Two years after our health bureaucrats got together and decided it was time to call the pandemic off, we are still none the wiser about what really went on during the Covid years.

The entire country was shut down, and we still can’t really explain why.

People’s civil liberties were restricted in a way that would have made a communist dictator blush, yet we still cannot pinpoint the exact reasons.

Real-world evidence comparing Sweden, where lockdowns were not implemented, with nations like ours – where government panic in my home state of Victoria, for instance, led to police-enforced curfews and rings of steel around Melbourne – showed that Sweden arguably did better!

And yet our government’s response has been to shrug, to sweep it under the carpet, and to insist ‘there’s nothing to see here’.

The Albanese government won the last election promising Australians answers. The Prime Minister stood and told Australians that if we put him in the Lodge, he would hold ‘a Royal Commission or similar inquiry’ that would get to the bottom of what happened during the pandemic.

Mr Albanese made his new home in the Lodge and then, instead of implementing a Royal Commission, he announced what appears to be a sham inquiry that would address everything except the things Australians were demanding to know.

Where were state premiers getting their advice?

Were decisions to lock people down based on science, or on polling?

Were restrictions on people’s movement based on data, or focus groups?

Did government decisions protect the public being protected, or were we being played?

The Prime Minister arrived at the Lodge promising responsibility, accountability and transparency, but he gave us a Clayton’s inquiry that will provide neither responsibility, nor accountability, nor transparency.

I co-sponsored a bill with Senator Matt Canavan, and a number of independent senators, to establish a Commission of Inquiry into Covid that would effectively have had the same powers as the Royal Commission that the Australian people deserve.

This was, after all, what the Australian people had been promised.

I used my private senator’s time in the last sitting of August to bring the bill up for debate and force a vote. Sadly, Labor voted it down, along with the Liberal leader in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, two other Liberals (Senators Henderson and Paterson), and Senator Tyrrell from Tasmania.

It’s sad to see the duopoly in action, blocking the Australian people from accessing the accountability and answers they deserve.

This kind of betrayal is not as rare as one would think.

A number of Liberals, including Senator Birmingham, also sided with Labor earlier that same week to vote against my motion in support of rendering care to babies born alive following a failed abortion.

Democracy and human rights are the real victims of the Liberal/Labor duopoly.

If you believe this Prime Minister when he insists ‘my word is my bond’ you probably also believe the Covid vaccine was ‘safe and effective’.

The Australian people now have two outrages concerning the Covid pandemic.

There’s the response to Covid, and there’s the response to the response to Covid, which is one of complete and utter disinterest.

I’m still wanting to know why we were made to stand 1.5m from each other. On whose advice and on what scientific basis?

In New South Wales, people were told it was not safe to talk to their neighbours. Can you believe that?

And we still don’t know on what basis the government gave that advice.

In South Australia, the people were locked down without the right to exercise or even walk their dog.

Playgrounds were closed and sport was called off.

Why were children kept from going to school? Who made that decision? What data informed them?

How was it that Victorian bureaucrats decided it was too dangerous to play golf, or that a curfew was the most effective way to fight the virus?

Which health expert came up with the idea that you could have one friend visit you at home, but not three?

What’s in those vaccine contracts? How big is the blank cheque that was signed on behalf of taxpayers?

How much taxpayer money was really wasted?

Have government spending and reserve bank decisions led to our inflationary and housing affordability crises?

I could go on and on – listing trivial interferences in our lives as well as outrageous impositions that destroyed businesses and families.

And the maddening thing is that – for the most part – we are still completely clueless as to who decided what, and how decisions were made during that time.

Australians just want the truth.

Australians deserve to know the truth about what really went on during the Covid years.

When will we get it?

So many lives were destroyed by the pandemic response. Will anyone admit fault?

Will anyone put their hand up and say they got it wrong?

To simply move on from the pandemic, as if nothing ever happened, is an outrage greater than the multiple outrages perpetrated during the pandemic itself.

The Covid-19 Response Commission of Inquiry Bill 2024 would have finally given us a chance to forensically examine how government and public institutions handled the Covid crisis.

To deny Australians that opportunity represents an epic failure of curiosity, a dereliction of public duty, and heaps insult upon injury to the millions of Australians whose lives were devastated, not by the virus, but by the government’s response to the virus.

University of NSW Professor of Economics Gigi Foster analysed the economic, health and societal impact of government-imposed Covid lockdowns and estimated the cost was 68 times greater than any benefit provided.

If she’s even half right, we should surely investigate that.

A panel chaired by former top bureaucrat Peter Shergold found that the government response to Covid smacked of over-reach that ‘lacked compassion, consistency and clarity’, and that actually worsened inequalities.

If this is even partly true, decency – let alone duty – demands a full and frank inquiry.

I could fill columns of news space with examples of how state and federal governments – first driven by fear and then drunk on power – hurt and harmed citizens with their manic Covid response.

All of this demands a full investigation.

And that’s to say nothing of vaccine mandates which threatened free men and women with punitive measures, effectively turning them into second-class citizens – destroying their livelihoods and breaking up their families – if they declined a drug that has since proven to be, shall we say, less than entirely safe or effective. These mandates continue to wreak their havoc in some industries, like Victorian Firefighters, to this day.

We now have overwhelming evidence of vaccine injuries. But what about our excess deaths?

Are we not in the least bit curious? Do we not care even a bit?

Are we really going to tell Australians that we are disinterested?

If there is any truth at all to these reports, should we not investigate in order to ensure lessons are learned and mistakes are never again repeated?

A once-in-a-100-year pandemic demands a once-in-a-lifetime commission of inquiry. And yet the government is completely disinterested.

It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that when this government shows disinterest in the pandemic response, it really means that it is disinterested in you.

We need answers and we need them now.

Senator Ralph Babet, United Australia Party