Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

We'll get to you in a minute. In September, the Prime Minister announced the independent inquiry. Ms Robyn Kruk, Professor Catherine Bennett and Dr Angela Jackson were appointed as the inquiry's panel members, and the inquiry will go on. The panel members have heard from thousands of Australians in consultations and are due to report to the government shortly. It's reviewing what worked well and what we can do better to improve Australia preparedness for future pandemics. More than 2,000 people and organisations have taken the time to share their insights and experiences with the inquiry, ensuring that the inquiry will be informed by a substantial evidence base. It will consider the findings and work of other relevant inquiries and reviews and identify knowledge gaps for further investigation. It is founded in a proper public policy purpose: how is it that governments, the Australian government and the states and territories, and our public institutions respond in the event of future pandemics? That is a good motivation for a response. That is not what this proposal is founded in.

There is a sort of fetid wellspring of COVID conspiracy theorists, and some of them inhabit the benches over there. We know that Senator Babet comes from the outer reaches of some of the more kooky conspiracy theorist views. It is obvious. The One Nation party have always sought to manipulate these kinds of conspiracy theories for their own purposes. That is well known. There is, of course, and always has been, a group of people in the community who are mobilised by concerns about chemtrails, lizard people or fluoride conspiracies. Some of these characters are also attracted to the fluoride conspiracy theory. They're on the pizzagate material. They're on all of these things and on the drip for every internet conspiracy theory that there is—the JFK stuff, the Roswell stuff. You're all into that stuff. I get it.

Senator Rennick thinks that the CSIRO is part of some global conspiracy. You don't have to reach too far from these—

An opposition senator interjecting

You sook!