Labor refuses to call a Royal Commission into COVID, because they’ve already been given $1 million in donations from Big Pharma.
One Nation is calling for a COVID Royal Commission now, to ensure we never repeat the same mistakes.
Labor refuses to call a Royal Commission into COVID, because they’ve already been given $1 million in donations from Big Pharma.
One Nation is calling for a COVID Royal Commission now, to ensure we never repeat the same mistakes.
I sent a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese supporting Russell Broadbent’s request for him to address the concerning findings in a recent scientific report prepared by Canadian virologist Dr. David Speicher.
One of the most troubling scandals in Australia involved government agencies, the Australian Red Cross, blood banks, and CSL, who knowingly transfused contaminated blood to individuals in need of transfusions. This included blood from donors with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV, which was then used for transfusions to people, including haemophiliacs, who underwent surgery or other critical procedures.
Many recipients of this tainted blood subsequently contracted these diseases themselves. Despite numerous efforts to seek compensation from the responsible agencies and the Commonwealth, no resolution has been achieved so far.
In contrast, the Canadian government addressed this issue and compensated victims. Furthermore, following a Royal Commission into contaminated blood in the United Kingdom, the full extent of the scandal was acknowledged, and victims were provided with appropriate compensation.
I have has actively pursued justice for Australian victims, questioning the Blood Authority at Senate Estimates in February 2023 and again in June 2024 about the possibility of a Royal Commission and compensation. I remain dedicated to ensuring that Australian victims receive the justice and compensation they deserve.
Photograph: Science Photo Library/Tek Image/Getty Images
I have asked, over multiple estimate sessions, about the approval process for lab-grown meat. While I acknowledge and understand Food Standard Australia New Zealand’s (FSANZ) need to take their time with this decision, the process seems more about ticking the boxes rather than conducting a serious investigation into the potential health impacts of this Frankenstein food product.
Australia has the highest quality farm produce globally, with the capability to both feed our population and export protein. There is absolutely no need for lab-grown meats. The process of cultivating muscle cells from live cattle via biopsy in a bio-reactor to create meat, bears a resemblance to how cancer cells replicate.
Lab-grown meat has the nutritional value of whatever it has been cultivated in. There’s no chance this product will match the nutritional value and safety of real meat.
One Nation believes that before lab-grown meat is approved, extensive generational testing must be conducted to assess the impact of this product on human cells, including testing for potential damage to reproductive capacity and to the development of cancers – a process known as genotoxicity testing. If such testing were performed on rats (a perfectly valid method), it would have been completed by now. The lack of such testing is alarming and begs the question – why has it not been conducted?
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. At last estimates, I asked about genotoxicity of products grown in a bioreactor—lab meat. Your answer on notice—and thank you for providing this—was: ‘There are no safety concerns, including genotoxicity.’ Is that still your position?
Dr Cuthbert: Yes, it is.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Your answer doesn’t address my question. I didn’t ask if you had no genotoxicity concerns. I asked, and now repeat: have you received genotoxicity testing on this or a similar product from a suitable jurisdiction?
Dr Cuthbert: I’ll pass to Dr O’Mullane, who is the general manager for risk management and intelligence and is managing the assessment.
Dr O’Mullane: Thank you for the question. If I could just go back to a statement around genotoxicity or carcinogenicity, and that is that the starting material for these types of cell based meat products are cells taken from healthy animals. They are not cancerous cells and they are not cancer cells. They are cells that are harvested from connective tissue, from muscle tissue, from skin tissue. They are then taken into a bioreactor and they are selected. There are natural variants that can live for a reasonable period of time in that bioreactor under very specific and controlled conditions, along with tissue culture media components. Taken outside of that bioreactor, they are not capable of surviving. They are not going to survive food processing activities or cooking; they would certainly not survive through the human digestive tract. So our position very clearly is that the cells that are used in terms of the quail application that we’re currently looking at don’t pose any cancer concerns. They’re not cancerous. That view is held not specifically for these quail cells but certainly in a more general sense via the US Food and Drug Administration who have made statements in this effect and also the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who provided a report last year around cell cultured foods, and they have made similar statements. To your question on genotoxicity data, I don’t believe that genotoxicity data was provided as part of this application. I will confirm that. So the characterisation of the safety risks are very much around the molecular characterisation of the cells and what is involved with the actual culture media. So we are confident that these cells and the actual products that are generated from those cells aren’t going to pose a human health and safety concern.
Senator ROBERTS: So you have not received genotoxicity testing on this or a suitable product from a suitable jurisdiction?
Dr O’Mullane: I don’t believe we have. But I will confirm that on notice if I may.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. How can you say then that you have no genotoxicity testing concerns if you haven’t done or seen genotoxicity testing?
Dr O’Mullane: Based on the points that I’ve already made. It is based on the actual characteristics of the cells. These are entirely normal cells that have been taken out of healthy animals. So there is no plausible reason to consider that they would have any sort of cancer or genotoxicity potential.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re relying upon the FDA in America?
Dr O’Mullane: We are not relying on the FDA. As part of this particular application, certain data have been provided. We are still going through an active process of scientific evaluation which is still running for at least another six months. On the basis of what we have seen to date, we went out with a first public consultation ending in February this year. The risk assessment that we put out very clearly said that there were no human health and safety concerns. If there is any additional information that might be available, either from yourself or others, that could be submitted, we would certainly be happy to look at that and see whether we needed to make any sort of adjustments. But, based on the evidence that we’ve seen to date, we are confident in the safety of this particular cell based quail.
Senator ROBERTS: But you’ve done no genotoxicity testing. What is the state of approval for Vow Group’s application to produce imitation quail meat in a bioreactor for human consumption?
Dr O’Mullane: I mentioned that there was a first public consultation round earlier in the year. We’re due to go out with a second public consultation round in July. Then there will be a period of time where we will evaluate any submissions. That second so-called call for submissions report will include the proposed legal drafting: things like labelling that will appear in the Food Standards Code. There will be an opportunity for stakeholders to comment on our legal drafting in terms of its clarity and enforceability. We then go through a period of proposing a so-called approval report for the FSANZ Board to make a decision. At the moment we’re looking at around the end of the year, probably in December. Once the FSANZ Board has made a decision, there’s a 60-day window where that decision is notified to food ministers, who then have the opportunity to call for a review of that decision or not. Following that, if everything goes smoothly, it would be gazetted and then go into food law.
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve in embarked on consultation?
Dr O’Mullane: This is considered a major application, so we’re required to undertake two rounds of public consultation. We’ve undertaken one round, and we’re about to take—
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve finished the first round. You’re about to start the second.
Dr O’Mullane: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Then the approvals will continue without any further testing, and, even if you give approval, it will be the subject of the health ministers and the states to object if they want to.
Dr O’Mullane: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Have they got the capacity to do their own testing? They’d be relying on you.
Dr O’Mullane: Yes. They would certainly provide us with very detailed commentary around why they were calling for the FSANZ Board to review its decision.
Senator ROBERTS: Who decides use of the word ‘meat’, which the public rightly associates with an animal product, not a laboratory product?
Dr O’Mullane: In relation to the current quail application, as part of the first public consultation we’ve looked at possible options for labelling and what it may be called. Where we are heading to at the moment is either ‘cell cultured’ or ‘cell cultivated’ quail. Based on the consumer feedback that we’ve had, that seems to be best understood by consumers. In terms of the use of the term ‘meat’, you’re right that there is a specific definition of meat in the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Code, which is defined there. But if the term ‘meat’ is used in an accurate context so as not to mislead consumers it could potentially be used in a different context.
Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean?
Dr O’Mullane: For example, use of the term ‘milk’. Milk is defined in the Food Standards Code, but milk can also be used in the context of soy milk or oat milk. In that context it’s not misleading because consumers generally know that it’s not from an animal, similar to the use of the term ‘beer’ in ginger beer or ‘bread’ in shortbread. It’s around the context of use that we need to look.
Senator ROBERTS: Your reply also states that FSANZ is a member of the World Health Organization’s technical working group on cell based food as well as an OECD expert group on cell based food. Can Australians have confidence this decision is all your own work instead of being guided by foreign commercial interests?
Dr O’Mullane: We’re still going through an active process at the moment. The food hasn’t actually been approved. If it is approved by the FSANZ Board, it will be because there is a scientific weight of evidence supporting the safety and suitability of the cell cultured quail. If it does end up on supermarket shelves, consumers can be confident that that’s the case and that the food will be labelled appropriately so that consumers can understand the true nature of the food and that they can make informed purchasing decisions. Senator ROBERTS: But you’re doing no further testing, including no genotoxicity testing.
Dr O’Mullane: We don’t specifically do testing. We rely on the evidence that the applicant has provided, and there are—
Senator ROBERTS: You rely on the evidence the applicant has provided?
Dr O’Mullane: We rely on the evidence the applicant has provided in the context of the legislative requirements to provide certain information, data and studies. That is supplemented by our own scientific searches of the literature.
Senator ROBERTS: This is a new field, yet you’re relying on regulations or legislation made in this building?
Dr O’Mullane: We’re relying on scientific information. It’s a weight of scientific evidence that will then support the decision one way or the other about whether to permit this cell cultured quail product.
The Albanese government is legislating to prohibit vaping for recreational use, as an aid to quitting smoking and to sustain smoking cessation efforts. I’ve been receiving numerous messages from Australians who have successfully kicked the smoking habit through vaping. They now either vape a herbal solution to combat the physical habit of smoking, or have completely quit. The Labor government’s move to ban vaping contradicts the international vaping experience.
Health authorities in the UK have found that vaping is a safer alternative to smoking and provides an effective pathway for smokers to quit.
The measures in the bill will, however, allow individuals wanting to quit or who are in the process of quitting, to obtain a prescription from their doctor for a vape. The use of this provision is being disingenuous, as many Australians who are attempting to access vapes to aid them in quitting are finding that either their doctor refuse to prescribe a vape, or the pharmacy does not stock them.
Additionally, the costs have surged as demand s gone up exponentially as volume has fallen, and as medical establishments take a much larger share of the sale than a tobacco/vape retailer did.
Although there’s concern about children, it’s always been illegal for minors to vape, just as it’s always been illegal for children to smoke cigarettes. While vaping poses less risk to minors than smoking, the ideal scenario is for parents and guardians to prevent their children from engaging in either. The idea that vaping serves as a gateway to smoking is wrong and is not supported by experiences in many other countries like the UK that have legalised vaping.
The Minister’s actions will force vaping underground, evidenced by recent incidents where two vape shops were targeted by organised crime. Illegally supplied vapes will likely be adulterated with addictive substances, manufactured cheaply and with little regard for safety.
This is a health disaster waiting to happen and is entirely foreseeable.
One Nation supports the regulation and licensing of vapes and vaping products exclusively for adult consumers.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being present today. Professor Buchanan, can I confirm your involvement with the University of Wollongong School of Health and Society?
Prof. Buchanan: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. The University of Wollongong school of health receives substantial grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council year on year. Is your testimony today completely
independent of the people who fund you?
Prof. Buchanan: I am not funded, Senator Roberts, by the University of Wollongong. I have an honorary position and I receive no funding from the University of Wollongong.
Senator ROBERTS: The university is associated with the Global Challenges Project, which is funded by Open Philanthropy, an organisation that campaigns against smoking specifically by taxing it out of reach of
everyday Australians. Do you support increased taxation rather than vaping as a means of smoking reduction?
Prof. Buchanan: Sorry, Senator; in the last part of your question I got a bang on the microphone and I didn’t catch it.
Senator ROBERTS: Sure. Do you support increased taxation rather than vaping as a means of smoking reduction?
Prof. Buchanan: We support a comprehensive approach to reducing tobacco. Excise is one of those approaches, and there is a range of others. They are all outlined in the National Tobacco Strategy and we support
all of the measures in the National Tobacco Strategy.
Senator ROBERTS: Cancer Research UK have a 100 per cent opposing view to yours. Their analysis of the use of e-cigarettes, ones that are registered with the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the equivalent of our TGA, states this: Lots of people want to know about the health effects of e-cigarettes … Many studies show that vaping is far less harmful than smoking. This is because e-cigarettes don’t contain cancer-causing tobacco, and most of the toxic chemicals found in cigarettes are not in e-cigarettes. … … … There is no good evidence that vaping causes cancer. … … … Because vaping is far less harmful than smoking, your health could benefit from switching from smoking to vaping. And you will reduce your risk of getting cancer. Who is right — Cancer Research UK or the Australian Cancer Council?
Prof. Buchanan: What we are all saying is that we want to see people who smoke stop smoking, because it is incredibly risky. If some smokers can benefit in quitting by using e-cigarettes then we would support that. We have never not supported that. But we would like to see that support provided through a healthcare professional who can enable that person to make the right clinical decisions to manage their nicotine addiction and then to move forward by helping them to quit vaping. In many of the studies where people have used vaping to quit, we’ve seen an increase in the number of people who dual use rather than quit products altogether, and that is not a good outcome.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll come to what you’ve said in a minute. Johns Hopkins Medicine also maintains that: Vaping is less harmful than smoking. … … … Regular cigarettes contain 7,000 chemicals, many of which are toxic. … … … … vaping exposes you to fewer toxic chemicals. Professor Buchanan, why are you supporting a bill that exposes smokers to more toxic chemicals than vaping?
Prof. Buchanan: We are not supporting a bill that increases people’s exposure to anything. What we are supporting are ongoing comprehensive tobacco control measures in this country which have proven to be incredibly effective in reducing smoking rates. At the same time, for those smokers who are struggling to quit— and we need to remember that it is a very small percentage of the population—we want them to get the help that they need under the care of a healthcare professional.
Senator ROBERTS: We are on the same track now, then. Professor, the United Kingdom National Health Service says of vaping: Nicotine vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. It’s also one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking. That is what I think you want. It says: Vaping is not completely harmless and we only recommend it for adult smokers, to support quitting smoking and staying quit. Is the Cancer Council of Australia out of step with the science?
Prof. Buchanan: I think we have already addressed that. What we want to see for people who are looking to quit smoking are evidence based approaches to quit. We know that most Australian people who are looking to quit smoking will quit unaided. For those who need support and cessation aids to quit—and that is not the vast majority of smokers; in fact, the vast majority of smokers who quit smoking do so unaided—there is a strong evidence base of safe, effective, regulated medicines in Australia. E-cigarettes are not one of those and so people should be receiving support for using those products under the care of a healthcare professional.
Senator ROBERTS: My electorate office has been receiving many contacts from real Australians complaining about this measure and saying how much vaping has improved their lives, reduced their nicotine dependency and even helped them quit smoking entirely. Are these people lying or are you protecting the $500 million ‘quit smoking’ industry from a product internationally proven to reduce smoking?
Prof. Buchanan: We have not said anywhere that this product will not help some people to quit smoking. We do believe that it well. But because the nature of the product is that it is not a safe product people are best placed to work with their healthcare professional—
Senator ROBERTS: It’s stated that two out of three—
CHAIR: We need to let the witness finish.
Prof. Buchanan: I do take objection to your implication that we are somehow protecting an industry. We are actually about preventing ill health from smoking and also associated with vaping.
CHAIR: Thank you, witnesses, for staying longer than you were allocated. We appreciate your involvement in our committee. If you have taken questions on notice, we are asking for answers back very quickly—by COB Monday 6 May.
Joel Cauchi, who stabbed and killed six people and hospitalised another 12 people was a known mental health patient from Queensland.
With a long history of schizophrenia, Cauchi was living an itinerant lifestyle with deteriorating mental health and apparently not being adequately medicated or monitored.
How could this disaster have been prevented? Significant questions remain unanswered.
Who was responsible for managing his mental illness while in the community?
Had he been considered safe to be in the community and how could that decision have been so wrong?
Had he been lost to the system and fallen through the cracks in the system?
Was this because the Queensland mental health system is severely under resourced with insufficient trained staff and not enough mental health beds in a failed public health system?
Was this tragedy a result of the closing of mental health facilities and a foreseeable consequence of a policy of treating mentally ill patients within the community?
Was Cauchi being treated in Queensland under a Treatment Authority receiving enforced treatment and had he moved interstate to NSW to avoid treatment?
Did the Queensland mental health system know he had moved out of the state to NSW?
When was the last time his mental health had been assessed in Queensland?
Fixing this broken system may help prevent a repeat of this horror story.
One thing that has come out of the COVID response is how it’s exposed the pharmaceutical industry to more scrutiny from the public than ever before. More questions have been raised about the Therapeutic Goods Authority (TGA) and our Health Pharmacrats than ever before. Yet, what is the alternative?
In this parliamentary speech, I put it on record that we must look at the influence of pharmaceutical companies on the education system for medical professionals, and the relationships between pharma giants and former health department executives. The toxic, inhuman killer ‘pharmaceutical only’ model is failing Australian taxpayers. People are dying needlessly.
As an example, Albicidin is a natural antibiotic with clear potential to become our leading antimicrobial. It’s proven to not create resistance. Albicidin could be, and most likely is the answer to antimicrobial resistance. There are many others, but they don’t get patented. They don’t receive sponsorship and therefore they don’t get approved.
It’s time for an entirely new medical paradigm. One that puts humans first, not big pharma.
Antimicrobial resistance is the new climate change, allowing for control over agriculture, medicine and household and industrial cleaning, in the name of reducing use of antimicrobials. That’s why an alternative solution, using an antimicrobial that doesn’t cause antimicrobial resistance, is being ignored and quietly buried. It’s to protect globalist profits and to control people – and to hell with human and animal health and safety!
Globalists WANT control. Globalists NEED control to complete their agenda.
Australia needs a customer consumer advocate, or natural product advocate, to advance natural products that can’t be patented, yet are safe and effective treatments — products to be listed under Schedule 4 and offered under the PBS as frontline medicines. Not watered down products sold in supermarkets as complementary medicines so that their efficacy can plausibly be dismissed.
Instead of advancing people-first health care, our Pharmacrats are actively promoting mRNA vaccines and medications to the commercial benefit of big pharma. This is caused by “the patent cliff”, which refers to the expiration of patents on popular drugs, leading pharmaceutical companies to face intense competition from generic drug makers, dramatically reducing their profits. The new mRNA technology allows big pharma to replace off-patent drugs with newly patented mRNA drugs at prices that guarantee their profits for the next 30 years. Our health authorities are actively promoting this solution to the patent cliff, despite the myriad of adverse health outcomes from the mRNA vaccines.
Why? These are important matters that can only be answered by a Royal Commission.
What should not wait for a Royal Commission is a system to incorporate affordable, natural remedies into our health approval process. This could be implemented immediately if the Pharmacrats were interested in providing people-first health care.
Where’s the scrutiny on our health authorities? During COVID, drugs were rushed through that would never have been approved on safety and efficacy grounds, such as molnupiravir and remdesivir. Last year, these two inhuman pharmaceuticals cost taxpayers $1 billion. Alternatively, tried and tested drugs that are out of patent could have been used for a fraction of the price. Remember that our authorities and the mouthpiece media called ivermectin ‘horse paste’. The statist Left rushed to demonise anyone who defended ivermectin, because the control side of politics—the so-called Left—loves to follow orders. Ivermectin is a Nobel-Prize-winning antiviral for humans. Over 40 years, it has saved millions of lives. Around the world, it’s now been proven safe and effective as an early-stage treatment for COVID, as it always was.
Our health authorities demonised ivermectin to prevent early-stage treatment of COVID in order to build demand for an untested novel mRNA vaccine. How many died because of the long-term strategy that our health authorities followed and pushed—a strategy to use COVID as a cover to introduce a class of mRNA drugs that the public would have rightly baulked at and rejected? How many died from the side effects of mRNA technology—technology that was not tested in Australia and was not tested off the production line, for which the method of production was changed after overseas testing and approval and the fake trials were at best shambolic and at worst criminally negligent?
Why would our health authorities tolerate this? Simply because of a thing called the patent cliff. Pharmaceutical companies are profitable because they develop a new drug and then get a patent, exclusive sale of the drug for 25 years. Drug companies can afford to put that drug through the approval process because once it’s approved they add the approval cost to the selling price—kerching, kerching!
The system of drug patents has created a $2 trillion industry whose tentacles of influence extend to political parties, who happily accept donations, and to health authorities. Their tentacles extend to the USFDA and Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health, who hold patents on drug processes they license to big pharma in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in personal royalties. Their tentacles extend to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, whose young global leaders sit in this parliament.
This is influence that our healthy authorities cultivate while coveting lucrative careers in the pharmaceutical industry. For example, just eight months after approving Pfizer’s untested COVID injections, Professor John Skerritt, former head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, is now on the board of the pharmaceutical industry lobby group Medicines Australia. This isn’t the normal operation of a free-enterprise system that One Nation would support; this is a cabal of greedy, unprincipled, evil individuals treating everyday citizens as cash cows. They want everything you have for themselves, including your health.
The patent cliff is upon us. There’s increasing urgency—desperation—in the measures being rammed through government. Two-thirds of the revenue is from drugs being sold to you that are out of patent now or will go out of patent over the next five years. That threatens big pharma’s harvesting of humans for profit. Modern drugs, once out of patent, can be made for cents per tablet. India specialises in that. Australia used to, and we can do it again. The patent cliff threatens the entire pharmaceutical industry and stops the ability of chemical pharmaceuticals to do better than they do now, in terms of profit.
From where are the new patents going to come? I’m glad you asked, Mr Acting Deputy President: from mRNA of course. There are 400 new mRNA vaccines and drugs currently under development. Such is the expected volume of these things that two manufacturing plants are being prepared here in Australia. Our health authorities decided to press ahead with mRNA technology to save the pharmaceutical status quo—the pharmaceutical gouging of people to extract exorbitant profits. Patient harm apparently no longer matters.
Last week, a study of 99 million COVID-jab users, including in New South Wales and Victoria, found the product was not safe. The study was published by Elsevier, for more than 140 years the world’s leading scientific publisher and data analytics company. The study showed the following conditions were occurring above baseline levels: brain and spinal cord swelling, up 380 per cent; blood clots, up 320 per cent; Guillain-Barre syndrome, up 250 per cent; and myocarditis, up 278 per cent for Moderna and up 350 per cent for Pfizer. After a second injection, myocarditis was up a damning 610 per cent and pericarditis was up 690 per cent. I told you so four years ago. Many good people warned that COVID products were not tested, that they were experimental, and that forcing them on the general population was an insane, inhuman abuse of government power. Now look at those figures. It’s another area for a royal commission to investigate.
It’s time for an entirely new medical paradigm in this country and throughout the West. Pharmaceutical companies are embracing mRNA as their saviour because it can be patented. They can charge whatever they want for it, and compliant health bureaucrats like our TGA, acting out of self-interest, protect pharmaceutical companies from financial harm. The expert medical advice the TGA relies on comes either directly from drug companies or from advisers who have worked for big pharma, who have accepted research grants or sponsorship from big pharma, or who covet doing so in the future. After all, $29-million Sydney harbourside mansions don’t just buy themselves.
These are things that make for a royal commission. One thing that should not wait for a royal commission is a system for getting cheap, natural remedies into our health approval system. Australia needs an office of the consumer advocate to oversee complaints and the harm bureaucrats cause—bureaucrats who appear incapable of acknowledging odious and obvious adverse events. We need a customer consumer advocate or a natural product advocate to advance natural products that can’t be patented but are safe and effective treatments—products to be listed under schedule 4 and offered under the PBS as frontline medicines, not watered down and sold in supermarkets as complementary medicines so their efficacy can be dismissed. Albicidin, for example, is a natural antibiotic with clear potential to become our leading antimicrobial. It’s proven to not create resistance. Albicidin could be the answer, and highly likely is the answer to antimicrobial resistance.
Antimicrobial resistance is the new climate change, allowing for control over agricultural, medicine, and household and industrial cleaning in the name of reducing use of antimicrobials. That’s why an alternative solution, using an antimicrobial that doesn’t cause antimicrobial resistance, is being ignored and quietly buried: to protect globalist profits and to control people—and to hell with human and animal health and safety! Globalists want control. Globalists need control to complete their agenda.
Take another example: blushwood is an Australian native berry. It was shown, in a 2014 test, to kill skin cancer in just 10 days. Did our health authorities rush to understand this plant and bring a potentially lifesaving medication to market? No; they did not. Another one: conolidine is a natural treatment for severe pain. Ignored! Natural remedies include cannabis. Senator Pauline Hanson has led way, advocating for medicinal cannabis since 1996. I joined her, and now there are others.
A recent paper pointed out that natural products work differently to chemical products, yet our system for understanding and testing substance efficacy is geared to chemical drugs. The paper and system offer a new way of measuring efficacy that confirms plants like cannabis and conolidine do work, and explains how they work. The truth is this: currently only when a product is patented and presented as the TGA on a plate, ready for the TGA’s rubberstamp, does it enter our pharmaceutical system. I urge the Minister for Health and Aged Care to introduce a consumer natural products advocate to provide much needed supervision and accountability over our health authorities. Failing that, I ask the Greens to consider if the agency they’re establishing with the Legalising Cannabis Bill would be better suited to handle natural medications in general—those that the TGA refuse to handle in addition to cannabis.
I’m not offering medical advice on the examples I’ve used in this speech; I’m asking why the health department and medical schools first response is to the scalpel and the prescription pad instead of natural medications that cost a fraction of the price. We must have an independent office in the TGA with the budget to sponsor natural alternatives through the safety, testing and efficacy stages, and to have these promoted to doctors who most likely have never even heard of them.
We must look at the influence of pharmaceutical companies in the education system for medical people, in their relationship with former health department executives and their influence through advertising and sponsorship. The toxic inhuman killer ‘pharmaceutical only’ model is failing Australian taxpayers. People are dying needlessly. Stop so-called health authorities committing homicide, child homicide, infanticide. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I say call a royal commission now and make an immediate start on the obvious reforms to our health administration that we need.
In January, the Senate held a committee inquiry into appropriate Terms of Reference for a Royal Commission into COVID. This is the Royal Commission the Prime Minister promised during the election campaign, which Senator Gallagher also promised. Instead the Prime Minister called a review of the government’s response, which excludes state and territory responses.
Many have slammed the Prime Minister’s COVID review panel as a “toothless tiger” and support a Royal Commission instead. Doctors, unions, human rights lawyers, vaccine injured, and Royal Commission experts were among the witnesses who provided submissions and gave evidence at the Senate inquiry tasked with proposing Terms of Reference for a future COVID Royal Commission.
Why did the Government Health Department not partake in this inquiry? Could it be to avoid scrutiny from the Committee that would result from making a submission? Judge for yourself.
Senator ROBERTS: The department and its agencies did not make a submission to the Senate inquiry into appropriate terms of reference for a possible future royal commission into COVID. I would have thought, Minister, that the department that ran our COVID response would be the first to put forward its position on the matter. Why the silence? Is the department hiding from committee scrutiny?
Senator McCarthy: We do have an inquiry underway—an independent one—looking into COVID, so I reject outright your question.
I have been asking the Health Department across multiple estimates a simple question. Every drug approved in Australia must be made using Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), which is a detailed standard to ensure quality and consistency in manufacturing of pharmaceutical products.
If the “speed of science” prevented using GMP then say so. Instead, the TGA and Health Department has bobbed and weaved to prevent giving me a straight answer, and today is no different.
The last response I got was to send me a list of GMP certificates issued to Pfizer. There was no ability to check the certificates back to the injection batch numbers. This looks to me like there is a coverup to hide that the vaccines were not produced using GMP until late in the rollout. This was a decision that was not open to the TGA to make. Accepting products made in a rush may have been why the original doses were accompanied by such a high and unpredictable rate of harm. I will continue to pursue this matter.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move to good manufacturing practice. I have just two questions left. At the last estimates, I tried to get to the bottom of whether every batch of Pfizer COVID injections was made using good manufacturing processes. If they were not, that may explain the huge variance in adverse events between batches. If they were made with good manufacturing processes, there is another cause we really need to understand for the huge number of excess deaths. In your answer on notice, you did not answer the question, but you gave me a list of entries in your manufacturing information database. This is a little confusing, because your answer does not allow me to check good manufacturing process certificates off against batch numbers. What your data tells me is that all of these good manufacturing process certificates were issued as a result of a desktop audit rather than an in-person inspection, which means you took the manufacturers’ word for it based on whatever it was they sent you. Is that correct?
Prof. Lawler : Thank you for the question. I would just highlight that we’ve received these questions regarding the batch testing of vaccines and the associated release a number of times before, and we’ve answered these questions—most recently, I think, SQ23-002145. Those answers are clearly on the record.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s not the one I have. Secondly, there are 44 good manufacturing process certificates for all COVID vaccines, yet there are 410 batches listed in your COVID vaccine batch release assessment. Some of those are duplications and some, admittedly, are for AstraZeneca, but the number seems off. Can you please give me on notice a full list of Pfizer batch numbers and the corresponding good manufacturing process—or is it true that good manufacturing process was only used from the bivalent vaccines onwards?
Prof. Lawler : Thank you for the question. I’m happy to either take that on notice or to return to that under outcome 1.8 when my—
Senator ROBERTS: Perhaps you could take it on notice.
Prof. Lawler : Absolutely.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
During COVID we were forced by the health system into unnecessary and unhealthy lockdowns, away from fresh air, denied proper exercise and social contact. Many Australians have lost faith in the medical system that seems intent on promoting pharmaceutical responses to health issues that are more rightly lifestyle.
The nation’s health survey was released over Christmas and it’s one the health officials will not enjoy reading – “Today … Australians are at significant risk of dying young or living with preventable chronic diseases, with two thirds of us being overweight or obese.”
News Limited observed respondents would rather play video games and eat junk food than exercise. Where was the guidance from health authorities on staying healthy? What happened to the great Australian tradition of promoting “life, be in it”? Of prioritising good food and the great outdoors? Whatever happened to that? Instead we were locked down, fed on fear propaganda and isolated from our loved ones.
In 2024, public health is all about taking a jab or a pill to ‘restore’ health. Public health is no longer about preventative health or natural immunity, it is about promoting drug use. How has this been allowed to happen?
Australians need answers. We also need our public health system to make health all about healthy living once more.
The greatest victim of COVID-19 was not the many Australians who, sadly, lost their lives to this man-made virus that Australia helped develop. It was not the many thousands of Australians who, sadly, died from injections and jabs that are proving to be the crime of the century; the greatest victim was public health. Confidence in public health is at an all-time low. Childhood vaccination rates are plummeting. Parents are choosing not to engage with the childcare system and, increasingly, the education system to protect their children from public health.
The nation’s health survey was released over Christmas, and I thank News Limited for this report, which acts as a second opinion on the performance of our health officials. It’s one the health officials will not enjoy reading. Let me share some of the findings with you:
Today … Australians are at significant risk of dying young or living with preventable chronic diseases, with two thirds of us being overweight or obese.
More troubling for our health bureaucrats is that so few respondents were interested in doing anything about it, choosing instead to sit in front of a computer or TV screen for more than eight hours a day, shun exercise and eat junk food. News Limited have taken up the challenge of equipping their readers with simple advice to improve their health. Isn’t that our health authorities’ job? Remember Life. Be in it? Overweight Norm and his family, which started in 1979 and went into hibernation until recently, as it turns out. Public health is supposed to be about preventative medicine, encouraging people to get into life, get into some exercise and fresh air, and interact with others in a sporting, outdoor or otherwise active context. It’s great advice—advice that saves the taxpayer money, correcting conditions that are self-inflicted.
Saying obesity is self-inflicted will earn you the ire of the woke brigade, who call that ‘fat shaming’. Someone has to. According to the study, Queensland is the third-fattest state in the nation, with 33 per cent of people identifying as obese. That’s one-third. This data is for Australians generally. It does not include the increase in youth depression and suicide that resulted from our failed COVID response and fear campaign. Sedentary lifestyles lead to chronic diseases and illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and dementia.
This afternoon I plan to speak about the 13 per cent increase in Australian mortality. Those deaths occurred largely in the areas of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Many, including myself, are blaming the increase in unexplained deaths in Australia on the COVID-19 injections. Many of those are. Yet other reasons may be brought to light in a COVID royal commission that we need. One of those will be the failure of our health authorities to follow the most simple and fundamental pieces of health advice: preventative medicine.
Everyday Australians were advised to isolate from others and stay inside away from the sun, yet sunshine is a common natural treatment for COVID. The advice to stay out of the sun is the opposite of the advice that should have been provided. We knew right through COVID that those who were obese were the group most at-risk for an adverse reaction to COVID-19. Where was the advice to eat healthy, exercise and lose weight? Nothing. The only advice was to be afraid, be terrified, so as to force a fear-based level of obedience in a country that had always used a mate’s approach to health, like Life. Be in it.
At the same time, our health bureaucrats have acted to protect their friends in the quit-smoking industry through this recent ban on vapes. They’re protecting the quit-smoking industry, not smokers. One million Australians use a vape, many of whom use it to quit smoking. Australia’s smoking rate is higher than in countries with laws that allow vaping. Vaping stops smoking. Britain’s National Health Service advocate vaping as a quit-smoking medium, and our health authorities ban it. Why do they do that?
In 2024 public health has changed direction. Preventative health has turned into restorative health. Our health industry is now standing, figuratively, on every street corner hawking the latest drug to correct the very conditions that their failures in public health have made worse. How has this come about? How is this allowed to continue? These are my questions to government and to the media. Will you please start asking those questions?
Over $30,000 a year being stolen, and it’s been signed off by the union and the government. Find out about the largest wage theft from casuals in Australia.