Calls Intensify for New Covid Inquiry in New Zealand

Written by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D on September 24, 2024. Posted in Current News

A member of the New Zealand Parliament called on the country’s Covid commission to stop ignoring the voices of people injured by the vaccines, as other critics accused the commission of “not looking for the truth.”

Tanya Unkovich, a member of the New Zealand Parliament, spoke on Sept. 11 and called for the second phase of the Royal Commission: COVID-19 Lessons Learned to give a voice to people who were affected by COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

The call comes as a legal case against Barry Young, a New Zealand government whistleblower, drags on.

Last year, Young, then an employee of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, leaked data suggesting “really big red flags” and “really big safety signals” connected to the COVID-19 vaccines.

He is facing trial and seven years’ imprisonment for revealing that data.

In her parliamentary speech, interrupted by heckling from parliament members, Unkovich said:

“Many New Zealanders … have felt shunned, ignored, gaslit, coerced, isolated and forgotten. New Zealanders [are] unable to participate in an inquiry where they can truly tell their stories.

Those stories can include vaccine mandates, vaccine efficacy and safety, the reporting and monitoring of adverse reactions to vaccines and vaccine approvals and procurement.”

Unkovich said she and members of her party, New Zealand First, have spoken to people injured by the COVID-19 shots.

She said:

“New Zealand First knows that there are stories out there because we have spent the time to listen to them. We all have our personal experiences to draw on during these years. I certainly have mine now.

This House must understand that there are still many Kiwis out there who are still hurting. We have walked with them, sat with them and we are working to support their needs in this house.”

‘The people involved are not looking for the truth’

Katie Ashby-Koppens, an Australian attorney who worked with groups in New Zealand opposed to pandemic-related mandates and restrictions told The Defender, “It’s about time a politician has stood up to acknowledge those injured by the COVID-19 injections.”

According to Ashby-Koppens, the Royal Commission, launched in December 2022, “was commenced by our former Labour government,” including the country’s ex-prime minister Jacinda Ardern — “the ones that imagined and then enforced the COVID public health measures.”

Young told The Defender the commission is “a legacy hangover from the days of Ardern’s frightening term in power.” He described Ardern as “the most despotic, terrifyingly unsympathetic and inhumane leader in New Zealand history.”

According to the commission’s most recent quarterly report, published in March, “almost 13,000 New Zealanders shared their stories with the Inquiry.”

But Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, told The Defender, “We hear the talk, but we don’t see people walking the talk. The talk sounds great, but the actions aren’t backing up the words so far.”

“The people involved are not looking for the truth,” Kirsch said. “They’re looking to basically provide cover so that the government can say, ‘yes, we had an investigation and everything is fine, and let’s continue to do this for the next 20 years while we kill people.’”

According to Ashby-Koppens, limits to the inquiry’s scope, spelled out in the 2022 government order establishing the commission, have turned the investigation into “a farce.”

These limits include any investigation into vaccine efficacy, “particular clinical decisions made by clinicians or by public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and how and when the strategies and other measures devised in response to COVID-19 were implemented or applied “in particular situations or in individual cases.”

Young said the inquiry set easily attainable standards for itself.

“Apparently, all legitimate safety concerns were ‘out of scope’ for this commission,” Young said. “The current Royal Commission has got the complete wrong end of the stick. The low bar they set themselves has been easily met. This was a sham, wasting millions of taxpayers’ money.”

In its preelection campaign, New Zealand First included a call for expanded terms for a Royal Commission “and on the back of that election promise, New Zealand First got the eight [parliamentary] seats it did,” Ashby-Koppens said.

These promises also made their way into the party’s coalition agreements with its governing partners, Ashby-Koppens said.

Ashby-Koppens said there is support for expanding the country’s COVID-19 inquiry, noting that a draft proposal she prepared earlier this year garnered over 30,000 signatures.

However, the partners in New Zealand’s governing coalition have been unable to agree on terms for an expanded inquiry.

“This has brought about the resignation of the remainder of the Phase 1 Commissioners,” Ashby-Koppens said, noting that Phase 2 will “focus on vaccines” but “still excludes the specific epidemiology of the COVID-19 virus and its variants.”

According to Ashby-Koppens, the final report of Phase 1 of the inquiry is due in November, but Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden announced earlier this month she will withhold the report’s findings from the public until the completion of Phase 2 of the Inquiry.

“The Phase 2 report is not expected out until early 2026 — just in time for the next election,” Ashby-Koppens said. “Sitting on the Phase 1 report for another 18 months seems unjust.”

Vaccine-injured ‘have been tormented, ignored or gaslit’

In her parliamentary speech, Unkovich said she and her party will continue speaking to vaccine injury victims and their families, despite opposition.

“We debated this topic in the House and … I was continuously heckled by the other side, just as I am now,” Unkovich said. She said New Zealand First will continue to listen to the vaccine-injured and their “heartbreaking stories of how their lives have changed.”

Ashby-Koppens said she is “relieved that a couple of politicians have now met with those injured by COVID-19 injections,” noting that “to date, those injured have been tormented, ignored or gaslit” and some have been treated “appallingly.”

“In New Zealand we have a no-fault government paid compensation scheme for injuries,” Ashby-Koppens said. The Accident Compensation Corporation or “ACC has barely acknowledged the plethora of injuries, and many people have had to sell homes, move in with family just to support getting some form of treatment for the new diseases and symptoms that began shortly after they got their injections.”

“If there is to be a real change, then all of those that have been injured should be getting the benefit of the doubt instead of being put through the rigmarole of the broken ACC system, which is designed to protect the government and Big Pharma, not serve the people,” Ashby-Koppens added.

For Young, “The huge $6 million question is, by having this new inquiry, is that then job done — box ticked, move on, time for another election?”

According to Kirsch, other national COVID-19 investigative commissions, such as the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, have similarly ignored the voices of the vaccine-injured. He said:

“There are two possible goals informing a commission. One is to cover yourself publicly, so it looks like you’re doing the right thing. And for all appearances, make it look like you’ve done an independent investigation and it’s cleared you from all wrongdoing.

The other purpose for creating an independent investigation is to find out the truth. The latter doesn’t happen very often … All people are being harmed by this.”

For Kirsch, any national commission investigating the response to COVID-19 should investigate two things: Were the vaccines safe and were the vaccines effective? “And then they could look at censorship and they could … look at the public policies involving masks and lockdowns and other interventions,” he said.

He added:

“They have to look at the numbers and they have to judge for themselves whether they have to do a very objective evaluation as to whether the vaccine was effective and another investigation as to whether the vaccine is safe.

In some cases, they may need to go out to other countries where there are multiple vaccine brands and request data from other countries to complete the picture.

Or they can simply … talk to individual doctors and put them under oath and protect them from being fired.”

There are “lots of things that can be done to find the truth,” Kirsch said, but to his knowledge, “Nobody on our side has been contacted by any of these people.”

According to Kirsch, national COVID-19 inquiries wouldn’t be needed if data were transparent and made public.

“Why isn’t there data transparency? Why can’t the public know this?” he asked. “The best public inquiry is simply to collect public data and make the data public. You don’t need the inquiry after that,” Kirsch said. “All the world needs is an honest public health official.”

Instead, people such as Young who publicized government data suggesting COVID-19 vaccines weren’t safe, now face prosecution.

“They’ve spent about $2 million in legal fees pursuing him, and they spent $zero in analyzing the data he was complaining about,” Kirsch said. “Their focus is in demonizing him and covering their tracks rather than exposing the truth.”

Young told The Defender he is now representing himself legally. He described the case as “unprecedented … eye-opening and absolutely stunning.”

“There is no precedent for this activity in New Zealand,” Young said. “The government is committing a crime and needs to be exposed.”

See more here childrenshealthdefense.org

Header image: Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

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