Recent revelations of a cover-up over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and of the Australian government’s deliberate suppression of free speech during the pandemic have made the need for a Royal Commission more urgent.

The Prime Minister has promised it, and while he’s not known for keeping promises (remember how our electricity bills were supposed to fall by $275 per year), he must keep this.

The pandemic was the most disruptive event in Australia since the Second World War. Thousands of people died. Entire cities were locked down. State borders were closed. Military forces were deployed to support the police. Hundreds of billions of dollars were borrowed by Australian governments to fund pandemic relief.

Thousands of jobs were lost, and many skilled workers in critical sectors are still excluded from working thanks to vaccine mandates being maintained by vindictive government bureaucracies. Thousands of businesses closed, many never to open again.

Fundamental human rights like freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom of assembly and freedom of association were suppressed or attacked outright. Australians who questioned or resisted these attacks were demonised by the media and elected politicians.

Only a Royal Commission has the necessary coercive power to compel the ‘expert’ health advice that led to lockdowns and mandates – advice which remains hidden from the Australian people – and unearth the accurate figures on who died from, or just died with, the virus. We need to learn what worked and what didn’t to better prepare us for the next pandemic.