George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise—not with any happiness, that's for sure—to talk about this statement that has been made on the Wuhan coronavirus, COVID-19. There are seven million-plus people infected around the world. In Australia, almost 7,300 people have been infected with this virus. Around the world 404,000 people are dead, and that number is growing on a daily basis. In Australia, thankfully—hopefully—it looks like we have stemmed that tide, with a very low number of 102. But that's quite a stark statement to make: 102 people dead is still a lot of people dead. There are families and friends right around this country grieving because of those 102 people who have died in Australia.

It's estimated that 950,000 jobs were lost over seven weeks, from 14 March through to 2 May—almost a million jobs gone. Hopefully, a lot of them will return as the economy reopens, but some of them may not. People's jobs have been lost, perhaps for a long time. Businesses have been reduced to ashes, and people whose life's work and life savings have been affected are either on the brink of bankruptcy or have already gone bankrupt because of this event. So it has been somewhat devastating for this country—somewhat devastating for the world, in fact. But I have to praise the leadership of the Prime Minister. I think that he has been very much the right person at the right time in this global crisis and how it has impacted this country.

I want to particularly say thank you to all of the hardworking health professionals, the frontline responders. These people, quite frankly, put themselves in harm's way during this event. They're like the SES volunteers who go out during cyclone disasters or the country fire brigades during bushfire disasters. They are our doctors and our nurses in our hospitals and in the GP clinics, the paramedics and the ambos. All of these people, as far as I'm concerned, are deserving of a national emergency medal for what they have done during this pandemic crisis. So, particularly to the hardworking men and women who make up the Mackay Health and Hospital Service and the Townsville Health and Hospital Service, to all of those who work in GP clinics, and to all of the Queensland Ambulance Service workers in my electorate and elsewhere, I want to say, on behalf of the people of Dawson, thank you for what you have done during this pandemic crisis.

Things could have been done better—there is no doubt about that. Hindsight is always great. Actually, during the event, I, along with other members in the Liberal-National Party and also in Katter's Australia Party, were calling for there to be regional management and basically a lockdown of 'North Queensland's borders'—I say that in inverted commas; we're not a separate state yet. There are local government boundaries that could have been closed down so that there wasn't the spread of this virus. We had 90-plus per cent of cases in Queensland originating in Brisbane and the south-east corner. So we could have stemmed that tide further. That option wasn't taken up, but I notice that there's now a bit of arguing from Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk against the position that she had with North Queensland. She's arguing that the borders of Queensland need to remain shut because of cases in New South Wales and Victoria. Well, the cases are extremely low now, and what we are seeing is the devastation of our tourism sector, in particular, in places like the Whitsundays.

Some of my constituents received some rough treatment at the hands of New South Wales Health authorities when they were locked down in quarantine after returning to the country. I'm very disappointed that New South Wales authorities took a bit of a heavy hand with my constituents, and I've raised those matters with people here. But, whether it's these issues or whether it's the issues of the people in Peru—I had constituents who were over there and were struggling to get back home and people on cruise ships who were struggling to find a way home—they were great difficulties that were managed through.

But, out of all of this, we need to look at the root cause of this problem. I hold one single entity responsible for it all, and that is the Chinese Communist Party. They unleashed on the entire world this virus that has caused such devastation. It has caused such a high death toll. In this country, it has caused 102 deaths, jobs have been lost and businesses have been lost, and an economy that was OK, that was going well, is suddenly looking very, very bad indeed.

There was a cover-up by the Chinese Communist Party. It is quite clear that the matter was covered up. Doctors were being silenced. Well-known doctor, Dr Li Wenliang, who died of COVID-19, was silenced. He was brought into a police station and told he was a rumour-monger and that he had to sign a piece of paper saying that he wouldn't say any more about this—one of the first whistleblowers. There were more doctors that were hauled in and questioned and arrested, and some disappeared. There were people who worked in laboratories that were near the Wuhan seafood market who disappeared. Why was there a cover-up? Why did they go into that seafood market and clean it out before anyone could do some proper inspections of the place? Why did the Chinese Communist Party authorities destroy early samples of this virus? Why did they do that? Why was there a cover-up? Why? The question has to be asked, and I'm glad that our government has pursued this with the World Health Organization and the World Health Assembly, because these questions have got to be answered.

We don't know where it came from. They say a seafood market, a wet market, but then there are sources within the Chinese Communist Party administration that say, no, it didn't come from there—that it came from the USA, apparently, and that the CIA brought it over. With the laboratory that exists nearby, I do think that there is enough circumstantial evidence pointing to that as the cause. I've been called a racist for saying that. Well, if I'm a racist for saying that then there are a lot of racists in very eminent positions that are coming out. Scientists, the former head of MI5 and the US military intelligence apparatus are coming out and saying that this is the case. The Harvard Medical School has a study out alleging that CCP authorities had knowledge of this virus back in August by using satellite imagery of the hospital carpark in Wuhan and also search terms that were going on from Wuhan. They were search terms that are associated with symptoms of a virus, such as the COVID-19 virus.

We know the cover-up happened. Why did the cover-up happen? You've got to have a close look at that lab—a very close look at that lab—because actually that lab has been doing some shocking research, gain-of-function research, where it manipulates viruses and can cause quite dangerous outcomes. That's not me saying that; a renowned microbiologist by the name of Peter Chumakov has said that they are doing absolutely crazy things in that lab that a lot of people are talking about. A World Health Organization adviser—Jamie Metzl, who's a member of the WHO's international advisory committee on human genome editing—has said it's likely that it leaked from that lab. This is one of the early signs. When this first came out, the South China University of Technology released a report by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao that said:

… somebody was entangled with the evolution of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus.

In addition to the origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan …

Eminent scientists in China itself said this probably came from a laboratory. There are a lot of questions that the Chinese Communist Party has to answer, and hopefully we will get those answers because of Australia's initiative.

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