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

For the past two years state governments, with the assistance of the federal government, sadly, have imposed many regulations and restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures have eroded our freedoms, our human rights and our civil rights. Such infringements on our rights were introduced under the guise of public safety, but the oft-cited health advice on which they were allegedly based has never been held up for public scrutiny.

States have introduced draconian measures, such as border closures, without having the validity of such measures tested in court. Governments have prevented doctors from prescribing medicines that were safe and effective, with a long history of safe use. Governments have mandated and coerced Australians to undertake a medical procedure that does not have long-term safety data. Substances that people are forced to inject into their body out of fear of losing their job are produced by big pharma companies that are getting very rich off these mandates while bearing no responsibility for any of the harm their products may cause, thanks to an indemnity granted by the government. We already know some of the harmful effects but we don't know all of them, because there is no long-term safety data.

There's always going to be a section of the Australian community that for whatever reason is hesitant or totally opposed to these provisionally approved inoculations. The mainstream media are kidding themselves when they seek to demonise all pro-freedom people with the antivaxxer slur. There were tens of thousands of protesters on the lawns of parliament on Saturday. They were not all antivaxxers. Most of them were actually fully inoculated—I'd say many of them—but they were antimandate. They were hardworking people. Many of them lost their jobs due to workplace vaccine mandates. They were opposed to the discriminatory measures that are locking ordinary Australians out of polite society as well—locked out of cafes, locked out of restaurants, locked out of theatres, locked out of sporting venues and even locked out of hospitals. They are sick of being forced to comply with measures that just make no sense.

In my home state we have mask mandates. We have vaccine mandates in the form of 'no jab, no job' policies. We've even had borders closed to people who weren't vaccinated. But still the omicron variant crossed the border, from the vaccinated, and swept through the state. The vaccinated caught the disease, the vaccinated passed on the disease, the vaccinated went to hospital with the disease, and the vaccinated, sadly, died with the disease. Ordinary Australians look at this data and ask the obvious question: why are we still pretending that masks, QR codes, vaccinations, lockouts, lockdowns and discrimination can stop the spread? The mainstream media has failed to actually ask that question, but it is a question that we can ask and it should be asked.

As the pandemic transitions to the endemic phase, we need a royal commission to find out not only how we got into this situation but who is responsible. The devastating impacts of the pandemic response on millions of Australians cannot just be swept under the rug. To gloss over the rise of tyranny and authoritarianism in this country would only further embolden those who seek to coerce and control the Australian people. If we fail to examine how and why we were stripped of rights and freedoms, we will fail to learn the lessons of history and we will be doomed to repeat them at the next pandemic or the next opportunity to induce fear amongst the populace and then tyranny. That's why I have called for a royal commission or a similar commission of inquiry with sufficient powers to fully investigate the pandemic response from all levels of government—federal, state, local, Public Service institutions, departments and agencies. I'm asking people who believe in freedom, who believe in human rights, who believe that wrong was done over the course of this pandemic, to get on board with this. I've got a petition at georgechristensen.com.au/inquiry. I am calling for wide terms of reference in that, to include all aspects of the pandemic response that have eroded our freedoms, human rights and civil rights: lockdowns; border closures; mask mandates; vaccine efficacy and safety; vaccine passports; medical segregation and discrimination; transparency of medical advice; treatments and interference with GPs; misinformation and censorship; big tech and freedom-of-speech issues; quarantine facilities, rules and operations; restrictions on social gatherings such as weddings and funerals; access to hospitals and services; international travel and return; school closures; regulation enforcement and police overreach; PCR and rapid antigen tests—all of these issues. I urge anyone who has suffered under any instance of government overreach in the pandemic response to head to the website and support my call for a royal commission into the pandemic.

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