While Local Alice Springs ABC reporters have been congratulated, the ABC has had to apologise for unbalanced reports from its capital city journalists that falsely left the impression a meeting of locals was about white supremacy.
Adding to that, the ABC presents Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’ book filled with exaggerations and some outright lies about aboriginal history on an education site for kids. The ABC receives over $1 billion of your money every year to present fair and balanced reporting, it doesn’t seem like value for money to me.
It’s pretty simple, #changingthedate of Australia Day won’t satisfy the “Blak Sovereign” movement behind the campaign.
Australia Day is a day to unite, reflect and respect our history and acknowledge we are stronger as a country without dividing ourselves on skin colour or ancestry. We have one flag, we are One Nation, we are one community.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/u_9dvxIoJHM/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-02-16 06:45:002023-02-15 19:03:31Keep Australia Day on Australia Day
The Iron Boomerang rail project could be one of the largest pieces of regional infrastructure Australia has seen.
It proposes building a rail line linking the abundant coalfields in Queensland with the iron ore deposits in Western Australia and establishing steel mills at either end. It would make Australia one of the leading steel producers in the world and turbocharge the economy.
Given the enormous potential being investigated, and the fact that a Senate Inquiry is currently underway, I can’t believe that this Government doesn’t seem to be interested.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/gxQydAFvGgQ/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-02-15 18:44:292023-02-15 18:44:38Iron Boomerang: A real nation building project
In my questioning of CASA they have always denied that jab mandates introduced any kind of risks to pilots in the cockpit. Mysteriously however, changes have been made to cardiac ranges, we’re waiting for more information on exactly what those changes were.
I’m not satisfied CASA is doing it’s due diligence, that it’s Medical Officers are properly dedicated to the job or that they are actually looking after pilots. I’ll share more of the details on my website when my questions on notice are answered.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/clyT4MYWmP4/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-02-15 18:34:292023-02-15 18:34:41Why is CASA changing the cardiac health guidelines for pilots?
Since 2019 the RBA created $508 billion out of thin air through electric journal entries. I have been warning the RBA directly that this money printing will contribute to the inflation we are experiencing.
What did Governor Phillip Lowe say? He acknowledged I warned about creating money, he acknowledged it was a mistake and he also said nation building projects like Iron Boomerang would help fix inflation.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS : Thank you both for being here. Dr Lowe, in 2016, I had my first Senate estimates session. I asked the Treasury secretary, who at the time was John Fraser, a question about the huge increase in money supply. He pretty much dismissed me and said, ‘No, don’t worry about it.’ At the next Senate estimates session, he said yes; he acknowledged it. In the third one, he said, ‘Yes. The theory is that it will lead to inflation, you’re correct, but we haven’t seen it yet and we don’t know why.’ So I understand that it’s a vexing problem. You said that one of the solutions is to make the pie bigger. You are saying that the answer to the government’s funding dilemma is to grow the economy and, as a result, the tax base. Have you heard of the project Iron Boomerang? We’ve got the world’s best metallurgical coal for making steel in the east coast and the best iron ore in the west coast. It would build a railway line fully funded. The investors are ready to go. There is a Senate inquiry taking off on it pretty soon. It would take coal to the west and iron ore to the east. There would be massive steelmaking complexes both in the east coast and the west coast. It would remove shipping and road transport. It would be a huge investment. It would add $100 billion to our GDP, which is five per cent. It would open up the north and all of central Australia for the Indigenous living there and rural communities and agriculture. Is that something that we should be thinking about?
Mr Lowe : If the rate of return on that investment is as you describe it and both the financial and social returns are as you describe them, it is something to think about. There may be other projects that have better returns. I don’t want to endorse it, because I don’t know anything about it. But, in principle, we should be looking at the financial and social returns we get from these projects. If they are greater than the cost of funding and the economy has enough resources to do it, then certainly we should be thinking about it.
Senator ROBERTS: We’ve got investors, we’re told, from overseas lining up and also from within. I will come back to the formal questions I had. The Reserve Bank spent the COVID years increasing the money supply, as Deputy Governor Debelle said at the time, by electronic journal entry; they are his words. It is commonly called printing money. At an earlier estimates, I was given a figure of $508 billion as the total for electronic journal entries since 2019. Can you update that figure, please?
Mr Lowe : That’s still roughly the same. I think our balance sheet is a bit over $600 billion at the moment.
Ms Bullock: It is about $600 billion. Exchange settlement account balances are probably around $450 billion or something like that.
Mr Lowe : Our balance sheet has roughly $100 billion of banknotes on it. That is still $100 billion of banknotes. That is $4,000 for every person in the country, which I find extraordinary. That is one of the elements on our balance sheet. We have these exchange settlement balances, which is the electronic money that you talked about.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. So inflation has gone from not a problem to a 30-year high, 7.8 per cent in the December quarter. On 2 February 2022, Dr Lowe, you said that inflation had surprised on the upside. In March 2022, you predicted inflation would peak at 4.2 per cent. That was at the ABA, Australian Banking Association, conference that we both attended. Why were you surprised, Dr Lowe, when many, including myself, had spent 2020 and 2021 warning the Reserve Bank and the government, including at Senate estimates, that the sheer volume of this money expansion would inevitably cause significant inflation?
Mr Lowe : You were one of these people who were making the argument that the money supply expansion was ultimately going to be inflationary. That has played a role. As we were talking about before, at least half, maybe three-quarters, of the increase in inflation is due to what went on in Europe and the supply-side disruptions. The expansion of money supply, the low interest rates and, I would say, the government support during the pandemic have driven inflation. But it’s not the full story.
Senator ROBERTS: Is 7.8 per cent inflation the price the public is paying for the Reserve Bank supporting the government’s wasteful mismanagement of COVID using lockdowns and other restrictions, leading to JobSeeker, JobKeeper and mismanagement that the government caused, which is what necessitated the money creation? Did you even consider saying to the government, ‘No, I’m not going to print the massive amount of money, so perhaps reconsider your COVID strategy’?
Mr Lowe : No. We did not do—I want to be very clear about this—the money creation at the request of the government. The nine people who sit on the board of the Reserve Bank decided to do this. We had meetings with the government and we understood—
Senator ROBERTS: Was it because the government had put in place so many onerous restrictions?
Mr Lowe : No. It is easy to forget this now. In early 2020, we were being told by the health people that tens of thousands of Australians would be dead within months. Remember that there were preparations for, including in the Reserve Bank, temporary morgues in our cities. Our borders were closed. We were told the vaccine was maybe three years or longer away. This was going to be something that would take the society a long time to get over. That is what we were being told. That was the information—
Ms Bullock: And we were observing what was happening overseas.
Mr Lowe : And we were seeing what was going on in New York and Italy. It was really terrible and scary. People were locked in their homes. That was the base upon which we made the decision to go on this route. It turns out that the scientists developed a vaccine much more quickly and the economy was more resilient and we did too much. But we didn’t do too much because the government told us to or we wanted to; we thought it was the right thing to do given the information we had at the time.
CHAIR: We’re out of time for this line; sorry, Senator Roberts.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/NNRblw5xmK0/hqdefault.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-02-15 12:07:532023-12-08 09:45:18RBA creates inflation by printing money out of thin air
The Snowy 2.0pumped hydro is one of the biggest disasters in our Government’s history.
Originally budgeted as a $2 billion renewablebattery, it’s now estimated it won’t get power to the grid for less than $10 Billion. Despite telling me four months ago that the tunneling machine ‘Florence’ wasn’t bogged (it had “encountered soft ground”) the 7.30 Report tells us in the last 10 months the bogged Florence appears to have tunneled just 150m from its starting point before a 50m hole to the surface appeared on top of it.
All of this for a project to produce the same amount of electricity in a year that the Liddell coal fired power station could make in two weeks.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/IodZC9qcj3E/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-02-15 07:33:002023-02-14 16:49:06Bogged Snowy 2.0 in a hole lot of trouble
The government continues to push reliable coal fired power out of the grid and push unreliable wind and solar in. Yet no one in Labor will take responsibility for the lights going out when they push it too far.
One Nation believes in cheap reliable electricity for Australia so families don’t have to choose between the power bill and their kids school shoes.
Reports last year indicated that the China has set up police stations across the world including one in Sydney.
Chinese authorities have said the stations, sometimes called “contact points”, provide services to citizens, such as renewing national identification cards, passports and drivers licences, by using facial recognition technology.
But human rights groups fear overseas police offices could also be used to target dissidents abroad or compel people to return to China where they could face potentially politicised trials.
Despite this potential National Security Breach, our spy agency ASIO doesn’t appear worried and claims to not know anything about it. China must be laughing at our government.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for attending today. Mr Burgess, you said in your opening statement that
Australia is the target of sophisticated and persistent espionage and foreign interference activities from a range of hostile foreign intelligence services. I take it they use a range of means of doing so.
Mr Burgess: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there a Chinese Communist Party supported contact point in Sydney?
Mr Burgess: I’m not aware of that.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s been reported in the media, I understand.
Mr Burgess: I see many things in the media, but I let the data that we have available to us determine that. I wouldn’t comment on operational matters, but I’m not aware of that in the context of that media reporting.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re not aware of how long it’s been in operation or what its purpose is?
Mr Burgess: You’re assuming it’s true.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mr Burgess: We will investigate things that are associated with acts of foreign interference, but I won’t bring colour to them in a public hearing.
Senator ROBERTS: Are there Chinese police officers working out of premises in Sydney?
Mr Burgess: Not that I’m aware of.
Senator ROBERTS: Are their operations of interest to our security agencies?
Mr Burgess: If anyone here were engaged in acts of espionage or foreign interference, that would be of concern and something that we would investigate.
Senator ROBERTS: What about potential breaches of Australian national sovereignty?
Mr Burgess: Again, my agency will investigate anything that’s a threat to security.
Senator ROBERTS: What about Chinese citizens or Chinese people living here in Australia? Should they be concerned? You would protect them, even though they may not be Australian citizens.
Mr Burgess: Anyone in this country is free to be here, assuming they’re on a valid visa, of course, or they’re a citizen or permanent residence, and they’re of no concern to us unless they’re engaged in matters of prejudicial security, in which case we would show an interest in them.
Senator ROBERTS: Individual security as well as national security?
Mr Burgess: Threats to security are what ASIO worries about.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re not aware of people operating from this contact point, so you wouldn’t know whether or not they have any contact with or influence on Australian Chinese residents or Chinese visa holders.
Mr Burgess: Again, I don’t comment on specific operational matters, but I will say this because I’ve said this publicly before: the threat of espionage and foreign interference is a real threat in this country. It is our principal security concern. It comes from a range of countries, and I think it’s unhelpful for me to call out specific countries and in particular when we talk about the vast range of diaspora communities in this country, the members of those communities are not the problem. It’s the foreign government and the foreign intelligence services that will be the focus for me and my agency.
Senator ROBERTS: The Chinese Communist Party itself has belted our country economically. What Australian overview of agencies that operate in this country is there for premises like the supported contact point in Sydney?
Mr Burgess: Again, I don’t comment on specific matters, but if we have a need to investigate things that may be of concern in relation to security, things that could be used as platforms for espionage or foreign interference, I can assure you my agency will be on it and investigate it. And I can assure you we had a very productive year last year, removing espionage and foreign interference problems from this country.
Senator ROBERTS: And you may or may not be able to tell us about those operations, depending upon the circumstances. Is that correct?
Mr Burgess: I wouldn’t talk about them publicly in detail.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on to a series of very short questions on a topic that was underway in last Senate estimates in this room, as I was asking the questions, but it was denied. That was the ISIS brides that were brought back. What are the costs to Australia of bringing these women and children to Australia?
Mr Burgess: The repatriation was not a matter for ASIO. We gave advice on the individuals, but beyond that you’d have to pass that question to others.
Senator ROBERTS: What security measures are to be taken to keep Australian community members safe, because these people have been part of some radical terrorist groups and associated with them?
Mr Burgess: The only comment I’d make there is that ASIO gave security advice to government and, in particular, gave security assessments on all the individuals that returned. That was our job.
Senator ROBERTS: What was that again? You assessed them?
Mr Burgess: We did security assessments on returning individuals, and they returned, and that’s okay.
Senator ROBERTS: Are any of these women currently wives or partners or sisters of terrorists?
Mr Burgess: I won’t go into specific matters.
Senator ROBERTS: Are they genuine refugees?
Mr Burgess: They’re Australian citizens who have returned home.
Senator ROBERTS: Given their recent social circumstances, are any of these people going to need
deradicalization programs?
Mr Burgess: Again, I wouldn’t comment on that publicly, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: How many of the women have been charged with terrorism related offences?
Mr Burgess: I’m not law enforcement. I’m aware of one charge.
Senator ROBERTS: One.
Mr Burgess: You should speak to the AFP about that.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, if it assists you, we do have the AFP a little bit later today. They can answer some of those questions for you.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. Given that most of the husbands and children’s fathers have been
killed by Western soldiers, how traumatised and angry were they when you assessed them?
Mr Burgess: I can’t speak for how they’re feeling.
Senator ROBERTS: No, but you would be aware, surely, of their potential threat?
Mr Burgess: As I said, we did security assessments on all the individuals, and anyone who falls into that
category that believes that violence is the answer would be subject to my agency’s inquiry and investigation.
Senator ROBERTS: Is ongoing support to be provided, and what is it?
Mr Burgess: Again, that’s not a matter for my organisation, other than to say that we will continue to watch anyone that is a threat to security, but I’m not making any comment on these individuals.
Senator ROBERTS: You may not be able to answer this, but I’m guessing you would know the answer
because it would form part of your assessment of terrorism threat. Given the children’s exposure to violence, either as victims or perpetrators, what are the plans for their assimilation, and did you make any comments about what was needed?
Mr Burgess: Again, that question is best put to others in Home Affairs and more broadly.
Senator ROBERTS: Does your agency work in providing a diagnosis and recommendations?
Mr Burgess: On individuals or children?
Senator ROBERTS: On treatment of people to make sure that they don’t violate our standards of behaviour.
Mr Burgess: No, we’re not involved in that. We talk about the security threats people might face, and others worry about what treatments, if any, might be needed.
Senator ROBERTS: So, you do interact. If you can see a potential threat, you pass it on to someone. You
don’t just—
Mr Burgess: We’re part of a broader apparatus that helps counterterrorism in this country, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I see Mr Pezzullo nodding in agreement. Have the communities where these people are to be housed been fully consulted? I guess that’s for other people to comment.
Mr Burgess: It’s not a question for me, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Does your assessment of the threat include any consideration of family members here in Australia whose friends or family members have been killed by ISIS terrorists? Do you consult with the community in which they’re going to be placed?
Mr Burgess: No, we’re not involved in that consultation of where they get placed.
Senator ROBERTS: Will the families be housed together or apart?
Mr Burgess: Again, I can’t answer that question.
Senator ROBERTS: I was thinking more from a security point of view.
Mr Burgess: No, that’s irrelevant. They’re Australian citizens; they’re entitled to be where they want to be
unless there’s some legal condition on them. But I’m not law enforcement, so I’m not part of that.
Senator ROBERTS: So, would you be monitoring them more closely if they’re living close together in an enclave?
Mr Burgess: We will monitor anyone that we deem to be a threat to security.
Senator ROBERTS: So, it wouldn’t be part of your recommendations to keep them separate in this country?
Mr Burgess: No, we were not in that space.
Senator ROBERTS: I just have a final question, Chair, on violence. Does ‘violence’ include destroying
artworks, interrupting everyday Australians and destroying roadworks? I note that left-wing extremism in the 20th century killed 120 million people. I presume you monitor all types of extremism?
Mr Burgess: We’ll monitor any individuals that have an ideology that thinks violence is the answer.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much and thank you for your clear statements opposing violence.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/j3lIndoX3tY/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-02-13 19:37:122023-02-14 14:12:05Spy agency ASIO not aware of secret Sydney Communist China police station
The Industrial Relations system in this country is a mess. One Nation is committed to untangling the web of over-regulation.
The Fair Work Ombudsman
The Fair Work Commission Part 1
Fair Work Commission Part 2
For three years I have been raising the issue of casual coal miners being fraudulently dudded out of Long Service Leave entitlements. Finally, I was able to secure an audit into the Coal Long Service Leave Scheme from the previous government. Yet, exactly how much needs to be paid back to casual coal miners is still unclear. We’ll be following this up again at next estimates and ensuring casual workers receive the leave payments they are entitled to.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/myNJXhidJfA/0.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2022-12-21 14:53:412022-12-21 14:53:46Fair Work and Coal LSL at Senate Estimates
With each new day we find more evidence of conflicts of interest, lies from the supposed “experts” and none of these bureaucrats want to acknowledge it. We need a Royal Commission to bring their lies out into the daylight.
Transcript (click)
Senator ROBERTS: Can you tell me how many medicines were approved under the provisional approval pathway during the COVID period 1 July 2020 to date? My numbers are 13 vaccines and six drugs; is that correct?
Dr Skerritt: Are you talking specifically about COVID treatments and COVID vaccines?
Senator ROBERTS: No, any vaccines or drugs that have been approved using the provisional pathway.
Dr Skerritt: I will start with COVID vaccine treatments. There have been seven COVID vaccines and eight COVID treatments. I’ll just check whether I’ve got the numbers for other medicines during that period. You’re talking about the provisional approval pathway?
Dr Skerritt: From 1 July this year there have been five provisional approvals. From the period 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022 there have been 23. That would include those COVID treatments. What it does show is a lot of other medicines, such as cancer medicines, such as medicines for rare conditions, have also been approved. In the financial year 2021, from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022, there were five. Over the period you’re talking about, that would add up to 33.
Senator ROBERTS: How many drugs have been approved under the normal process during that same period?
Dr Skerritt: During the same period? I will add the three financial years and I’ll check my mental arithmetic. So 36 this current financial year, and 117. These are either new approvals or new indications approved. And 95 the year before. So, it is a significant percentage, but not most of them.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the maximum provisional approval period six years because it can take that long to get drugs approved under the old approval system?
Dr Skerritt: A provisional approval is only valid for two years and then the company either has to come back and show why they cannot obtain all the data within the period and apply for an extension.
Dr Skerritt: They are possible extensions; they’re not guaranteed.
Senator ROBERTS: How much money do you save pharmaceutical companies by switching from full approval to express approval? I understand it’s hundreds of millions per approval?
Dr Skerritt: It actually costs the pharmaceutical companies more in regulatory fees for provisional approval.
Senator ROBERTS: No, I didn’t say regulatory fees. How much are you saving the pharmaceutical companies by giving them express or provisional approval rather than going through the six-year period for getting proper approval?
Dr Skerritt: No, you’ve misinterpreted the system. It’s not a six-year period to get full regulatory approval.
Dr Skerritt: Most of our approvals are submitted as a standard approval, especially, for example, if it wasn’t a public health emergency or it’s a drug that already has others in the same category. They’re submitted as a standard approval.
Senator ROBERTS: Dedicated trials for their drugs, I understand, can be hundreds of millions of dollars. How much time and money would they save by going express?
Dr Skerritt: We would not give a provisional approval to a medicine unless there were clinical trials.
Senator ROBERTS: How much money does it save if they do a provisional without doing a formal or normal approval process? How much money does it save the drug company?
Dr Skerritt: I don’t believe there are necessarily savings. The situation would be different for every drug. It’s really important to emphasise there were very extensive clinical trials for the vaccines and treatments that have been through provisional approval.
Senator ROBERTS: My understanding is that it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to get the full approval process. Without the dedicated trial, they could save hundreds of millions of dollars per drug?
Dr Skerritt: I don’t necessarily agree with you.
Senator ROBERTS: When does the provisional approval for Pfizer expire?
Dr Skerritt: The two-year period will be two years from the anniversary of the first approval. I would emphasise that in certain countries—
Dr Skerritt: For the very first approval, for 16 years and over, the two-year period finishes on 25 January 2023.
Senator ROBERTS: I have in front of me a document called the Australian Public Assessment Report for Tozinameran, from Comirnaty (Pfizer), dated December 2021. Is this the approval application for the paediatric version of the Pfizer vaccine?
Dr Skerritt: No, it is not. An Australian Public Assessment Report is a summary of the assessment that we did of the application. You mentioned Pfizer. The actual application is over 220,000 thousand pages of paper from Pfizer for that particular group of vaccines.
Limitations of the current application data. Safety follow-up is currently limited to median 2.4 months post dose 2 in cohort 1, and 2.4 weeks for the safety expansion cohort.
What is the safety expansion cohort?
Dr Skerritt: Remember, also, this was going back to the time of approval. We now have hundreds of millions, actually more than a billion, people who have been vaccinated with that vaccine and experience going on since December 2020, when the first vaccination was done. The safety expansion cohort is in a clinical trial where individuals are monitored closely and the data reported back to regulators for periods of months, leading to years, after their vaccination.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you recommend this substance based on 2.4 weeks of safety testing or did you get more in? If so, over what period? How many months?
Dr Skerritt: Remember the initial approval from TGA was based on that two months of follow-up, but we also had the experience of other countries that had more than a month before starting mass vaccination campaigns. When we approved Pfizer on 25 January2021, we were in almost daily contact with the British, who by that stage had vaccinated millions of British people by 25 January 2021. Real-world evidence played a very important role in both the approvals and in the ongoing safety monitoring of these vaccines.
Senator ROBERTS: So you relied on data from other countries and you relied for periods of months, merely months. It can’t be more than six months, because there’s a gap between application and approval and to give time for collection of data and analysis. There should be years of data before we start putting this stuff into our children, yet it’s months.
Dr Skerritt: I disagree in the context of a pandemic and a public health crisis. Regulators globally felt that it was appropriate to do initial approvals—
Dr Skerritt: As the head of the Australian regulator, I would do precisely the same if I had my time again. The alternative would have been to leave Australians unvaccinated through the course of 2020, 2021 and 2022, and there would have been tens of thousands more Australian deaths.
Senator ROBERTS: Can I reference a letter from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, signed by Radha Khiani, Director, Governance and Coordination section, in which the department makes this claim. The letter from 4 November 2022, just last week, states:
A large team of technical and clinical experts at the TGA carefully evaluated the data submitted by the sponsor. A treatment or vaccine is only provisionally approved if this rigorous process is completed.
This document concerned the use of Pfizer stages 2 to 3 cynical trial data in support of their application for provisional approval. Did the TGA check the stage 2 and stage 3 clinical trial data from Pfizer? Did you check it?
Dr Skerritt: We did check the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data from Pfizer and we also took it to independent external medical experts as well as consumer representatives.
Senator ROBERTS: Referencing Freedom of Information No. 2289, in which the applicant requested a copy of the stage 2 and stage 3 clinical trial data, the TGA responded that the ‘TGA does not hold any relevant documents relating to the request’. That was a request for stages 2 to 3 clinical trial data.
Dr Skerritt: Without seeing what’s in your hand, I believe that you asked for individual patient data rather than the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data. I can give you my word that we assessed the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data; otherwise, what else did we do? Look at the colour of the label on the bottle? That is the main thing our team of several thousand clinicians look at in reviewing a new vaccine, the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data. It is the centrepiece.
Senator ROBERTS: The freedom-of-information request then asked for ‘any documents confirming the process of analysing this data to a decision, including meetings, notes, dates and times’. Again the TGA replied, ‘We have no relevant documents.’ Did you review the stage 2 and stage 3 data or not, and, if you did, why did you tell this freedom-of-information applicant you did not have these documents? Which document is the lie? One of them is.
Dr Skerritt: I don’t have that document in front of me. We can review it on notice. But we reviewed the phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial data at length.
CHAIR: This really needs to be the last one so I can share the call.
Senator ROBERTS: I just want you to think about this and confirm it or otherwise: and ‘the trail data contained sufficient proof the vaccines were safe and effective, sufficient to meet the criteria for provisional approval’; is that correct?
Dr Skerritt: Correct. Yes.
Transcript (click)
Senator ROBERTS: I asked a question earlier, Professor Skerritt, about the number of drugs approved under the full approval process, the normal process. If you exclude the number of drugs that you said were new uses for existing drugs and medical devices, what is the figure for new drugs approved under the full approval process in the last three years?
Dr Skerritt : It will be about 90, but I’ll give you the exact answer on notice. We approve between 30 and 40 new drugs a year.
Senator ROBERTS: You also confirmed your view that ‘the trial data contained sufficient proof that the vaccines were safe and effective, sufficient to meet the criteria for provisional approval’. Yet after 18 months and analysing the data, some of the world’s leading virologists and pharmacologists from UCLA, Stamford and here in Australia found that the ‘Stage 2 and Stage 3 trial data showed the vaccine was associated with a 36 per cent increase in serious adverse events’ and ‘out of every 10,000 people injected, 18 will experience a life-threatening or altering complication, and the vaccine should not have been approved, as it caused more harm than it prevented’. That’s what they said. One of the papers—there are several papers—is titled ‘Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomised trials in adults’. How could ATAGI review the data and conclude that everything was fine, with the world’s leading experts on the subject, in a peer reviewed and published paper, then finding the exact opposite? Did you approve the vaccine in a deal with colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry?
Dr Skerritt : I think that’s an offensive allegation, and we certainly did not.
Dr Skerritt : people in terms of the courts, including the criminal court. So, we work with people in the pharmaceutical industry and we work with other government people, but they’re not colleagues in the sense of working for the same organisation.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you do a deal or come to an arrangement with the—
Dr Skerritt : No.
Senator ROBERTS: It could have been just provisional approval to get it through. Did you do that with the pharmaceutical industry?
Dr Skerritt : No. No, that’s an offensive and unfounded allegation, and I’d like you to withdraw it.
Senator ROBERTS: There are thousands of people who are dead, and we’ll get on to that in the next session.
Dr Skerritt : I disagree with you. There are 14 deaths associated with vaccines in Australia, all—
