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A senate committee has been tasked with investigating the reasons for Australia’s highest excess mortality rates since World War II, with a report due in August.

Australia’s Parliament has become the first in the world to launch a formal inquiry into excess mortality after senators voted 31-30 in favour of the investigation Tuesday afternoon.

The successful motion, put forward by United Australia Party (UAP) Senator Ralph Babet, obliges the Community Affairs References Committee to probe the factors contributing to Australia’s abnormally high excess mortality, with a report expected by 31 August.

It took Senator Babet two years and five motions to convince the Senate to act on the issue, after his colleagues scuttled two motions last March and another in February of this year.

A fourth motion tabled by Senator Babet late last month finally won majority support, signalling a shift of mood in Canberra and paving the way for this week’s decision.

“Fifth time’s the charm!” Senator Babet declared in a media release following the vote. “This is the fifth time I have moved a motion on excess deaths. Finally the Senate has agreed that an investigation is warranted.”

He singled out for thanks Independent Senator David Pocock and Senator Jacqui Lambie of the Jacqui Lambie Network for co-sponsoring the motion, which saw the nation’s upper house divided along party lines.

All senators from the ruling Labor Government and their cross-bench comrades in the Greens voted no, while every independent and minor party senator joined the centre-right Coalition in approving the historic inquiry.

“I’d like to thank Senator Pocock and Senator Lambie for co-sponsoring the motion as well as One Nation, Senator Thorpe, Senator Tyrell and the Coalition for voting in favour,” Senator Babet said.

“Only the Labor party and the Greens decided to vote against my motion to investigate the issue of excess deaths,” he added.

“So much for the transparency promised by the Albanese Labor government.”

The senate committee will examine excess mortality data for 2021 to 2023 and compare it to equivalent figures from the preceding six years. They are responsible for determining any causes contributing to the nation’s excess deaths and how those causes can be addressed.

The Australian public will be asked to make submissions to the inquiry and a public hearing is expected to follow.

What Does the Excess Mortality Data Say?

Almost 30,000 more Australians died between 2021 and 2023 than should have based on historic trends.

Visuals published by the online scientific publication Our World in Data show Australia’s average excess mortality trending upwards during the three years in question, with peaks as high as 37 per cent in early 2022.

According to the ABS, the year with the highest excess mortality in recent memory in Australia was 2022, when deaths tracked 11.7 per cent above the baseline average.

That figure was reportedly as high as 15.3 per cent until the ABS adopted new modelling that saw its excess mortality statistics revised downwards.

The ABS attributes a majority of this excess mortality to “deaths from or with Covid-19”, though their criteria for this designation is loose. According to an analysis by Daily Declaration contributor Rebekah Barnett:

Initially, the ABS differentiated between deaths due to Covid alone, and deaths with other causal factors, revealing that just 8.6% of deaths with Covid were caused solely by the virus. Subsequently, this reporting method was done away with, and all deaths with a causal sequence of events (including with pre-existing chronic conditions) were swept into the ‘due to Covid’ category, taking the accounting of deaths due to Covid from 8% to approximately 80%.

When Australia’s peak actuarial body, the Actuaries Institute, examined excess mortality data from 2022, they attributed just half of the deaths to Covid-19, leaving the remaining excess deaths unexplained.

What’s Driving All the Excess Deaths?

In its analysis, the Actuaries Institute proposed a number of possible reasons for the unexplained excess deaths. The flow-on mortality risk of Covid-19 manifesting as heart disease, strokes, diabetes and dementia was top of their list, along with delays in emergency care at the peak of the pandemic.

However, they also suggested that missed routine medical appointments, mental health issues, and unhealthy lifestyle changes adopted during the Covid era could be to blame — all of which are documented side effects of  government policy decisions.

The national “Covid-19 vaccine rollout” appears to be another likely contributor, particularly given Australians’ high uptake of injections by global standards. Rebekah Barnett explains:

An independent excess death probe led by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) highlighted the impact of the Covid vaccination program as another potential driver of excess mortality.

One particularly interesting report featured in the AMPS inquiry was an Australian study of all-cause mortality trends conducted on the pre-Covid but post-vaccinated Queensland population. The analysis showed that deaths started trending upwards with the Covid vaccine rollout, not Covid.

She continues:

While the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) officially acknowledges only 14 deaths related to the Covid vaccines, there were over 1,020 reported deaths and over 140,000 injuries recorded in the DAEN, Australia’s safety surveillance database, as at 12 March 2024.

As underreporting is a well-known feature of such safety surveillance systems, the true extent of harm from the Covid vaccines is unknown.

The TGA admitted as much when, in September last year, the regulator refused to say how many of the adverse events reported to the DAEN it had determined to be causally linked to the Covid vaccines, but let slip that the TGA assigns almost all reports a causality status of ‘possible,’ neither confirming nor denying causality.

According to a media release from Senator Babet’s office, “For multiple years Australians have been dying in excess numbers without adequate explanation. Excess mortality is not just a transitory phenomenon.”

The statement also noted that the excess death rate in 2022 was the nation’s highest since World War II.

“May this committee process give a voice to the family members of the deceased and deliver the answers that our nation so desperately needs,” Senator Babet said.

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