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

I move:

That, noting the recommendation of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee report into the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023 that the Australian Government review the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme, the following matter be referred to the Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 December 2024:

The current Federal Government's COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme, with reference to:

(a) the eligibility criteria;

(b) the time in processing the claimants' applications, noting that as of 30 August 2023 fewer than 200 of 3803 claims had received compensation;

(c) differences between Therapeutic Goods Administration assessments and specialist assessment reports included in vaccine injury claims;

(d) the adequacy of the compensation in relation to the person's injuries, mental health and lost earnings;

(e) the risks that inadequate support and compensation for vaccine related injuries may exacerbate vaccine hesitancy; and

(f) any other related matters.

I'd like to speak to this motion today because I think it's about time we called out Australia's history when it comes to dealing with victims of drug rollouts approved by the government. This is symptomatic of a long history of gaslighting of injuries. This goes right back. Just earlier this year, the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, came out and apologised to the victims of thalidomide. Unfortunately, they were hollow words, because those people were injured 60 years ago. Why did it take 60 years for the government to apologise to the people injured by thalidomide? It was too long. But there are more people in this country that suffer every day from government neglect in terms of quality assurance of the rollout of drugs in this country.

We've got the infected blood people. In the 1980s, tens of thousands of Australians—in particular, children and haemophiliacs—were infected with AIDS and hepatitis C because the Red Cross and CSL refused to heat-treat the blood to make sure that the AIDS virus and hepatitis C were sterilised from the blood. The reason, as we found out in a Senate inquiry in 2004, was because CSL didn't want to lose yield on the blood products. As a result of that negligence, we have had, for decades, thousands of Australians suffer in pain and slowly die. If you want to read a story about it, I suggest you read Bryce Courtenay's April Fool's Day, where he wrote about his own son, who was a haemophiliac who caught AIDS. Being a haemophiliac requires a lot of blood transfusions. He went through a lifetime of suffering until he turned 18 or 19, and then one day he got a blood transfusion that contained AIDS. Of course, he rapidly died within a matter of years after that, and his father and his mother had to fight the government. The New South Wales government, I do believe, did pay out some money, but it was a battle the whole time through.

We've also got people who suffered mesh injuries in this country. They too are still suffering today. They are fighting to get justice from the government for the injuries that occurred to them. I can speak on behalf of my own uncle, who in the early 1950s came down with an illness and was given a sulpha drug that made him blind. A seven-year-old boy was turned blind for the rest of his life, and he was given no support by the government. My grandmother had no support from the government for the drugs that were given to him. He's battled through life. He's got a law degree, having done it through braille, and I'm very proud of him.

It sickens me, the way that people in this country and are treated by government and that politicians, who are meant to protect the people, refuse to acknowledge the damage that they have done to Australians who thought that they were doing the right thing. They were told the vaccine was safe and effective. They were told that there was going to be a vaccine injury scheme that would protect them and look after them if they were injured by that vaccine, and that is not the case. Just yesterday I spoke to a person injured by the vaccine. We actually had to turn the lights off in the office because he couldn't keep his eyes open from the brightness of the light. He's not actually applying through the vaccine injury scheme, I should add; he's applying through Comcare because he worked for the Australian health department, and they are gaslighting their own employee.

If we aren't here to protect the people, what exactly are we here for? The whole point of a liberal democracy is to protect the individual and their families from the unrestrained authority of the big end of town. Whether it's the health bureaucracies, big corporations or whatever, we are meant to protect the people.

Let's talk about the big corporations. Let's talk about the fines that these pharmaceutical companies have paid over the years. In 2012 GlaxoSmithKline paid a fine of $3 billion. It was a criminal fine for off-label promotion and failure to disclose safety data. There were civil fines for paying kickbacks to physicians making false and misleading statements. Our good friends Pfizer paid $2.3 billion in 2009 for off-label promotion and kickbacks. In 2013 Johnson & Johnson were fined for off-label promotion and kickbacks. Eli Lilley in 2009 were fined for off-label promotions. Abbott Laboratories, in 2012, were fined $1.5 billion for off-label promotion. You can look up on Wikipedia the 20 biggest fines by pharmaceutical companies. The bottom one tops out at $345 million for a similar thing: Medicare fraud kickbacks. If you look at it all, you see it's all kickbacks and misleading information.

The pharmaceutical industry have a history of putting their wallets in front of people's health. We know that they're driven by the monetary incentives, and there's nothing wrong with that. We all have to put bread on the table. We understand that. But you should not trade out the safety of people when you do this. Drugs have been a wonderful thing. I accept that they have increased the standard of living in the Western world and other parts of the world. A hundred years ago, your average life expectancy was around 50 or 55. Today average life expectancy is 80. We have made much medical progress in that time, and that is something to be commended.

If we want to make sure that we keep trust in our medical system, we have to protect those who have been injured by medical products, and in the last three years we have seen gaslighting and double standards for the people injured by vaccines. I'll touch on the gaslighting first. It is a disgrace. They've been labelled antivaxxers, cookers—you name it. They rolled up their sleeves. They believed in the government and the information the government gave them, thinking they were doing the right thing, and now the government has kicked them to the kerb. That is not good enough.

Then there are the double standards. When it came to COVID—heaven forbid!—anyone with a sniffle would have to go down and quarantine. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to protect people from COVID, which I accept is a risk, like any virus, especially to older and sick people. But for the majority of the working-age people who were healthy it wasn't a risk, and it didn't warrant the unnecessary lockdowns and fearmongering that took place. As a result of that, we've had massive implications for other parts of the health system, and I'll just elaborate on that.

The Australian government bought 300 million doses of various types of COVID vaccines whilst at the same time saying that two doses were enough to protect you. Twenty-five million people times two is 50 million people. You could have bought three doses per person and had 75 million doses—a quarter of what we bought—for $8 billion. If we had bought a quarter of what we bought, we would have saved $6 billion. The Sunshine Coast University Hospital was built in the last decade. It cost $1.8 billion. We wasted the equivalent amount of money that could have built three Sunshine Coast university hospitals. All of this money that was spent on the COVID overreach—not all of it; I'll take some of that back. A large part of it could have been spent on front-end services. It could have been spent on more nurses, more doctors and more ambulances, because, heaven knows, just about every state in this country is suffering under the weight of the mismanagement of the health system. I'm led to believe that. I'm shooting from my hip here, but I certainly know that's the case in Queensland. We have got ambulance ramping that is out of control. In my own home state, we have maternity wards closing down.

There was an article in the Courier Mail a few years ago that said that, in towns where there was no maternity ward, the number of deaths per thousand births was 23 versus six in towns with a maternity ward. Now, the difference of 17 per thousand is probably higher than the death rate from COVID. Imagine if we had kept that $6 billion, plus the other billions we spent on masks and PCR testing! I seem to recall that the Western Australian government spent $600 million just on PCR tests. How many maternity wards could that have built? How many frontline nurses could that have paid for?

All I'm asking for here today is to honour the recommendation by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee that came out earlier this week in reply to Senator Babet's inquiry into the vaccine indemnity scheme. This is the thing—this is coming off the back of the inquiry that looked into why pharmaceutical companies are given indemnities. I've just read out some of the fines that these pharmaceutical companies have been forced to pay because of the deceptive, misleading and unethical conduct they engage in. Yet we roll over and give them an indemnity. We give them an indemnity, and the least we could ask for is a no-fault compensation scheme, which is the recommendation from the Finance and Public Administration committee—to actually inquire into the vaccine injury scheme and to have a no-fault scheme.

There is a reason why that matters. I've got an insider from the TGA who played a big role in designing this scheme. I can't say his name. He's left it now because he doesn't want to lose his job if he goes public. The whole point of that scheme was that, once an injured person got a specialist to say that the person was injured by the vaccine, he or she would be entitled to compensation. That is not happening. What is happening is that Services Australia makes these people wait, on average, 297 days to get a decision. Many of these people can no longer work. They are seriously ill. They have to do all the legwork of trying to book in to see a specialist, a cardiologist, a rheumatologist or whatever, and that takes a lot of work. It's very expensive. They've got to get MRIs or something to back up their claim, and then they're basically being neglected.

What's happening though is Services Australia make these people jump that hurdle. Services Australia then refer it back to the TGA. And the TGA doctors are turning around and saying, 'We are overriding the decision of the specialists who actually examined the patient.' My insider tells me that these doctors at the TGA are not qualified to be overriding specialists, and I believe that. If you haven't examined the patient, who are you to say this isn't actually a vaccine injury? How would you know? I had a discussion this morning with some scientists who said, 'Basically, you'll never know while a person's living because you can't take tissue samples from living people.' So we are operating in the dark here with regard to our ability to examine what's really going on as a result of these vaccine injuries.

But let me tell you this: these people should not be made to suffer for following the advice of the government that said they would be protected. And when you look at the TGA's track record on this, there have been 1,000 reported and, most importantly, the box that was ticked was 'suspected deaths from the vaccine'. How many did the TGA recognise? Fourteen. Over 60 per cent of those reports came from health professionals. When you press the TGA and you say to them, 'Can you actually prove that this death wasn't from the vaccine,' they say, 'No, we can't.' They are playing semantics: when they say there have only been 14 deaths from the vaccine what they're saying is, 'We can only prove there were 14 deaths,' but they haven't examined the body.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the coroner didn't get to examine the body either, despite that being the advice from at least one state government. The Queensland state government—you have to get on the 'way back' machine, because they've pulled this down—said if you suspected a person had died from the vaccine you need to refer it to the coroner. That's not happening, but it should have happened because there was an increase of 10,000 actual deaths in the eight months after the rollout of the vaccine, from May 2021 through to December 2021—before COVID was widespread in the community. The TGA cannot explain that either.

There is plenty of information. We need to protect the people. I urge you to support this motion today and protect the people injured from the vaccine.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting this motion. On Monday, the report from the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee was tabled in this Senate. The committee report includes the recommendation that the Australian government review the COVID-19 vaccine claim scheme and consider the merits of a national no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme as part of the National Immunisation Strategy. We had that recommendation from the committee tabled just three days ago.

This motion before us seeks a referral to the community affairs committee for another inquiry for Senators Rennick and Antic to pursue their agenda regarding the COVID-19 vaccine and the vaccine program. And we saw that in Senator Rennick's dissenting report from the committee inquiry, where he says:

… the argument that there was a public health emergency—

associated with COVID-19—

is overblown. Covid-19 was of little risk to healthy people of working age population. There was no justification to roll out a novel vaccine that had next to no testing, especially longitudinal on people that had very little risk from Covid.

The government does not feel that we should feed into this irresponsible view and, in considering this motion, we should consider the remarks of the committee report, which found:

The benefits of immunisation are vital in protecting the health of the Australian population. The committee is unanimous in its view that passage of this bill would have a severely detrimental effect on Australia's future capacity to manage any future pandemic, and consequently on the health of the population. This is because Australia's pandemic response would be inhibited by an inability to source and secure the timely provision of life-saving vaccines in an emergency by a prohibition on the granting of indemnities.

The committee then says:

… it is clear to the committee that the granting of an indemnity for legal risk in an emergency does not compromise the efficacy and robustness of the vaccine assurance, monitoring, and regulatory processes undertaken by the—

TGA. It goes on to say:

… the committee considers it incumbent on government to ensure that any vaccine injury claims scheme offers timely, easily accessed, and adequate compensation to persons suffering vaccine injury. Further, the committee considers it prudent to take seriously any risk of increased vaccine hesitancy associated with the view that the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme, or indeed any vaccine compensation scheme, is overly onerous. With new strains of COVID-19 continuing to emerge and the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme scheduled to end on 30 September 2024, the committee considers it appropriate to review the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme and consider the merits of a National no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme as part of the National Immunisation Strategy.

As this report was tabled on Monday, the recommendation will be considered by the government before we provide our response and there is no need for another inquiry by the community affairs committee.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my introductory remarks I would like to say how much I deeply admire the commitment that my friend Senator Rennick has made to discuss with people and to be there for people who have suffered vaccine injuries. I doubt if there's anyone in this place who has spent more time talking to some of Australia's most vulnerable Australians who have gone through very, very difficult personal times because they're in that cohort of Australians who have suffered from the side-effects of vaccines. When Senator Rennick speaks on these issues, he speaks with a good heart and from a place of deep conviction. Others may disagree with him, but in the best traditions of a representative democracy, Senator Rennick, I believe, has made sure that he's always been available to people in need and people who have sought to tell their story, and I really, deeply applaud Senator Rennick for that. I consider Senator Rennick a dear friend and I greatly admire the time and effort he's put into that.

Australians have suffered from vaccine injuries; there's no question about that. The objective evidence is to that effect, and the whole purpose as to why we established a vaccine claims scheme was to provide those Australians with a simple and easy process to claim compensation as a result of that. When this country was facing the circumstances that we were facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of Australians decided to become vaccinated, and those Australians who suffer injuries as a result of that vaccination are entitled to a no-fault compensation scheme which recognises any injuries they've suffered.

In a response to a question on notice, the TGA reported that, 'as at 31 August 2023, there had been 3,805 claims submitted to the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme: 199 claims had been approved, 1,252 claims had been deemed not payable, 729 claims had been withdrawn, 1,625 claims were in progress'. The fact that, as at 31 August 2023, nearly 200 claims had been approved through the process is objective evidence that there is a cohort of Australians who have suffered from vaccine injuries and a cohort of Australians who've already had their compensation claims recognised. But there are hundreds and hundreds of other Australians who are still in the process, so there is an issue with respect to vaccine injuries and there are people seeking assistance through the no-fault compensation scheme. The objective evidence is to that effect. It can't be disputed.

Two things drew my attention, and I say this as someone who practised as a lawyer before coming into this place. Firstly, it takes 297 days for a claim to be processed. That is nine, nearly 10, months for a claim to be processed. Secondly, it says 'including up to six months for claimants to consider a deed of settlement'. That immediately raises the concern in my mind, which I would take the advantage of looking into if this reference was approved, as to what is in that deed of settlement. To what extent are people forgoing rights? To what extent do they have to commit to confidentiality obligations? I don't know, but it does make me somewhat concerned that vulnerable Australians in this position are being required to enter into a deed of settlement, a formal legal document, when they are in a very grave position of vulnerability, be it because of their health or their financial situation.

The objective evidence is that there is a need for this scheme and that is why it was established under the previous government. Senator Rennick did have an input into some of the financial thresholds. There are people who have suffered vaccine injuries who are having recourse to the scheme. But 297 days for claims to be processed causes me some concern, and the whole concept of a deed of settlement being required to be entered into by Australians who are in desperate straits in some instances it also causes me concern, so I think that merits an inquiry.

Also we do have to appreciate that when we look at this proposed reference, it is extraordinarily objectively worded. It is not pre-guessing or assuming what the results of the reference will be. I will read the terms of the reference so those in the gallery can hear the terms of what is being proposed for a Senate inquiry to look into this.

It says:

The current Federal Government's COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme, with reference to:

a. the eligibility criteria—

so is the scheme making sure that we capture everyone who is legitimately suffered a vaccine injury—

b. the time in processing the claimants' applications—

I have spoken about the 297 days—

c. differences between Therapeutic Goods Administration assessments and specialist assessment reports included in vaccine injury claims—

so to what extent does someone who makes a claim with the support of a specialist report having their claim rejected because of another medical specialist having a different view and how is that all working in practice—

d. the adequacy of the compensation in relation to the person's injuries, mental health and lost earnings;

e. the risks that inadequate support and compensation for vaccine related injuries may exacerbate vaccine hesitancy; and

f. any other related matters.

These are quite fair and objective terms of reference. They don't pre-judge the findings. Based on the objective evidence, I can't see why we would not have this inquiry, especially—and I emphasise this—because we are dealing with a cohort of Australians who have heightened vulnerability health-wise and finance-wise, and I think that places greater obligation upon us to consider this reference.

I am chairing an inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee into proposed terms of reference for a COVID-19 royal commission referred by Senator Roberts. We have heard during the course of that inquiry from different stakeholders, including those representing people who have suffered vaccine injuries. I want to commend in this debate the work that is being done by Dr Rado Faletic and Ms Rachel O'Reilly. Dr Faletic shared his experience of his vaccine injury. Dr Faletic has a PhD in hypersonic physics, so that makes him a rocket scientist, and a smarter man than I would ever hope to be. He had a vigorous professional life. He had side-effects after the first vaccine he received. When he got the second one, he said: 'Over the following months I experienced many disabling and painful neurological, cardiac and systemic symptoms, affecting my capacity work and even just getting through the day. I could not walk for more than a few metres without feeling like my body was about to shut down. I was constantly bumping into things on my left-hand side. I could not recall words. I could not engage in conversations for longer than two minutes before my brain could no longer process what was being said to me. My emotions became unstable, fluctuating from the inability to feel any emotion to extreme emotions like suicidal ideation and intense rage, and, no, this was not due to the stress of my situation.' This is a highly trained professional who has shared his story and has opened up about the vulnerability he's now suffering as someone who's gone through a vaccine injury. He's now advocating on behalf of other Australians who've suffered vaccine injuries.

I say to the senators: this isn't about Senator Rennick. It's not about Senator Scarr, Senator Roberts, Senator Cadell, Senator Brown, Senator Grogan, Senator McDonald or Senator Sterle; it's not about any of us. It's about the Australians who've suffered a vaccine injury and it's about making sure that the no-fault vaccine compensation scheme is working as we intended it to work. When objective evidence is presented that talks about delays and that talks about denials of claims—we're receiving reports from Australians who are vulnerable in terms of health and finances, asking us to look into this—I think we've got a positive duty to do that. I think that's the job of this place as a house of review. I'm very happy to support this motion and commend this reference to the Senate.

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

There have been more than 25,000 deaths. That's more than 25,000 homicides. At Senate estimates hearings last November I produced an independent analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data. It showed the unexplained increase in deaths for the period 2022-23—population adjusted, excluding COVID and respiratory deaths—was 13 per cent. The Australian Bureau of Statistics provided data using a different methodology, which agreed closely with my figure. An increase of 13 per cent above baseline on 195,000 deaths in 2022-23 means 25,000 more Australians died than expected.

Did the novel COVID injections cause all of these deaths? While highly likely, it's possible they did not. Were enough of these deaths caused by the injections to be of serious concern and to support an inquiry? Definitely yes. A common argument against having an inquiry is the issue that increases in mortality are due to many different causes—cancer, dementia, cardiac conditions and diabetes—so there can't possibly be a single cause. An inquiry would need to explain this. In the absence of an inquiry, I'll advance a theory from many credible medical authorities. I'll do that in a minute.

The COVID products are not vaccines because they don't stop people getting COVID. They don't stop people passing it on to someone else. I call them injections or jabs. The jabs include a segment of messenger RNA, which has the purpose of splicing a new segment into our DNA, which produces a protein to create an antibody to COVID-19. This raises the possibility that disease can be prevented, using mRNA techniques to get our bodies producing antibodies to stop cancer and disease in their tracks. This opportunity to play God has proven so intoxicating that many in our health industry have fallen for it; mRNA jabs are being defended with religious fervour. As with any religious zealotry, those who ask difficult questions like, 'Why are so many people suddenly dying?' are being treated in a way that is an afront to parliamentary process and civil government. This issue is life or death. It needs to be above honest debate and scrutiny.

One potential explanation for increased mortality rates across a wide range of conditions is a scandal known as 'plasmidgate'. This is technical, so I'll use plain language and apologise to any specialist vaccinologists listening. Messenger RNA is too fragile to use in a vaccine. To protect the RNA sequence from damage, these COVID jabs use a new technique, wrapping each one in a protective coating called a lipid nanoparticle. This keeps the RNA intact on its journey from your arm to the nucleus of every cell in your body, where the coating helps the RNA enter the cell and bind with your existing DNA. Remember, there are billions of mRNA particles in every jab.

The manufacturing process is not clean. Fragments of DNA are being picked up in the manufacturing process and getting coated in that protective layer as well, a coating that stops your body expelling the fragment. These fragments are coming from the E. coli bacteria, a derivative being used to grow on the mRNA. Yes, they're using modified E. coli bacteria as the growing medium for the mRNA in these jabs.

The clinical trials for this product were conducted using the previous growing method, albumen from eggs. That's the clinical trials. Yet that was far too slow for Pfizer, claiming the so-called speed of science. So, after the clinical trials were tested, with a conventionally propagated product, Pfizer switched it out for one grown using the much faster E. coli bacteria method. Has E. coli ever been used before as a medium to grow on a vaccine? No, it hasn't. No, it has not. Was any safety testing done? Well, that would be every person that has had done the jab. That's where the testing was done, if you've had the jab. Now people are dying, and the mRNA vaccine zealots are ignoring the outcome. The crime of the century is that the Australian public have been injected with DNA from E. coli bacteria that was wrapped up in a protective coating and delivered into the nucleus of every cell in your body.

It gets worse. The latest peer reviewed published data on this shows that, in a third of cases, the cell will not produce the antibody intended against COVID and instead will produce some other antibody—in a third of cases. It's a process called frame shifting, which means the mRNA does not present itself to your DNA strand correctly and accordingly combines with your DNA in an unintended way before producing an unintended protein antibody. This is going on in people's bodies right now. What does that mutant protein do to your system? Nobody knows. Here's the final crime. These mutant proteins are not created in one-third of people; they're created in one-third of cells, meaning that everyone who was injected with a COVID product has a third of their cells now producing mutant proteins. We don't know what harm that will cause. The harm varies from person to person.

Are these proteins now resting in our brain? Are they? We know it can cross the blood-brain barrier into our brains. Are these proteins resting in our hearts, in our livers, in female ovaries, in male testes? Is it turning off our body's natural cancer defence, resulting in turbo cancers? Highly likely. These are questions, not statements. When some of the most highly qualified medical professionals on this topic are asking questions, there is no excuse not to be investigating. It's time to treat the zealots of the religion of mRNA as the maniacs they are. They played God and they harmed people. They killed tens of thousands of people. They committed homicide—homicidal maniacs.

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support this motion from Senator Rennick, which will find out how bad the damage is, and, once again, I call on the Senate to demand a royal commission into the crime of the century.

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

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Rennick be agreed to.