Ending Big Pharma’s Vaccine Indemnity By Brian Simpson

Senator Ralph Babet of the United Australian Party has introduced a Bill to parliament, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023, with the aim of ending the vaccine indemnity schemes that exist in Australia, which gives a legal outer to liabilities for vaccine injuries. According to the Senator: “The potential liability doesn’t end with Covid-19 vaccines. According to the 2023-24 budget, indemnity has also been granted in advance to a manufacturer of a smallpox/monkeypox vaccine and a particular manufacturer of Covid-19 pandemic and pre-pandemic influenza vaccines.” So, here are big interests and money at stake here.

In the US, the story goes that President Reagan had met with leaders of Big Pharma when this issue was raised in the US and Reagan asked why such an indemnity was needed. The vaxxers said because the amount of vaccine injuries would cripple their profits and they could not produce the vaccines. I think we will find the same forces coming into play here as Big Pharma will oppose most strongly the new Bill, and it has a stranglehold upon parliament; see if I am right on this one. But, it is worth trying, for the record.

https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/end-big-pharma-vaccine-indemnity

“United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet introduced a bill to the Senate today which, if passed, will mark the end of carte blanche vaccine indemnity schemes for big pharmaceutical corporations in Australia.

Senator Babet says that the bill will prevent the Australian Government from granting indemnity to vaccine manufacturers, which will in turn, “limit financial and legal risk to the Commonwealth and aid in the restoration of trust in medicine.”

“The potential liability doesn’t end with Covid-19 vaccines. According to the 2023-24 budget, indemnity has also been granted in advance to a manufacturer of a smallpox/monkeypox vaccine and a particular manufacturer of Covid-19 pandemic and pre-pandemic influenza vaccines,” says Senator Babet.

Senator Babet notes that such schemes incentivise risk-taking, as the pharma companies won’t be held liable if cutting corners leads to safety concerns.

“The Covid-19 vaccines have had an alarming adverse event reporting rate that is 23 times greater per dose than non-Covid-19 vaccines. They have resulted in over 139,000 adverse event reports and some people have died. The true scale of vaccine-related injuries and deaths is equally unquantifiable.”

To date, the Australian Government has refused to release its contracts with the Covid vaccine manufacturers. However, the provision of the federal vaccine injury claims scheme and the budgetary allocations for indemnity costs have been taken to indicate that it is the Australian Government (and therefore, taxpayers) who are copping the cost of Covid vaccine harms, not the pharma companies.

In 2021, it was widely reported that the big vaccine providers (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, etc) were riding roughshod over governments, securing secret contracts that enabled them to keep ownership of publicly funded patents, enabled profiteering, and that excused them from liability.

It is hard to imagine a strong reason for this bill to be voted down. The obvious counter is that vaccine development is in the interest of the nation, and as vaccine development is inherently risky, governments should offset that risk by providing indemnity. The obvious counter to this is that if governments take the risk, then taxpayers should share in the profits. That has not been the case.

A spokesperson for Senator Babet says that there is support within the Parliament for this bill. Next Thursday, the bill will be debated in Parliament, with the hope that it will instigate a broader public discussion about the nature of government agreements with large pharmaceutical corporations.

One would expect that a reasonable Parliament will progress this bill to the next stage, which would see it go to a Senate Committee for review. Then again, this Parliament voted no to releasing the Government’s Covid vaccine contracts, voted against launching an inquiry into Australia’s record excess deaths, and voted against several bills to end vaccine mandates.”

Guest where where this noble Bill will go?