Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] On 9 July this year I wrote to the Minister for Government Services, Senator Reynolds, on behalf of Tasmanian constituents who were concerned that their vaccinations had not appeared on the Australian Immunisation Register. One of these constituents is a fire safety and training consultant who does a lot of work with residential aged care. A COVID vaccine mandate was about to come into effect for residential aged care in Tasmania and he needed to prove his vaccination status quickly. It took until 14 September for the minister to reply to my letter. Minister Reynolds revealed that a software constraint meant immunisation data failed to transfer from the Tasmanian Department of Health to the register. Instead of alerting the public, the minister quietly deployed Services Australia staff to help Tas health catch up and manually input 3,788 vaccinations.

I wrote to Minister Reynolds again with a series of questions about the vaccine certificate bungle—in fact, I have written to the minister three times on this issue—but she refused to answer any more of my questions. This is outrageous and it stinks of a cover-up. Australians have a right to know what happened. Without answers, how can they know that the issue has been fully resolved and that their vaccination status will appear on the register in a timely manner? Vaccinations are our ticket to freedom but only if Australians can demonstrate they've been vaccinated.

The latest bungle comes from the government that gave us robodebt, the botched COVIDSafe app and the most shambolic census in history. How can Australians trust any ICT project this government gets its hands on, including the Immunisation Register? It's time for the minister to come clean, tell us what happened, tell us why it happened and make sure that all those people have their names properly on the register.

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

Last weekend more than half a million Australians came together to protest antihuman and possibly criminal governments. The media were there, not to report on proceedings accurately and with integrity but to lie and cover-up for our medical dictatorships. What we all saw around Australia was not right-wing extremists. What One Nation saw was everyday Australians united in a desire to get government and health bureaucrats out of their lives, to be left alone to make the best decisions for their bodies and for the bodies of their children. It was no surprise that a common sign being held high was: 'my body, my choice'—on one occasion written on the back of a Greens' election poster. Apparently 'my body, my choice' is a value the Greens abandoned and their hypocrisy is now widely noticed.

The Liberal Party should be scared of the number of signs from small businesses that capricious, callous government mandates shut down. The closures destroyed lives and weakened local communities. The Labor Party should be concerned at the handwritten T-shirts on former unionists in health care, education, police and emergency services, and aged-care facilities, fired for the crime of respecting their bodies—Labor voters no more. Another sign simply read: 'pray, reflect, vote.' Religious leaders advocating action contrary to religious teachings are not going to come out of this unscathed.

The rallies were peaceful and the mood was positive and energised. Many Australians have realised that fear is the virus and the cure is to embrace family and community with love and inclusion. The only fear was from some small groups of spectators infected with the media mutation.

The weekend stands as a warning to all power-crazed health bureaucrats, state premiers and federal politicians. We have one flag. We are one community. We are one people. We are one nation. We will not be scared and bullied into surrendering our bodies and our freedoms.