Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the federal and state governments have had a disastrous two years of COVID mismanagement—not just one summer. Go out the front of this building and have a listen. Go anywhere in Australia and have a listen. Australia has seen a repeated failure to learn and do better from one year to the next—and it's now counting in years. The failure of this government to modify the COVID response as more information has emerged about the science of this virus is criminal incompetence.

Our competitive federalism model has been mocked and abused and buried, in some perverse game of pass the parcel, so that everyday Australians can have no clear idea of who is to blame for this mess. I know who's to blame: it's all of you. All of you have waved through ill-prescribed and illogical measures for more than two years. One after the other, from one state to another, the same science and data on COVID has been translated into wildly different responses, depending upon the ideology and personality flaws of the premiers and chief ministers of the day and the federal ministers. Yet on each occasion, with each different policy, the phrase was the same: trust the science, but don't show us the science.

The last two years have seen a litany of nonsense and lies—lie after lie, dressed up as medicine and science. Here are just some of them: the unresolved definition of 'a hotspot'; the inability to agree on sensible measures for border communities; the seemingly arbitrary closing of borders and the locking down of communities for minor outbreaks, while then being allowed to open up during major outbreaks, which was just incredible to see; marginalising the unvaccinated in some states but not in others; the changing definition of 'fully vaccinated'; and making commitments to people and then contradicting them.

As a nation we have been held captive to measures that have divided our communities; coerced us into a medical procedure in order to keep our jobs; and denied us freedom of choice over our bodies, over when we can open our businesses, over where we can travel, over whether we can see our family or friends and over whether we can attend a funeral or a wedding. Any dissent has been kept suppressed by media accomplices. The media have crafted the narrative into a singular, government sanctioned message—essentially, propaganda and lies.

Disasters and calamities can have a powerful galvanising effect for communities, as we see during bushfires and floods. Yet during COVID, our governments have successfully eroded our cohesiveness as an Australian nation. They've fractured it. This is the first time I've seen a national emergency responded to by dividing Australians instead of uniting against the common threat. Instead of helping one another, we find ourselves treating others like lepers and retreating from anyone who coughs or sniffles. We've been brainwashed into division, disrespect, telling lies and telling tales on anyone we believe isn't being compliant.

The federal government have squandered the opportunity to bring Australia together as a nation, by letting the states and territories run wild with stupidity and deceit: Liberal, Labor, Nationals and Greens—governments all. Historically, our ADF are brought in to help domestically in catastrophic and emergency situations, so it says a lot about how the state and federal governments have mishandled the response to COVID, when, after two years of COVID experience, we need 1,700 ADF personnel to go into our aged-care sector because the staff have left; they've had to because they've been threatened with a forced vaccination. Debacle after debacle have left our aged-care sector completely under-resourced. Staffing has been ravaged by vaccine mandates and unreasonable close-contact rules.

It makes no sense to me that Labor would try to pin this on the Morrison-Joyce government alone, when the Labor Party—when this parliament, both state and federal parliaments—waved these measures through for two years. To steal a line from Driving Miss Daisy: 'Senator Brown, you took that turn with the government.' It's too late now to dodge the blame. You're all to blame. The unnecessary deaths within aged care from government incompetence are heartbreaking, shameful, immoral and inhuman. So too are the continual lockdowns of elderly residents, which have prevented the elderly from seeing their families, leading some to believe they've been abandoned. It is not their families who have abandoned them; it's this parliament. It's all of you. The disrespect shown to our elderly is breathtaking.

While there are ethical questions about the balance between opening up and our most vulnerable being exposed to COVID, there's absolutely no acceptable excuse for the state and federal governments' logistical failures during this entire atrocious mess. How can we do this to our families and communities? We're still stumbling as a nation two years later! The federal and state leaders have gutted the dignity and rights of everyday Australians through their ineptness and unprecedented thirst for power and control, at a time when Australians needed hope, reassurance, leadership and confidence in their leaders. Is it any wonder that this incompetence, arrogance and hubris have brought protesters onto the streets in their millions? (Time expired)