SuperKevni’s Pfizer Fizzer

Everyone needs a Covid hobby. Kevin Rudd, for example, busies himself by pointlessly intervening in vaccine delivery programs.

Kevni and Malcolm have formed their very own little Covid love bubble

Documentation of Rudd’s inconsequential hobby meddling then somehow ended up with the ABC’s Laura Tingle:

The bringing forward of millions of Pfizer vaccine doses last week followed a back channels intervention eight days earlier by a high-powered network which included a senior business figure despairing of the government's failure to secure enough vaccine supplies, and a former prime minister.

It is true, in a strictly chronological sense, that the bringing forward followed Rudd’s intervention. But it’s also true that the bringing forward followed Max Verstappen’s victory in the Austrian Grand Prix.

Certain gullible types immediately rushed to applaud Rudd for doing nothing at all besides chatting to a pharmaceuticals executive:

As a marketing guy how could @ScottMorrisonMP not see working with @MrKRudd on Pfizer supplies would have been great PR.

Australia would have seen a PM putting aside politics to LEAD in a time of crisis.

Instead, no credit, and smoked out by @latinglehttps://t.co/rKlhR3RFWh

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) July 11, 2021

And then there’s this bloke:

Thank you @MrKRudd for speaking to the Chairman of Pfizer to secure an earlier delivery of vaccines. Staggered the vaccination of Australians was apparently not important enough to warrant a call from @ScottMorrisonMP or @GregHuntMP to the Pfizer boss.

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) July 11, 2021

Pfizer has since set the record straight:

Pfizer says reports former prime minister Kevin Rudd played a hand in vaccine negotiations with the company are incorrect, saying there were only two parties involved in the agreement.

In a statement released on Monday, Pfizer said “all agreements and supply arrangements” were exclusively made with the federal government, in which it maintained a “strong relationship”.

“Recent media reports suggesting that any third party or individual has had any role in contractual agreements reached between Pfizer and the Australian government are inaccurate,” the statement said.

 “The only two parties involved in these agreements are Pfizer and the Australian government.”

The statement, however, didn’t deny representations had been made by Mr Rudd directly to Pfizer chairman and chief executive Albert Bourla via a Zoom call.

Nobody denies that. It’s just that Rudd’s representations – “I did so … purely in my private capacity as an Australian citizen who cares for his country's wellbeing” – didn’t change anything.

Further thoughts from Gray Connolly.

UPDATE. This joker is wrecked:

Here’s a statement from my office responding to media enquiries. pic.twitter.com/xsUWIHohM0

— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) July 12, 2021

So Rudd "would definitely not seek to associate himself" with the vaccine program.

But he just did.