CSL has said it is too busy making 50m Covid-19 vaccines for Australia to explain its role in the $1.7bn AstraZeneca supply deal to a federal parliamentary inquiry.
The biotechnology company was a no-show at the first hearing of the Covid-19 inquiry in 2021, prompting the independent senator, Rex Patrick, to accuse it of disrespecting the Senate and behaving “improperly” by not submitting to scrutiny.
At the start of the hearing, the chair, Katy Gallagher, said the company had “declined” to appear on Thursday despite the committee believing it was “essential to hear from them directly” about their “vital role” in the vaccine rollout.
Gallagher tabled correspondence from CSL in which the company stated “the first quarter of 2021 is an extremely busy period for CSL in terms of Covid-19 vaccine manufacture and we are unable to resource participation in this hearing at this time”.
When the committee sent a formal request for CSL to appear, it responded again that it was “currently fully focussed on the accelerated manufacture” of the vaccine and was “not available to appear at this time”.
“CSL employees have been working at pace since September … to prepare our facilities for the large‐scale manufacture of this vaccine,” the biotech giant said. “CSL has needed to acquire specialised equipment and infrastructure, recruit, train and redeploy personnel, retool and reconfigure existing manufacturing facilities, and move CSL existing products offshore in order to continue manufacture of those lifesaving items.”
CSL said it hoped to provide 1m vaccine doses per week by late March. The company offered to appear at the committee in mid to late April.
In September, the Australian government locked in supply deals with CSL for the AstraZeneca vaccine and also the UQ vaccine which was later discontinued.
Patrick told Guardian Australia if the government had given a role in $1.7bn worth of contracts to “an organisation that doesn’t have the capacity to deal with administrative requests and answer Senate committees – then it was given to the wrong party”.
“The company was being quite disrespectful to the Senate and behaving improperly in my view – the directors of that company really need to rethink their approach to this sort of request,” he said.
Guardian Australia understands the committee will aim to call CSL in February. Patrick publicly threatened a “subpoena” if they again refused to appear.
Rex Patrick
(@Senator_Patrick)It is totally disrespectful for CSL, the recipient of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funded vaccine related contracts, to refuse to appear before today’s Senate COVID Committee. If they won’t respect the Senate’s request, they should expect a ‘subpoena’. #auspol https://t.co/ZS3gMO8VoE
Patrick said he intended to grill CSL on its readiness to manufacture the vaccine, whether it was on schedule, what the conditions of its contract were, and how much public funding it received to retool for the job.
“Their responses [to the committee] don’t make sense – which leads to the question: what have they got to hide?”
At the hearing, the health department secretary, Dr Brendan Murphy, said Australia was paying “in a similar ballpark” to the 1.78 Euro cost per AstraZeneca dose, a figure leaked by a Belgian minister on Twitter as the price paid by the European Union.
Murphy said there were “additional costs” to ensure Australia could produce the vaccine onshore, including the cost of paying CSL to modify its plant to produce the vaccine here.
Patrick said the government had “sensibly” invested taxpayer money to create capability to produce vaccines in Australia. “We’ve invested commonwealth money … so we’re entitled to discover what’s happening.”
Katy Gallagher
(@SenKatyG)The Covid Committee invited CSL to appear at today’s hearing. They declined to attend.
CSL are an important part of Australia’s vaccination strategy and we look forward to welcoming them before the committee soon.
More info 👉https://t.co/d7ZWUm2I0s#auspol #VaccineStrategy
A spokeswoman for CSL said it “appreciated” the Senate inquiry’s invitation but it was “unable to resource our participation at this time”.
“We will be in a better position to consider a similar invitation later in the year,” the company told Guardian Australia on Thursday.