Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

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

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

(c) joins the House of Representatives in condemning the comments of the Member for Dawson prior to question time on Tuesday, 10 August 2021 designed to use our national Parliament to spread misinformation and undermine the actions of Australians to defeat COVID-19;

(d) condemns Senator Canavan's and Senator Rennick's repeated use of their public platforms to undermine confidence in public health responses, public health institutions, and the actions of Australians to defeat COVID-19;

(e) rejects statements that 'masks don't work', 'lockdowns don't work', that lockdowns are 'doing much more damage to our love of liberty and our political system, that's the real threat to us now', descriptions of our health professionals as 'dictatorial medical bureaucrats', and that spread misinformation about Therapeutic Goods Administration approved vaccines; and

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

Paragraph (b) of this motion thanks the heroes of the pandemic—scientists, doctors, nurses, aged-care and disability workers, cleaners and other essential workers. These Australians have shouldered responsibility and taken leadership. If only this Prime Minister could follow their example! If only this Prime Minister could refrain from his consistent pattern of making excuses and ducking and weaving! We know this Prime Minister does that whenever he's asked to take responsibility, and he has done it again when it comes to members of his own party undermining the public health messages in the face of this pandemic.

There was a very similar motion in the other place—a motion the government didn't have the courage to call a division on. In speaking to the motion our Prime Minister went to every length to avoid referring to the member for Dawson. He said, 'What I'm not going to do is engage in a partisan debate on this.' The only partisan debate is the debate within his own party. He's not willing to have the debate in his own party. The leader of the nation is not willing to take responsibility and say to members of his own party, 'You're wrong and you should stop spreading dangerous misinformation.' He did say, 'I don't support misinformation.' That's like saying you don't support cancer. He can't even be straight with people. Where was the rebuke? Where was the courage to say it was wrong? It is a spinner's way through, isn't it? Rather than the Prime Minister making it clear that what the member for Dawson was saying was dangerous and rather than the Prime Minister saying the member for Dawson should stop making these sorts of comments, we saw the Prime Minister engaging in the same old dance of ducking and weaving.

When Australia needs leadership and responsibility, Mr Morrison goes missing. He even went so far as to say—and the Leader of the Government in the Senate has said the same thing—'If others want to undermine the public health effort with misinformation, that's a matter for them.' Really—'that's a matter for them'? What weakness! This bloke can't even stare down his own party, let alone stand up for the country.

But Mr Christensen is not alone in this. We have senators in this place who are prepared to make statements which are demonstrably against the public health advice and demonstrably not in the public interest. Senator Rennick said this about public health officials who are trying to keep Australians safe: 'Our country has become a comedy of errors. Our bureaucrats are the clowns.' They're the clowns! In a Facebook post that he has since removed, he endorsed an article that undermines the TGA approval of vaccines. Remember that, when that lot there stand up and tell us, 'We're doing a great job, because we've got TGA approval for Moderna.' One of their own is undermining the TGA approval process.

Then we have Senator Canavan, and I'm sure he's waiting for this. Senator Payne, in a speech on disinformation, made this statement:

Let's be clear: disinformation during a pandemic will cost lives ...

Senator Payne would be aware, as foreign minister, of the leadership of Dr Anthony Fauci over many years and through more than one pandemic, and I'm sure she too would have been horrified last year to read that the former chief strategist to President Trump, Steve Bannon, called for Dr Fauci to be beheaded. Mr Bannon was banned from Twitter as a result, but he still has a podcast. A recent guest on that podcast said, 'Coronavirus is doing more damage to our liberties than our health,' and that guest was Senator Canavan—going on a podcast hosted by someone who has called for the beheading of one of the world's leading public health officials. There should be nothing easier than for Senator Payne to rebuke Senator Canavan, and I invite her to do that today. I invite Senator Birmingham to do the same, unequivocally, and not with the weasel words we've heard from the Prime Minister: 'It's a matter for them.'

Also, Senator Canavan has written in the Fin Review, saying that using lockdowns in Sydney to save lives was an 'unjustifiable expense'. I would like him to tell us which life saved he thinks is an unjustifiable expense. Who should sacrifice a mother or a father or a daughter or a son because their life shouldn't be saved, because it isn't precious enough to be saved? When people say, 'We should learn to live with the virus,' what they're actually saying to Australians is: 'Be prepared for some of you to die from it.' This government have to stand up to those peddling disinformation and their failure to do so demonstrates the same lack of responsibility the Prime Minister continues to demonstrate. (Time expired)