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

I would like to acknowledge the people of Australia whom we in this place are elected to represent to the best of our abilities. To a large extent their health and welfare rests in our hands. We must serve them first and rise above the influence of powerful corporate agendas. That's what we must do.

Today, I introduce to this place a bill that truly serves all Australians. This bill is titled the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023.

This is a bill that I should not have to introduce.

This bill, if passed by those in this place, will ensure that no future indemnities are granted by the Commonwealth to the manufacturers of vaccines in relation to the use of said vaccines.

This bill will limit financial and legal risk to the Commonwealth and aid in the restoration of trust in medicine.

Over recent years, our elected members have unfortunately undermined the trust of many citizens.

Secret deals have been done with pharmaceutical companies. We don't know the details of these deals because unfortunately transparency does not exist.

What we do know is that a key part of the contracts signed with these big pharmaceutical companies was an indemnity clause.

The Oxford dictionary defines indemnity as 'protection against damage or loss, especially in the form of a promise to pay for any damage or loss that happens'.

I guess it's easier to sign a blank cheque when you know it's 'only' taxpayer money that is at stake. This is nothing short of a betrayal.

The federal budget for 2023-24 contains multiple 'unquantifiable contingent liabilities' relating to vaccines. The unquantifiable liability stems from the fact that indemnity has been granted for the advance purchasing agreements for COVID-19 vaccines.

'It was a pandemic; we had no other choice'—that's what they will say.

But, before the Australian people accept this excuse, just hear me out for a second.

The potential liability doesn't end here. According to the 2023-24 budget papers, indemnity has also been granted in advance to a manufacturer of a smallpox and monkey pox vaccine and a particular manufacture of pandemic and pre-pandemic influenza vaccines.

This bill, as designed, does not impinge on existing contracts, but the issue of retrospectivity is something that we should investigate further should this bill be referred to committee.

Now a precedent has been set, the pharmaceutical industry has a taste of your money and they will not stop demanding indemnity unless we in this place say, 'Enough!'

Indemnification has created an incentive for risk taking in the pharmaceutical industry, which is not aligned with the fundamental principles of medicine.

Where indemnity exists, it is human nature to take larger risks, whether consciously or subconsciously. The outcomes will always be poor.

Companies work for shareholders first and it is profits that motivate their decisions and their actions.

Our nation has granted indemnity to a pharmaceutical company that is famous for setting a world record.

Unfortunately, it is not the kind of record that one would boast about.

In 2009, Pfizer forked out US$2.3 billion for illegal promotion and false and misleading claims about drug safety and in paying kickbacks to doctors.

This included the largest ever US criminal fine at US$1.2 billion. Pfizer was also connected to the death and permanent disability of children who participated in a critical trial in Nigeria.

We also granted indemnity to Moderna, a company which has been trading for 10 years but until the COVID-19 vaccine had never achieved a single product approval.

Contracts known to include indemnity clauses with pharmaceutical companies have been requested by the Australian Senate as recently as 22 November, but unfortunately the government voted against public disclosure of these critical documents.

The unjustified suppression of contracts in the public interest is another key driver of this important bill.

Transparency builds trust. How can the Australian people trust their government in the absence of transparency? The only solution to ensure accountability is passing this bill.

Accountability is, after all, a cornerstone of our society.

Businesses that produce goods or provide services are expected to be accountable for any adverse or unintended consequences of their products or services. When a product is faulty, for instance, it is replaced. When a service is inferior, a refund is provided.

Unfortunately, there are large and powerful entities in the pharmaceutical industry that have managed to evade accountability, and our federal government has willingly surrendered the Australian people's right to financially hold them to account.

For a vaccine to be available in Australia it must be approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The main process for distributing vaccines in Australia is through the National Immunisation Program (NIP).

Section 9B of the National Health Act 1953 allows the minister for health to provide or arrange for the provision of vaccines for distribution through the NIP.

Vaccines distributed via the NIP must all be listed on the PBS.

The purchase of vaccines occurs through the Commonwealth entering into supply arrangements (aka contracts) with the relevant pharmaceutical companies.

These arrangements would include the amount of compensation the Commonwealth is liable to pay in exchange for the vaccines and are generally subject to Commonwealth procurement rules.

The process for the purchasing of the COVID-19 vaccines varied from the normal process for purchasing vaccines for distribution through the NIP.

While the Commonwealth government has previously provided indemnities for vaccine manufacturers, this only appears to have occurred in limited circumstances.

Indemnities provided to vaccine manufacturers and sponsors became more commonplace during and post the COVID-19 pandemic, but very little is known by the general population about the specifics of said indemnities as the contracts between government and corporations have been protected as 'commercial-in-confidence'.

When transparency and accountability measures are removed from government contracts a threat emerges and the likelihood of errors, omissions and nefarious actions emerge. The trust in both medicine and government is threatened by the weakening of accountability measures.

The Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 enables the finance minister, or their delegate, to grant indemnities on behalf of the Commonwealth.

Indemnities given by the Commonwealth create contingent liabilities. In other words they may give rise to a liability on the occurrence of a future event.

To achieve its objective, this bill amends the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.

That act establishes the framework for government financial accountability arrangements and includes provisions enabling the finance minister or their delegate to grant indemnities on behalf of the Commonwealth. This bill inserts a new section 61A into the PGPA Act.

To my colleagues in this chamber, I want you to think for a second and consider this in your personal life.

Let's just say that you're negotiating with a builder to construct a new home for your family. You complete your plans, specifications and selections of your floor coverings, doorknobs, and taps et cetera.

The time comes to sign the build contract. You read through the contract and it all seems fine, but then you get to the term sheet and you see the total cost for your new home. You don't see a number; you see a word, 'unquantifiable'. How many of you would sign that contract? Probably not many, if any.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said when you are signing a contract on behalf of Australian taxpayers. You are more than willing to write a blank cheque on behalf of other people, but you would not do it yourself.

That is why I have put up this bill. I urge you to support it. I urge you to treat taxpayer money the same way that you would treat your own.

Our state and its elected representatives appear to have been captured and it's an ongoing problem.

This bill serves multiple purposes. It's not just the limiting of financial and legal risks to the Commonwealth.

As a good global citizen, it is also worth noting the potential for state capture that arises because of indemnity clauses in vaccine contracts.

Published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice is a research paper titled: 'State capture through indemnification demands? Effects on equity in the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.'

This paper concludes that COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers indemnification demands constitute state capture in many low and middle-income countries.

In global pandemics, pharmaceutical companies can exert their power and coerce nations to shift their laws or policies away from the public good and towards the demands of pharmaceutical companies.

Wealthy nations, like Australia, are more capable of meeting the indemnification demands of private companies, resulting in delayed access to vaccines for lower income nations.

Indemnification has also had the unintended consequence of enhancing global vaccine inequities.

The fact is that the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out with the support of an indemnity clause. These vaccines have unfortunately resulted in over 139,000 adverse event reports and some people have died.

Based on the recent Western Australian data from 2021, the COVID-19 vaccines had an adverse event reporting rate that is 23 times greater per dose than non-COVID-19 vaccines.

There were 264 adverse events per 100,000 doses, when compared to just 11 for non-COVID-19 vaccines.

This is unacceptable, and big pharmaceutical companies appear to be unaccountable and, quite frankly, a little bit untouchable at the moment.

This bill has been drafted in a very reasonable manner.

It honours existing commercial contracts—we cannot undo the past.

What we can do is ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated.

We must draw a line in the sand and regain our sovereignty over vaccine contracts.

The question of whether this bill is supported, or not, will be a test of those in this place. Do you represent the people of Australia, or will you in my opinion sell out to the big pharmaceutical companies?

Support this bill and help me in restoring our nation's trust in medicine and holding these giant global corporations to account.

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

I rise to speak in support of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023. In 2021, just two short years ago, the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out to the Australian population. Supposedly, this was done to protect us from coronavirus, which had a case fatality rate of 0.16 per cent and for which the average fatality age was 86, the same fatality age as the regular seasonal flu. Of course, by 'rolled out', I mean that the vaccines were mandated by government departments in the health sector, education sector and so on, as well as in private workplaces.

Major pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna swiftly developed products to stop the spread. The COVID vaccines were developed far more quickly than the usual decade or so it takes to develop a vaccine; they did it in way less than two years. Their products were swiftly granted provisional approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and other regulators around the world. The manufacturers of these vaccines were granted indemnities from government, meaning that the companies themselves could effectively offload liability of their newly developed products to the taxpayer. Personally, I think the fact that these big pharma companies sought such indemnities in the first place suggests to us that those products may not have been as safe and effective as our health departments wanted us to believe. Indeed, this was a giant red flag for many Australians.

Many Australians were told that they had to take two doses of this quickly developed pharmaceutical product or lose their job. The manufacturers would face no legal or financial consequences should the vaccine prove defective. The recipient took all the risk, and this was justified by government departments and the media because we needed to 'Stop the spread'. I've always maintained that vaccine mandates were unjust. To me, that was just a matter of commonsense and principle. It seems obvious that the government doesn't have the right to determine what any one human being puts into their body, and getting vaccinated with any kind of vaccine is, of course, an irreversible treatment. If it turns out to be defective, you can't undo the decision. You must live with the consequences—pharmaceutical companies won't have to; you will.

Throughout that period, if one ignored the public health advice and the ludicrous media hysteria, the situation wasn't complicated. It was a matter of principle. And, as a result, many Australians opted not to receive a novel vaccine and waited to see what would happen. The indemnities granted to pharmaceutical companies were one of the many factors that rightly sparked suspicion. Had mandates not been in place, far fewer people would have received a dose at all, in my view. As time passed it became clear why big pharma wanted these indemnities in the first place: their products were not safe, and they were not effective. They did not prevent people from contracting COVID, meaning they didn't stop the spread as promised. They didn't prevent hospitalisation, and the notion that they reduced hospitalisation, a line often touted by those desperate to defend the decision in the first place, is absurd given the rates of adverse effects we are seeing now.

Anecdotally speaking, many people know at least one person who had an adverse event that wouldn't be considered minor, ranging from cardiac complications to neurological symptoms to dying suddenly, tragically. There's a lot of vaccine regret out there, I can assure you. Meanwhile, the unvaccinated in our midst seem to be doing fine. I'm not aware of one single unvaccinated person who's developed myocarditis or the so-called long COVID. I recently spoke with a young Adelaide woman by the name of Hannah, who developed a severe cardiac condition after her second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Her condition has permanently changed her life, whereas it's almost certain that, had she simply caught COVID, she would have been perfectly fine. In fact, she was lucky to even have her condition acknowledged as being the result of a vaccine; thankfully, it eventually was. No doubt there are countless others out there who are injured but their injury has not been acknowledged as such, given doctors face suspension for contradicting AHPRA and the TGA's position.

In a hearing before the European parliament nine months ago, a Pfizer representative admitted that Pfizer didn't know whether their product would stop viral transmission before it was rolled out around the world. Remember 'Stopping the spread'? That was the entire basis for the mandates in this country. People were told it was their moral obligation to roll up their sleeves and get the jab to save grandma. Shouldn't Pfizer have said something? They knew their product wouldn't stop transmission; I think we all know they should have.

A 2009 press release from the United States Department of Justice, titled 'Justice department announces largest healthcare fraud settlement in history', reads as follows:

American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.…have agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, the Justice Department announced today.

[Pfizer] has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead… Pfizer promoted the sale of Bextra for several uses and dosages that the FDA specifically declined to approve due to safety concerns. The company will pay a criminal fine of $1.195 billion, the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter.

It goes on, but you get the point. Pfizer paid what was, at the time, the largest fine in criminal history. That's a criminal fine; not a fine for simple negligence, but for deliberate fraud.

Pfizer promoted their drugs as having health outcomes they didn't have and had been made for conditions they were not approved for, putting users of their products at risk. However, nobody from Pfizer ever faced any real punishment for their actions. They can just factor those fines into the budget line of hundreds of billions of dollars, continue to donate to major media outlets and move on.

The COVID emergency was the perfect opportunity. In 2022, Pfizer enjoyed a record $100 billion in sales. These companies can afford the hit their reputation takes, and they still make a profit in the end. It's absurd and unjust that Australians were coerced and pressured into taking these products while the manufacturers were indemnified by the government, therefore, you and me. Some other members of parliament, along with myself, have sought to have the agreement between pharmaceutical companies and the government disclosed to the public, but that motion was voted down by Labor and the Greens, the great champions of transparency! They don't want transparency, after all.

Furthermore, as I and others have spoken about in this chamber before, there has been a massive increase in excess death rates, not only in Australia but across the world, after the vaccines were distributed. I think it's quite reasonable to suspect that the drastic increase in death rates—which was 15.3 per cent throughout 2022 in Australia—is being drive, at least in part, by the COVID-19 vaccines. These vaccines are the obvious factor that was not present before 2021 when the increase in deaths began. Yet, the major pharmaceutical companies face absolutely no scrutiny on the issue. Given what we're hearing from the World Health Organization, there will be future pandemics to prepare for, so let's prevent those pharmaceutical companies from developing more products for use on the Australian population. Removing the option of indemnities means that they won't be able to get away with developing drugs, such as these poor performing drugs, with no financial consequences, or at least not as easily.

Big pharma must face some consequences and bear some responsibility if they end up causing harm to Australians in the event of a future emergency, lest they manipulate and exploit the situation to their own advantage, as, in my view, appears to have been done here. Ideally, I'd prefer that we simply never, ever have vaccine mandates again, but legislation that would have protected Australians from mandates has also been voted down multiple times in this place because, strangely enough, Labor and the Greens reject the principle of my body, my choice.

Throughout COVID, and indeed for many years now, big pharma has been generating scandal after scandal, injury after injury and paying fine after fine. Yet, they never face any meaningful consequences because they can simply factor in their inevitable payouts as a budget line item.

The Australian government and the health departments cannot be beholden to the whims of big pharmaceutical companies. There must be an understanding that, as wonderful and effective as some of their products are in treating illness, disease and relieving pain, they are for-profit corporations that have literally paid billions and billions of dollars in criminal fines over the years. These pharmaceutical companies, it seems, were able to strongarm some governments into buying ludicrous amounts of their products because it was apparently a major emergency. Governments wanting to get vaccines into the arms of their citizens as quickly as possible awarded indemnities to these companies and deferred any consequences of all of the hasty actions until a later date. That later date has arrived. We're now living in the fallout of what, from beginning to end, was a disaster. People were saying all of the things that are now coming to light about the vaccines and lockdowns from the very beginning. They were utterly vilified for defying the narrative. Don't forget that. We can't allow big pharma to exert this kind of leverage and pressure on governments again. We should not be beholden to these companies. They should have severe financial consequences, to say the least, for the products they've made should they turn out to be defective.

I support this bill. I commend Senator Babet for introducing it. I hope that others, and particularly others in this place that have a history of standing up, so-called, to the big pharma companies—I'm looking at the Australian Greens in particular—live up to what they're talking about and support this bill.

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

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I speak in support of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023, because with indemnity comes impunity, and this parliament needs huge doses of accountability to change it from exploiting the people and return it to serving the people.

The main process for distributing vaccines in Australia is through the National Immunisation Program. Section 9B of the National Health Act 1953 allows the minister for health to provide, or arrange for the provision of, injections for distribution through the National Immunisation Program. Injections distributed via the National Immunisation Program must be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The purchase of injections occurs through the Commonwealth entering into supply contracts with the relevant pharmaceutical companies. These arrangements would include the amount of compensation the Commonwealth is liable to pay in exchange for the injections and are generally subject to the Commonwealth Procurement Rules.

During COVID, the Liberal government, with the full support of the Labor opposition and the Greens, simply tore up the rule book. Pfizer were given a blanket immunity. Pfizer knew, when the injection was being developed and tested, that they had a blanket immunity. What could go wrong? Firstly, accountability is shredded. The outcome of this ill-considered decision was an excess mortality rate in Australia of 27 per cent above normal since the 'fakecines' were rolled out. Most likely 30,000 Australians will die this year from side effects of our COVID response, including the injectables. Did they really think Pfizer, a multinational pharmaceutical company with an appalling track record, would suddenly turn into a model corporate citizen when asked to produce the COVID injections? Did you?

Prior to COVID, Pfizer had been fined US$3 billion for criminal acts. They are a habitual offender, persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results. We know Pfizer suppressed bad trial data in the COVID trials, fabricated results, excluded test subjects that became sick and failed to test for a full range of adverse effects. They did this knowingly. The 'fakecines' were then manufactured in a shoddy fashion and did not use good manufacturing process as they were supposed to and as every other product approved in Australia must.

Live DNA derived from E. coli used in production has been found in large quantities in the Pfizer product—up to a billion strands or parts of strands in every dose. Huge variations between batches suggest huge variations in manufacturing quality. I say 'suggest' because we have no idea what is actually in these products, because the TGA accepts batch testing from the manufacturer and has not conducted the testing on each batch as it arrives. It has not conducted the testing. The TGA took the US FDA's word for the results of the stage 2/3 clinical trials, and the FDA took Pfizer's word for it. We're relying on Pfizer's word for these.

To give a product immunity, the TGA should have thoroughly tested these injections, not looked the other way. We have no idea what harm these products will eventually cause, because there was no long-term safety testing conducted—none. Why would they spend that money when they already had the immunity? That's what immunity has done to them—more profit for Pfizer, more money in the pocket for CEO Albert Bourla, who banked US$30 million in salary and bonuses last financial year. Overall, Pfizer sold $36 billion in COVID products in 2022, pushing Pfizer to a record $100 billion in sales. I am slightly encouraged to see their share price is down 40 per cent from the peak of 2021, and projected revenue in 2023 is down 80 per cent.

While Pfizer made out like the fraudulent bandits they are, the Australian taxpayers are on the hook for who knows how much. The budget papers are required to show every potential liability the government has. There is an entry for our liability under the COVID products, yet they have not quantified it. You have not quantified it; there's no figure there. That can't continue. This liability will run into the billions. Australia needs this bill from Senator Babet to make sure no greedy, dishonest, opportunistic pharmaceutical company is allowed to get away with financial murder again. Australia needs this bill to make sure that no inhuman monster like the former health minister Greg Hunt, like the former prime minister Scott Morrison, like premiers Palaszczuk, McGowan and Andrews, is allowed to get away with malfeasance forcing experimental gene therapy based injections leading to tens of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of people permanently crippled for life and hundreds of thousands of people injured, and uncounted people in mourning. Those are the nuts and bolts.

Now we go to the morality because governments cannot be trusted. With immunity, comes impunity. The simple reason for lack of accountability is the hiding of government actions through indemnities. Firstly, my position on medications including injections: we all want safe treatment. We are all pro-medicine. We all want that each of us decides what is put into our body—my body, my choice. We all want freedom to make our choice and for our choice to be accepted and respected. We all wholeheartedly support medicines that are fully tested and proven safe, effective, affordable and accessible. I am opposed to untested drugs, forcing untested experimental injections on to people, forcing untested experimental injections on to people with the only alternative being to lose one's livelihood or let your children starve. How could any human allow this to happen?

How could any human allow this to happen, yet you did. Then in your shame, your cowardice, your guilt, the best you could do to those of us who stood up to this inhuman, monstrous and at times murderous madness was to call us 'anti-vaxxers'. Pathetic—labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the dishonest, the guilty and the fearful, name-calling as you sling words at us for protecting innocent good people. But your vilification means nothing to us because we go for the truth. I oppose coercion, I oppose mandates, I oppose confidentiality hiding details from taxpayers. These untested injections from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca were forced on people using lies. Daily for two weeks former prime minister Morrison said, 'There are no vaccine mandates in Australia.' That was a lie, a murderous lie killing 30,000 Australians annually in excess deaths above normal. Worse, the Morrison-Hunt duo enabled and drove the injection mandate. Here is how: the Morrison-Hunt duo bought the injections. The Morrison-Hunt duo gave them to the states. The Morrison-Hunt duo indemnified the states. The Morrison-Hunt duo made federal health department data available to the states.

That was the only way the states could enforce their mandates, which really were driven by the Morrison-Hunt duo. State premiers admitted their vaccine mandates were in line with the bogus so-called 'National Cabinet', which was headed by Scott Morrison. The Morrison federal government mandated injections in Defence, the Australian Electoral Commission, aged care, the Australian Federal Police and others, but there are no vaccine mandates in Australia, he said. Then on Tuesday, I spoke about the Medical Countermeasures Consortium, which drove the whole lot, the four nations' defence departments, from Canada, America, Britain and Australia. This was planned and delivered, and Pfizer did the work on behalf of the American Department of Defense. That's why it bypassed the testing. Now we have 30,000 excess deaths That's the equivalent to two Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashes every week for a year—every week for a year! Yet we have Queensland nurses still suspended. Foreign nurses are being recruited by Premier Palaszczuk to take their jobs. Then she's told us repeatedly for the last three years, 'The health system is crashing.' Disgraceful, inhuman. The police are mandated, and they've lost many. The teachers have been mandated, and, when they finally lifted the mandate, many of them didn't come back. We found children were crippled, affected. The teachers were fined. Doctors were mandated and many have left the profession. How can Australia put up with that? That's going to hurt the patients. The pilots were mandated and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, CASA, cares not a bit. It's wilfully blind, it's misfeasance and it's betraying passenger air safety.

In a shining light, the Australian Firefighters Alliance was formed because their union would not stand up for them. Many unions went rogue and did not stand up for their members. The Australian Firefighters Alliance resisted. They developed, from the very start, a defensive strategy and an offensive strategy and that's the only one that Premier Palaszczuk did not mandate. It's based on a false premise. Livelihoods and lives have been destroyed.

We had the absurdity of the drugs failure, the vaccine failure, the injections failure being falsely blamed on the people who didn't take it. Indemnities encourage impunity and rogue behaviour, irresponsible behaviour, destructive behaviour, cruel, monstrous, inhuman behaviour. Indemnities destroy accountability because everything is hidden, and indemnities are given. There's no problem disclosed and so there's no compensation. Millions of people suffer in silence and this Labor government perpetuates the misery, the deceit.

Rapper Zuby, in a very well-delivered address in 2022 at CPAC observed that most politicians don't care if people die—and he is correct. Most politicians don't care if people die. There's no royal commission. There's no Senate inquiry. There's no access to contracts—they're commercial-in-confidence we're told. Years after they were signed, they're still commercial-in-confidence. Taxpayers paid for injections, yet we cannot see what we paid for. We can't even see how much we paid. Censorship. What are they hiding? Bill Gates paid for censorship in the mouthpiece Big Brother media that is often owned by the same people who own Pfizer. Bill Gates paid for censorship across social media. Gates is an investor in big pharma—a massive investor in big pharma—and a massive contributor to the World Health Organization, the UN's World Health Organization.

I hold the whole Senate accountable, the whole Senate, apart from six senators withstanding the catcalls. At last Thursday's Senate inquiry into antidiscrimination bills—one of which was moved by Senator Hanson and another one by Senator Canavan, Senator Antic and Senator Rennick—four of the five senators grilling Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA were from Queensland. Four, plus Senator Antic. Pfizer did not know where to go. Clearly Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA all disgraced themselves and showed themselves to be inhuman. Clearly none feel accountable for the deaths, the chronic and crippling injuries, the severe injuries—not federal government or its health departments, not the state premiers or their health departments, not employers mandating injections. No-one takes accountability. We will chase you until you are held accountable.

We've had airline employees taken to hospital and then returned and Qantas insisted they be injected. There are too many other stories there; I won't go into them. But we see people awakening. We see the situation has created heroes: Hoody, Maria Zeee, Chris Spicer and many, many more from the independent people's media; doctors who formed the Australian Medical Professionals Society; Dr William Bay, and he is a doctor; nurses like Dee; firies like Dan; police like Krystal; paramedics like Peter; doctors like Camillo; pilots like Alan; and thousands of construction workers and other workers. You've woken the people up. Thank you so much for being our heroes. Here and globally, you're wakening people up.

When indemnities are granted, especially in secret, accountability is removed, and you in this Senate, in this parliament, have demonstrated that repeatedly. You've confirmed it. All who oppose this bill will be voting to continue the needless deaths and lies. This bill will prevent recurrence. Ending indemnity will end impunity. It will contribute to restoring accountability. Transparency restores trust. I wholeheartedly support this bill and urge all senators to vote in support.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government will not support this bill, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023. The ability to indemnify vaccine manufacturers in an emergency and/or pandemic situation is critical to secure timely access to vaccines for Australia. This was the case during COVID-19, where our ability to indemnify COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers enabled timely access to vaccines. If the Commonwealth had not been able to indemnify COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, there would have been significant delays or refusal from the manufacturers to supply their vaccine in Australia. If this bill were to pass, this change would hinder Australia's ability to secure timely supply to vaccines during worldwide pandemics.

Just by way of background, the Australian government has entered into five separate agreements for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines. These include agreements with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Moderna and the COVAX facility for over 250 million doses of vaccine. The agreements with AstraZeneca and COVAX have been fulfilled. The details of advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines are commercial-in-confidence. The proposed amendment would apply only in relation to the granting of indemnities on or after the day the amendment commences, so should not impact on any indemnities already granted.

The government separately established the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme to provide an avenue for those who suffered a serious adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine to apply for compensation. The scheme is a no-fault scheme, administered by Services Australia, that allows claimants to access compensation for injuries resulting from diagnosed clinical conditions likely to be caused by a Therapeutic Goods Administration approved COVID-19 vaccine or its administration. Decisions about which conditions are eligible under the scheme are made based on the advice of the TGA on conditions with a recognised link to the vaccine and include consideration of the events listed in the approved Australian product information for the specific COVID-19 vaccine and the clinical significance of the condition. The TGA closely monitors the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and has a well-established and robust system in place to capture reports of suspected adverse effects of all medicines, including the COVID-19 vaccines. The TGA receives reports of adverse reactions from consumers, health professionals, pharmaceutical companies and state and territory health departments.

As I say, the government will not be supporting this bill, primarily because the ability to indemnify vaccine manufacturers in an emergency and/or pandemic situation is critical to secure timely access to vaccines for Australia.

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

The government's justification for not supporting this bill, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023, does not stack up at all. The argument we just heard from Minister Watt is that somehow we need ministerial approval for an indemnity to respond in an emergency to a pandemic. He didn't; he failed to in any way outline the time line of this emergency and apparently how urgent it was. Keep in mind that we did not have this vaccine for almost a year after the pandemic began in February/March 2020. In fact, it didn't really start getting rolled out in Australia for more than a year. All this bill does is remove one man's or one woman's ability to indemnify and affect the whole country through the stroke of a pen.

I support this bill because I don't think that power should be placed in one individual. If a future Australian government wants to provide an indemnity to a large pharmaceutical company—or, sometimes, as we heard in Senator Babet's speech, even a small one like Moderna, one without any record at all—it can bring legislation to this parliament and have the people's representatives debate and inquire into whether such an indemnity should be given. They had ample time to do that during the coronavirus pandemic, more than a year, and almost certainly any future pandemic would play out the same way. A vaccine won't be ready straightaway; it will take time to develop. There's plenty of time to call the parliament and have a proper inquiry on whether an indemnity should be provided. I'm not so ideological about this that I don't believe there may be some circumstances in a pandemic where there's a virus killing fatality rate of 50 or 60 per cent—with, say, yellow fever or smallpox—where maybe we need to provide something like an indemnity. But it shouldn't be done without proper parliamentary scrutiny and oversight, because we've seen so many mistakes made here. The system we've got right now, where we almost provide blank cheques to large companies with, at best, spotted corporate histories, is a complete undermining of the trust of the Australian people and it transfers enormous risk to them.

Let's be very clear what an indemnity does. An indemnity doesn't remove the risk. It doesn't take the liability away. All the indemnity does, through the stroke of a pen of a government minister, is transfer that risk and that liability—which should naturally be with the company selling a product—to the people. The people are the ones who are left picking up the bill. The people are the ones, through these government decisions, who are left with the liability and risk of any pharmaceutical product that gets the benefit of an indemnity. That's what happens.

Under natural law, tort law, the common law that's been established in this place—that we adopted from Britain—a company selling a product is liable if their product is defective. Generally, courts over the years have applied a strict liability test, which is that you do not need to prove intent on behalf of a company. They are responsible for their product. If their product is defective then a consumer who may have been harmed by that product has the right to take them to court and seek compensation for it.

What these indemnities do, at the very least—and I might come to more of the details—is remove that strict product liability, that natural justice that should be provided to a consumer in a country of laws like ours. They remove that. They do not transfer it. And get this, right? This is what really bugs me. If a government did want to provide an indemnity to a company why wouldn't the government take on the liability? Why wouldn't they do that? They could do that. Why wouldn't the minister say: 'We think we need this company to have an indemnity so it can roll out its product and not have to bear the risk itself on a small balance sheet.' Why doesn't the government take on the risk? If the government was so confident in the safe and effective language a company was using about the coronavirus vaccines, why wouldn't they take on that liability? They could do that, and they could let any consumer who was ultimately harmed, and could prove such harm in a court of law, sue the government for that liability and for that harm and still receive compensation.

That's not what your government does. For anybody listening here, the government doesn't do that. They don't take on the risk themselves. They try to present themselves, as we just heard, as angels and saints responding to a pandemic, but they don't take on that risk. They transfer it to you. And you and your family, who might be affected by any defective pharmaceutical products, are left to pick up the pieces.

What is worse is that you, the people, do not even know what those risks are. You're not even allowed to know because apparently it's commercial in confidence. I don't know why it's commercial in confidence, because the government doesn't take on any liability. The government doesn't accept any commercial risk here. You, the people, take on that commercial risk, as I just outlined. Don't you deserve to know what risks your government is imposing on you? Why shouldn't you have that knowledge?

As I have outlined, a large pharmaceutical company is definitely absolved from the product liability risk here through these indemnity arrangements that remain secret and hidden for many decades, as Senator Roberts said. I want to know, and if there are any further government contributions on this I might ask further questions at an appropriate stage, what other liabilities these companies are absolved from. For example, are the companies still liable for misleading and deceptive conduct? Are they indemnified from that? I'm very concerned not just about the possible defective nature of some of these products, which are rushed out under an indemnity blanket and not necessarily properly tested, but about whether a company is also absolved from any risk of any statements it might make publicly about the safety and effectiveness of its product which, again, would normally be illegal or provide the ability for you to take them to court without such indemnities.

For example, and other senators have mentioned this, last week we finally got Pfizer and Moderna along to a Senate committee. It took a while for us to do that, but we got them along to a Senate committee to answer some questions. I raised with them the fact that the Pfizer CEO and the Pfizer company itself had made a number of public statements early on in their vaccine rollout that their vaccine could stop transmission, that their vaccine with 100 per cent effective. In fact, one time Pfizer said their vaccine was 100 per cent effective at stopping you from getting coronavirus. They made that statement. In fairness to them, they said, 'A study in South Africa has shown that our vaccine is 100 per cent effective against you getting coronavirus.' Putting aside all the debates about adverse events, we can probably all agree that that statement is a big fat lie. That's a massive lie. Does anybody here think that the vaccine has stopped them from getting coronavirus? Has that happened? That is just a total lie from a big corporate entity that's seemingly gone unpunished. I don't know why the ACCC's not onto it. They have said that. It's out there.

I put to them that they made that statement and that I could not find a single statement from Pfizer—a professional statement, a tweet or whatever—since mid-2021 which clarified the effectiveness of their vaccine against you getting coronavirus, not a single extra thing. Obviously, all the evidence since that time has completely undermined what Pfizer had to say in early and mid-2021, but they have failed at any point since then that I could find to tell us—and they couldn't point to anything; I think they took it on notice, so we'll wait and see what comes back—where they have clarified the record to fully inform the customers of their product that perhaps their vaccine wasn't 100 per cent effective against you getting coronavirus. I really want to know here: can I take Pfizer to court for misleading and deceptive conduct? It seems like a pretty open-and-shut case to me here: they have engaged in what any other company in this country would be done for. Misleading and deceptive conduct is a key part of our consumer law, but are they indemnified against that as well? Can they just say whatever they like about it? I think that's very important because we must keep in mind the records of these companies. Sometimes it's almost presented as if they're not really companies, they're somehow modern-day saints, all helping us extend our lives, when most of us who have looked at this in any sort of detail know that these are some of the most fraudulent companies that have ever graced this God's earth.

In fact, Pfizer themselves in 2009 had to pay the largest settlement in history at that time for fraud, a $2.3 billion fine for corporate fraud, to the US Department of Justice. They were there for corporate fraud was because they were misrepresenting the approval of certain pharmaceutical products—obviously, these didn't have an indemnity; they weren't vaccines. Certain pharmaceutical products were being misadvertised to American consumers, and they were ultimately fined $2.3 billion. These are the companies that we provide a full indemnity to, and we put that risk onto Australian consumers. This is completely beyond the pale, and there is no justification for the lack of transparency, for the lack of parliamentary oversight, for the lack of oversight from general people that goes into the conclusion of these vaccines.

The other point I'd like to make in closing this debate is that this debate has evolved a lot in a short space of time. I do want to give credit to Senator Babet for bringing this particular bill forward and also to many of my other colleagues—Senator Roberts, Senator Hanson, Senator Antic, Senator Rennick; I hope I'm not missing some—who, over the past year and a half, almost two years now, have raised these and related issues. A lot of senators have brought these issues up. I don't know if some of my colleagues remember but when we first brought these issues up—we brought up a bill to end vaccine mandates—we struggled to get a word in because on the other side there were others wanting to jump up and call us antivaxxers and say how ridiculous we were, say that we were QAnon conspiracists and label us with all these epithets. There were multiple speeches from the other side condemning us as almost evil for even suggesting that somehow the products of the saintly Pfizers or Modernas of the world could be in any way questionable.

Well, it's very different today, isn't it? It's very different today. We had a half-hearted attempt there from Minister Watt to rebut this particular bill, but he actually didn't give any real time to it. The words 'safe' and 'effective' didn't even go past his mouth. People have completely surrendered on this issue. But now the problem is they are too embarrassed to admit their mistakes and they won't correct them on behalf of the Australian people. It's about time some humble pie is eaten in this debate and we actually make decisions in the best interests of the Australian people, not try to protect our parliamentary record or previous statements. As I said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Who is taking a booster now? Who is getting a booster? Does anyone want to put their hand up as getting it? No-one is doing this anymore, right? Hardly anyone is doing it.

Alright, Murray. Good on you for having the courage! I think the latest stats out of the US show that 12 per cent of people are doing it.

I think there are still some ads from the Commonwealth government promoting this vaccine. Not once in these ads do they refer to the fact that there are actually side effects from it. We know that there are cases of myocarditis, pericarditis and others, particularly for young males, and they never mention it in the ads. It is totally irresponsible. I have great faith and trust in the Australian people and, fortunately, they have worked it out for themselves. They are not listening to the ads, because hardly anyone is getting it. But at the very least the government could be upfront with them and say: 'If you are young, fit and healthy, you probably don't need this vaccine. Don't get it.' Hardly any young and healthy people are getting it, but it would be good to have full disclosure here because we constantly seem to be trying to dupe the Australian people on these issues when it would be much better to explain all of the problems with any particular drug or pharmaceutical products, which are always legion. There are always side effects from pharmaceutical products.

So we will keep fighting on this issue even though it seems the other side have effectively surrendered on this. We will keep raising these issues on the behalf of the Australian people. They have worked it out. They understand what is going on here. They understand the great swindle that these pharmaceutical companies get away with constantly. As I said at the start of my contribution, what should happen here is that any future indemnities are done with full parliamentary oversight and approval such that they bring legislation into this place. If the government wants to do that, there is plenty of time during a pandemic to do it, as we saw with the coronavirus. Don't give us that rubbish that it has to be done overnight. Let's not have these kinds of deals done in back rooms by one particular minister at the time who has all the power to impose all the risk of a pharmaceutical product onto you, the people. We will keep fighting for you. Once again, I give credit to Senator Babet for bringing this forward.

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

I rise today to speak in favour of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023. I think it is way overdue and I think that it's a real shame that this wasn't introduced earlier, because too many people have suffered. What's worse is that the people who have been injured by the vaccine have effectively been gaslighted and haven't got proper compensation to help with their injuries. That we could spend hundreds of billions of dollars on shutting down a country in regard to coronavirus when healthy working-age people had very little risk from the virus and yet spend nothing on these same people when they are injured from the vaccine is gross hypocrisy.

Before I get into the vaccine I actually want to talk about this side of the chamber and what the Liberal Party pretend to believe in or what we are supposed to believe in, and that is capitalism. The capitalist is someone who risks their own capital. As I have always said, I don't believe in the free market. I am in good company there because Robert Menzies himself did not believe in the free market. He said in his 'forgotten people' speech that we should not go back to the 'old and selfish notions of laissez-faire'. I have spent my whole life working in finance and I have never seen freedom as a line item on the balance sheet. There are only two outcomes in the market: you are either making money or you are losing money. The real capitalists out there are the Australians who get out of bed every day and put their noses to the grindstone. I don't care whether you are a teacher, nurse, lawyer, doctor, engineer, scientist or small-business person; if you are out there busting your gut, you are the one risking your capital. I've always tended to have thought of that in terms of economics, but, unfortunately, because of this contrived crisis that was brought about by state governments who lost the plot basically, we've now found that people have had to risk their health because of a government mandate. That is totally wrong. I think we need to have a good look at that.

Effectively, I can tell you who isn't a capitalist, and that's big corporations. They've never been capitalist, because they've always hidden it under the veil of limited liability. This is another example of where big pharma—it's the same for bureaucrats; they don't have to be held accountable for superannuation funds. They don't have to be accountable, because they risk other people's capital. When you have situations where big organisations are risking other people's capital, you need proper checks and balances. One of those things is definitely not indemnities because indemnities effectively remove the checks and balances.

The whole point of democracy is to protect the government from the people. It's not the other way around. We are here to protect the people. We are not here to protect the big end of town. We are not here to protect corporations, the bureaucrats or big wealth funds, who own these big corporations today. The corporations are just puppets on the string now. The puppeteers and the puppet masters are actually the superannuation funds here in Australia or BlackRock and Vanguard overseas. They have these cross-interests that allow them to get away with lots of things.

The other thing that makes this indemnity particularly bad is the fact that there's been no transparency about the contract. We have, on many occasions, tried to get the terms and conditions of the contract with Pfizer, and it hasn't been forth coming. Yet again, one of the hallmarks of democracy is accountability and transparency, and we have not got that.

No. 1, it's bad that we gave an indemnity without knowing the risks. No. 2, it's even worse that we aren't being transparent. No. 3, I don't believe that this contract will still hold up. I was taught at university in introductory law, in the bowels of the Forgan Smith Building in Queensland university, that there are three elements to a contract. There is the offer. There is the acceptance. And there are the terms and conditions. And the terms and conditions of this particular drug were not made available to the people.

One of the things in the immunisation schedule—it's on the internet; it's basically an oral contract between the Australian government and the people: the Immunisation Handbookis that people have to be fully informed about the risks of the drug before they take it. Of course, they weren't fully informed at all. They were lied to. They were lied to by the government and they were lied to by big pharma.

You don't need to take my word for it. Right here we've got the Australian public assessment report for the Pfizer vaccine. This came out, by the way, in January 2021. You can google this. It's the Australian public assessment report. If you go to page 31, you will see what they tested this on. I'm going to read out some of the 'missing information' that was involved with the sale of this drug. It says, 'Missing information: use in pregnancy and while breast feeding; use in immunocompromised patients'—I wonder why they did that!

I'll tell you why this really matters. Last week I finally got the TGA to admit that myocarditis is an autoimmune disease. So they knew. This is the thing: a normal vaccine generates an immune response against the foreign body that's in the vaccine. This vaccine doesn't do that; this vaccine creates an autoimmune response via generating a T-cell response against the little peptides that are present on the cell membrane. That's in the Pfizer FOI-289-6 report. That generates a T-cell response. That means you now get an autoimmune response against your own cells. So the pathway of this vaccine was completely different. It created an autoimmune response, yet, right here, it says they never actually tested the drug on immunocompromised patients.

Under 'missing information', the report also says:

Use in frail patients with co-morbidities (for example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes—

Well, diabetes has jumped a lot in excess deaths; it's one of the largest contributors to excess deaths, yet they never tested for diabetes.

… chronic neurological disease, cardiovascular disorders)—

Hmm, is myocarditis a cardiovascular disorder? All of this was missing information, and, yet again, it's relevant, because last week Pfizer and Moderna could not explain why their vaccine causes myocarditis. It turns out that they never actually tried to find out before they rolled this thing out. They were happy to say the vaccine was safe and effective, but they didn't actually understand what they were selling. And, of course, we've got use in patients with autoimmune or inflammatory disorders. Wow!

Next there is 'Interaction with other vaccines' and 'Long term safety data'. They lied. They lied, and people died. Yet these people were given an indemnity. I've been contacted by the mother of a child this week whose child was recognised by the TGA. She was offered $85,000. That included $15,000 for funeral costs. Her daughter was worth $70,000. That is a disgrace. That is an absolute disgrace.

Let's go to the initial reason why this was approved. This is on page 7 of the product assessment report. It says:

… COVID-19 vaccine has provisional approval for the indication below:

Active immunisation to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2, in individuals 16 years of age and older …

The decision has been made on the basis of short term efficacy—

They're not wrong about that—

and safety data. Continued approval depends on the evidence of longer term efficacy and safety …

Guess what? The TGA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine just last week. So they're not really being held to account on what they said they would do.

Let's talk about the so-called efficacy and the 95 per cent efficacy that Pfizer originally claimed that they provided. It turns out that was all a scam. You see, in the initial trial there were about 44,000 participants. Of the 20,000 each that they ended up measuring, 162 in the non-vaccinated group caught COVID and only eight in the vaccinated group caught COVID. That was less than 1 per cent of the trial group in either trial. That is not statistically significant. Here is what is interesting: 1,594 people were suspected but not confirmed to have COVID in the inoculation group, and 1,816 were suspected but not confirmed to have COVID in the vaccine group. They actually excluded 3½ thousand people from the efficacy trial. The reason they did was, if they included all those people, it would have reduced the relative risk reduction to 19 per cent. That was below the 50 per cent threshold necessary to get European approval for the vaccine. They engaged in deliberate—in my view—fraud.

You don't have to take just the efficacy. Let's talk about Maddie de Garay. She was one of the children in the children's adolescent trial. She ended up in a wheelchair being fed through a tube. How did Pfizer describe her injury? As 'functional abdominal pain'. This was a girl who developed gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor ticks, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down—hence the wheelchair and lost bowel and bladder control, and she had a nasogastric tube placed because she lost her ability to eat. She was hospitalised many times and has been wheelchair bound and fed via a tube. How did Pfizer treat this victim of their own trial? They gaslighted her. They gaslighted her own injury. Shame on you, Pfizer. What an absolute disgrace. We gave these people indemnity.

That's not all. You see, one of the things these Pfizer are claiming is, 'It wasn't meant to stop transmission and it wasn't meant to stop efficacy.' But here's the thing. Look at their own trial data. Last week Pfizer were claiming it's going to reduce serious illness and death. That's not true. Their own six-month data, which was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that adverse events related to Pfizer were 300 per cent higher in the inoculation group—that is, in the vaccine group—than in the placebo group. Any severe adverse event was 75 per cent higher in the vaccine group than in the actual placebo group, and any serious adverse event was 10 per cent higher.

So, even in Pfizer's own six-month trial data, injuries were higher—significantly higher—in the vaccine group, yet these people still try to claim that the vaccine reduces illness. I find that very hard to believe, and you don't have to base it just on a trial. We know that in May 2021 the number of deaths jumped by about four per cent and continued to stay that high throughout the year, so there were 172,000 deaths in 2021, all from May onwards, in the last eight months of the year, straight after the vaccine rollout. This is significant because it was before COVID was in the community. What caused it? There were almost 10,000 more deaths in 2021 than there were in 2020. Yes, 2020 saw a reduction in deaths of 2,000 from 2019, but that's a long way short of 10,000. We had 1,300 deaths from COVID in 2021, but we had 1,000 deaths in 2020. So, out of that extra 10,000 deaths, only 300 were due to COVID.

What was the cause of all the other excess deaths, and why were those excess deaths in the states that were locked down? The highest jump was in Queensland and WA, where there was absolutely no COVID. That figure is three standard deviations from the average mean of the prior five years. That is a six-sigma event. That has a one-in-1,000 chance of happening statistically. It's an outlier of enormous proportions. Yet these people will sit here and claim that this vaccine reduced illness and death, and that is not true.

We can't get Pfizer's contract, but what we can get is Pfizer's set of financial accounts. I managed to get them yesterday. You can pay $47 from ASIC and get their financial accounts.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Rennick. The time for debate has expired. You will be in continuation when we resume with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023 at a later date.