Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that the President has received the following letter, dated 7 August, from Senator Babet:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "that, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

"It's been more than two years since some Labor MP's called for a Royal Commission into Australia's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It's been 16 months since Labor Senator Katy Gallagher backed a Royal Commission into Australia's pandemic response. It's been over a year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the Australian people a Royal Commission or a similar inquiry into Australia's response to the COVID pandemic. He said an inquiry would be established 'as soon as practicable'."

The Labor Government must honour their promises and establish a Royal Commission into the pandemic response immediately."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

"It's been more than two years since some Labor MP's called for a Royal Commission into Australia's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It's been 16 months since Labor Senator Katy Gallagher backed a Royal Commission into Australia's pandemic response. It's been over a year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the Australian people a Royal Commission or a similar inquiry into Australia's response to the COVID pandemic. He said an inquiry would be established 'as soon as practicable'."

The Labor Government must honour their promises and establish a Royal Commission into the pandemic response immediately."

It's been almost a year since the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, promised to establish a royal commission into our nation's pandemic response. Where is our royal commission? I know things move slowly in this place, but the Prime Minister promised this in August last year. He said a royal commission or something equivalent would be set up 'as soon as practicable'. When might 'as soon as practicable' be, Prime Minister? How long are we going to have to wait?

It's been 18 months since Labor minister Katy Gallagher backed a royal commission into the pandemic response. Minister Gallagher told the Sydney Morning Herald last year she was firmly of the view that a royal commission was the right thing to do. That's what she said, and I agree. Most Australians agree. So where is it? It was also Minister Gallagher who last year said that we need to know:

Who was advising, what they were advising, whether the government took that advice at critical parts of the pandemic is all unclear because we haven't been given access to that information—

and—

We think the government's response has been characterised by a failure to be prepared, a failure to take responsibility, and then a failure to get it right.

Minister Gallagher was previously the chair of a COVID-19 committee which recommended that we have a royal commission. So, whilst in opposition, the minister was a supporter of a royal commission, but now it seems like the urgency has evaporated. Why, Minister? Why has it evaporated? The Australian people need answers. We need the power of a royal commission to compel witnesses and for the production of documents. We need the truth. We need to hold those in power to account. We need to learn from all the mistakes made—and, my God, there were some mistakes made—and never to repeat them.

The World Health Organization declared the pandemic over back in May. Now is as good a time as any to have this commission. The chief health officers, the state Premiers are retiring, they're walking away, they're exiting their positions in quick succession, I think. We must not let them get away with what they did during the pandemic—the human rights abuses, the weaponisation of fear, the lockdowns, the closing of borders and obviously the inhumane vaccine mandates. Unexplained excess mortality is the elephant in the room. Cancer, diabetes, dementia, cardiovascular related deaths—they all spiked. I have previously attempted to create a committee to investigate this, but it was voted down by almost every single senator in this place. What a shame that was.

We purchased 318 million doses of vaccine at a cost of around $10 billion and around 68 million doses have been administered. That is approximately 250 million doses wasted, flushed down the drain, to the tune of $8 billion. Most Australians have caught COVID anyway. The vaccines do not work. We spent hundreds of billions on the COVID pandemic response measures and all we have to show for it is out-of-control inflation, excessive government debt and a guarantee of high taxes for the next generation. My home state of Victoria was the most locked down state in the world. Victorians like me will never forget these inhumane and ineffective measures for the rest of our lives. We will never forget.

We call on the Labor government to honour their promise to establish a royal commission into the pandemic response immediately. They previously said it should happen. They said it was the right thing to do. They promised it 'as soon as practicable'. Let's give people answers. Establish a royal commission now. Let's make sure that this never happens again. Let's protect our people from gross mismanagement. (Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia was unprecedented, and our response followed a very uniquely Australian path, striving all the time to try to get the balance right between our health and economic objectives. There's no denying that Australia was one of the best-performing countries in the world throughout the pandemic when it came to saving people's lives and their livelihoods. But, with the power of hindsight, we do have the opportunity to explore how we could have done things better and certainly how we could do things better in the future if we are faced with a similar challenge again, and I think we should all be open to learning from the experience of the past. If there is another pandemic, we must make sure that the things we did well we do again and the things that we perhaps didn't do so well we don't do again. So it makes sense to review the decisions that were made very quickly and with a great deal of haste and in the pressure of the immediate situation that we were faced with to protect Australians at the time.

However, any inquiry must have the appropriate power to take evidence from all levels of government, not just the Commonwealth, given the extraordinary influence, power and involvement of the states and territories in Australia's COVID-19 pandemic response. It must look at all factors that impacted on decisions throughout the pandemic by all people, because we cannot forget the confronting situation that we were faced with at the time. It was unprecedented and, to be perfectly honest, it was frightening. What we were seeing back in 2020, before a vaccine, was a very different COVID situation to the situation that we see today. Countries like Italy and elsewhere were confronted with situations reminiscent of wartime. We sat in National Security Committee meetings confronted by possible situations where Australia might have to set up morgues next to a public hospitals and where intensive care units might be completely overwhelmed. That was the experience of other countries at the time and it was something that we were determined to avoid in Australia.

It's fair to say that in such unprecedented circumstances you don't get every decision right. We had to make quick and decisive decisions to protect Australians' lives and livelihoods. But Australia's management of the pandemic allowed us to avoid the death rates that so many other countries had to face. The former coalition government, I believe, acted swiftly during the pandemic to ensure our health systems had the capacity to protect Australians. It's believed that over 40,000 lives were saved by that quick response. Our loss of life from COVID was amongst the lowest in the world, and Australia led the world in COVID-19 ICU survival rates.

We ensured our preparedness early on in the pandemic by increasing ICU and ventilator capacity. Combined with the latest treatments, medical research and expert advice from the Communicable Diseases Network Australia and the AHPPC, this helped our frontline healthcare workers, doctors and nurses, who worked tirelessly through that time, to save the lives of so many Australians. Importantly, our response was always informed by the best medical advice. We worked tirelessly to make sure that this advice was used despite the fact that it was quite scant. We worked with the Australian people to ensure transparency with the modelling and advice so that they understood the basis upon which we made decisions. We made all health experts available to the COVID inquiry whenever they were required to appear and we established national cabinet in the early days to make sure that frontline communications were had with everybody who was being impacted and had decisions to make. This was in contrast to the mishandling we saw by so many other countries around the world, where their systems saw chaos as they responded to the pandemic, with fatality rates that were significant higher than in Australia.

But while our focus was primarily on health response, we also focused on the economic side of the pandemic and retained our AAA credit rating by supporting hundreds of thousands of businesses through JobKeeper. We also managed to put in place some reforming healthcare initiatives like telehealth. We now see a telehealth system in Australia that is supporting Australians with an innovative approach to how they get their health care, which is one of the benefits of being able to work during the pandemic.

But we also recognise that older Australians were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and that's why so much of our focus during the pandemic was to support older Australians, particularly those in residential aged care. On that basis, we believe there should be an appropriate inquiry that considers all factors into the decision-making and looks at all levels of government, considering the important roles played by the states and territories.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From the outset, it remains the position of the Albanese Labor government that, given the enormous dislocation, stress, death and expenditure involved, it would be extraordinary not to have an inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic. No-one is walking away from that position—that there is a need for an inquiry. We said that before the election, we have said it since and that remains our position. Indeed, it was some three months ago that I stood here in a debate similar to this—raised by Senator Roberts in that instance as opposed to Senator Babet—and confirmed that position.

But, to be clear, we are not yet through the COVID pandemic; it continues. Cases, hospitalisations and deaths related to COVID-19 continue, maybe at a lower rate, but the pandemic is continuing. For now, the government is rightly focused on monitoring and responding to cases and on ensuring our systems are prepared to respond to future waves, because we all saw what happened when these waves came throughout the pandemic and we were not ready. We saw what happened in early education when educators were sent back into the classroom, into the playroom, without PPE, without any of the protection they needed to keep themselves safe, working with our youngest Australians—little Australians who were not able to socially distance, who were not even able to blow their own noses. Our childcare workers went back into that environment unprotected, unprepared and unheard when they raised those alarms. We saw what happened in aged care, when nurses and carers were exposed to the virus. We saw what happened when it ran rampant through these homes. We saw what happened when the government wasn't prepared with adequate PPE to protect residents and protect workers. And we saw what happened when the government delayed the vaccine rollout. I saw what happened. Friends of mine—doctors and nurses—were going into hospitals every day, coming back and telling me that felt like they were going to fight battle on the frontline of a war. They were coming back to their homes and to their children, terrified of what they may bring back but absolutely determined to help and serve their communities.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that these are things that happened in our lifetime, let alone a few years ago, let alone being part of a pandemic in which we are still living. In all these systems, but especially aged care, we saw what happened when systems failed. We saw what happened when the government took its eye off the ball in terms of preparedness. We saw what happened when our essential workers were not listened to in this environment and we saw the impact on these aged-care and early childhood facilities, on our hospitals and on our skills.

At the risk of opening up a wild can of worms in this chamber during this debate, vaccination remains the single most important step each of us can take to minimise the risk of severe disease and death associated with COVID-19 infection. So of course, the vaccinations remain a focus too.

The pandemic was a once-in-a-century event from which governments globally must learn a significant amount about how to handle and prepare for such a catastrophic event in the future. That will include the Australian government as it includes state and territory governments, most of whom are already undertaking their own inquiries into their responses to the pandemic. These inquiries will provide important information to the Australian government, other levels of government and other actors in such a pandemic on how to respond, how to be prepared, and what needs to change. So a review is wholly appropriate. It would be extraordinary not to have one. But the timing of this matters too. That timing must be well considered, noting Australia is still experiencing COVID-19. This is not over, and there is heightened risk during the winter months, when you're in the middle of risk, when you're in the middle of managing situations and systems.

I want to take the last 40 seconds I have in this debate to thank and recognise all of those who did fight on the front line of this pandemic, all of whom, I am sure, are looking forward to a review and an opportunity to take part in that—ordinary Australians who went above and beyond everyday to protect their fellow Australians. Our nurses, our doctors, our aged-care workers and others in the care economy have provided vital care to Australians in the most trying of circumstances. None of us will forget the faces of exhausted nurses and other healthcare workers during this time. I also want to thank those who kept the economy moving: our distribution workers, our shop assistants, our truck drivers and everyone in that part of the economy who ensured that— (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak in support of Senator Babet's motion. Since before the federal election, it's been One Nation's policy to have a royal commission into management of the COVID-19 pandemic by Australian governments. The matter has become more urgent following revelations of blatant cover-up over the origins of the pandemic, involving scientists, the media and governments. It's become more urgent after revelations the Australian government ordered social media platforms to suppress the free speech of Australian citizens during the pandemic, including me.

At the committee hearing into my legislation to make COVID-19 vaccine mandates and discrimination unlawful, I asked a representative of Moderna what her company might say to Australians who lost a family member to the vaccine program or who were affected by adverse side effects. Her response was, 'Those people have been indemnified.' I asked representatives of Pfizer if they considered Australians had been forced to get the jabs. They said no. Apparently, these people believe that threatening people's jobs and incomes is not forcing them.

Not only were millions of Australians subject to vaccine mandates during the pandemic; many are still excluded through mandates from working in critical sectors today. At a time when the Defence Force desperately needs more personnel, many serving members still cannot be deployed in many circumstances unless they bow to the mandate, while people move freely across international borders regardless of their vaccination status. At a time when crime is escalating in the territories, Australian Federal Police officers are being denied work by mandates, while people move freely across state borders regardless of their vaccination status. At a time when public health is in crisis and the aged-care sector struggles with staffing levels, experienced nurses are being denied work, when people are allowed to move freely into public health and aged-care settings regardless of their vaccination status.

By keeping these mandates, it appears these agencies are more interested in punishing workers who defied them. What the government should be doing is supporting these workers back into work, where they are desperately needed, and apologising for the direct attack on their basic human rights. Australian governments have much to answer for. The Prime Minister has promised a royal commission into the pandemic but is yet to deliver. Perhaps if we established something called the 'COVID-19 Voice', he might finally act.

While I've got 22 seconds left, let me apologise to all those people who have been affected by adverse side effects and deaths in their families due to this vaccine mandate that was forced upon them, the vaccine they were made to have in order to keep their jobs. That is the truth of the matter, and we have to have a royal commission to bring out the truth.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In May this year, the head of the World Health Organization warned the world we must prepare for the next pandemic, which could be even deadlier than the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts say it's a case of when, not if. And will Australia be ready? Absolutely not. You've learnt nothing. I sat on that committee. You've learnt nothing. There is no more manufacturing in place. You don't want to look at our public health system. That was our biggest problem. We went into lockdown because our public health system wasn't up to scratch and, by God, it hasn't got any better. That is where your main problem is, and we've all paid the price for that. It's been disgusting.

In January 2022 Anthony Albanese told the National Press Club:

It is beyond comprehension that this Government has actively refused to learn from this pandemic.

Yet we have a new government. There was a Senate select committee which delivered its report in April 2023. There were 19 recommendations. One of those recommendations was to set up a royal commission. Now, Australians may think: 'You had a select committee. Why spend the money?' But I'll tell you this, Australians: a royal commission has the power to compel witnesses and get documents that the government and these committees do not—documents that would show how key decisions were made. A Senate select committee doesn't have the power to get its hands on things like recommendation 18, which recommended seeing the minutes of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, the AHPPC, the key decision-making body for health emergencies.

If we don't know what mistakes we have made or what deals were done or what the cover-ups were, how are we possibly going to get ready for the next one that hits? Seriously, that was your warning, guys, and your biggest issue, which you've still done nothing about and which has deteriorated even more, is the public health system in our country! That's what threw us into lockdown. It threw us into lockdown because we did haven't enough nurses out there and we didn't have PPE. My God, you've learned nothing, and we're going into the same fight again! Wake up! (Time expired)

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

I, too, support this motion and believe that we need a royal commission into COVID. I would like a Senate inquiry into COVID as well. Anyway, I'll take whatever I can get at this stage because there are a number of issues that need to be addressed in regard to this. First is the origin of COVID itself. We had Anthony Fauci come out the day before Donald Trump's inauguration and say that there would be a surprise outbreak throughout Trump's term. This same person then colluded with none other than some Australians—one was Ed Holmes from Sydney University—with a view to covering up the origins of the coronavirus. So we need to look at that as well and at whether or not coronavirus was deliberately made. Was there a deliberate cover-up?

We then need to look at the diagnostic tool, the PCR testing. We need to determine which part of the COVID sequence was actually used to indicate a positive return. There are 29 proteins and 29,000 nucleotides. We need to know the length of the nucleotides in the sequence that was used in the PCR test to determine whether or not COVID was positive. We also need to look at why the cycle threshold was set to 40, not 28. We then also need to look at why the World Health Organization told national health authorities to code every death that came back with a positive COVID test to COVID and not some other form of disease. For example, people could've had comorbidities and their death could've been from those other comorbidities, but the World Health Organization said that you had to put that to COVID, which obviously would've bumped up the number of COVID deaths.

We also need to look at the role of the media and, in particular, the way in which they've ramped up the fearmongering in regard to COVID. We need to look at the censorship involved with COVID. Anyone who questioned the narrative of COVID was censored. That's not the way science is conducted. Science should always be open to scrutiny, so we need to look at the censorship there. We need to look at the role the state premiers played with their daily press conferences. Who can forget the Queensland Premier with her classic statement: 'There's COVID in the sewage. Be scared, everybody.' That sort of insanity needs to stop and cannot be allowed to happen ever again.

We need to consider why we bought 300 million vaccines—12 doses for every man, woman and child in this country—when at the same time we were being told that two doses were enough. We dropped over $8 billion on these vaccines. We could've bought 75 million, spent $2 billion and saved $6 billion for frontline services, including maternity wards in my home town of Chinchilla. We also need to look at why 10 million people caught COVID after the borders were opened up. The public assessment report said the vaccine was approved to stop infection, yet 10 million people caught COVID in the year after opening up. It did not work, and we need to ask why the pharmaceutical companies got away with it. (Time expired)

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need a royal commission right away, because people are still dying and we don't know why. That's the fundamental reason we should have this inquiry sooner rather than later. The statistics don't lie. We've got, unfortunately and tragically, deaths in this country running at levels we've never seen before outside of war. So-called excess deaths—the number of deaths above the number which is expected given the age structure and history of fatality in this country—have been running at 15 per cent and even higher above average. Worse, no-one can tell us why. I and other colleagues have asked the Department of Health in Senate estimates, and they don't have any answers as to why excess deaths are running at such a large number. We're talking about tens of thousands of people dying unexpectedly, and no-one has answers.

Senator Hanson, I and other senators have put bills into the parliament to end vaccine mandates. Last week, at an inquiry into those bills, we had representatives from Pfizer and Moderna, the manufacturers of the major vaccines which were rolled out here in this country. We know now, of course, that there are side effects from the vaccine, especially heart issues like myocarditis and pericarditis in young males in particular. The most concerning thing, I thought, of the evidence last week was that they don't have any idea why that is happening. They admit now that it is happening; they admit that there are side effects from the vaccine. But they don't have any understanding of why it might be happening.

The question has to be asked: why is the government still advertising for people to take these products when there is a serious, heart-related side effect that the government officials and everybody recognises—that's not controversial—and when the manufacturers themselves have no idea why that's happening? They can't have a scientific pathway for why their product is causing these particular outcomes. Meanwhile, we also have massive amounts of unexplained excess deaths in this country. That is the fundamental reason we should have this inquiry right away—so we can try to get to the bottom of what the hell is happening, what has been done and what we can do to stop people dying.

I remember that at the start of the pandemic one death was too many. We had to lock down the country and stop travelling to stop deaths. I supported the initial response to the pandemic for that reason. It's better to be safe than sorry. Now we seem to have gone past all that, and tens of thousands of people are dying in unexplained ways, yet we're not even asking questions about why. There's a serious disconnect. I think one of the reasons we're not getting this inquiry is because some people are afraid of what the answers might be. Some people that were responsible for the policies of the pandemic might be a little afraid that the answers might embarrass them on the decisions they made. That is no good reason not to have an inquiry. It's actually more reason to have an inquiry, so we can make sure we do not make the mistakes again.

Finally, one other reason we need to have this inquiry is because it was promised. The Prime Minister promised an inquiry in his National Press Club speech in January last year, before the election. Now, a year-and-a-half on from that promise, if he's not delivering this, it's another broken promise from the Prime Minister. It's a piece of broken trust. I also recognise Senator Gallagher, through you, Chair, in the chamber. Senator Gallagher chaired an inquiry into COVID, and she spent her time lambasting the then government. Guess what her major recommendation from that inquiry was? It was to have a royal commission into COVID. Where is that royal commission, Senator Gallagher? Your Prime Minister promised it. Let's get on with it. (Time expired)

Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in support of Senator Babet's matter of public importance seeking a royal commission. In 2020 and 2021, anyone who questioned or criticised the lockdowns in this country was called an antivaxxer and a threat to public health. I've noticed since those days that there are members of the public, members of parliament, media commentators—many of them on the Labor side, by the way—who now seek to duck and weave and who have forgotten all about that. They've gone rather quiet on the subject. Do you want to know what's happened? I'll tell you what's happened. The truth has caught up to them. The lockdown narrative has become absolutely indefensible, as has the damage through job losses, tragic suicides, divorces and increases in health problems. They've all become more evident. The time will come when every single aspect of the COVID narrative, including the vaccine mandates, the mask mandates, staying 1.5 metres apart—remember that?—and so on will become utterly indefensible. It's a matter of urgency that we examine now why, as Senator Canavan said, Australia's excess death rates are increasing after the pandemic. This was after everyone got their 'safe and effective' vaccines. Do you remember they were 'safe and effective'? But no-one wants to ask what is causing the excess death rate. There are more excess deaths occurring at the moment than there were in 2020. The ABS reported that in 2022 there were 190,394 deaths that had occurred by 31 December and were registered by 28 February of this year. That is 25,235—that's 15.3 per cent—more than the historical average. I'm a bit confused as to why this isn't being investigated already. This particular issue of excess deaths must be the lynchpin. If nothing else, a royal commission must be sought in order to uncover this issue.

In the beginning of 2020, we saw Australia plunge into an illiberal, draconian period of history. I think historians will reflect on this period over the last few years and utterly marvel at how this hysteria was created over a virus that had a 0.16 per cent fatality rate. They will write dissertations about how the power of media propaganda fuelled this, and how imperative it is that we learn from this and make sure that this is never, ever repeated. Under the cloak of emergency, legislation that entrenched the state's pandemic powers was rushed through our parliaments in the most illiberal manner across the country. This also need to be re-examined.

Today, I stand here in my last 20 seconds to support Senator Babet's call for a royal commission, and to support all of my colleagues who have continued to call for this royal commission. It's time the Albanese government put its money where its mouth is and called a royal commission so we can get to the bottom of this.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is the urgency motion as moved by Senator Babet be agreed to.