Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

When Senator Pratt talks about delays in responses and lives being at risk, the senator and the Labor Party fail to understand the need to provide Australians with a full range of safe options for COVID. State and federal parliaments have chosen bullying to force mandatory vaccination on everyday Australians. They have driven a wedge into the Australian culture and left many in fear, without jobs, stressed and in tears.

Australians need a guarantee that the pharmaceuticals being rushed to market without proper approvals are 100 per cent safe, not just to this generation but to the next. Now Labor is pushing for more healthcare staff and resources when we may need them for only a few months. This will leave us with more debt for decades to come, simply because federal and state parliaments—Labor, Liberal and Nationals—refuse to consider a better way, using treatments alongside vaccines.

Healthcare heroes have been defending our health and lives. Now those same professionals are being intimidated and terminated by Liberal, Labor and Nationals governments for choosing, for daring to choose, not to be vaccinated and not to be injected. How can healthcare workers go so quickly from hero to villain? One Nation values all our healthcare and emergency services personnel. In many cases stress on the system is coming not from inadequate resources but from mismanagement and inefficient practices. Given the worldwide demand for healthcare resources, where are Senator Pratt's extra practising healthcare professionals going to come from? Is Labor going to rehire the unvaccinated people they're sacking? Because of the sackings we've seen AHPRA rush to requalify retired health professionals to practice without adequate retraining, support or professional development. Their skills may be out of date, and that puts lives at risk. The government's hasty ill-researched acceptance and $300 million purchase of molnupiravir is another example of selling pharmaceutical hype over proven treatments. It is Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals who are putting Australian lives at risk. (Time expired)