Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the House:

(1) applauds the sacrifices made by the Australian people to keep each other safe;

(2) thanks the heroes of the pandemic - our scientists, doctors, nurses, aged care and disability workers, cleaners and other essential workers;

(3) condemns the comments of the Member for Dawson prior to Question Time designed to use our national Parliament to spread misinformation and undermine the actions of Australians to defeat COVID-19;

(4) rejects statements that 'masks don't work', 'lockdowns don't work' and the describing of our health professionals as 'dictatorial medical bureaucrats'; and

(5) calls on all members to refrain from making ill-informed comments at a time when the pandemic represents a serious threat to the health of Australians.

Just prior to question time is the key position for the last speaker for the government—one which exposes, to the Australian public, tactics on both sides of the House. That's the key slot prior to 2 pm that occurs in the parliament. The government chose to give that spot to the member for Dawson, which is why I move the motion I read out. The fact is that the member for Dawson has engaged in behaviour over hydroxychloroquine, over unproven and indeed dangerous remedies, which are completely contradictory to the scientific advice and to the advice of our health professionals.

There has been some debate in this parliament about the two jobs that we say—and indeed the Prime Minister, when he addressed the National Press Club in January this year, said—are a priority for the government: the rollout of the vaccine, and quarantine facilities that are purpose built and keep people safe. The fact is that, when it comes to the rollout of the vaccine, our scientists have done an absolutely magnificent job. There's debate over the speed at which our rollout has gone. When we look at the rollout, the fact is we are last in the developed world. We're struggling to get in the top 80 in the entire world for the rollout of the vaccine. Last year, when companies like Moderna and Pfizer were promoting the idea of an mRNA vaccine, there was some scepticism as to whether it could be achieved and what the time frame would be. But, as we asked about in questions today in relation to Moderna, between the outbreak of COVID-19 originating in China and the end of 2020 Moderna had already delivered 100 million vaccinations to the US government. Pfizer was being delivered. Our scientists and our health professionals performed miracles to take what was an unknown disease, beginning in China and then spreading around the world, and come up with real solutions based upon science.

What parliaments have done around the world, and what the Australian people have been magnificent on, is respond to the threat that this pandemic represented. Australians have listened to the advice of our health professionals. They have made sacrifices. They've stayed at home. They've kept safe from each other. They have in many cases made sacrifices that have cost them their jobs and their incomes. Certainly every Australian's way of life has been impacted as a result of this. But what we have also had throughout this pandemic is a very small minority of people here in Australia but also overseas—and we saw the actions of some of the conspiracy theorists in the United States, leading to a raid on the White House in January earlier this year—promoting through Facebook, through a range of social media posts, ideas that are frankly not based upon science but based upon conspiracies, based upon spreading fear and based upon spreading misinformation. We saw the end result of those consequences in the rallies that took place just weeks ago. The violent rally in Sydney should have been condemned, and anyone promoting it should have been condemned, just like the minister was quite right to condemn any violence and the inappropriate way of protesting that occurred outside this parliament and at the Prime Minister's residence earlier today.

What we saw, from the punching of a horse down to attacks on police—attacks on those brave men and women who take the duty of keeping us safe—was people having those mass demonstrations in order to promote civil disobedience. For many people, you would think that they might have been on the fringe of society. They'd heard misinformation. They were concerned about the sacrifices they were being asked to make and didn't have a clear explanation as to why. For many people who turned up, just frustrated, you can perhaps think that maybe they were just misguided. But for a member of the House of Representatives to attend a rally in Mackay, as the member for Dawson did, supporting these violent demonstrations that took place is an insult to those heroes of the pandemic.

That's why this motion recognises our scientists, our doctors, our nurses, our aged-care and disability workers, our cleaners, our truck drivers and our supermarket workers, who've made all those sacrifices to keep us safe. Yet we have a member of the government, a member of the Liberal-National Party, coming into this parliament and, in the key slot before question time, promoting these conspiracy theories by saying, as he did in his contribution, that it's okay to say, 'Masks don't work—fact,' to say, 'Lockdowns don't destroy the virus, but they do destroy people's livelihoods and people's lives,' to refer to our medical heroes not as heroes of the pandemic but as 'dictatorial medical bureaucrats' who 'need to recognise these facts and stop spreading fear.' This is at a time when in the last days, each and every day, there have been fatalities in New South Wales, including over the weekend one of my constituents—a constituent in an aged-care home in Summer Hill who caught the virus because an aged-care worker had not been fully vaccinated. That person died because they had not been kept safe. What we had from this member of parliament today was: 'Some people will catch it. Tragically, some people will die from it. That's inevitable, and we have to accept it.' That's what he said. He then went on to say: 'Open society back up! Restore our freedoms! End this madness!' I'll tell you what madness is. Madness is saying let this disease rip; let people die; let whole economies be shut down; let's stop our being able to return to our way of life. That is what is madness—the madness of conspiracy theorists, the madness of the rump in the National Party who replaced the former Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Riverina, as its leader as a result of the idea of the tail wagging the National Party dog, because the former Deputy Prime Minister wouldn't have a bar of this sort of nonsense. But the current one is quite happy to give it a tick.

The Liberal and National parties are quite happy to give a voice to the member for Dawson. He's not sitting on the crossbench. I'll tell you when we'll take you, the government, seriously. We'll take the government seriously when the member for Dawson is expelled from the party and is sitting over there with the member for Hughes. The member for Hughes also has spouted these sorts of conspiracy theories and was allowed to do it day after day, week after week, month after month at a time when our heroes of the pandemic have been doing great work each and every day. They are being undermined by someone paid by the taxpayer and with the great honour of sitting in this House of Representatives. But with that great honour of sitting in the House of Representatives comes obligation: an obligation to be fair dinkum, an obligation to promote truth, an obligation not to promote conspiracy theories, an obligation to listen to the health professionals.

The health professionals have had a difficult task. It is true that this was not anticipated. Anyone early in 2019 who would have said at the time of the contest of the last election that this would be a dominant issue during this term of parliament—not even Nostradamus could have done that. But the fact is that Australians in workplaces, some of the poorest-paid Australians—our cleaners, those people who look after people in aged-care homes—are risking their lives by going in and helping vulnerable Australians each and every day, and they are prepared to do that. Aged-care workers, who were told they would be fully vaccinated by Easter but who were then told, 'No, just go and see a doctor; you're on your own when it comes to being vaccinated,' are our heroes, and they deserve so much better. Under 40 per cent of our people in disability care have been, we learnt yesterday, vaccinated—pretty close to one in three—and under half of our aged-care workers have been vaccinated. They are our heroes. They deserve our thanks and our gratitude. But what they get is an insult from the member for Dawson, and what's worse is that those people who are members of grieving families actually heard in our national parliament a member of parliament stand up and essentially say—as he did explicitly, not essentially—'COVID-19 is going to be with us forever, just like the flu.'

This is not the same as the flu—this is not the same as the flu. The member for Dawson went on to say, 'And just like the flu, we will have to live with it, not the constant fear of it.' Well, I've got to say this: I'm scared and Australians are scared of COVID. There is fear because they're fearful of something that's scary. This is having an impact. People are dying. People are getting sick. There are almost 30 people in hospital today who are on ventilators. They're on ventilators and being kept alive by a machine. There are almost double that number, or around about double that number, who are in hospital in ICU. This is a scary disease that requires an appropriate response.

This parliament needs to dissociate itself from the member for Dawson's comments. He was let go for far too long with his mad theories about what drugs people should take. We didn't quite have what they had in the United States, drinking bleach and various other things, but we've had quite inappropriate theories promoted by the member for Dawson. That's why this motion should be supported, and that's why the member for Macarthur has seconded this motion.

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