Kate Langbroek explains controversial mandatory vaccine stance

Kate Langbroek has doubled down on her comments on mandatory vaccinations, voicing her worries over where they will lead.

Kate Langbroek opens up about her controversial stance on mandatory Covid vaccines in the new issue of Stellar magazine, out today.

Presenter and broadcaster Langbroek, 56, made headlines last month when she had a lively on-air discussion with fellow Project panellist Hamish Macdonald about the topic of mandatory vaccinations in some workplaces.

Macdonald was all for them, Langbroek against, and the pair acknowledged they’d already had a heated off-camera clash about the topic.

Speaking to Stellar, Langbroek reiterated her reservations about mandatory vaccines, saying her upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness had made her wary of “cults”.

Langbroek first aired her views on mandatory vaccination on The Project last month.

“I’m confused that everyone is so militant and happy about it,” she said.

She explained her reticence was due to her upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness.

“They had the concept of disfellowshipping, which I find so repugnant,” she said previously.

Those who are “disfellowshipped” from the religion are immediately shunned by their former friends and loved ones.

Langbroek told Stellar: “I don’t want to see people disfellowshipped from their lives. I witnessed it growing up, and it’s a cruel and effective means of control … The values and sense of community [within the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith] is good until you decide to leave, and then you discover all the love they supposedly had for you was dependent on what you believe. I was raised in a cult and to see the emergence of other cults is unsettling.

“You only have to see what’s happened in the pandemic to see Australians are not easygoing. We never think we’re this bunch of risk-averse, dobby neighbourhood snitches, but we are.”

Kate Langbroek on the cover of Stellar magazine.

Speaking on The Project last month, Langbroek – who said she and her family members were vaccinated – revealed that she’d felt like the odd one out during an earlier off-camera discussion about mandatory vaccination for some workplaces.

“Nearly everyone was [pro] mandatory vaccine, but I’m not mandatory vaccine for work,” she said at the time.

“I’m not anti-vax, but I’m very uncomfortable prescribing mandatorily to people what they have to put in their bodies to work,” she said.

Read the full interview with Kate Langbroek in this week’s issue of Stellar, free with today’s Sunday Telegraph.