SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, Professor Nicola Spurrier, ordered to give evidence at AFWL player’s vaccine mandate challenge
A Crows footballer fighting vaccine mandates has lobbed subpoenas to the state’s top anti-Covid officials, requiring them to give evidence at trial.
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South Australia’s top Covid-19 officials have been summoned by court order to give evidence at AFLW footballer Deni Varnhagen’s challenge to the vaccine mandate.
The Advertiser can reveal that, on Tuesday, Supreme Court subpoenas were issued to Police Commissioner Grant Stevens and chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier.
The subpoenas were accepted on their behalf, by government lawyers, less than 24 hours before Mr Stevens suggested emergency laws and restrictions may end on April 1.
Varnhagen’s challenge to the mandate is scheduled to be heard from March 17 to March 25.
A subpoena is a document that requires the recipient to follow the orders of a court and, if refused or disobeyed, can result in a fine or prison time.
The legal move comes one week after New Zealand’s High Court ruled vaccine mandates for police and defence forces unjustifiably infringed upon that country’s Bill of Rights.
Varnhagen, fellow nurse Courtney Milligan, teacher Craig Bowyer, childcare worker Kylie Dudson and police officers Adam Zacary Cook and Rosalyn Smith are challenging the mandate.
They claim authorities failed to exclude all “obvious, alternative, compelling, reasonably practicable” alternatives that do not affect “common law rights or freedoms to bodily integrity”.
They also want the trial livestreamed, and have secured a first-of-its-kind order protecting them from excessive court costs if they lose.
Previously, the Supreme Court heard Mr Stevens would not be available to give evidence at the trial, and that his staff had filed an affidavit on his behalf instead.
Counsel for Varnhagen’s group were critical of that document, and of attached email correspondence between the staffer and Professor Spurrier.
They asserted neither the affidavit nor the emails disclosed the scientific basis upon which the decision was made to require public servants to receive both vaccine and booster shots.
One of Ms Varnhagen’s witnesses is Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, who holds an academic position at Flinders University.
He also gave evidence in the New Zealand case, where police and defence force staff argued mandates limited their rights to refuse medical treatment and manifest religious beliefs.
In that case, Justice Francis Cooke ruled ordering frontline police defence staff to be vaccinated or face losing their job was not a “reasonably justified” breach of the Bill.
He overturned the mandate, which affected 164 of the country’s 15,700 police and 115 of its 15,500 defence staff.
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Originally published as SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, Professor Nicola Spurrier, ordered to give evidence at AFWL player’s vaccine mandate challenge
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