Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025, Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025

Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (19:07): I want to follow on from the remarks in the member for Macarthur's speech—erudite. I want to make it clear how much respect I have for the member for Macarthur. We came into parliament together in 2016.

I went walkabout for three years, but he has always, I thought, served the parliament extremely well. Obviously we have a difference of opinion occasionally with how we vote, but his contributions in this chamber—particularly on matters related to the context of health care—have always added substance. He's actually lacked a partisanship, because I think he's motivated from a heartfelt and genuinely sincere place.

I say that, genuinely and sincerely, from the bottom of my heart as well. So I take everything he has just said on board with sincerity and the good spirits in which it's intended. Nobody who's debating this legislation starts from a position of arguing against the importance of preparation around health care, making sure that we have access to services, containment of diseases or, of course, protection of the Australian public.

I'm sure he's not suggesting anything along those lines or an unwillingness to focus on disease control. How best we do that, though, in terms of legislation, the institutions we build and the powers they have is an enormously important part of the framework, particularly because—as the member for Macarthur correctly identified—it comes off the back of a period in which there has been, let's say, an elevated level of distrust from a large section of the Australian community about how powers have been used and/or abused in recent years.

Being from the great state of Victoria myself, I watched as our state government lied to the people of Victoria. When I say 'lied', I mean they explicitly lied and said that there was evidence as the basis and justification. They used the case of expert evidence which never existed to shut down, silence people, lock people in their homes, impose a curfew and bully children and families for two years and refuse to adapt and adjust.

I fully understand that there is a need to have evolutionary policy to address the challenges of health care. But I can tell you one thing—some of us are deeply sceptical of the idea of a starting point where we just get together people who through a different basis of argument are declared experts and who then declare emergencies and the job of the Australian people is to suddenly conform.

It doesn't matter what the issue is. It doesn't even matter whether I agree with it or not. Democratic accountability and responsibility are a necessary part of the institutions of our democracy.

But it's not just that; it's also so that people can be held accountable because the member for Macarthur is right—we got things wrong during the pandemic. I don't just mean this in chamber; I also mean the state governments and their failure to adapt. One of the greatest problems is how unwilling we as a nation have been to acknowledge some of those problems at different points, but there is no state where that has been more egregious than the great state of Victoria, which literally bullied Victorian citizens into compliance and control.

Once upon a time you'd say the peak point of insanity in the state of Victoria was when—I say this politely and with the greatest respect to my fellow citizens—they re-elected the government that did that. But, actually, I'm wrong. The peak point of insanity in the state of Victoria was when our former premier decided to sidle up against the world's most horrific and egregious dictators and get happy snaps next to people like the President of Russia and Kim Jong Un.

This is insanity. This is not a partisan point I'm seeking to prosecute. It is a point about control.

One of the reasons why, at the core, people like me are Liberal is that we believe that people should be empowered to be able to make decisions about their lives. They should not have a situation where the government seeks to impose control over people's lives. I know the government whip has rushed in here against the idea of somebody daring to stand up against the idea of Labor Party control—using instruments of state to impose conformity onto people's lives and to bully people.

How dare people raise that banner! But that is the reality— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Young ): Order! The member for Lalor?

Ms Ryan: On a point of order, could the member be directed to speak to the legislation. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes—if the member can steer back that way. In general terms, I think he is being loosely relevant.

If you can bring yourself back there, the House would appreciate it. Mr TIM WILSON: I can assure you, Deputy Speaker Young, I'm definitely being relevant where we have institutions of state that have been established and other institutions that the government wishes to establish to give themselves large amounts of power to use as justification to control Australians' lives.

That's part of the legislative framework of what they're putting forward. All I'm doing is simply looking at historical precedent of how those things have been abused and how members on the other side of this chamber applauded that every step of the way and condemned anybody who at any point has stood up to challenge or question their authority. We have just heard that from the whip when I dared raise questions about the despicable conduct and behaviour that occurred during that period, where we saw children denied education under the banner, without any evidence, which caused mental scars and long-term or lifelong mental health damage because some experts declared that they knew better than everybody else.

I understand it was difficult, but one of the biggest problems was the complete and utter failure of the so-called experts to be able to adapt, evolve or acknowledge that they got some things wrong. We heard recently from the former chief medical officer of Victoria that, in fact, there wasn't a lively evidentiary base, but that certainly wasn't how it was presented to the people of Victoria at that time.

What we actually needed from the public health community at that time was a little bit of humility—for them to acknowledge that they got something wrong and to actually take the public with them and persuade them. And yes, sometimes I'm raising my voice about this. I tell you what—no matter what you said at that time, people were bullied and silenced if they dared to speak up.

In fact, some people were even shot with rubber bullets, simply because they dared to have a contrarian view. So yes, people were angry. And some people are still angry, because they were never heard and they were never listened to.

Government members interjecting— Mr TIM WILSON: I hear some of the Labor members from New South Wales, who weren't even experiencing the full consequences of it and who don't seem to understand just how much Victorians despise the treatment they received. It is just like so many other areas of public health that this Labor government continues to completely ignore.

We currently have a situation where we have organised crime gangs that pick up Molotov cocktails and throw them at small businesses, under the banner that we should be able to tax products into perpetuity, so those products become a direct incentive to fuel organised crime under the banner of public health. But apparently we can't challenge that or question that.

Well, sorry—welcome to reality. We're going to challenge it, we're going to question it. We're actually going to say, 'No, there are other principles at play, and you can't just have control; you can't just dictate to us how we're going to live our lives.' We live in a free society.

We're going to stand up. We're going to speak for ourselves. We're going to make sure that the institutions are here to stand up for our freedom and for our rights to be able to live our lives.

We will not simply conform to whatever the Labor Party wants. When they establish new institutions, they go around trying to bully and intimidate Australians. We are not going to simply sit back and take it any longer, because some of these Australians live the full consequences of the bullying and the intimidation, not just by the Victorian government but by other state governments at the time.

So yes, people are passionate, people are proud, and people are absolutely going to stand up, and we will not be afraid to keep fighting. When it comes to this legislation, we're looking at it and saying, 'You haven't made the case.' The Labor Party hasn't made the case. They get up here and want to lecture everybody.

They don't want to listen. They're not interested in the genuine, serious and deep concerns about trust that exist within the community. They're not interested in understanding why there is a deep concern about making sure legislation goes through proper consultation, proper engagement, to build trust where trust has been broken.

And they were core to the problems of breaking that trust. They're not interested in understanding why some sections of the Australian community want to know what steps are going to be taken, not just now but into the future, to rebuild the trust that was destroyed at that time. Without ambiguity, I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done across the entirety of the Australian community in terms of addressing those problems of trust, because it is important.

We need public health experts and health experts to inform public policy. But we also need elected officials to take responsibility and have accountability, and that's what we haven't had. That's why so many Australians are upset and angry and will continue to be so, because of that lack of transparency and that lack of honesty.

We had politicians deceive the Victorian community and use the banner of public health as the basis on which to engage in that deceit. They have since acknowledged it, fessed up and told the Victorian people that they lied, and we have since had the former chief medical officer of Victoria say, 'We didn't really have any evidence to substantiate that.' I remember at the time I challenged the Premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, saying, 'There's no evidentiary basis, and it's a violation of people's human rights to impose a curfew.' He said, 'Well I'm interested in human life, not human rights.' There is no evidentiary basis.

He just lied to you—the Australian people, the Victorian people. That's all that happened. The Victorian government lied to the people and bullied them into their homes.

So, yes—it directly links. Some of the members are asking, 'How does it link to this legislation?' When it comes down to it, the Labor Party wants another artifice where they can declare emergencies and justify the imposition of controls to be able to dictate people's lives. We're simply reminding you of the historical precedence—the things Labor members want to and have run interference on before.

I'm sorry—this is where your history and your past catch up with you, members of the Labor Party. It's the point at which people come to realise that, when you have deceived the Victorian and the Australian communities in the past over your misconduct and abused the trust of the Victorian and the Australian people, people then don't trust you on these issues in the future.

You, Labor, are the active underminers of public trust in public health. Labor are the active underminers of trust in making sure that we stop things like organised crime. Labor use public health every step of the way as a weapon to try and impose conformity and control because that is central to their playbook.

It's central to how they approach public policy. Every artifice of the state has only one purpose, which is to manipulate and control people's lives, because that is central to what they want to do—impose conformity. I end where I started with the member for Macarthur.

I don't doubt for second the member for Macarthur's sincerity. I think he's a fundamentally good man. And I start of by at least acknowledging—unlike the members complaining on the other side of this chamber right now—he started by acknowledging that things were wrong during the pandemic, just like I have, and good on him for doing so. taken the millions McCarthy, I think is a fundamentally good man and I stay off my lease acknowledging unlike the members complaining on the other side of the chamber right now, he started by acknowledging that things were wrong during the pandemic.

Just like I am. And good on him for doing so. Ms Claydon: You were in charge!

Mr TIM WILSON: Absolutely. Members are saying, 'You were in charge.' At the federal level it was a coalition government. I don't think they got everything right, just to be clear, and I made that clear at the time.

I also think that's true at the state level. The difference is that I've got the guts to admit it to some of the members opposite, whereas they don't have the guts to admit on their own side their criticisms of the Labor Party. That's the difference.

To the credit of the member for Macarthur, he has the guts to admit it. That's the difference. A bit of humility wouldn't go astray.

A bit of honesty wouldn't go astray if you wish to rebuild trust. But instead what we've had is the constant lecturing, the constant intimidation, the constant attacks, the constant deception and the exposition of lies. At the heart of what Labor wants to do is weaponise every single part of the artifice of the state to control people's lives, and that is why they have destroyed trust around public health.

They ought to be ashamed of themselves.