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

I rise to speak to One Nation's legislation to end the pandemic of discrimination against Australians who stood for the right to refuse COVID-19 vaccinations. One Nation first introduced similar legislation in 2021. It was when parliament sittings were being conducted remotely and when the untested jabs were being rolled out while lockdowns were being imposed. It was when bureaucrats and elected representatives deliberately trampled all over the democratic rights of the Australian people. It was when discrimination against those who stood for the right to choose vaccination was at its worst. It was so bad and so pervasive that the Senate even refused to record One Nation's votes on our own legislation because we had the temerity to do what they should have done from the beginning.

One Nation introduced this updated version of the COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2022 in November 2022. Here we are now, debating it in 2024, and discrimination against people who refuse vaccinations continues even today. Australians who stand for the right to choose vaccination are ordinary Australians. They are doctors, nurses and paramedics caring for our health. They are police officers enforcing law and keeping us safe. They are soldiers, sailors and aviators defending our sovereignty. They are people who work alongside us in an office, in a factory, at a mine, at a farm or in a shop. They are volunteers helping their communities. They are people in line with us at Centrelink, and they are people sitting next to us in corporate boardrooms. They are people who live next door, down the street, across town and interstate. They are people: born here and overseas; Indigenous and non-Indigenous; men and women; and adults and children. They are our people. They are our fellow citizens. They are Australians just like you and me with families, mortgages, worries, hopes and dreams. They are no different from anyone else.

The pandemic of discrimination which was unleashed upon our fellow Australians took many forms. They were demonised not only in our own country but internationally by elected governments and unelected health bureaucrats, a message amplified by a disturbingly compliant and complacent media. They were physically beaten by police for protesting vaccine mandates and hair-trigger lockdowns, destroying their families, jobs, businesses and the economy. They were attacked in parliaments by their very own elected representatives.

Many of these people, thousands upon thousands, lost their jobs and their livelihoods, with little or no prospect on the horizon, and many of them are still denied employment in their fields today because they, like me, would not allow that crap to be injected into their body. They are still being punished by bureaucracies and government ministers who will never forgive them for not merely submitting to the jabs. These include vital frontline workers in critical fields like law enforcement, public health, the Defence Force and emergency services, all of which are short of skilled workers today. COVID-19 vaccine mandates are still in place in many jurisdictions, despite the virus having become endemic in the population. It is nothing less than petty, vindictive discrimination and naked vaccine coercion more than one year after the pandemic has been effectively over.

However, two particular vaccine mandates are no longer in place. In February this year, the Supreme Court of Queensland ruled them illegal on the grounds that they breached the human rights of the police and nurses on whom they were imposed. That has been One Nation's position on the vaccine mandates all along. The vaccine mandates' discrimination and coercion were not only a fundamental breach of the basic human right to choose; they were a breach of the Australian Constitution. I draw senators' attention to section 51(xxiiiA) of the Constitution—which I have done on numerous occasions—which says parliament can make laws with respect to:

The provision of maternity allowances, widows' pensions, child endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services (but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription) …

What were the vaccine mandates if not civil conscription forced upon the Australian people due to the coronavirus? That is why the Prime Minister at the time, Scott Morrison, could not mandate it. He was gutless and he knew he couldn't do it, and that's why he handed it over to the premiers to force it on the people and businesses. He knew he was going against the Constitution.

I also note the valedictory speech of former New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet last week. Perrottet became the Premier at the height of the pandemic, in October 2021. In his speech last week he said:

… if the impact of vaccines on transmission was limited at best, as it is now mostly accepted, the law should have left more room for respect of freedom. Vaccines saved lives but, ultimately, mandates were wrong. People's personal choices should not have cost them their jobs. When I became Premier, we removed them—or the ones we could—but this should have happened faster. If a pandemic comes again, we need to get a better balance, encouraging people to take action whilst at the same time protecting people's fundamental liberty.

I'd have a lot more respect for the man if he had articulated and upheld those basic democratic principles when he had the power to do so.

A mandate is still in place for NSW Health workers, and those firefighters who refused to be jabbed are still being refused work even now, long after their counterparts have not, since December 2021, been forced to have the jabs. I believe the same is happening with the firefighters in Victoria, unless things have changed. I can hear the bureaucrats and the politically elected minions saying: 'Thou shalt not disobey us. Do as you are told.' It was the unelected bureaucrats driving the pandemic response that trampled our human rights, not elected officials. This was coordinated and orchestrated on a global scale.

The rushed COVID-19 vaccines, which cost Australian taxpayers an eye-watering—get this one—$18 billion to buy, not only proved ineffective in preventing infection and transmission. It cost us $18 billion to strip people of their human rights and force them to have a vaccine against their will. How much of that $18 billion went back over to Japan or to these big pharmaceutical companies that pushed a vaccine that was not tried, tested or proven? The evidence is very clear now. These untried and untested medicines caused immense harm to many thousands of Australians and to millions across the world. The Therapeutic Goods Administration reported more than 144,000 adverse reactions in Australia—an astronomical amount compared to other vaccines—and the evidence is clear that there were a great deal more.

More experts are now speaking up about the lifelong impact on human health of these experimental jabs. Young men across the world are experiencing heart problems, mainly myocarditis and pericarditis. Not only are women's menstrual cycles being disrupted but we have more miscarriages and birth defects happening in our society—but no-one wants to own up to anything, do they? There are far fewer kidney transplant procedures taking place due to a sudden shortage of healthy kidneys, and there is an unexplained spike in deaths in Australia and around the world that are not related to getting the virus. On top of that, I was also informed that we now have a rise in unknown cancer rates. Cancers that were not very common are on the rise as well.

To those people that have had this vaccine, I am sorry to tell you that you've compromised your body and compromised your health. One cardiologist said that by having the jab you've compromised your heart, 100 per cent. This is what the government has done to you. This is what the bureaucrats have done to you. You were led like sheep to the slaughter to have this vaccination against your will. If you wanted to have the vaccine, that was your choice. But people were forced to have the vaccine or they would lose their jobs. That's what I am angry about and that's what needs to be exposed here. People's liberty and their rights were stripped from them.

I said at the beginning of the vaccine rollout that I would not put that shit into my body, as did many other Australians, but they had no choice. It turns out they were definitely onto something. Refusing the mandates may have saved their lives. Bureaucrats in Australia have been indemnified against the consequences of imposing these harmful mandates. That needs to be reversed. Australians are demanding accountability for being forced to accept vaccinations proven to be harmful to their health. We must unpack the entire Australian response to the pandemic. We must see the health advice which led to these mandates and who provided it. We must act before the World Health Organization's proposed pandemic treaty is imposed on the world.

The only way to do this is by following One Nation's policy to establish a comprehensive royal commission into the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by all Australian governments. They won't do it because, at the time, we had a Liberal-National party government and we had state Labor governments, so, you see, they won't want to put a noose around their own necks. That's why this royal commission will never happen, because they know they're both guilty of it. For Christ's sake, the people want answers. The people want someone to stand up and say, 'I got it wrong.' Dominic Perrottet did it, but he is out of office now. At least he was edging towards it. Why can't we have the same backbone in some of the members of this parliament and our leaders of this nation? Premiers—whoever—and the former Prime Minister, please be upfront with the Australian people. If you're not upfront now, when will be the next time that you force this on the Australian people? When will be the next time that you listen to health officials from somewhere around the world saying, 'You've got to force this on the people'?

Until we know how to deal with this properly, we're not going to move forward with this. The people are demanding answers. The mental illnesses that it has left people with are unbelievable. People have been left with numerous health issues. I'm pulled up all the time by people with health issues who had the vaccine, and I say, 'Don't have any more.'

You couldn't see your loved ones—even in aged-care homes. Unless you had the vaccine, you couldn't see your people in aged care. They were dying. They were distraught because they couldn't see their families and they didn't know what was happening.

How many people in good health have keeled over, dead, in their 40s and 50s due to heart failure? How many have died? I've heard of former Olympians and other people in good health that have, all of a sudden, died from heart attacks. Isn't it amazing! A lot of these people died and no autopsy was done. It was all hidden and buried. We don't want to tell people. An inquiry that One Nation got up had Pfizer and Moderna there and they said, 'Oh, no. No-one was forced.' What a load of rubbish. And why did the government indemnify these pharmaceutical companies? Why were they indemnified? Here we were giving vaccinations to people that weren't tried, tested or proven. I'll keep saying that. It was only 10 months prior to that. Any vaccinations given to people usually go through a period of about eight, maybe 10 or 18 years. They need to be properly tested. Yet this was not properly tested. A batch of this stuff actually killed people. Every batch that was manufactured was not tested. That was the problem.

I am going to keep going on and on about this until I'm a pain in your backside, which I don't care, until the people get answers and until the people get a royal commission into this. I may not have the balance of power this time around, but I hope that people vote for One Nation at the next time election so that we get the balance of power. We will use that balance of power to force a royal commission for the people to have their say. That is what is dearly needed.

One Nation is the only party that's fighting for this. I take my hat off to Senator Rennick, Senator Antic and Senator Canavan, who have also stood up for this. There are very few of us here. And Senator Babet is also standing up for this. I take my hat off to them. I respect them for standing up for their values and principles. They know it's wrong. To you, the people, we're fighting for you. But the rest of the people in this place couldn't give a damn about you or your future or your health—nothing! You're going to have to suffer until you throw them out at the next election.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government does not support the COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill. This bill is yet another stunt by Senator Hanson and One Nation, and our nation's public health is too important for that. It should be rejected by all parties.

The government's position on the COVID-19 vaccination is that it is voluntary, as are all vaccinations in Australia, although we encourage and aim to have as many Australians vaccinated as possible. COVID-19 vaccinations protect people in Australia against serious illness and death and have been instrumental in allowing society to reopen both socially and economically.

Since the COVID-19 vaccination program commenced, vaccination has been critical in reducing hospitalisations, admissions to intensive care units and deaths. Vaccinations remain highly effective in preventing severe illness and death and are needed to maintain protection, particularly for priority and at-risk populations. As we can expect to experience further COVID-19 waves, to maintain protections we need to continue to follow the expert advice on the need for additional vaccine doses, particularly as new variants of concern and new vaccines and treatments emerge.

We shouldn't focus on conspiracy theories and fringe agendas. Our priority continues to be ensuring that Australians continue to receive the vaccinations recommended for their age and health status.

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

RENNICK () (): "We shouldn't continue to focus on conspiracy theories and fringe theories." I don't think the thousands of Australians injured by the COVID vaccine would take too kindly to that disrespectful remark there by Senator Urquhart and the Labor Party. Vaccine injuries are not a conspiracy theory.

I'm actually ambivalent about a COVID-19 royal commission, because, quite frankly, I don't trust the judiciary, and they do not have the knowledge around the biochemistry of the vaccine. But what I do want out of this process is accountability. I want the people that made these decisions and I want the people who gaslit the injured people to be held accountable. I'm sick and tired of these people being mocked by people in this chamber, the other chamber, the media, the health authorities. They are mocking people who followed government's advice in good faith and then have been trampled on and gaslit, because it does not suit their political agenda. That is absolutely shameful. That is absolutely shameful. To think, that came from a Labor senator who's on the actual community affairs committee that covers the health portfolio. That they should get up here and refer to these people as 'conspiracy theorists' is an absolute disgrace. That is the nub of this issue—the fact that democratic governments are all about holding people to account. Democracy, as the great patriots in 1776 fought for, was to upturn the establishment, and no longer would we have the ruling elite destroy the individual. Yet what we've got here is a complete gaslighting as to what happened in COVID-19.

Of course, it's not just the vaccine injuries that we need to look into. We need to look into the whole sorry saga. I will slightly disagree with Senator Hanson: I don't what the judiciary involved. I actually went to the Supreme Court and sat in the Supreme Court when those brave police officers stood up for their own rights, and I listened to a judge say that he didn't want to understand the biochemistry of the vaccine. Well, if you don't understand how the thing works, how on earth can you possibly rule on it? That's what the nub of this issue is. We need to understand how respiratory infections work. We need to understand pathogens, because there are different types of pathogens, and I'll touch on that now because I've got 15 minutes to speak.

It's very important that you understand there are different types of pathogens. You have bacteria, you have double stranded DNA viruses and you have single stranded mRNA viruses. Your bacteria is generally dealt with by the use of antibiotics. One of the reasons why we haven't had severe pandemics in the last 100 years is thanks to those great scientists like Fleming and Florey, who discovered penicillin, and we have effectively been able to use antibiotics to control the spread of bacteria. An issue that we need to look at here is why the COVID-19 evidence taskforce recommended against using azithromycin, which is a widely used antibiotic, for people who had COVID. If you understand respiratory infections, you will know that you might initially catch a viral infection, but older people or vulnerable people will get a bacterial infection.

This is another thing that needs to be looked at: the lockdowns in Victoria in August 2020 that led to about 800 deaths in aged-care centres. Why were those people locked down in aged-care centres when they should have been put in hospital? That's something that hasn't been looked at all. Aged-care centres weren't equipped to deal with people who had COVID. Those people should have been sent to hospital. Was that deliberate by the then premier to make sure that, if they went to hospital, it didn't become his responsibility? Was it all too politically convenient to let them die in aged-care centres so that the state government of Victoria could blame the federal government, which was a Liberal government?

The other thing, but it is one of many things that need to be looked at, is the politicisation of health, and we saw it with the premiers every day. They would get up there and perform their stunts like clowns in the media circus, terrifying people about the risks of that virus. It's a virus which, mind you, I accept was a risk to older people and people with vulnerabilities and comorbidities—all viruses are—but it's how you react to these things and it's how you handle these issues that matter. Locking down healthy people of the working-age population was completely unnecessary. You don't destroy the strong to protect the weak, yet that's exactly what happened here.

We know that the Labor government could never accept they lost the 2019 election, and we all know that in politics Labor are generally considered to be more trustworthy with health and education. The Liberals and the coalition are generally considered to be more trustworthy with defence, the economy and law and order. So Labor played to their strengths. They knew that they could terrify everyone—could lock everyone down—with their repeated propaganda. And that's what it was: it was nothing but propaganda in those daily press conferences. It was, 'Ooh, there's COVID in the sewage!' or Dan Andrews saying, 'If you don't take this vaccine you're going to be lining up for a machine that helps you breathe.' What type of hysterical hyperbole was that? That was not medical advice. That was unashamed and unabashed propaganda being used to exploit people who didn't understand what we were dealing with.

Now, some people—and I have to deal with these people as well—think the whole virus thing is not real. I disagree with that. I think viruses are real, they're genuine, and they need to be dealt with. But the fact of the matter is that most people could have coped with it—okay? And we did not need to lock down.

The other thing we really need to address when we look at this whole handling of the COVID pandemic is the PCR testing. There were two issues with the PCR testing. One issue was that the cycle threshold was set at 40. That would pick up any sort of dead virus in your body. If you'd had a virus in years gone by and any part of that was left in your body, that could pick it up. The other issue—and this is what really annoys me—is that we cannot get the primers or the genetic sequence used in that PCR testing to actually find out what the PCR testing said was COVID. We know that COVID is a virus with 29 proteins, of about 1,200 nucleotides in each protein. We know the sequence of COVID. What I've asked for from the TGA—and they won't give it to me because it's commercial-in-confidence—is the primer used in that PCR test to determine whether or not that PCR test could distinguish between COVID and other forms of viruses, whether it be influenza A or B or whatever.

It was interesting: when the Olympics were on, I noticed that people had COVID. They didn't have the flu; they had COVID. This is really, really important, because, as we've just heard Senator Urquhart say, there will be more waves of COVID. Really? Well, there's nothing new in that; we've had waves of viruses for thousands of years. Ever since man started to domesticate animals, we've been catching viruses from animals and sharing them amongst animals and humans and whatever, through contact, for thousands of years. This is nothing new. What is new, however, is the level of organised global propaganda by concentrated media that have access, through technology, into all of our phones, very easily.

Once upon a time—I remember, when I was growing up—you might listen to the news once in the morning on the radio, and you might have a news bulletin at seven o'clock at night, and, if you wanted to get the newspaper, you'd have to go out and get the newspaper, and that would be it. Today's technology allows news to be streamed to you every second of the day, and so that message can be constantly repeated. We saw that, yet again, here in Australia.

Clive Palmer rang me, as he wanted me to join his party early on when I withheld my vote, and he told me that, when he tried to put out advertisements to warn against the vaccine, he was told that no media would actually put those advertisements out because, if they did that, the government said, 'We will not give you any media advertising.' That was an absolute disgrace.

It raises the question: is our media too concentrated in this country? And I think it is. I think it was the Morrison government that abolished the cross-media ownership laws in this country. Well, we need to bring the cross-media ownership laws back and we need to break up the monopoly of, basically, the Murdoch press, the ABC press and the Nine-Fairfax press, because those three media organisations control, I'm guessing, 80 per cent of the mainstream media, and there is very, very little room to have a contrasting opinion, and if you do—heaven forbid!—you get shut down. So we need to have a look at that.

We also need to look at the excess deaths, yet again. We heard Senator Urquhart say that the vaccines saved lives. I would really like to know how you work that out, unless you are doing autopsies on all those deaths, unless you are getting tissue samples, unless you're looking for the presence of the spike protein, and the spike protein from the vaccine is different from the spike protein in the virus. There's a proline insertion at the 986 and 987 proline amino acid insertion. That will tell you very quickly if vaccine proteins are hanging round in the body causing damage.

Then we have the lipids, four different lipids, despite what Adjunct Professor—not a real professor, adjunct professor—Skerritt told me in estimates—that the lipids are nothing more than dietary lipids that you eat on your steak or sausage. They are not. They are actually lipids designed to cross the cell membrane of any cell. The virus could not do that; it could only cross the membrane of the cell with an ace receptor. Here's the thing: the spleen and the bone marrow don't have ace receptors. Those two organs are very important because they produce white blood cells. If you start messing around with organs that produce white blood cells to protect your immune system you are playing with fire. Yet this vaccine used to process core transfection, and this was the first medicine to ever be used that could cross the cell membrane, go inside your cell, where the ribosomes would start processing a new pathogen based on whatever was in that MRNA code. So we really need to have a further investigation into that.

And this is the thing: when they say 'save lives' or whatever, I actually think the lockdowns early on probably did save lives, for what it is worth. I am not disputing that, but at what cost and benefit? We went from 164,000 deaths in 2019 to 162,000 deaths in 2020—sure. So 2,000 people fewer died in 2020 because of lockdowns, right? But in 2021, we had an extra 10,000 deaths. So what caused that? Because COVID was not in the community in 2021. Maybe that was a bit of a blowback from the fact that we had delayed or deferred medical checkups. I think that is entirely plausible. But to have an extra 10,000 deaths in eight months was a spike of 10 per cent, and those deaths jumped the very first month after the vaccine rollout occurred. For these guys to gaslight those figures as being not related to the vaccine is absurd, especially when COVID was not in the community. It is much harder in 2022 when you had an extra 30,000 deaths. Sure, COVID was in the community. What was COVID or what was the vaccine? We don't know, even though I suspect it was probably both. Australia is unique in a sense because we stayed in lockdown for so long.

Then we need to look at those border lockdowns, because we had thousands of people in my home state, Queenslanders, locked out of Queensland and living in tents in Murwillumbah or living in the back of their cars. My office was bombarded with people who could not pay their hotel bills. They got caught out. They had bills of $10,000. They could not get to work. They had pets locked up in their houses, and, most importantly, they could not see their loved ones. I have a close friend who was in this chamber once upon a time who could not be there when her sister died because you guys stopped that from happening and that is disgraceful. That is absolutely disgraceful. I do not care what sort of inquiry it is. We need to get real and we need to hold the people to account that caused so much unnecessary suffering to Australians.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens acknowledge that the Australian government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including access to vaccination, saved the lives of many people and ensured that our communities were protected from the very worst of the COVID-19 related illnesses. We saw in other countries where they did not have the same access to vaccines that many, many more people died from a preventable disease. This was a tragedy and it needs to be recognised in this debate that vaccines save lives. Access to safe and affordable vaccines is especially important for the health and safety of immunocompromised people, disabled people, people living in residential aged care and First Nations people.

The Australian Greens also acknowledge that the experience during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the wellbeing and mental health of many people in different ways, and some people continue to experience harm as a result. I am eagerly awaiting the report detailing the findings of the Commonwealth Government COVID-19 Response Inquiry. It is my hope that this report will provide clear, tangible recommendations for improvements for future pandemics. We must ensure that our governance frameworks for future pandemics are created and formulated in such a way that people are not left in vulnerable situations nor left to experience discrimination.

In the context of the COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2022, there are a few areas that I want to reflect on, which relate to improvements I'd like to see following the COVID-19 pandemic. The first area of priority for reviewing our response is the treatment of disabled people. We know that the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted disabled people. Many people experienced, and some are still experiencing, extended periods of being locked in their homes, shielded from the world to protect themselves. Many people experienced discrimination in hospital wards, where doctors were forced to make policy decisions that saw disabled people's lives valued less than abled people's lives.

Just think about that, as a person going into your local hospital. Maybe, through the course of your life, you've had other negative experiences with being in medical settings. You've said, 'I'm in pain,' and you haven't been believed, and you've said, 'I need help,' and help hasn't come. In a moment of real, serious fear, you go to that space in need of help, and you are made to feel as though there is, or you are proactively informed of, a policy which, regardless of the intent, has the end effect of treating your life, health and safety as less valuable than that of a non-disabled member of the community. It was a truly terrifying time. There are countless more examples of how state and territory and federal government policies can be improved to uphold the rights of disabled people in a pandemic.

The second matter that I'd like to raise in my contribution today is the impact of ongoing poor health. I'd like to reaffirm that vaccinations saved lives through the pandemic, and I would also like to acknowledge that, for some people who received a vaccination, they did experience injury from that vaccination. The Australian Greens have heard from the community that the government's response to vaccine injury, particularly the vaccine injury inquiry, has been inadequate. There have been insufficient commitments to long-term research into support for people experiencing vaccine injury, and the compensation program has been too narrow in its criteria to support people.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme, which provides compensation for people who experience vaccine injury, is due to conclude on 30 September. The Australian Greens believe that this scheme should be extended beyond this date as there are still people receiving COVID-19 vaccinations right now, and there should be a review into the program to understand how the eligibility criteria could be improved.

The pandemic caused a decline in many people's mental health, and many people are still experiencing poor mental health as a result. Too many people are still not able to access the mental health supports that they urgently need. This is because, in a cost-of-living crisis, appointments with counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs are simply too expensive. Cost should never be a barrier for people accessing health care in this country. This government could be doing so much more to invest in the wellbeing of our community. The Greens priority is for far more mental health services to be available under Medicare, with a return to 20 sessions available under the Better Access scheme, and for investment in the peer support workforce.

In closing, the Australian Greens believe that we need a comprehensive review of policy settings of state, territory and federal governments. Implementing this bill without taking a panoramic approach, driven by a panoramic view, to adjusting policy settings is not the way to best support our community right now or into future pandemics.

Lastly, the Australian Greens are calling on the Australian government to hurry up and meet their election promise of funding a national centre for disease control. We need a coordinated and comprehensive approach to managing future pandemics, and a fully funded CDC is a key milestone in achieving that goal.

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

When I hear senators in this chamber call for a CDC, do you know what I think of? I think of more government control. I think of more bureaucracy. I think of all of the garbage that came along with the previous pandemic we just had, the so-called COVID pandemic—the pandemic that only happened on the TV screen.

I rise to support Senator Hanson's COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2022 to end vaccine mandates. I think it's about time that we end vaccine mandates. It's been four years since 2020, and we've still got vaccine mandates for a virus with a near 100 per cent survival rate, a virus that didn't do anything to you unless you were already on your way out the door, if I can use that analogy—absolute freaking garbage. The fact that we are debating whether or not people can be discriminated against on the basis of a COVID-19 vaccine beggars belief. That is what it does; it beggars belief. We are still having this debate right now, in August 2024, long after the perceived threat of COVID has passed and well after the vaccine has been exposed as being less safe and, of course, less effective than what was originally pitched by those in positions of great power.

We hear senators stand up in this place all the time and rail against discrimination of all kinds—on a regular basis, I might add. Discrimination in this place—you all consider it a dirty, obscene, hateful thing. You all say that don't you? Except on this one issue. Except on the issue of a novel COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. And do you know what? All those senators, shocked at any kind of discrimination, suddenly transform themselves into serious rule makers and strict regulation enforcers. Let's be real: in my opinion they transform into authoritarian human rights abusers.

If we were discussing abortion, as an example, I wouldn't be able to count to 10 before the outraged mob would demand that I be cancelled. They have demanded that, by the way, but they haven't succeeded because I'm built different and I don't care what the outraged mob thinks. I'm sure that many in this place would stand and eloquently present the sacred principle of bodily autonomy if I were talking about abortion. They would defend a woman's right to kill her baby—kill her baby—which is what abortion is. Tell me this: what kind of society applauds the murder, cheers it on, cheers on the murder of their own children? That is a society in decline. That is a sick society that will soon cease to exist.

When it comes to the matter of whether people should be forced or not forced to take a COVID-19 vaccine on threat of losing their job, bodily autonomy is suddenly about as popular as bat soup in Wuhan. That's what it is, bat soup in Wuhan. I've been calling it a vaccine but let's be honest, it's not a vaccine. It is a product. It is a product that does not give you lifelong immunity. Do you know what it does instead? It turns you into a big pharma client for the rest of your life. It turns you into a pincushion. That's what it does. A lot of people think that big pharma is here to help. Maybe they are sometimes, but what does big pharma love most? Big pharma loves repeat business. They love repeat business, and through this novel mRNA COVID technology they have just that. They have customers for life. It's something that needs to be talked about and it's something we don't talk about enough in this place and everywhere else in society.

Why would the Victorian health system continue to penalise people for not having had the COVID jab when we know that the COVID jab does not stop you from catching or transmitting COVID? It doesn't stop you from catching it. It doesn't stop you from transmitting it. Why are we mandating this garbage? Why would so many job advertisements continue to insist that they want people who have had this COVID jab when we know that the COVID jab is also not entirely safe or free of serious side effects—including death, which I'm sure you would agree is pretty darn serious as a side effect, right?

You don't have to be jabbed to be in this chamber and thank God for that because I'm not and I never will be, but you do have to be jabbed to fight fires in Victoria. How does that make any sense at all? How does that make sense? You have to be jabbed to go and fight a fire. Come on, it's 2024! Maybe we can forgive the hysteria back in 2020 because the mainstream media, big pharma, the globalists at the WHO and all these jabronis were pushing this issue hard. Maybe we can forgive what happened in 2020, but we can't forgive it now. It's time for change.

Talking about Victoria, it's silly to expect anything in my home state to make sense after so many years of Labor mismanagement. Do you know what we have in Victoria, in my opinion? Labor has been in power for far too long and when you're in power for far too long, what happens? You get stale. You put all your apparatchiks in the important positions. That's what happens. We're at a point now where we really don't have any more competition. They've kind of wiped out the Libs in Victoria. They've wiped them into irrelevance. That's good for Labor and their socialist agenda, but it's bad for the Libs. Hopefully, they can pull their finger out and do a bit better than what they're doing at the moment, bring forth some good policy and start standing up against these people. But I digress.

Why would we continue to penalise people for not having had the COVID jab when it is now accepted by almost everyone, apart from the hypochondriacs, of course, and the people whose X bios still have those little syringes in them, along with the Ukraine flag and the LGBTQIA2S+ flag and all the other garbage, or who have photos of themselves on their social media still wearing masks to this day? Ridiculous. COVID is not a serious illness. It's just not. I'm sure you all know someone in here who has had COVID and has been just fine. Of course, sure, COVID can be fatal. Sure, it can, if you've got serious comorbidities—okay, fair enough—or if you're 85 years of age. But so can the flu. So can the regular flu. Did we shut down the nation for the flu? Did we impose mandates? Did we lock you in your house? Did we do what Victoria did and say, 'You can't go five kays from your house, because, if you go five kays from your house, the virus will get you; if you go one kay, no worries'? Back in Victoria, if you went to a restaurant: 'You can't stand up. If you stand up—trust the science!—the virus will get you. It's going to get you. If you sit down though, no problem. You're safe.' Absolutely ridiculous.

Do we insist that people are vaccinated against the flu before we employ them? Of course not. So why on this issue? As I said, it doesn't make any sense at all. But not only is it senseless; it's hypocritical, and it is morally wrong. The only reason that I can see for continuing COVID vaccine mandates in certain industries is pigheadedness. That's it. I get it; having enforced mandates to now drop them out of the blue—to just drop them—is something of an admission of error. And who wants to admit error? But, on this point, I give credit to one man, the former New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet, who in his valedictory speech admitted that the COVID-19 mandates were in fact a mistake. His admission, sadly, comes a little late for those who were already forced to take the vaccine against their will under his government, which I might add was a Liberal government. Liberal Party, have you read your 'we believe' statement lately? It might be time for you to jump on your website and read your 'we believe' statement because, let's face it, you're being wiped into obscurity very slowly because you don't stand up for your own principles. You know what, Liberal Party? If you want to win elections, if you want to take back the states from the socialists, just stick to your principles. You don't need to do anything else. Read your 'we believe' statement. Read the speeches by that great man, Menzies. Have a look at it, and just do what he said. You don't need to reinvent anything. Just do that because, if you don't, you're going to continue to slide into the nothingness that you are becoming. And you're going to embolden the crossbench. And you know what? My time will come. It may not be today, but my time will come.

Now, Perrottet—at least Perrottet admitted publicly that his policy was wrong. At least that. This should have never been enforced in the first place, but at least he admitted it. The reluctance to admit to error I think is just stubbornness. That's what it is. It's stubbornness. Are we pushing people today not for medical reasons, not for scientific reasons, but for reasons of pride? Are we pushing them to have the mandates on them still because of reasons of pride? Is that what's going on? I think maybe it is. Certain senators, bureaucrats and employers still simply don't want to admit that they potentially got it wrong. But I want to admit: pride does not make for good public policy or the fair treatment of citizens. It just does not. Vaccine mandates, in 2024, for an illness that in the vast majority of people is nothing but a cold do not make sense, and they will never make sense in any context whatsoever. They'll never make sense in any context whatsoever.

I wholeheartedly support Senator Hanson's bill. I urge my fellow senators to do the same. I don't know if they will. They will probably not, because you know what? You don't have a backbone. You can't stand on your own. You can't just say no to the apparatchiks in the background—the bureaucrats that influence your decision making. Stand on your own two feet! Be a man, have some cojones and do what's right for your country. Do what's right for your people. Don't do what the little insects in the bureaucracy want you to do. To all the ministers in this place, I can't stand you guys. You don't make decisions for yourself. You always defer back to the bureaucracy. Am I right? I know you do. Stop referring to the bureaucracy. Make the decisions; take accountability. You were elected to basically run the show. Don't let the bureaucrats tell you what to do, those insects. That's what they are. They are insects. You know what I would do if I were ever in government? The very first thing that I would do is sack half of these bureaucrats. I'd put them out on their butts and I'd say: 'You're never working for the public service again, you bums. Get out of here!'

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

I move:

That the question be put.

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

The question is that the motion, as moved by Senator Roberts, on closure be agreed to.

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

The question is that the bill be read a second time.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Apologies, that was my error. I seek leave for the question to be put again. We were on the wrong side, and that was my error.

Leave granted.

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

The question is that the bill be read a second time.