals and in the ongoing safety monitoring of these vaccines.
Senator ROBERTS: So you relied on data from other countries and you relied for periods of months, merely months. It can’t be more than six months, because there’s a gap between application and approval and to give time for collection of data and analysis. There should be years of data before we start putting this stuff into our children, yet it’s months.
Dr Skerritt: I disagree in the context of a pandemic and a public health crisis. Regulators globally felt that it was appropriate to do initial approvals—
Senator ROBERTS: You’re the Australian regulator.
Dr Skerritt: As the head of the Australian regulator, I would do precisely the same if I had my time again. The alternative would have been to leave Australians unvaccinated through the course of 2020, 2021 and 2022, and there would have been tens of thousands more Australian deaths.
Senator ROBERTS: Can I reference a letter from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, signed by Radha Khiani, Director, Governance and Coordination section, in which the department makes this claim. The letter from 4 November 2022, just last week, states:
A large team of technical and clinical experts at the TGA carefully evaluated the data submitted by the sponsor. A treatment or vaccine is only provisionally approved if this rigorous process is completed.
This document concerned the use of Pfizer stages 2 to 3 cynical trial data in support of their application for provisional approval. Did the TGA check the stage 2 and stage 3 clinical trial data from Pfizer? Did you check it?
Dr Skerritt: We did check the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data from Pfizer and we also took it to independent external medical experts as well as consumer representatives.
Senator ROBERTS: Referencing Freedom of Information No. 2289, in which the applicant requested a copy of the stage 2 and stage 3 clinical trial data, the TGA responded that the ‘TGA does not hold any relevant documents relating to the request’. That was a request for stages 2 to 3 clinical trial data.
Dr Skerritt: Without seeing what’s in your hand, I believe that you asked for individual patient data rather than the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data. I can give you my word that we assessed the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data; otherwise, what else did we do? Look at the colour of the label on the bottle? That is the main thing our team of several thousand clinicians look at in reviewing a new vaccine, the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data. It is the centrepiece.
Senator ROBERTS: The freedom-of-information request then asked for ‘any documents confirming the process of analysing this data to a decision, including meetings, notes, dates and times’. Again the TGA replied, ‘We have no relevant documents.’ Did you review the stage 2 and stage 3 data or not, and, if you did, why did you tell this freedom-of-information applicant you did not have these documents? Which document is the lie? One of them is.
Dr Skerritt: I don’t have that document in front of me. We can review it on notice. But we reviewed the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data at length.
CHAIR: This really needs to be the last one so I can share the call.
Senator ROBERTS: I just want you to think about this and confirm it or otherwise: and ‘the trail data contained sufficient proof the vaccines were safe and effective, sufficient to meet the criteria for provisional approval’; is that correct?
Dr Skerritt: Correct. Yes.
Transcript (click)
Senator ROBERTS: I asked a question earlier, Professor Skerritt, about the number of drugs approved under the full approval process, the normal process. If you exclude the number of drugs that you said were new uses for existing drugs and medical devices, what is the figure for new drugs approved under the full approval process in the last three years?
Dr Skerritt : It will be about 90, but I’ll give you the exact answer on notice. We approve between 30 and 40 new drugs a year.
Senator ROBERTS: You also confirmed your view that ‘the trial data contained sufficient proof that the vaccines were safe and effective, sufficient to meet the criteria for provisional approval’. Yet after 18 months and analysing the data, some of the world’s leading virologists and pharmacologists from UCLA, Stamford and here in Australia found that the ‘Stage 2 and Stage 3 trial data showed the vaccine was associated with a 36 per cent increase in serious adverse events’ and ‘out of every 10,000 people injected, 18 will experience a life-threatening or altering complication, and the vaccine should not have been approved, as it caused more harm than it prevented’. That’s what they said. One of the papers—there are several papers—is titled ‘Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomised trials in adults’. How could ATAGI review the data and conclude that everything was fine, with the world’s leading experts on the subject, in a peer reviewed and published paper, then finding the exact opposite? Did you approve the vaccine in a deal with colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry?
Dr Skerritt : I think that’s an offensive allegation, and we certainly did not.
Senator ROBERTS: You had colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Skerritt : We did not approve the vaccine in a deal with colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry.
Senator ROBERTS: You had colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Skerritt : I wouldn’t say that they were colleagues; we work with people. We also work with—
Senator ROBERTS: That’s what I mean: you worked with them.
Dr Skerritt : people in terms of the courts, including the criminal court. So, we work with people in the pharmaceutical industry and we work with other government people, but they’re not colleagues in the sense of working for the same organisation.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you do a deal or come to an arrangement with the—
Dr Skerritt : No.
Senator ROBERTS: It could have been just provisional approval to get it through. Did you do that with the pharmaceutical industry?
Dr Skerritt : No. No, that’s an offensive and unfounded allegation, and I’d like you to withdraw it.
Senator ROBERTS: There are thousands of people who are dead, and we’ll get on to that in the next session.
Dr Skerritt : I disagree with you. There are 14 deaths associated with vaccines in Australia, all—
Senator ROBERTS: We’ll get on to that in the next Senate estimates.
Dr Skerritt : I look forward to it.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, so do I.
While Labor’s Industrial Relations Bill is a rushed dog’s breakfast, I’m hoping to give it some redemption by including a clause that would stop companies from discriminating based on vaccination status.
There’s no reason for blanket mandates in workplaces given it will not protect workers or customers from infection. The IR Bill and my amendment are due to be voted on today.
Transcript
Minister, you look like you need a break, so I will give you a break from your legal jousting and setting up definitions of terms for the future. In proposing this bill, the government says the bill aims to secure jobs. My amendment on sheet 1768 goes to the heart of ensuring job security and protecting workers’ rights. To ensure job security, my amendment on sheet 1768 ensures that unjustified vaccine discrimination is stamped out in employment. The original bill inserts breastfeeding, intersex status and gender identity as attributes that the Fair Work Act protects from discrimination. This amendment copies that approach and simply adds COVID-19 vaccination status as an attribute protected from discrimination. The protection is still subject to the limits imposed on the other discrimination grounds in the Fair Work Act. An employer will not be in breach of the antidiscrimination grounds where the employer can prove, as they should have to, that it is a genuine and reasonable requirement of the position. This amendment is reasonable in its approach. It is not radical, because it uses and simply extends the existing mechanisms in the Fair Work Act.
We’ve long known that COVID vaccines do not stop transmission. Before this came apparent, however, getting vaccinated to ‘protect others’ was the justification many businesses used to roll out vaccine mandates. As a condition of keeping their job, many employees were coerced and still are being coerced into receiving COVID injections and boosters they do not want. The vaccine mandates cannot be justified, given the fact that vaccines do not guarantee protection from transmission.
The New South Wales Personal Injury Commission agrees with this view, with workers compensation being awarded for psychological distress stemming from mandates in the determination of Dawking and the Secretary of the Department of Education, handed down on 3 November. Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, yet we are happy that judicial bodies are taking up this self-evident position that broad vaccine mandates cannot be justified.
Despite this, mandates are still in effect across much of the private sector. It’s clear that further legislative action must be taken. Businesses are simply ignoring the evidence against unjustified vaccine mandates. A clear message needs to be sent that unreasonable directions that infringe on workers’ rights have no place in Australian workplaces.
Often mandates do not even account for Australians that have accepted medical contra-indications to vaccination. The Australian newspaper reports that Qantas sacked a pilot for failing to comply with a vaccination mandate while he was off work in a serious health condition: being treated for bowel cancer. Separately, I’ve met a Qantas employee who, after being injected with the first COVID injection, was rushed to hospital with severe disability—possibly life-threatening—due to the COVID injection. After hospital care and partial recovery, he returned to work, where Qantas insisted he get the second injection. He contested it and is on a vastly reduced pay on workers’ compensation. He fears his career with Qantas is finished. How can this be in this country?
This amendment seeks to reinforce workers’ rights to refuse a workplace direction where it is not a reasonable and justified requirement of the job. It leaves no doubt for employees and employers that vaccine mandates must not be in place unless there is a reasonable and justifiable need for them. Minister, given that businesses continue to ignore workers’ rights in this area, will the government support this amendment to reinforce the decisions of the Fair Work Commission and codify protections for workers against unreasonable workplace directions?
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show a shocking 67% reduction in the monthly birth rates from between July and December 2021. The Government claims I’ve got my facts wrong but the data is published on the ABS website for all to see. Guess what significant event lines up with roughly nine months prior to this data…
| Time Period | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
| Month of occurence | ||||||||||
| Total | 308,518 | 305,355 | 307,753 | 303,954 | 308,987 | 299,189 | 296,447 | 294,883 | 285,047 | 273,301 |
| · January | 25,745 | 26,135 | 25,344 | 25,575 | 25,398 | 25,373 | 25,529 | 24,796 | 24,611 | 24,793 |
| · February | 24,637 | 24,111 | 24,823 | 23,692 | 25,392 | 23,480 | 23,381 | 23,293 | 22,798 | 24,695 |
| · March | 26,397 | 26,405 | 26,438 | 26,172 | 27,365 | 26,426 | 25,768 | 25,632 | 24,794 | 27,433 |
| · April | 25,060 | 25,117 | 25,605 | 24,994 | 25,928 | 24,461 | 24,137 | 24,666 | 23,729 | 25,342 |
| · May | 26,394 | 26,486 | 25,964 | 25,199 | 26,293 | 25,608 | 25,387 | 26,004 | 24,424 | 25,669 |
| · June | 25,240 | 25,007 | 25,003 | 24,942 | 26,016 | 25,070 | 24,503 | 24,041 | 23,776 | 24,928 |
| · July | 25,940 | 25,719 | 26,325 | 26,347 | 25,785 | 24,973 | 24,915 | 25,049 | 24,490 | 24,905 |
| · August | 26,406 | 25,495 | 25,535 | 25,589 | 26,003 | 25,795 | 25,195 | 24,666 | 23,926 | 24,060 |
| · September | 25,463 | 25,575 | 26,383 | 26,027 | 26,248 | 25,185 | 24,385 | 24,557 | 23,760 | 23,558 |
| · October | 26,914 | 25,931 | 26,794 | 26,009 | 25,661 | 25,156 | 25,344 | 25,616 | 23,806 | 23,073 |
| · November | 25,392 | 24,507 | 24,353 | 24,194 | 24,387 | 23,888 | 24,123 | 23,332 | 22,238 | 18,186 |
| · December | 24,930 | 24,867 | 25,186 | 25,214 | 24,511 | 23,774 | 23,780 | 23,231 | 22,695 | 6,659 |
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:28): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Gallagher. It has been four weeks since the Australian Bureau of Statistics published data showing a 67 per cent reduction in Australia’s monthly birthrate between July and December 2021 as compared to the long-term average—a startling decrease. I drew attention to this data during Senate estimates, hoping for some reassurance. None was forthcoming. Let me ask again: Minister, why has Australia’s birthrate declined from 30 June 2021 to 31 December 2021, revealing a 70 per cent reduction?
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (14:29): I thank Senator Roberts for the question and I recall the discussion that we had at estimates and the fact that we requested, from Senator Roberts, some time to go through the information that he tabled in that hearing. I haven’t got that information back, but I think the advice given by the chief medical officer—who I was sitting next to—and me was that the data you were using didn’t align with the information we had. We hadn’t seen a drop-off of that size, which would be quite noticeable. In fact, that financial year of reporting, which incorporated births, actually showed the strongest birth record achieved so far—we had seen more births during that period. I’ll have to come back to you, because you tabled some documents in that meeting and the Department of Health took them away. If there’s anything further way in which I can advise you, I will do so.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary question?
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:30): Minister, that’s not as I remember it, but we’ll wait for your response. Is there any systematic information-sharing between the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Health to keep an eye on key indicators reflecting on our COVID measures, or does the Australian Bureau of Statistics just publish critical data like this in due course and hope that somebody notices at some time?
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (14:30): I thank Senator Roberts for the question. The ABS work very closely alongside other departments with the data that they are collecting, and they keep an eye on tracking any significant changes. If the ABS saw something in their data that would concern them—and I would imagine the numbers you’re citing about declines in birth numbers in one month would raise attention—it would be dealt with across government. In their cause of death publication the ABS reported that there had been 15 deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. That was against vaccinations of 42.5 million vaccines administered in that year.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary question?
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:32): Minister, what specifically is the government doing to get to the bottom of this staggering decline in births?
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (14:32): The first thing—and I remember this quite clearly from estimates—was that we undertook to look at the information you tabled in that hearing and align that with some of the data the ABS were collecting. They collect their births and deaths data as soon as it is available from the state and territory registries of births, deaths and marriages. The first thing we need to do is to get to the bottom of the numbers that you provided and make sure that the data that we got from the ABS, which I saw in that hearing, didn’t align with the numbers that you tabled.
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