Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there's one thing I've learnt in my 3½ years of being a senator it's that, if anyone thinks that this country is being run by the people in this chamber or in the other place, they are kidding themselves. It is run by the bureaucrats. Let's be honest: that's much too nice a term; they're really autocrats.

These people are accountable to no-one. We've been fooled with this Orwellian language that they're an independent statutory authority and, because they're independent, they're going to be pure as driven snow. I don't think I've been to a set of estimates yet in the last 3½ years where I've ever had a bureaucrat actually come out and give me a straight answer. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of it, so tonight's all about the last set of estimates and the number of lies that were told by Dr John Skerritt. I'm going to go through those lies bit by bit, right now.

The first one is a real doozey. When asked by Senator Roberts whether or not he would apologise to the people who died from the vaccine, Dr Skerritt said that since the beginning of the COVID pandemic more than 10 times as many people had died from paracetamol or Panadol as from adverse events due to COVID vaccines. We checked that out—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry to interrupt you, but Senator Ayres is standing, I believe, with a point of order.

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

I think it's pretty unusual for senators in this place to describe public servants, senior or otherwise, as liars, and I'd ask you, Acting Deputy President Pratt, to direct Senator Rennick to withdraw that.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, will you withdraw that statement?

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, because I'm going to explain the reasons why right now, and, if Senator Ayres would take the time to listen to what I have to say, he would know—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, you'll need to take your seat again. I also have Senator Roberts on his feet, but I'll go to you first, Senator Ayres.

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

Acting Deputy President, that is not a basis for not withdrawing that assertion. There are plenty of other forms of language that could be used by Senator Rennick to describe a disagreement that he has. Describing somebody, particularly somebody who's given evidence in Senate proceedings, using the terminology that Senator Rennick has is not acceptable. I'd ask you again to request that he withdraw it.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, before I let you take the call, which I'm assuming is on a point of order, I will advise Senator Rennick that, in this place and under our standing orders, in the exercise of our freedom of speech we have a need to exercise our valuable right of freedom of speech in a responsible manner, that damage may be done in this place by allegations made in parliament and that such persons have limited opportunities to respond to such allegations. Senator Roberts?

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

As a witness to what happened, I can testify that Senator Rennick is telling the truth.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, that is not a point of order. Senator Rennick, would you like to continue with your speech? Given your comment wasn't against a member of this place I won't insist that you withdraw it, but I do ask you to exercise your responsibility in this place and your right to freedom of speech in a responsible manner.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will continue. As I've just quoted, Professor Skerritt said there were 10 times more deaths from paracetamol and Panadol than there were from the COVID vaccines. So, upon returning to my electorate office, I thought I'd check this particular quote out. It turns out there were only 52 deaths on the DAEN, the Database of Adverse Event Notifications, website since 1 January 2021, which is the same period that the COVID vaccines have been available. Twenty-four of those vaccine deaths were as a result of self-harm and nearly all of the remaining vaccines were in concurrence with other drugs. Given that there's been 975 reported deaths—and that varies between 975 and 978—according to Professor Skerritt there should have been 9,000 or so reported deaths from paracetamol. I note that Professor Skerritt is more than happy to take every reported death from paracetamol as an alleged death but not do the same for COVID vaccines, so he's also applying double standards. Whichever way you look at it it's an egregious statement.

The second thing I wanted to pick him up on is a statement that I dispute or on a figure that was misleading was, when I asked why he made a statement at a press conference that Moderna would provide 100 per cent protection from death, he insisted that he was quoting a study. I've gone back and I've looked at the Hansard again when he gave that press conference and this is exactly with what he said—he was referring to the release of the Moderna vaccine:

It's highly efficacious. And of course, we can build on widespread global experience. So in the US alone, there has been over 140 million doses of Moderna used. The other really encouraging thing about Moderna is even after six months, it's proving to be 93 per cent efficacious against any infection, 98 per cent against severe disease and 100 per cent against death. And that's really exciting.

He's quoted from 140 million doses administered in the US. He was not quoting from a trial. So, again, I will say that he was definitely misleading. I would consider that, given I've raised this with him in questions on notice, he knew exactly what he was saying, and he shouldn't have said what he said.

The other thing that was particularly disturbing was that, when I asked why he didn't put a warning label on the vaccines to warn people who had antiphospholipid syndrome and advise them that the vaccines hadn't been tested for people with autoimmune diseases, he quoted a study from Rheumatology magazine that effectively said that vaccines were safe for people with antiphospholipid syndrome. So I went and looked up that study in the Rheumatology magazine, and it turns out that that study was conducted on the Sinopharm vaccine—a Chinese vaccine—which is a protein vaccine. So that's completely different. Protein vaccines are completely different to mRNA vaccines.

An important distinction is the fact that the mRNA vaccines are encased in a lipid nanoparticle, in which there are four lipids—an ionizable lipid, PEG, cholesterol and a phospholipid. Given that there are phospholipids in the vaccine and because the lipids actually cross the cell membrane—biochemistry students will know from Biochemistry 101 that the cell is a membrane made up of a lipid layer of phospholipids—the phospholipids around your cells are also impacted by this vaccine, because of the pathway it uses. So why he was quoting a study that relied on the Sinopharm protein vaccine and not the mRNA vaccine is again very misleading.

Another question that was posed to him earlier in the afternoon was about whether or not cardiac arrests were a side effect of the vaccine. That was a question because Professor Skerritt admitted that you could have myocarditis from the vaccine, and it turns out that, in some cases, myocarditis can lead to cardiac arrests. It can cause a lot of lifetime pain. I was on the phone yesterday to a doctor for 40 minutes who was saying it's actually a subclinical condition. I had never heard that term before.

What he said was it's like an iceberg. He said a lot of people don't experience any pain with myocarditis and then they'll suddenly pass away if they're not aware of the condition that they've got. That is unlike pericarditis, which is a heart muscle issue, but that actually has external pain, so you can feel it, and that's often the reason why people are going to the hospital—because they can feel that pain. Myocarditis can actually be subclinical, and you can't always feel it. To put a long story short, yet again, he has tried to downplay the risks of the vaccine by not acknowledging that cardiac arrests are a side effect of the vaccine; you can't say that myocarditis is but cardiac arrests aren't.

The other one I'd like to refer to is a statement that he made about 12 months ago, but I think it's worth raising again. He said that the lipids in the vaccine are like the lipids that you eat in the sausages that you have for breakfast. It turns out that, in December last year, a very diligent and persistent lady managed to get an unredacted copy of the Pfizer non-clinical report, and we were fortunate enough to get pages 17, 18 and 19 unredacted. There's some interesting stuff in here. You've really got to ask yourself why it was redacted in the first place, given that it was particularly pertinent to the risks that this new vaccine had.

What is interesting is that, at the bottom of page 17 of the unredacted statement—and you won't see this on the website at TGA FOI 2389-6, because the unredacted version hasn't been put up yet, even though it should be—the Pfizer Nonclinical evaluation report actually says that novel excipients are used in the vaccine. 'Novel' means new. So for Professor Skerritt to claim that the lipids used in the vaccine are the same as the sausages that you eat for breakfast is completely misleading, again. As his own document, submitted by Pfizer to the TGA, said, two lipids out of the four lipids in the vaccine—this is quite a complex biochemistry chemical arrangement here—are brand new. So, yet again, why has he misled us about this?

There was another statement that I asked about as well. This wasn't just Professor Skerritt; a number of people have said this. They said that the vaccine stays in the tops of your arms. If you go to page 44 of this particular document again, the Pfizer Nonclinical evaluation report, you will see that the concentration of lipids in just about all body organs was still increasing after day 2, before they stopped the trials. It doubled in the ovaries. The concentration of lipids in the ovaries doubled from day 1 to day 2.

That in itself should have been a red flag, because women are born with one set of ovaries and they have one set of eggs in there. They're called oocytes. They stay with women throughout their lifetime. So, if it gets into the oocytes, that's going to cause problems down the track, I can assure you. Professor Skerritt replied that the concentration of lipids decreased in the body. But that wasn't the question that I asked. I asked why the concentration of lipids increased in various body organs. Yet again, he has deliberately misled.

This matters because it comes back to the whole point about the 978 reported deaths, of which the TGA claim only 14 have been a result of the vaccine. Professor Skerritt is trying to override these reported deaths, of which approximately 70 per cent come from medical professionals and 50 per cent come from state governments. Given that Professor Skerritt and the TGA haven't examined the patients—haven't examined the body—and that in many cases autopsies haven't been done, why is he overriding the expert opinion of people who have actually examined the patient or the body before they passed away? If he can't tell the truth about all these other things, how do we know he's telling the truth about reported deaths to the TGA?

Senate adjourned at 20: 55