Independent ACT senator David Pocock has again backed United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet’s quest to investigate excessive deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, this time securing a Senate inquiry that will report back in April. Source: Canberra Times.
In what the anti-vaccine senator claims “appears to be a world-first inquiry for what is a global issue”, the Coalition, One Nation, and Lidia Thorpe supported Senator Babet’s motion co-sponsored by Senator Pocock and senator Jacqui Lambie. The vote was 31-to-30.
In a statement, Senator Babet said Australians have been dying in excess numbers without adequate explanation for the past few years.
“In 2022 we experienced our highest excess death rate since World War Two,” he said. “The ABS provisional mortality statistics released last month confirm that to November 2023 there were 15,114 or 10 per cent more deaths than the baseline average.”
Senator Pocock said he is acting on the concern of public health experts, and he amended the inquiry’s terms of reference with Senator Lambie.
“While I don’t think there is evidence to support conspiracy theories that have circulated for some time now, there’s no harm in looking at what other potential drivers might be behind this data,” he said.
“I don’t accept the conspiracy theories that have featured so heavily in the discourse around COVID-19 and vaccines, however, I do acknowledge there is data showing excess mortality rates have increased in recent years.”
He said there are potential non-vaccine reasons for the higher than normal death rates, such as people delaying seeing a doctor during COVID and a rise in alcohol-related deaths.
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Pocock supports inquiry into why more Australians are dying than usual (By Karen Barlow, Canberra Times)
