House debates

Tuesday, 1 June 2021

Bills

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2021-2022, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022; Second Reading

5:58 pm

Photo of Craig KellyCraig Kelly (Hughes, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to raise a few issues during this debate on the appropriation bills. Firstly, I would sadly like to greatly criticise the decision of our Paralympic movement to discriminate against the Paralympic athletes. We have one rule for able-bodied athletes going to the Games in Tokyo and we have another rule for Paralympians. If you are going to the Olympics in Tokyo, your decision to take a COVID vaccine is up to you. It is freely available, but it is not mandatory. There is no requirement from the Japanese government. There is no requirement from the Olympic movement. There is no requirement from the Australian Olympic movement. Therefore, athletes, who rely on their body for their income and their livelihoods, are able to make a decision freely and in consultation with their own doctor. They are not coerced; they are not forced.

In contrast, our Paralympians have been told that, unless they take the new, novel, experimental genetic COVID vaccine, they will be unable to attend the Tokyo Paralympic Games. This is nothing other than shocking discrimination. I call on the Paralympic Committee: if you think that your Paralympians are somehow special and need special care and special treatment, and need to be looked after in this way, perhaps you are not the right people to be looking after and to be involved with our Paralympians.

I've had the great pleasure of seeing our Paralympians at their basketball games and their touch football games. These athletes are as tough and as hard as any other athlete playing any other sport. You see them tumble over in their chairs—not on soft grass, but on hard wooden floors—and pick themselves up and go again. The fact that they are being discriminated against is a shame upon our nation and it's a shame on the organisers of the Paralympic movement. I call on them to please rethink this. We should not be using coercion to force someone to have a vaccine against their free wishes and to take away that freedom. They may have trained for 10 years for their one moment to go to the Olympics and to have that taken away is shocking and a disgrace. The Paralympic movement needs to find the science and the evidence and to end the shocking discrimination.

The second issue: I would like to revisit the debate on hydroxychloroquine. We may remember on 28 August last year Australia's then Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth made some comments. He said:

… I think Australians are very clear which Kelly should be listened to in COVID-19, and that is Paul Kelly

And obviously not Craig Kelly. He continued:

And Paul Kelly, like myself, like all clinicians around Australia, understand that regrettably hydroxychloroquine is not effective for COVID-19.

Well, let's look at some of the recent evidence to test this proposition of Mr Coatsworth that it is not effective.

We have also had the Chief Medical Officer, on 13 January, saying:

… subsequently there have been many, many studies on hydroxychloroquine for both treatment and for prevention of COVID-19. And at this point there is no evidence that it is useful for either of those things.

Let's look at evidence. Let's look at what is actually happening. Last week, Dr Peter McCullough, MD, MHP, FACP, FACC, FAHA, FCRSA, FCCP, FNFK, FNLA—a gentleman that has more letters after his name than the alphabet! He is professor of medicine. He is someone who has had COVID himself and someone whose father has had COVID. He was asked the question during interview: 'In your practice did you find hydroxychloroquine to be effective?' Remember, we've got Mr Coatsworth saying, 'Like myself, all clinicians around Australia, understand that regrettably it is not effective.' So how did Dr McCullough answer this question when he was asked if, in his practice, treating real-life patients, it was effective? His answer was, 'Oh certainly. Hydroxychloroquine is the most frequently prescribed drug for this condition worldwide. It is the most studied drug. There have been over 200 clinical studies and the data is consistent.' He continued: 'It is enormously helpful and as part of a multi-drug regime. There are published studies that show it is a prophylaxis and it's about as prophylaxis as the vaccine. It can prevent about 90 per cent of cases. It is relied upon worldwide but unfortunately it has been politicised.' This is a complete contradiction to what our Chief Medical Officer and former Deputy Chief Medical Officer have said.

It is not just Dr McCullough. On 5 February Australia's Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, most likely a high credential immunologist in this country, said, Craig Kelly is 'absolutely right' in saying that hydroxychloroquine is useful in early treatment studies. Yet we have our Chief Medical Officer saying it is ineffective.

What are we up to with some of the studies? We know that for hydroxychloroquine we have 29 early treatment studies. Remember, we have our Chief Medical Officer saying at this point there is no evidence. Well, why are they not looking at these 29 studies? And 100 per cent of those studies have found hydroxychloroquine effective. A random effects meta-analysis with the pooled results of these 29 studies has shown that there is a 66 per cent improvement. The probability of getting 29 out of 29 early treatment studies to show an effective result if it were an ineffective treatment is one in 537 million. Maybe all these people are wrong. Maybe our Chief Medical Officer has got the one in 537 million chance that he is right.

What about some of the other evidence, some of the studies referred to? Interestingly, a study published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Medicine proposes an algorithm to treat COVID. In that algorithm, it includes treatment with hydroxychloroquine. So in this country we have Chief Medical Officer that says it doesn't work. In Queensland we have a Chief Medical Officer that is so convinced that had it doesn't work that she's criminalised it. In Queensland a doctor will go to jail for six months for applying a treatment that is published in a peer-reviewed journal—not just any peer-reviewed journal but the American Journal of Medicine. This treatment protocol, applied in the state of Queensland, would see a doctor jailed for six months.

I could go on with all these studies all night, but there are another two that I'd quickly like to point to. First, they say these studies don't have big enough numbers of people in them. Again, this is a peer-reviewed study published in International Immunopharmacology. It looked at a study from Iran, a retrospective study, of 28,759 adult patients with mild COVID symptoms. In that study, no less than 7,295 were treated with hydroxychloroquine. This peer-reviewed study with 11 authors—what was its conclusion? Remember those numbers. They treated 7,295 patients with a treatment that in Queensland would end up with a doctor in jail. That study found it lowered the risk of hospitalisation by 35.3 per cent and lowered the risk of death by 69.7 per cent. A treatment that's found in a peer-reviewed study of over 7,000 people lowers the risk of death by almost 70 per cent. The same treatment will put you in jail as a doctor in Queensland. This is an outrage. This is an embarrassment to our nation, an embarrassment to our country.

Deputy Speaker, if you add up all the studies on hydroxychloroquine, there are 246 to date and 185 have found positive results. The probability of an equal or greater percentage of that occurring is—wait for it—one in two quadrillion. Those are the odds it is an ineffective treatment. Yet today if a doctor in Australia banned from using it uses it in Queensland to try and save a life, he'll face six months in jail. This is an outrage. This is a disgrace. It's an affront to all the principles of medicine. It's an affront to our doctors, who we should trust with the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.

When our Chief Medical Officer was saying this drug wasn't effective, Professor Raymond Seet, from the University of Singapore, was conducting a randomised controlled trial, in Singapore, with hydroxychloroquine. What did that find? On 18 May, exactly when our health bureaucrats were saying, 'No, no, it doesn't work,' in Singapore they were treating over 3,000 low-risk patients with it, as a prophylaxis. What did they find, Mr Deputy Speaker? They found the risk of a severe disease was 35 per cent lower and the risk of contracting COVID was 32 per cent lower. The numbers of those studies were only low, they could have done better, but how can you have 32 per cent and 35 per cent improvement in a study in Singapore? I've heard other people say: 'These studies are in Asian countries. We should discount them.' Does anyone think that the medical authorities in Singapore are not qualified to carry out these tests? There you have it, Mr Deputy Speaker: 35 per cent lower risk of severe cases, and 32 per cent lower risk of getting infected.

In the remaining minute, I'd also like to comment on the amendment moved by the member for Melbourne. The member for Melbourne and I don't agree on a lot. In fact, I would say that on maybe 99.9 per cent of the subjects that come along the member for Melbourne and I disagree entirely—even down to the art in this Parliament House! But on this occasion the member for Melbourne is right about the publicly funded JobKeeper wage subsidy. Companies that have made a windfall profit, that have got JobKeeper but haven't needed it or used it, should pay it back. And many companies have. I notice Nick Scali, the furniture retailer, have paid it back—and good on them! Many companies that have benefited have had their best period of sales and profitability ever because of changes in consumer spending habits during the COVID lockdown. Some of those companies that got JobKeeper have, correctly, paid it back. The other companies should. If the boot were on the other foot—if a Labor government had given JobKeeper to the unions for the unions to pay out, and the unions had pocketed that money for themselves and not given it to the workers—we would be coming down on them like a tonne of bricks. It should not matter; it is the principle. These companies should pay this money back, and that is why I support the amendment by the member for Melbourne. (Time expired)

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