One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts is facing significant backlash after a video surfaced in which he claims deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic were "staged" and that the public "were conned."
The video, published in 2025 and reported by Nine newspapers, features Senator Roberts questioning the severity and scale of COVID-19 fatalities during an interview with podcaster Sam Hope.
"Major news broadcasters had these videos of people dying in their droves in makeshift morgues in the streets of New York, the streets of Beijing, the streets of Italy," Senator Roberts said. "We thought it is pretty serious from what we've seen. We didn't realise until fairly recently that those were all staged. They're bulls***."
Senator Roberts also asserted that the severity of the illness, when excluding the most vulnerable such as the elderly and immunocompromised, was "low to moderate."
"The chief medical officer who was involved in staging a lot of the lies we were told by the bureaucracy ... the chief medical officer's graphs showed low to moderate severity," he stated. "We were conned."
According to the notes, Senator Roberts indicated he had written to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and ex-Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk seeking "evidence" but received no response.
Senator Roberts' remarks have drawn criticism, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accusing Senator Hanson of associating with "fringe people" during a recent overseas trip. Albanese also stated that Senator Roberts has "a history of promoting conspiracy theories" and that his views "are not worthy of being a senator."
Senator Hanson has reportedly faced pressure to remove Roberts, who has been accused of promoting conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes.