PM Malcolm Turnbull pushes for childcare ban for unvaccinated children

EXCLUSIVE: Unvaccinated children will be banned from all childcare centres and preschools in Australia under a hard line proposal spearheaded by the federal government.

Malcolm Turnbull meets with Toni McCaffery, who lost her daughter Dana in 2009 to whooping cough.

UNVACCINATED children will be banned from all childcare centres and preschools in Australia under a hard line proposal spearheaded by the federal government.

The immunisation rates of all preschools and daycare centres will be made publicly available to parents, and a loophole allowing formal objections will also be closed as part of the Turnbull government’s plan to boost vaccination rates.

In a powerful endorsement of The Sunday Telegraph’s four-year No Jab, No Play campaign, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has written to state and territory leaders demanding all jurisdictions introduce nationally consistent laws to protect Australian children, and has vowed to take the policy to the next Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting.

The campaign, launched in 2013, has won state and federal law changes that have seen an additional 200,000 children vaccinated.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Turnbull said parents deserved to know whether their children were safe when they dropped them off at care.

“All of us desperately want to protect our children and our grandchildren and other people’s children too,” Mr Turnbull said.

“If you don’t vaccinate your child you are not just putting their own life at risk, but you are putting everyone else’s children at risk.”

Toni McCaffery holds her daughter Dana, who died in 2009.

Dana McCaffery died from whooping cough.

In 2014, in response to The Sunday Telegraph’s No Jab, No Play campaign, the NSW government amended laws so children could not be enrolled at a childcare facility unless they were fully immunised, on an approved catch-up program or an official objection had been lodged.

The campaign also generated similar laws in Victoria and Queensland but children do not need to be immunised to enrol at centres in the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania or the Northern Territory.

The Australia-wide laws would not only remove exemptions for objectors but would ensure vaccination rates at each centre and preschool were publicly available.

In Sydney this week the Prime Minister met mother-of-four Toni McCaffery, whose baby daughter Dana died of whooping cough at four weeks of age.

Ms McCaffery believes Dana was infected while she dropped her other children off at a local childcare centre.

“I found out after she died that there were infections at the centre,” Ms McCaffery said.

“There are so many families with many kids, you have to go to school, you have to go to the shops, and you have to go to preschool. I had a right as a parent to drop my child to preschool and my daughter had a right to be safe”.

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Mr Turnbull said there was “nothing more heart-rending” than being unable to help a sick child. “The experience Toni went through with her little baby is one we don’t want any kids to go through,” he said.

In his letter to Premier Gladys Berejiklian and other state and territory leaders, Mr Turnbull writes: “At our next COAG meeting I propose we agree that all jurisdictions implement legislation that excludes children who are not vaccinated from attending childcare or preschool, unless they have a medical exemption.

“Vaccination objection is not a valid exemption. We must give parents the confidence that their children will be safe when they attend childcare and preschool.

“Parents must understand that if their child is not vaccinated they will be refused attendance or enrolment.”

The immunisation crackdown comes one week after One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson urged parents to get their children tested before they vaccinated them, then backtracked on her ill-informed criticisms.

Mr Turnbull said it was “vitally important” leaders presented a united front against the anti-vaccination movement.

“’It’s not one of those things where you say ‘I am making my own decision, it’s got nothing to do with anybody else’,” he said.

“It impacts everybody.”