Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 21 January this year, I proved positive to COVID. I wasn't too worried about that because my health advice over the last 12 months has had me on vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, B1 and other supplements to improve my immune system, although I was in trepidation about going back home to Phillip Island to tell my wife that I had tested positive. I also had access to Ivermectin, which we both immediately went on as soon as I tested positive. We had five days of Ivermectin and then another five days to prove it treated. I had some symptoms. I had a bit of a rough time for three or four days. I am not vaccinated. I won't be vaccinated because my view was the risk from being vaccinated was just as high as the risk I was taking from getting the virus itself. So I had to make a decision, and I made a decision on my behalf. I made a decision that I wanted to continue in this House, and I had just been through a fairly major health issue only a few weeks before, so I was fairly vulnerable. But I believed I had actually done the right thing and protected my body in the way that I wanted to protect it, by the choice that I made and the choice that all of those demonstrators out there we're talking about have made—choice and freedom and not having the things that they do imposed upon them by politicians in this place and others. (Time expired)