I joined Ben Dobbins on Rural Queensland today to talk about the Government releasing their COVID cover-up report. There were more holes in this inquiry than a block of swiss cheese, we need a Royal Commission to get the evidence so charges can be laid.

Transcript

Ben Dobbins:

Welcome back to Rural Queensland Today. I normally don’t get two politicians in one day, but this is very important. Malcolm Roberts joins us this morning, the One Nation Queensland senator, and rightly so, is pissed off. Now, the federal government have released a report after holding an inquiry into the COVID-19 response. Well, it was meant to come out in September, but their delay is typical. But gee whiz Malcolm, a lot has come out now to show that, jeez, we handled this poorly. We handled it so poorly and a lot of what everybody was saying was wrong from the government. Good morning.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Good morning Ben, and thank you for having me on. You’re absolutely correct.

Look, let’s face it, mate. This is a whitewash inquiry. And despite the fact that it was a whitewash and a cover-up, they couldn’t suppress some key points that you just very clearly articulated. The inquiry members were three supporters of lockdowns. They’re insider appointments from the government. They choked the terms of reference, they had left out the states, and yet the states were so egregious in the handling of this virus that they couldn’t help but condemn the states. There was no power in this whitewash inquiry to compel witnesses and to compel the giving of evidence.

And Ben, it’s so ironic. I moved a motion that was successful in the Senate last year, about this time last year, to have an inquiry into developing … Drafting the possible terms of reference for a possible future Royal Commission. That was an outstanding inquiry. We have got terms of reference, and I must commend Senator Paul Scarfe and the Liberal Party, who was chairman. Gave us free rein. And mate, we developed a phenomenal, and he in particular developed a phenomenal set of terms of reference, and that work has been used by the Kiwis in now extending their royal commission and making it a fair dinkum Royal Commission, and yet here we are in Australia with no Royal Commission.

Ben Dobbins:

Okay. What do you want to see now happen? Because it caused a lot of heartache for a lot of people, financially, emotionally. The whole thing has been a disaster. What would you have liked to have seen and what were the recommendations that come out of this report?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well, first thing I’d like to see is a proper fair dinkum Royal Commission. A judicial inquiry that can compel witnesses, compel, evidence. The bureau of-

Ben Dobbins:

What are we going to get from that, Malcolm it’s a dog’s breakfast.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

What we going to get is details around what was a dog’s breakfast. For example, I’m just going off some of the words from Minister Butler, the Labour Party minister and the Senate Health Minister in Canberra, who introduced the report from these commissioners yesterday. There was no shift. Listen to this. There was no shift from precautionary principle, which was used at the start, and we accept that, to a more evidence-based approach, including non-health aspects in a proportionate response. He is basically saying, in nice words, that was not evidence-based, it was not data-driven. It was disproportionate and completely over the top. That’s what we need to understand why and how that happened.

Then he said there’s a lack of transparency about the profound effect, exactly as you just said, on the lives of Australians and the loss of freedoms, their words from the report and from the minister. And then he said that there’s been a massive decrease in trust because a lack of real-time evidence-based policy. In other words, the policy was not based on real-time evidence. It was not based on data. And he said, “There’s been a huge decline in trust,” and that’s what the committee has said. We need to go into the details of all this and hold people accountable.

Ben, you will not get people to trust again until we know what went wrong in detail. You’ve got to have accountability. The government did not … And he also pointed out the government did not trust the people. So what we’ve got to do is restore basic freedoms, restore basic trust from the government and the people and get the details about this.

Ben Dobbins:

Yeah. I absolutely, absolutely agree with you 100%. I think it’s imperative that this happens, and something that I think needs to happen more and more. I absolutely fundamentally think that this should be something long-term that we look at even more and more. It’s important that we do this. It’s important that we have a long-term plan to make sure that this never happens again. We absolutely never go down this same road. So is that the reason why you want to get this … So if it does happen again, we never get locked up, vaccinated, our liberties absolutely taken away from us, families seeing loved ones die in the hospitals and not having any say of seeing them goodbye. Is that what you’re trying to get to so we never see this happen again?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Correct. But bit more than that. The minister himself and this Whitewash committee has confirmed that it was a disproportionate response along the lines you just said. For example, the panel has said, apparently, many of the measures taken in COVID are unlikely to be accepted by the population again. That means until the trust is restored, there will be no compliance, and there’ll be no voluntary adherence to it.

But Ben, we need to go further. I’m not going to talk about what you just said because you said it very, very well. We need to go further. Remember, in the early days of COVID we couldn’t get masks, we couldn’t get a lot of other things? We need to develop … One of the recommendations from this whitewash inquiry is to develop a whole of government plan to improve domestic and international supply chain resilience. Mate, we know that the food production is being interfered with in this country. The regions are doing their best to provide food, and the government is undermining their policy. We also know that you cannot manufacture and process without cheap energy, and our energy policies have been destroying our country’s productive capacity. We need a royal commission to get into the details of what is needed for complete recovery of our country. It’s on a highway to hell.

Ben Dobbins:

Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Malcolm, thanks so much for being with us. We might actually get this report up. One Nation Senator, thanks so much for being with us.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

You’re welcome, Ben. Thanks for telling the truth.

Ben Dobbins:

Good on you. We’ll take a break. Come back. This is Rural Queensland Today.

Thanks mate.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

You’re welcome, Ben. Keep doing what you’re doing, mate.