Everything wrong with the government’s response to COVID19

When it comes to vaccines in our bodies, we must always have access to informed consent and freedom of choice. In August, 2020, Prime Minister, Scott Morrison said, “It’s not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine.” On Monday 28th of June, 2021, he went back on his word and stated that it will be mandatory for all aged care workers to have the vaccine.

No one can argue the vulnerability of those in aged care. No one can argue the vaccination is not yet proven and everyone who is having the vaccine is part of the world’s largest clinical vaccination trial, which is exactly how our health minister Greg Hunt describes it. My office put out a call on Facebook for any aged care workers to contact us if they have concerns around the vaccine. We were swamped with phone calls and hundreds of emails just within hours. In summary, there are many workers distraught, anxious and terrified of being forced to get the jab. These concerns are raised from fears about the known and unknown side effects, religious beliefs, pregnancy, allergies and having pre-existing conditions.

If that isn’t enough, those that haven’t had the vaccine are harassed and intimidated by colleagues. We had people sobbing over the phone. We know many are casuals within the aged care sector. When they cannot afford to be without work, their concerns around the vaccine are so profound, they know when the September deadline comes, they will have to leave their jobs. The aged care sector could be challenged by increased staff shortages and standards of care will slip.

Aged care residents are at risk of losing the stability of those long-term care relationships with staff. Our aged care workers have had their rightful freedom of choice around the vaccination stripped away from them by the Prime Minister. Aged care workers are losing their fundamental worker and human rights. Some unions are by default, supporting the mandatory vaccinations.

In the words of Sally McManus, Secretary of the ACTU, “Just get the job done and support the casualization workforce so that they are not out of pocket if they get side effects.” Nowhere in that, does she advocate for workers’ rights to not get the vaccine. And a statement of side effects is an admission there are problems with the vaccine. All Australians must be able to make their own informed choices on whether to have the vaccine and not be rammed into it.

During these COVID 19 times, the government messages are getting more and more confusing. It was only a few months ago that the prime minister, Mr. Scott Morrison, said that he would not make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory. Yet, that is what he has recently said would be necessary for aged and healthcare workers and for those drivers working in the quarantine sector. If he gets away with this, it will be just the beginning, before spreading Australia wide across our industries and nation.

Can he do it? Well, the Australian constitution states in section 51, paragraph 23-A, that the Commonwealth government cannot impose mandatory medical treatment on a person. That would include vaccination. The states though can do it. If they pass legislation to that effect. Now Victoria and Western Australia have legislation in place that could force a person to be vaccinated. There’s nothing to prevent other states and territories from passing similar enabling legislation, to be in line with Victoria and Western Australia.

The result of that, is that if the prime minister can persuade the states and territories to follow his line, they can enable the Commonwealth demands. Is this ethical? Well, that’s another question, but absolutely not. It would be a backdoor way for the Commonwealth to sneak around the constitutional prohibition on enforcing vaccination. On this issue, the Commonwealth government is behaving like an authoritarian dictatorship. Acting in an unethical, unjustified and unprincipled way.

Forcing vaccinations represents an attack on bodily integrity and without a valid consent, they may well constitute an assault. People should be able to freely choose what will be injected into their bodies. These vaccines remain unproven and the long-term prognosis are unknown. On that basis the vaccines are unjustified.

We should be able to trust our prime minister when he makes promises. It’s clear that we can’t.

The cities of Brisbane and Townsville have only just come out of yet another brutal lockdown and Sydney is in the middle of a three week lockdown. The only time a lockdown is justified is when the virus is so out of control, the government needs to buy time to reorganise and regroup resources and protect exhausted health workers. Using lockdowns 18 months later is a sure sign that our political leaders are yet to master living with COVID. It seems that their only trick is to grind the towns or states to a halt over a handful of cases, while they madly scramble for testing and tracing.

My message has been consistent, quarantine those unwell and waiting on tests and allow the rest of the state to get back to work. Other countries have found a way to balance both the health and the economic priorities. Yet, after 18 months in Australia, we are still unable to find that balance. The Premiers and the Prime Minister may say that we can’t have any further deaths from COVID as justification for these brutal lockdowns.

What they aren’t saying is that deaths from loneliness, social isolation, suicide, and unchecked medical conditions such as missed cancer diagnosis are okay. Apparently those deaths don’t matter because they aren’t COVID deaths. We’re at the mercy of our Premiers and their insatiable need to appear to be looking after the people. They want to look good, not do good. They tell us, “We’re keeping you safe from COVID,” while what they do is wreck our businesses, take away our jobs, devastate our livelihoods, isolate us, and let our loved ones die alone.

Internet searches for loneliness have increased, as have rates of self-harm, eating disorders, anxiety, and domestic violence. Meanwhile, the government tracks every shop, supermarket, stadium, pub, and government office we enter. After 18 months of collecting health data, learning from national and international experience and knowing the costly economic and mental health concerns, we would have hoped that Australia’s approach would have evolved past brutal capricious lockdowns.

It’s a shame on these power hungry politicians that it hasn’t.

Many Australians are hesitating about getting a Covid injection. Since 2020 the number of concerned Australians “very unlikely” to get the vaccine has increased 10% and there’s good reason for this. People are recognising that our safety, liberty and personal freedoms are at stake, and asking many questions about the safety of these injections. The government gave vaccine manufacturers immunity so vaccine makers will not be liable for adverse effects. If a company is not willing to stand behind its product as safe there can be no trust.

The federal health minister said this is the world’s largest clinical vaccination trial. The Chief Health Officer, head of the Health Department and head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration all refused to say the vaccines are 100% safe. We have no idea what these products will do to our body months or years from now. How will it affect pregnant women? The babies they’re carrying? Infertility?

We know the vaccine can make people unwell, that 60% experience tiredness, 50% experience headaches and 30% might have chills and there are more serious complications including vascular deterioration and death. No one knows the dosage. Nor the number of injections. Nor the frequency of injections. Will they be annual? Twice a year?

There’s been no public debate among health officials, scientists or in parliament. People with questions or contrary opinions get silenced and healthcare workers are being intimidated not to step out of line. COVID’s first victim was free discussion.  The Morrison government is mandating vaccination for aged care workers yet many are afraid of the vaccine and afraid they will lose their jobs.

Yet despite all this, people having the vaccine can still get the virus AND still spread the virus. We all deserve to have access to the facts so we can make informed decisions. The simple legal fact is that a death associated with a government approved injection is different in legal status from a death due to an accidental infection.

I want to address some claims in relation to mandatory vaccines. I completely oppose mandatory vaccines, but there are some false claims about their legality. Some people may not like the information I’m about to tell you, but I assure you it is accurate. I wish it wasn’t, but there is nothing to gain in misleading you and giving you false hope. Can the Commonwealth Government make Covid vaccinations mandatory?

The Australian Constitution in Section 51(xxiiiA) does not provide an authority for mandatory medical treatment on a person. That would include vaccination. It does allow the Commonwealth to fund treatment but not to compel it. Because the power to mandate treatment was not given to the Commonwealth under the 51(xxiiiA) of the Constitution, the Commonwealth cannot mandate treatment under this provision. There are provisions in the Biosecurity Act 2015, made under the Commonwealth’s quarantine power, that in limited circumstances may authorise directions for individuals, but not groups of persons.

The States, on the other hand, can mandate treatment if they pass legislation to that effect.  s.51(xxiiiA) of the Commonwealth constitution does not restrict them. At the moment, Victoria and Western Australia have explicit legislation in place that could force a person to be vaccinated. There is nothing to prevent the other States and Territories from passing similar enabling legislation to be in line with Victoria and Western Australia.

The result of that is that if the Prime Minister can persuade the States and Territories to follow his line, they can enable the Commonwealth demands. Is this morally right?  Absolutely not. It would be a backdoor way for the Commonwealth to sneak around the Constitution on enforcing vaccination. Scott Morrison can’t do it because of the Constitution, so he’s getting the State Governments to do his dirty work.

Another issue that requires some explanation is the effect of s.109 of the Australian Constitution. This says that if there is a conflict between a valid Commonwealth Act and a valid State Act, the Commonwealth Act shall prevail to the extent of any inconsistency. Some people believe this makes mandatory vaccinations illegal even if the state does them. The Constitution however is a special document, not being a Commonwealth Act, and s 109 does not apply in the context of mandatory treatments.

If there was a Commonwealth Act saying vaccinations are not to be mandatory, and a State Act saying that vaccinations are mandatory, the State Act would be inconsistent with the Commonwealth Act and the State Act would fail under s109. However, there is no Commonwealth Act that says vaccinations cannot be mandatory so s109 does not apply. There may be a number of human rights protections against forced vaccination but these have not yet been fully tested under Australian law.

Some people have raised the Nuremburg Code, which is an international agreement that says that people should not be subject to experimental treatment unless they have consented to it. It is only enforceable in Australia if it is in legislation, which is not the case apart from the ACT, where s.10(2) of the Human Rights Act 2004 provides the right not to be subject to medical treatment or experimentation without free consent. The Nuremberg code is a principle that should be adhered to ethically, but it is not a guaranteed legal requirement generally in Australia.

Forced vaccinations represent an attack on bodily integrity, and without a valid consent may well constitute an assault. People should be able to freely choose what will be injected into their bodies. In Queensland, the Chief Health Officer has made several directions based on her emergency powers under the Public Health Act 2005, applicable in Queensland. These emergency-based powers are proposed to be extended out until 30 April 2022 and apply while there is a declared public health emergency.

The powers are very broad and recently included student nurses being  excluded from a Restricted Vulnerable Facility if not fully vaccinated, having not had both planned injections. Currently this directive applies for a period up to 6.00pm on 16 July 2021. A Restricted Vulnerable Facility includes hospitals, a residential aged care facility, disability accommodation and correctional centres. These Directions are all supposed to be temporary.

If an employer tries to force an existing employee to be vaccinated this may well constitute an unreasonable direction and the employee may refuse unless the employer has a particular authority. If that employee is fired or is threatened with being fired if they do not comply with the request this may constitute unlawful dismissal and can be fought in court. The proximity of the employee to vulnerable people may be a factor the court would look at when considering if the request to vaccinate is reasonable.

The court would also consider the risks to the vulnerable people and the risk profile of the employee through being exposed. The greater the risk, the more likely the direction to vaccinate would be considered reasonable. If before being hired an applicant is told this is a condition of employment and the applicant does not wish to be vaccinated, the employer is legally able to hire someone else. The decision in these circumstances is really a legitimate choice by the applicant.

In summary, although it is unethical, unjustifiable and a shocking intrusion on people’s bodily integrity, the States have the technical legal power to mandate vaccines. The only solution is to tell them you oppose it, and if they don’t listen vote the wannabe tyrants out of power.

Did you know, after the AstraZeneca vaccine had already been approved in Australia, the Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial in history? This government is just making it up as they go. In February the Government said AstraZeneca was perfectly safe and approved it. In April, they backtracked due to blood clots and said to avoid it if you are under 50. In June they backtracked further and said avoid it if you are under 60.

Then the Prime Minister announced that anyone under 40 can get AstraZeneca. The Queensland Chief Health Officer said that was wrong, and quote,

“We’ve seen up to 49 deaths in the UK from [blood clots]. I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got COVID, probably wouldn’t die”.

If you’re losing track of the advice, I don’t blame you. Despite saying the vaccines are completely safe, the government has given indemnities to vaccine makers and doctors who administer AstraZeneca to people under 40. This means that if something goes wrong and you need to sue someone, the taxpayer will end up paying the bill. Why would the vaccine makers and doctors need protection from being sued if the vaccines are so safe?

And if they aren’t safe, it should be the vaccine makers who foot the bill for any damage they cause, not us, the taxpayers. The government has been relying on fear and panic for the vaccine. When the government does that, they’ll just jump from brain snap to brain snap without a plan. You, and all of Australia suffers from the government’s brain snaps, and they’ve been non-stop lately.

There is a better way, with data, with honesty, and respecting freedom of choice. That’s what Australians want. That’s what I support.

Every doctor, every allied health professional and every lawyer who works in the medico-legal field knows that for a consent to medical treatment to be valid, a necessary element is that the consent must be fully informed. If the patient has sufficient information about the proposed treatment that will provide the treating practitioner with a defence against a civil suit for assault.

However, if the practitioner is being sued for negligence, by way of breaching the duty of care owed to the patient, the consent from the patient must be by way of a fully informed consent. Sufficient information in the context of an assault action would be that the patient has been provided information in broad, general terms as to the nature of the proposed treatment and what it is intended to achieve. Informed consent in the context of an action in negligence requires a much higher standard of information provided for the patient.

This information should be detailed as to the nature of the treatment; what alternatives there are; what are the risks involved, in detail more than just statistics; what are the possible side effects and how they may be treated. I’m being told that many people receiving a vaccination are deliberately not being told which vaccination is being administered. I’m hearing that in some aged care facilities, the residents are not being told of alternatives that may be available such as Ivermectin, and deliberately kept in the dark about the actual treatment.

They are very frightened. Deadly side effects such as blood clotting and heart problems are being downplayed. Simple questions about long term effects of the vaccinations go unanswered because the answers remain unknown. How can a patient give a fully informed consent with all these unanswered questions? They can’t. The government has recently said they would indemnify doctors who administer the vaccine when something goes terribly wrong. This does not indicate the government has much confidence in the vaccine being administered and indicates they’re presuming something harmful will happen.

You might think the government has gone quiet about their proposed vaccine passport, but they’ve just renamed it to something that sounds a bit more innocent, a “vaccine certificate”. That’s the government’s proposal to say that you can’t travel, go between states, maybe even go to the pub unless you’ve been vaccinated, and you carry something to prove you have been. Whatever they call it, it’s still the same tool of a dictatorship.

It doesn’t belong in Australia. Really it is a vaccine prison. It means that unless you are vaccinated you will have your rights taken away from you: rights to travel interstate, rights eventually to interact with society and community. That’s coercion. Informed consent, which is absolutely essential to any medical procedure, is not possible where there’s coercion. To be clear I absolutely oppose any form of vaccination passport or vaccination certificate.

I support vaccines being available and for people to have choice. I have concerns about the long-term effects of the current batch of COVID vaccines because we simply don’t know the effects. I support anyone making an informed choice and giving their informed consent to choose to take a vaccine, yet there is no justifiable reason that the government should enforce vaccines or make vaccines mandatory – ever. A vaccine passport, a vaccine certificate, a vaccine prison is just another way to make a vaccine mandatory by coercion and the idea should be tossed in the bin forever.

Many everyday Australians are concerned not just about COVID-19 but where it came from. We recently heard that CSIRO and several Australian universities have engaged in at least 10 joint projects with the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology over the past decade. This is a laboratory that US intelligence has linked to the Chinese military and which is suspected of being at the centre of the COVID-19 outbreak. Concerningly, at Senate Estimates hearings CSIRO at first denied any links to Wuhan. Later, the truth came out.  

What’s worse is that CSIRO is linked to a Chinese infectious diseases expert who is now head of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunity Project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  There are links into Australian universities too, one being the University of Queensland, which has been partnering with the Wuhan Institute, experimenting on emerging diseases, environmental science and infectious disease epidemiology. 

These experiments are called “Gain-of-Function” which is a euphemism for biological research aimed at increasing the infectiousness, danger and severity of pathogens and viruses. These deadly science-enhanced pathogens can and do escape into the community where they infect and kill people – it’s biological warfare. The risks posed by these dangerous experiments far outweigh any speculative benefits.  Many Australians are asking why our government is not being proactive and protecting us from the release of lab-created viruses, and why the government does not have an end-to-end plan for managing the COVID-19 outbreak.

It’s time the Morrison Government cancelled funding and support for research and collaboration on projects and with nations that may weaponise a virus and harm everyday Australians.  We all deserve to be safe.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), part of the Department of Health, has granted a provisional determination to the Pfizer Australia and the Astra Zeneca vaccines. The granting of a provisional determination means that the TGA has made a decision that Pfizer and Astra Zeneca are now eligible to apply for provisional registration for the vaccine in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG).

This Provisional approval pathway is available to sponsors with preliminary clinical data. To put this simply, the TGA takes the drug companies’ word for the accuracy of the data, which will have come from limited foreign trials. There is no checking or peer review. none. In looking through Pfizer’s clinical data, our office team noticed this disclaimer: “Pfizer advise that substantial risks and uncertainties exist in connection with their data, including the possibility of unfavorable new data and the ability to produce comparable clinical results, including the rate of vaccine effectiveness and safety observed in the trials.”

With those words, Pfizer just said that they cannot guarantee once deployed the vaccine will be safe and will provide a level of protection claimed during the application process with the TGA. This is what happens when approvals are given on wafer thin clinical testing, so quickly that replication and peer review has NOT happened. The vaccine approval process takes between 5 and 10 years for a reason. This approval was 3 months.

The public are right to be concerned that the TGA has not tested these vaccines enough, and in fact, have not tested them at all.

The Australian people and our business community are fatigued with the limping and damaging mis-management of our response to COVID. The only real plan, post flattening the curve, has been to stoke the fires of exaggeration and hysteria to keep the population scared and compliant.  This ensures many of us won’t notice that no one has any idea of what’s next and it facilitates people accepting illogical and inconsistent health orders.

After 18 months of widely different responses across the country the Prime Minister announced on Friday 2 July what he believes will be a plan to get back to normal. You might breathe a sigh of relief… yet that would be premature.  There’s no real detail, that will take another month to assemble. The promise to use lockdowns only as an extreme measure seems to mean that lockdowns will be here to stay for the rest of the year.  That gives business no confidence at all.

The real message in the plan is the use of coercive power to get the population vaccinated.  Our freedom of movement, our freedom, is being directly tied to being vaccinated.  The Prime Minister is ushering in a two-tier society – those vaccinated and those unvaccinated.  Personal choice and health considerations around the unproven and experimental vaccine with known and unknown negative side-affects have become irrelevant. 

The unvaccinated will be condemned and not allowed to live a normal life. Instead of this vaccine prison Australians need a plan that respects the rights of Australians and brings us all along without the intrusive and unconstitutional curtailing of personal freedoms. This one trick pony of a plan is all about coercive control – get the vaccine or lose your job, lose your business or stay at home.

We are being forced to choose between our freedoms – freedom over our bodies or freedom over our movement or freedom over which job we can have.  That is no plan. That is a con, a disgraceful con. No wonder so many people have vaccine hesitancy.

When it comes to treating and preventing people getting Covid-19 we’ve been told that the only solution is a brand new vaccine. This is not true, there are alternative and complementary treatments for respiratory conditions, which COVID19 is. One of them is Ivermectin. It’s had over 3.7 billion doses administered over the last 60 years. In that time, it’s had a proven safety record. Over the past year Ivermectin has been successful where used against COVID in some Indian states, and in some South American, European and Asian countries.

There are over 40 medical and scientific papers which hail Ivermectin’s success. So why is it banned for this use with Covid in Australia? It raises serious questions about BigPharma’s monopoly and conflicts of interest. For example, Google’s parent company Alphabet owns YouTube. YouTube has banned any videos that even mention Ivermectin as a possible COVID treatment.

They even took down one of my videos, and I’m a Federal Senator. But here’s the kicker, Alphabet owns 12% of Vaccitech, who created the AstraZeneca vaccine. Aren’t these conflicts of interest? The federal government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration wrote me a threatening letter for publicly discussing Ivermectin.

The way I see it I’m a duly elected member of Australia’s national parliament doing my lawful duty, sharing accurate information with you. Silencing debate and data is a form of control. And always beneath control there is … fear.

Is dishonest BigPharma afraid of losing its hundreds of billions of dollars in profits? Is the government afraid to admit they’ve made a mistake? I have no financial or other ties with vaccine makers or Ivermectin or drug companies. My interest is in ensuring we protect people’s health & restore our nation’s economic health and security. That’s why alternative and complimentary treatments must be available.

On the best evidence we have, Ivermectin should be available. Without it, the government has blood on its hands.