Craig Kelly (Hughes, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move amendment (1) circulated in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 4), before the heading specifying National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits-Budget and Other Measures) Act 2018, insert:

National Health Act 1953

1A At the end of section 9B

Add:

(11) Nothing in this section or any other Commonwealth law allows the Minister to:

(a) require a person to receive a vaccine; or

(b) provide, or arrange for the provision of, a vaccine unless the Minister is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the vaccine is not or will not be administered to a person without the person's free and informed consent.

(12) Without limiting paragraph (11)(b), a person's consent to the administration of a vaccine to the person is not free and informed if:

(a) when the person consents, the person is under a threat of negative consequences (including prejudice or disadvantage) if the person does not consent; or

(b) the consent is a result of coercion.

1B After subsection 84C(1AA)

Insert:

(lAB) To avoid doubt, for the purposes of determining a person's eligibility for a concession card or any other concession or benefit under this Act, it is irrelevant whether the person has been injected with any:

(a) experimental medical intervention; or

(b) medical intervention that has less than 5 years of safety data.

1C After subsection 101(4F)

Insert:

(4G) The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee must:

(a) review recommendations made by the Advisory Committee on Medicines Scheduling in relation to new restrictions on prescribing previously approved drugs for off-label use; and

(b) advise the Minister and the Department about the recommendations.

1D After subsection 132G(2)

Insert:

(2B) Nothing in this section or any other Commonwealth law allows the Minister to:

(a) require a person to receive a COVID-19 vaccine; or

(b) provide, or arrange for the provision of, a COVID-19 vaccine unless the Minister is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the vaccine is not or will not be administered to a person without the person's free and informed consent.

(2C) Without limiting paragraph (2B)(b), a person's consent to the administration of a COVID-19 vaccine to the person is not free and informed if:

(a) when the person consents, the person is under a threat of negative consequences (including prejudice or disadvantage) if the person does not consent; or

(b) the consent is a result of coercion.

1E At the end of Part VIIIB

Add:

132H Restrictions on COVID-19 treatments

(1) This section applies to a treatment for COVID-19 that:

(a) has documented success in reducing hospitalisation or death from COVID-19; and

(b) is currently being provided by medical practitioners in Australia.

(2) Before the Minister engages in conduct (whether or not under this Act) that would have the effect of restricting the ability of medical practitioners to provide the treatment, the Minister must consult with the medical practitioners in Australia who currently provide the treatment.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (2), engages in conduct includes makes a legislative instrument.

There are five separate clauses to this one amendment which I have put together as a single amendment for the ease of the House. Firstly, I will talk about clauses 1A and 1D together as they are basically the same. They amend to enhance the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme section 9B, which is the provision of vaccines, and also section 132G(2), which is the provision of COVID vaccines and treatments. Both parts have the same wording, which I'll read out. They add two paragraphs to both those sections, and they are:

(11) Nothing in this section or any other Commonwealth law allows the Minister to:

(a) require a person to receive a vaccine; or

(b) provide, or arrange for the provision of, a vaccine unless the Minister is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the vaccine is not or will not be administered to a person without the person's free and informed consent.

(12) Without limiting paragraph (11)(b), a person's consent to the administration of a vaccine to the person is not free and informed if:

(a) when the person consents, the person is under a threat of negative consequences (including prejudice or disadvantage) if the person does not consent; or

(b) the consent is a result of coercion.

These two additional parts of the amendment to the National Health Act are most important. We have two provisions in the act about the provision of vaccines, but neither of them have any requirement that the administration of those vaccines be only done with free and informed consent. This is a fundamental tenet of medical ethics that has developed over the centuries, and it should be in our National Health Act to spell it out loudly and clearly.

The reason this amendment is needed is that it's very clear when it comes to free consent that we have medical treatments being administered in this nation today that are not given with free consent. And we see it in thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs and occupations, from airline pilots to nurses to schoolteachers to people that work at Woolworths. They are facing not only a loss of their job unless they submit to take one of the COVID vaccines; in many cases, they are facing the loss of their career. They are being prohibited to work in their career of choice. When someone has a mortgage to pay, when someone has rent to pay, when someone has children that they need to look after, they have no option; it is coercion and threats that they are actually taking these COVID vaccines under. That is not free consent. We have a society at the moment where you cannot cross a state border unless you have been vaccinated. In Sydney today, I cannot sit in a barber's chair and get a haircut; I cannot sit in a barber's chair in Queanbeyan, but, if I come across the border to Canberra, I can get a haircut. In Sydney today, inside, I cannot sing, I cannot dance, because I'm unvaccinated.

This is an absurdity. We are abandoning those principles of medical ethics that have stood us in good stead and have been developed over the centuries. Those two provisions need to be put in to ensure that we are getting free consent. Because it's free and informed—that's the phrase. There is also no informed consent. How can we have informed consent in this nation when we have doctors that are censored and silenced and face threat of deregistration if they decide to put up an alternative expert medical opinion?

There is no one source of truth in this issue. It is important that we allow doctors to be doctors, to practise medicine. (Time expired)

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you want to seek the call again?

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek the call again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Hughes.

Doctors must be free to give their own opinion to their patients. The sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship is important, and we cannot have informed consent in this nation if our doctors are silenced, censored and face threat of deregistration, because that is exactly what is happening. There cannot be informed consent when other medical experts from around the world, such as Dr Peter McCullough—probably one of the most highly qualified medical minds in all of the United States of America—says, in his belief, that the vaccines are not sufficiently effective and they are not sufficiently safe and should be stopped tomorrow, but his opinion is not allowed on any mainstream media. His opinion is censored from places like Facebook and Twitter. How can there be informed consent if there is a suppression of free speech? And how can there be informed consent when we continue to say 'safe and effective' but yet there is zero—I repeat zero—long-term safety data?

As for the short-term safety data, the method of data collection is not fit for purpose. It is grossly underreporting the number of adverse events. I'll give an example of this. We have the TGA collecting data for adverse events, and they currently say the number of adverse events from the COVID vaccines is 0.21 per cent. The question is: how many are being underreported? The TGA say: very little. However, we have another group that reports on vaccine safety, called AusVaxSafety. What do AusVaxSafety do? They actually contact, rather than wait for a voluntary response. They are sending SMS messages out to people after they have the COVID vaccine. They have got over four million responses back, and those responses show that the number of people going to a hospital or emergency department or doctor's surgery—which, according to the TGA, should all be reported, under the method they use—is running at 0.9 per cent. So the TGA data is 0.21 per cent, and the AusVaxSafety data is 0.9 per cent—and we know the AusVaxSafety data is underreported because it only goes out on the third day. From that, we know that the TGA's data of adverse events is missing at least 75 per cent of adverse events occurring. Yet that is not reported.

How can there be informed consent? Are parents aware that when their child, a 12- to 17-year-old child, goes and gets a vaccine, their child, if they are in the United States of America, would not be getting the Moderna vaccine because the Food and Drug Administration in the US has not yet decided that it is safe for injection in a 12-year-old child? Do Australian parents understand, and are they given the information, that the Moderna vaccine being injected into their 12-year-old child has been suspended as an injection for 12-year-old children in places like Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and many other countries? Is that information being given to parents? Do parents know the data from AusVaxSafety about young adolescents, which shows that, in comparison to the Pfizer vaccine, while the Pfizer vaccine in adolescents reports at least one adverse event in 48 per cent of kids after the second dose the Moderna vaccine reports adverse events in an incredible 61 per cent? Are parents informed that, of the Pfizer vaccine in adolescents, just over one in 100 people report going to the emergency department and seeing a doctor after their second dose of Pfizer but just under two in 100 do if they are given a dose of Moderna? For adolescents, the chances of ending up needing to see a doctor or going to hospital increase by almost 100 per cent if they take the Moderna vaccine over the Pfizer vaccine. Are parents being informed of that? (Time expired)

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you want to seek the call again?

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek the call again.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hughes.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is clearly not informed consent, and that is the reason why I have moved that amendment.

The other amendment I have moved in this series of amendments is about the functions of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, to include after section 101(4F):

(4G) The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee must:

(a) review recommendations made by the Advisory Committee on Medicines Scheduling in relation to new restrictions on prescribing previously approved drugs for off-label use …

Why is this needed? We have had this advisory committee on medicines deciding they would ban ivermectin in this country. Who reviews this decision? Who questions them? We have experts in this country—men like Professor Thomas Borody, with more letters after his name than the alphabet, and Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy—who not only have been using these treatments on Australians but have documented and shown that they are saving lives. They have documented and shown that they are keeping Australians out of hospital. Yet an unelected group of unaccountable faceless bureaucrats, many of them not even medical people, have come forward and told those two medical geniuses, who are among the highest qualified people in this country, that they cannot use a treatment that they have demonstrated will save lives. There clearly needs to be more oversight of these groups because they are not doing their job as the Australian public would want them to.

The other amendment is to section 132, which relates to the provision of COVID vaccines and treatments. It calls for the minister, before engaging in any conduct that would restrict any medical practitioners, such as Professor Borody and the 30 doctors he had working underneath him, to engage in some consultation. Has the minister sat down with Professor Borody to go through the results of his trials? There have been 600 patients and zero deaths. We know that in an equivalent group of 600 Australians who had COVID there would normally be seven deaths. There should be in the legislation a requirement for the minister and the department to consult with these medical doctors, who are saving lives, before they pull the rug from underneath them.

These are sensible amendments to this bill. They enhance the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to talk simply about more oversight and more consultation and to make sure that the concepts of free and informed choice and consent are enshrined in law. I would hope that every single member of this House supports the amendments.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be disagreed to.

Question agreed to.

The question now is that the bill be agreed to.

Question agreed to.