Letter to the PM: COVID-19 Strategy

Dear Prime Minister

RE: COVID-19

Your Treasury staff are commended for the Coronavirus legislation package your government presented to the Senate on Monday 23 March 2020. 

With the enormity of the challenge our country faces and the urgency to present your government’s COVID-19 package we anticipated written legislation may have had a few ragged edges yet our office is impressed with your product’s quality. 

Although we disagree with some aspects of your Coronavirus support package, in the interests of ensuring swift support to the people of Australia whose lives have been jolted through loss of income we voted to support it in full. 

We acknowledge that there is no manual on how to respond to the serious health and security crisis now confronting all Australians. The situation is dynamic and initially you needed to act promptly based on minimal data. 

Fourthly and most importantly, overseas experience has now produced a large and growing yet still incomplete body of data, evidence and experience. Countries like Italy, France, Spain and possibly the USA and UK are floundering with healthcare systems either overwhelmed or facing overwhelm. They seem to have focussed on balancing human health against economic impact and in doing so have seriously compromised both. 

Countries such as Italy aiming to mitigate the virus’ impact and to “flatten the curve” are floundering and their people dying needlessly in droves. 

It seems that South Korea started on Italy’s path to disaster yet reportedly quickly learned from initial experience. It instituted massive body temperature testing of its people as a front-line filter to testing for COVID-19 that in turn led to isolation of people with the virus. People vulnerable to the virus were isolated as well. That apparently meant that the bulk of South Korea’s workforce could return to work safely. Page 2 of 3 

As expected countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore that are focussing their efforts on ensuring people’s health and security are succeeding at protecting their people. A second benefit to protecting people is that through quickly getting people safely back to work these countries are suffering much less economic impact. 

Having taken some time to appreciate your government’s package and actions to date I am left wondering what strategy our country is following: the Italian and western strategy of mitigation or the South Korean and East Asian strategy of virus suppression? 

It seems that your government has chosen a path similar to that of Italy that will soon lead to our health system being overwhelmed and in turn possibly lead to tens of thousands of needless and otherwise avoidable Australian deaths. 

My experience across many fields shows accurate data is the key to making sound decisions and while we acknowledge the initial lack of data, we understand that data is now becoming available. 

My son is a layperson and without medical qualifications yet his basic research alerted me to the dangers we face. Although I was initially blasé, my conversations with him prodded me to investigate further. The emerging data then swung me into realising that my initial response was wrong and that we must prioritise public health and safety as our primary goal. 

I offer you the following articles that illustrate the concepts involved, the lessons that can be learned and provide empirical data. 

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Further, I strongly support mobilising our defence forces, and especially its well-trained medics and relocatable hospitals to strengthen virus hot-spots with front-line health care and triage that could ease the coming pressure on hospital emergency departments and Intensive Care Units. 

Finally, I take this opportunity to stress that our country’s future depends on restoring our national productive capacity and economic resilience that have been weakened severely over the last three decades. A second unfortunate result of the political mantra preaching globalisation and interdependence since World War Two has been dependence on foreign nations and corporations. 

I believe that dependency and weakness need to be reversed. We must address this urgently and I am willing to assist in implementing policies based on solid data that will restore the fundamentals that people need to be productive, resilient and secure. 

We remain ready to assist in the immediate and medium terms to bring back Australia. 

Everyday Australians expect our governments to protect us and our economy.

I implore you to change strategy if required based on evaluating the emerging data and to make the hard and possibly initially unpopular decisions. If you do so I am confident that within months the people will appreciate what will come to be seen as you demonstrating strength, leadership and care. 

Yours Faithfully 

Malcolm Roberts

Senator for Queensland

200325-PM_ltr

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COVID 19 (Coronavirus) Special Sitting of the Senate

I spoke in this special sitting of the Senate dealing with the Corona Virus (COVID19).

Transcript

We applaud Senator Cormann’s opening comments and also Senator Keneally’s opening comments. This is, as Senator Cormann said, a new threat to our nation, our health, people’s health and security and our economics.

COVID-19, as Senator Cormann said, is moving so quickly and on so many fronts. Yet Senator Cormann, through you, Mister President, when we went shopping yesterday to get some food in Canberra, I saw business as usual.

People are not aware of what is happening, not aware of the threats of this so we need to work on that. We will, One Nation, will work with the government to serve the people but what we want to do is to not just slow down the virus but to shut it down to save lives and to minimise economic impact.

Saving jobs will require restoring the productive capacity of our country. This, as many people have said around the world, is now a war and we’re on war footing and that’s why it’s so important to have our productive capacity restored.

Italy had an excuse for the mess in which it finds itself. Open borders and ignorance in dealing with a very new threat, yet South Korea made the same mistake initially but it has rebounded remarkably through rigorous testing, isolating key people and then getting back to normal.

They’ve had minimal disruptions, so is reported. We need, as Senator Cormann said, to heed the advice of the top medical people. Could I ask everyone in this chamber to look at the data, look at the facts around the world.

We now have that data and facts that Italy and South Korea initially didn’t have and that South Korea is now showing us as is Taiwan, Singapore and even mainland China, are showing how to deal with this.

A third point I’d just like to make is that history shows that some entities during such crises and challenging times take advantage of others. We will make sure, in One Nation, to protect our taxpayers, to protect people’s health. We will join with the government in doing that.

We need though, to remember that we look at the future to restore the productive capacity of our country after 20 years of neglect. We need to restore freedoms as soon as possible because economics depends on interaction of people.

Once we cut that interaction, there is a minimal economic trading. So I ask everyone in Australia to cooperate with the government. We elected the government, whether you voted for it or not it is the government and we need to go beyond that to ensure the virus is stopped and everyone in Australia has a role in stopping this virus. Thank you Mister President.

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Why I’m going to Canberra this week

I’ve made the decision to attend Senate sitting tomorrow in Canberra.

I have driven from home and camped at Myall Lakes last night in NSW on the way down to limit contact with others.

It will be a shortened sitting week to pass essential Bills and the stimulus package.

While I could have not attended, I have chosen to keep an eye on the Liberals and Labor to make sure they don’t try any funny business.

That is what you voted me to do.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. We’re on our way to Canberra by road. We’re driving down from Brisbane for a sitting of Parliament, Lower House, House of Representatives and the Senate, with vastly reduced numbers.

We’re doing that for health reasons, because of the health risk of coronavirus. We need to meet to pass essential legislation for keeping the government running, the country running, and especially to pass the stimulus package.

We’re having minimal staff in Canberra with us, because we wanna minimise the health risk. Why am I going to Canberra? Very simple. I don’t trust either of the tired old parties, the Labour Party and Liberal Party.

I wanna make sure that the legislation they pass, doesn’t include some sneaky little hook for the Australian people. On our way down yesterday, I camped out at the Myall Lakes, which is been a favourite spot of mine since I was a child.

And, I made sure I stayed in isolation from people. It’s very, very important to stay safe, be hygienic, keep isolated, keep a safe distance from people, because this really is serious. Very challenging times.

We need to co-operate with each other, and care for each other. We also need to rely on the government, but to not let them get away with anything. We’ve gotta keep, we’ve elected them, they need to get on with the job.

They need some authority to get on with the job, and protecting the people, which is their number one responsibility. But, we need to make sure that we keep an eye on them, to make sure that we hold them accountable.

We need to provide oversight. So, during this whole time, rely on the government, let it go, let it do it’s job, but hold them accountable.

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