CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab that draws on the work of its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check, to recap the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation.
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CheckMate March 3, 2023
Good morning,
This week, CheckMate provides some much needed context in the debate around how your superannuation might be invested in the future.
We also examine claims that Australian doctors should be bracing for a wave of lawsuits in relation to COVID-19 vaccines and update you on the ongoing disagreement over the origins of the coronavirus.
Does Labor plan to use your super as a 'piggy bank' to fund its pet projects?
The federal government this week unveiled a plan to curb tax breaks on superannuation for people with more than $3 million in their accounts, saying that the move would only affect 0.5 per cent of the population and only after the next election.
While that proposal has drawn fierce criticism from the opposition, the backlash against another Labor idea for super is intensifying after Coalition social media accounts suggested the government wanted to use people's superannuation to "fill budget holes".
"Super isn't a piggy bank for Labor's pet projects," Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor wrote on Facebook. "It's your money, not the government's."
Nationals MP and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also took to Facebook, claiming that Treasurer Jim Chalmers had "decreed" that "your super will 'elevate and broaden' in its purpose to also look after him or his Labor objectives".
Mr Joyce said the government intended for super funds to invest in "wind towers" while forgoing "the best returns" available from fossil fuel companies, because it had "decided that we go to work to assuage their guilt rather than earn money for our retirement".
Some readers of the posts were quick to assume the worst.
"The ALP are going to force super companies to invest our money in ALP projects that give worse returns (or negative) than where that money would otherwise be invested for maximum returns for us," one wrote under a post by Mr Taylor. "It effects [sic] 100% of people."
Another wrote: "Labor's plans to steal our super must be stopped."
But does Labor really plan to dip into Australians' super accounts to fund "pet projects" and "fill budget holes"?
The Coalition's attacks follow the release of a government consultation paper seeking to define an objective for superannuation.
The executive summary of that paper states there is a significant opportunity to "leverage greater superannuation investment in areas where there is alignment between the best financial interests of members and national economic priorities".
However, the paper makes clear that legislating an objective would not "impact regulatory supervision activities".
"As the objective is not intended to guide the regulation of [superannuation fund] trustees' conduct, it would not change trustee obligations."
There is no suggestion that money would be taken out of super accounts to support the budget or that super funds would be forced to invest in specific projects.
Speaking at a doorstop interview soon after, Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones clarified that Labor's "first, second and third principles" for super was the "best financial interests of fund members".
"But if we can find some areas where the funds can make great returns, and that's great returns by investing in something which has a national interest in it, we'd be nuts if we didn't work in partnership with funds and the broad industry in doing that," he told reporters.
Mr Chalmers, meanwhile, told 3AW radio host Neil Mitchell that Labor was "trying to work out ways" that the government could partner with investors to "solve some of our big economic challenges" and that super returns would not be hurt in the process.
Asked by Mitchell to confirm that there would be "encouragement" rather than "compulsion" for super funds to work with the government, Mr Chalmers replied: "Of course, I mean super funds and investors make their own decisions."
Notably, as pointed out by the chairman of Industry Super Australia and former Labor politician Greg Combet, super funds have a legal obligation to work in the best financial interests of their members.
"One thing needs to be made absolutely clear about this: super can only be invested in the best financial interest of members," Mr Combet wrote in the Australian Financial Review. "That is the legal duty of superannuation trustees, no ifs or buts…
"It is simply nonsense to suggest that industry superannuation funds would make an investment that was not in the best financial interests of members — no matter how worthy the cause or its importance to any particular government."
Will Aussie doctors face a 'wave of lawsuits' over COVID jabs?
A suggestion that Australian medicos have been left without legal cover for patients suffering COVID-19 vaccine side effects has been shared widely online after being promoted by a US talk show with a history of spreading vaccine misinformation.
"Doctors, nurses, health centres, government employees are liable for vaccine injuries," reads the caption at the beginning of a TikTok video featuring a clip from the show, which goes on to suggest Australia should prepare for "a wave of lawsuits".
In the clip, the host and an "investigative journalist" discuss a letter warning doctors that the federal government had failed to establish a legal indemnity scheme.
According to the journalist, practitioners would, as a result, be forced to rely on their own medical liability insurance but, even then, may only be covered for vaccine side effects if they had informed patients of the COVID-19 jab's "real and unknown harms".
He describes the letter as "really a legal notice" notifying doctors of this obligation to gain informed consent despite a gag over sharing anti-vaccine misinformation — something the host described as being placed in a "Catch-22" situation by regulators.
"Basically, what [the authorities are] telling you is that if you say anything bad about this vaccine that could be construed as misinformation, we're going to take your licence. But do know that the things that those anti-vaxxers are saying … are true, and if you didn't warn your patients about that, you could be liable."
The problem is, the letter is not from regulators but the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) — a professional association founded during the pandemic to represent medical workers opposed to vaccine mandates.
And while there is indeed no national indemnity scheme to protect doctors from being sued, in 2021 the Morrison government established an alternative "no-fault" scheme to compensate patients for known side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. (Compensation for unknown side effects would typically be pursued via a class action against the manufacturer, according to experts.)
A patient who makes a claim under the government scheme must show that they were likely harmed by receiving a vaccine but, in contrast to a negligence lawsuit, they do not need to prove that another party was at fault.
"A key aim of the scheme is to reduce the risk of legal action against a healthcare practitioner involved in the vaccination rollout," the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) explains on its website.
"The scheme does not prevent someone from taking action through the courts — it has been designed as a streamlined alternative to court proceedings."
Fiona McDonald, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology and co-director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, told CheckMate via email that the government's scheme was "likely to be more efficient and cost-effective than bringing a legal proceeding claiming negligence".
Moreover, suing a doctor for following the government's vaccine advice was "unlikely to be successful", she said, adding that on questions of informed consent, the courts would only expect patients to be told of risks based on "evidence-based known information" — and only those that a reasonable patient would expect to know about in their particular circumstances.
Dr McDonald said that if a vaccine-injured patient were to pursue a negligence claim through the courts, "any compensation provided under the no-fault scheme must be returned".
As for insurers covering doctors in the event of vaccine injuries, the RACGP website — which points to the policies of Australia's four major medical defence firms — states that medicos whose "scope of practice includes prescribing or administering vaccines … will be covered in a similar way to other vaccination programs".
Despite a shift, intelligence agencies are still split over COVID-19 origins
Social media users pounced this week on reports that a US government department now believes the COVID-19 pandemic was likely caused by a Chinese laboratory accident, with many taking it as vindication of what they had long suspected.
"New York Times viciously attacked scientists 'spreading Covid misinformation'," wrote one user. "[N]ow they admit that the lab leak 'conspiracy theory' was true."
In a post featuring an image of Dr Anthony Fauci, former chief medical adviser to the US president, another user suggested the lab leak hypothesis had been accepted by "the US government".
Amid a global pandemic that has killed nearly 7 million people, how it all began has remained a politically charged and hotly contested question. But has it really been resolved?
Many in the scientific community argue that current evidence suggests the virus behind COVID-19 most likely spilled over from animals to humans in a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Proponents of the "lab leak" theory point to a nearby virology institute as the likely source, citing, for example, reports that staff members were hospitalised with COVID-like symptoms several months before the outbreak.
The latest flurry of news was sparked by an article in the Wall Street Journal, which revealed the US Energy Department was no longer "undecided" on the likely origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
According to a classified intelligence report, the department now believes — with "low confidence" — that the virus had escaped from a Chinese lab.
However, the US intelligence community remains divided, with the Wall Street Journal reporting: "Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two [including the CIA] are undecided."
"The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with 'moderate confidence' and still holds to this view."
There was no change to the existing consensus among intelligence agencies that COVID-19 was not caused by a Chinese biological weapons program, the news report said.
The New York Times reported that some officials briefed on the latest intelligence described the information as "relatively weak". And while the Energy Department had shared it with other agencies, "none of them changed their conclusions".
A spokesman for the White House, meanwhile, told journalists that there was "not a consensus right now within the US government about exactly how COVID started".
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell
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