Australia’s prime minister was yesterday forced to bring a lawmaker from his own party to task for spreading COVID-19 pandemic disinformation, after a string of comments that threatened to undermine public safety.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison summoned Liberal Party lawmaker Craig Kelly after months of false claims that questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, opposed lockdowns and promoted unproven treatments.
In a statement after the face-to-face meeting, Kelly said that he “agreed to support the government’s vaccine rollout, which has been endorsed by medical experts.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I believe that the spread of misinformation can damage the success of our public health response during the pandemic,” he said in a statement.
Mostly free of COVID-19, Australia has yet to begin its vaccine rollout.
Public opinion polls show that about three-quarters of Australians intend to get vaccinated, but misinformation is widespread on prominent media platforms.
Kelly has routinely backed the use of Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and head lice medication ivermectin as COVID-19 treatments, and endorsed other unsubstantiated theories spreading widely in the US.
Despite his claims being publicly rejected by the Australian chief medical officer, Kelly’s Facebook following has doubled over the past year, amid regular virus screeds.
Kelly’s Facebook account — which had about 6 million video views and 5 million interactions in the past year according to data tool CrowdTangle — bears a warning from the social media platform about potential COVID-19 misinformation.
In the past few weeks, Morrison’s Liberal Party has come under increasing pressure from health professionals and other political parties to sanction Kelly, who has also been a vocal climate change denier.
However, the party has prevented efforts to sanction him in parliament.
“We’ve been very clear to point out where you get your information from. You don’t get it from Facebook,” Morrison said on Monday when asked to comment on Kelly. “He’s not my doctor and he’s not yours, but he does a great job.”
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, of the Australian Labor Party, called Morrison’s defense of Kelly “a national embarrassment.”
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