Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator O'Neill today relating to the member for Hughes.

There is room for many different voices on different issues in a mature democracy, and we can find room to disagree about policy priorities, about facts and about values. But there are some lines that should not be crossed, and one of those lines is endangering lives. Over the past year, the member for Hughes has crossed that line again and again and again. He has made demonstrably false claims that endanger ordinary people's health. His comments are now notorious, arguing, against all available scientific evidence, that particular drugs can cure COVID, when they cannot, and claiming, as he did just this month, that mask wearing is dangerous and that forcing children to wear masks is child abuse.

Peddling false medical information at any time is dangerous. Doing so during a global pandemic that has claimed 2.2 million lives worldwide is inexcusable. Yet excuses are exactly what is being offered from the top down: by the Prime Minister, by the Deputy Prime Minister and, today in this chamber, by the Leader of the Government in the Senate. These excuses don't hold up. They don't stand ordinary scrutiny. Asked if Mr Kelly's remarks would cause panic and fear in the community, Mr McCormack lamely said he did not think so, offering this excuse:

I don't know how many followers Craig Kelly has on his Facebook or a social media platform, but it's probably poor compared to perhaps what the mainstream media has.

Mr Kelly proudly boasts that his posts reached over 1.8 million people in January and 'ensured that more people are exposed to the facts and have been educated about ivermectin and HCQ and zinc'.

The Prime Minister has refused to condemn Mr Kelly's comments, saying, glibly, 'Mr Kelly is not my doctor.' Well, an actual doctor—the vice-president of the AMA—said that misinformation like that being shared by Mr Kelly is 'torching the foundation of community health and science'. But the Prime Minister said he thought Mr Kelly was doing a good job as the member for Hughes. Well, what does that look like? What is this 'good job' the Prime Minister is talking about? Mr Kelly's Facebook page is a relentless cavalcade of misleading information. Since 30 January he has published 23 posts; 12 of them promote COVID misinformation, nine promote climate misinformation and one relates to a community event—just one. And he topped off that performance by doing a 90-minute podcast with Mr Pete Evans, a man who last year was fined by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for making false claims about supposed COVID-fighting devices and went on to tweet a meme containing Neo-Nazi imagery.

It should be easy for the Prime Minister, for Mr McCormack and for Senator Birmingham to condemn a man who has peddled dangerous conspiracy theories, and it should be even easier to condemn the use of taxpayer funded platforms to spread them. Mr Kelly is afforded a privileged position. He is a preselected member of the Liberal Party. He is a member of the Australian parliament. I don't think it should be beyond Mr Morrison to say, very clearly, what is clear to everybody else in this community: that what Mr Kelly is saying is wrong, that it is dangerous and that people should not listen to him in particular. A real leader—a real leader with a spine—would find it within himself to express an opinion about the wrong and dangerous ideas espoused by Mr Kelly. The failure to do so is even more extraordinary when we consider the relationship between Mr Morrison and Mr Kelly, because it has been widely reported that Mr Kelly owes his job, owes his preselection, to Mr Morrison. In 2018 we saw the headlines 'Morrison intervenes to save maverick MP Craig Kelly from preselection defeat' and 'Scott Morrison's fixer offered Craig Kelly's challenger a $350,000 party job to drop out'. Well, Mr Kelly has his seat in this parliament, thanks to Mr Morrison, and the least Mr Morrison can do is show some courage and hold him to account.