Life more of a right than Covid-19 jab refusal

NSW’s biggest civil liberties group has backed vaccine mandates in high-risk workplaces and jab passports to get into stadiums and nightclubs, saying life itself is a fundamental right.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Pauline Wright. Picture: Sean Davey

The biggest civil liberties group in NSW has backed vaccine mandates in high-risk workplaces and jab passports to get into stadiums and nightclubs, saying life itself is a fundamental right.

Business groups have begun to call on Scott Morrison and the national cabinet to begin setting out rules for employers who want to make vaccines compulsory for workers as the vaccine rollout and eligibility for Covid-19 jabs ramps up.

The Law Council of Australia has joined constitutional experts to declare vaccine mandates in workplaces reasonable, and lawful in certain circumstances and under public health orders.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Pauline Wright this week told The Australian that targeted vaccine mandates were not an incursion on Australians’ freedoms.

“It’s within the rights of employers to say to employees I need to keep everyone safe. The right to life, the right to be free of disease, is pretty fundamental,” she said.

“And with vaccine passports at a nightclub, for example, you make a deal at the door. You’re saying if you come into my premises, I have to think of my staff.

“We would oppose a blanket mandate across the population as that offends freedoms – people have religious views, for ­example – but looking at each ­instance (in different workplaces), it’s hard to see an incursion on liberties.”

Hotel quarantine and residential aged-care workers are the only groups currently mandated to receive vaccinations as a condition of employment.

Vaccine mandates have gained steam in recent weeks. US President Joe Biden has made vaccinations compulsory for federal public servants and French President Emmanuel Macron is moving to make the vaccine mandatory across most of the population.

Ms Wright, a former Law Council of Australia president, said governments would not ­encroach on civil liberties if they sought a mandate for public servant vaccinations in line with Mr Biden’s proposals in Washington this week.

While Australian businesses want to discuss mandates, industry groups said Mr Morrison and national cabinet needed to back compulsory vaccinations first.

Law Council of Australia president Jacoba Brasch said workplaces had leeway to make “reasonable and lawful” directions on vaccine mandates but it would depend on whether the state government had placed their industry under a public health order. “Both reasonableness and lawfulness may turn on whether there are public health orders in place,” Dr Brasch said.