Piers Akerman: Investigate politicians and health experts over Covid

We weren’t all in this together because of petty politicians and the lack of expertise displayed by our so-called health experts, writes Piers Akerman.

After nearly two years of exposure to the Wuhan flu, confusion about its origins, treatments, efficacy of vaccines and the repeated failures of health professionals and political responses remain to be explored.

The lack of transparency from the get-go – internationally and locally, at all levels – has been breathtaking.

The health experts don’t agree with each other and in the case of Queensland’s former chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young, who is now the state governor, have assisted a wave of vaccine hesitancy.

Queensland’s former chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young. Picture” Peter Wallis

State leaders, particularly Labor’s Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, Queensland’s Labor premier Anna Palaszczuk and Western Australia’s Labor Premier Mark McGowan, have been cruelly responsible for serial examples of inhumane treatment of ordinary Australians.

Only in the past week have Queenslanders been able to reunite with loved ones locked out of their state. West Australians will have to wait until early February.

Many missed funerals of close family members, marriages and births – all the milestones that knit family ties and bind generations.

Victorian police arrested pyjama-clad pregnant woman Zoe Buhler, 28, in her home in Victoria in front of her partner and children for posting information about an anti-lockdown protest on her Facebook page.

Queensland’s Palaszczuk refused to grant waivers for family members to attend the funeral of a dead baby but film stars and sport figures were granted admission at will.

Similarly, WA’s McGowan granted travel exemptions to local billionaires but refused to permit families to come together for weddings and funerals.

As Australians travelled to be with their long-separated loved ones for Christmas, former PM Tony Abbott called for a royal commission into the handling of the pandemic.

Speaking to the International Institute For Strategic Leadership Dialogue (forced to hold its sessions by video-link for the second year in a row), Abbott said it was essential the decisions of government and officials be scrutinised once victory over the pandemic is declared. Abbott said he was particularly concerned by the lack of parliamentary scrutiny to date.

“The most important decisions that have been made in a generation, at least in terms of spending and restrictions, and there has never been a full debate in the parliament and there has never been a vote on it,” he said.

“The democratic deficit which exists increasingly in these ‘expertocracies’ that we have become has been radically exacerbated by this and I think that is one of the reasons that so many people are feeling frankly pretty disgruntled right now.”

To that, I would demand the actions of the Therapeutic Goods Administration be thoroughly investigated in regard to its illogical rejection of drugs proved to reduce the risk of Covid death and its pandering to big pharmaceutical companies, and I would add its refusal last week to reschedule for therapeutic use the hallucinogens MDMA and psilocybin in the treatment of depression.

Premier Dominic Perrottet has scrapped mandatory mask-wearing in NSW. Picture: Getty Images

According to the Productivity Commission, one in five Australians – pre-Covid – suffered from a mental illness and one in eight Australians (including one in four older people) were on antidepressants.

Lobby group Mind Medicine Australia chairman Peter Hunt pointed to the volumes of research conducted by the US Federal Drugs Administration which has permitted therapeutic use of the hallucinogens and expressed bitter disappointment with the TGA’s decision to reject FDA findings and deny access to MDMA and psilocybin therapy to people suffering from treatment-resistant depression and PTSD in Australia.

Finally, when the pandemic first reached Australia, I believed that the national approach trumpeted by Prime Minister Scott Morrison was necessary and achievable. I took umbrage at then NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet’s resistance to the national cabinet’s plan to house new arrivals in hotel quarantine and charge the costs back to their home states.

For this, I apologise. Perrottet correctly read his fearmongering interstate colleagues and accurately predicted they’d leave NSW to pick up the bills. We weren’t all in this together because of the petty politicking of pusillanimous politicians and the lack of expertise displayed by our so-called health experts.

The people have been denied the protection of their constitution.