Steve Price: Dan Andrews’ vax mandate is dangerous and divisive
If there’s one thing Pauline Hanson is right about, it’s that vax mandates are divisive. Premier Dan Andrews is playing a very dangerous and destructive game.
Opinion
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Cartoonist Mark Knight on this page a few weeks’ back depicted One Nation leader Pauline Hanson as a cane toad in a rather unflattering illustration.
To Senator Hanson’s credit, and to my knowledge, she didn’t complain, and indeed I have interviewed her on radio since that column appeared.
The Senator did object, however, to my criticism about her ability to make banana bread.
She presented her version of the Australian-baked favourite to me after an interview at her home a couple of years back and wanted to defend her baking skills.
It was a lighthearted exchange done in good humour.
Pauline and I have disagreed many times, over many things, over the years, but her objection to some state premiers and their vaccination mandates isn’t one of them.
Australia’s double-dosed vaccination rate of everyone over the age of sixteen is headed toward 90 per cent and will wind up, by the end of the year, as one of the best vaccination rates in the world.
For Labor premiers – particularly Daniel Andrews in Victoria – to hang on to the notion that unvaccinated people should be unable to participate in any sort of normal social activity for up to a year is dangerously divisive and surely, if tested, unlawful.
Indeed, just this week the World Health Organisation – hardly a hotbed of anti-vaxxers – said “if these mandates are implemented, they need to be implemented for the shortest possible period”.
And as University of Sydney professor of nursing and midwifery Julie Leask said; “we cannot lock out risk by locking out the unvaccinated from everyday life”.
As we watched protest numbers across Australia this past weekend — especially in Melbourne — grow as large as I can remember, it’s obvious mandates are dangerous and divisive.
Thousands of those marching were double-dose vaccinated and turned up to show their objection to the notion that any government would use health orders to force people out of any sort of social life.
Worse, Premier Andrews in some sort of gung-ho tough guy act is considering, it seems, to not only attack unvaccinated adults, but children all the way down to five-year-olds.
If the job of politicians, both state and federal, is to lead and not create division, it seems plenty of them are doing just that.
Australians were urged to go out and get vaccinated, and once the slow rollout was sorted, that’s exactly what we did.
New South Wales leads the nation and is storming towards 95 per cent double dosed and has stuck a stake in the ground on March 15 declaring from that date – a Wednesday – your vaccination status will not be relevant.
By contrast, Victorians and Melbourne will hit that vaccination level not that much later, but have been told, in Premier Andrews’ own words, that in 2022 unvaccinated Victorians will not be able to get a coffee, go to the MCG, enter a bookshop, a theatre or get a haircut.
Last month the Premier went as far as to suggest Victorians might even be required to have a third shot – a vaccine booster – to be able to maintain their fully vaccinated freedoms.
He says: “Life for the vaccinated would be about the maintenance of your vaccination status”.
Let me be very clear on my position on vaccines before anyone labels me an anti-vaxxer;
I was an early adopter have been double dosed with Astra Zeneca and am due for a booster shot in mid-January.
As such, I feel heavily protected, even in the knowledge that I can still catch Covid, be infected and could then pass it on to others.
The chances of me getting very sick or being at the risk of dying from Covid, however, are minimal.
If I am in a restaurant or a bar, on a train or sitting in a seat at the MCG next to someone not vaccinated I don’t care.
I wouldn’t think for a second of asking a guest to my house “are you vaccinated for Covid?”, just as I wouldn’t ask if they had an annual flu shot or their blood pressure regularly checked.
It’s none of my business.
Melbourne has three major international sporting events booked in between now and April next year, with the Ashes Test on Boxing Day, the Australian Open tennis in the second half of January and a Formula 1 Grand Prix in April.
To prevent unvaccinated cricket, tennis and motorsport fans from attending these major events plays straight into the hands of other states – think NSW – or countries bidding for, and pinching, those events.
Wimbledon, the French and US opens were not restricted to vaccinated fans and Formula 1 races have been run all over Europe, the US and Middle East without banning unvaccinated spectators.
China, particularly, would love to steal the tennis, and Sydney has been sniffing around the F1 race for years. Given the sacrifices Melburnians have made over the past 19 months, the anger over losing any of these defining major events would make recent protests look tame.
We have seen the Victorian government pull off remarkable U-turns during this pandemic, not the least being the abandonment of a zero Covid strategy to one where, in a breathtaking backflip, Victorians were given more freedoms on a day that had more than a thousand daily cases.
Suspicion remains that Andrews is using the stick of non-vaccinated purgatory to further drive-up vaccine rates, but it’s a dangerous game.
The Australian Retail Association has reported increased cases of customer aggression over vaccination status with staff being threatened physically and verbally. It urgently wants the burden of proof ruling scrapped.
In 18 days time, non-vaccinated Victorians will be able to travel to Sydney and attend crowded sporting events, eat in a restaurant or cafe and go to the theatre, regardless of their vaccine status.
But in their own home town or suburb, they would banned from doing all those things for at least another five months, if not longer.
Pauline Hanson might struggle to unemotionally explain her mandate argument, but she is 100 per cent correct that divisive laws like this need to be dumped.
Ego will probably see our Premier try to stick it out.
That would be a destructive mistake.
LIKES
• AFL draftees and their parents’ joyful reaction to being selected to play elite sport
• Canberra politicians like Senator Jacqui Lambie at least showing some passion and emotion
• Footballer Nick Riewoldt winning celebrity MasterChef
• The buzz returning to parts of the city
DISLIKES
• Hospitality venues forced to close at least a day a week because of staff shortages
• Border confusion introduced by South Australia with rules nobody understands
• Boat people deaths in the UK reminding us of the evil people smuggling business
• Unhinged comments from the Queensland Premier suggesting that somehow Canberra wanted to give Queenslanders “Covid for Xmas”
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