Compulsory vaccination is a distraction from failure

The pandemic is loaded with difficult choices about how best to balance individual liberties against the collective good. Governments and institutions have given themselves great powers to restrict many of the choices that ordinarily have been taken for granted. During lockdowns these rights extend to leaving home, meeting friends and family, and honouring the most sacred human activities, such as births, deaths and marriages. We must have trust in our political institutions and leaders that these restrictions will be imposed only when necessary and will be removed as quickly as possible. It is inevitable, however, that authoritarian intrusions into our civil liberties will continue for some time. This includes the right to free passage across national and international borders.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan upped the ante on Friday with a declaration that travel to his state from NSW would be open only to those who had received a Covid-19 vaccine. It appears certain that this will become a new reality for international travel, with the airline industry at the front of the curve in developing vaccine passports and other measures that will give citizens a ticket to ride. This all provides a big incentive for anyone who may have been hesitant to get vaccinated.

Our firm view is that vaccination is a community good and should be taken up as quickly as possible by anyone who is able to do so. The evidence from other vaccination programs is that high levels of vaccination provide the best protection for communities. Getting vaccinated is a sign of respect for oneself and loved ones, as well as for others in the community more broadly. This is why we supported the Abbott government initiative to toughen the “no jab, no welfare benefits” regime in which parents would lose social security benefits if they chose not to have their children vaccinated. Our support was based on the evidence that the policy would likely save children’s lives.

Scott Morrison, who was social services minister at the time, said it was not fair for taxpayers to subsidise those who left their children – and those of others – at risk of debilitating and potentially fatal diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, rotavirus and meningococcal disease. The measure did not rise to the level of compulsory vaccination but it sent a strong incentive for recalcitrants to comply.

Compulsory vaccination is quickly becoming a big issue across the community with regard to Covid-19. Health officials have advised that high levels of cover are required to suppress the spread of the virus. Employers have been left with an unenviable task of deciding where their greater duty of care resides and have been calling for clear direction from government.

In a rare display of unity, the Business Council of Australia and the ACTU issued a joint statement on Friday on the issue. The peak employer and union groups said they were committed to working co-operatively with governments to keep workplaces safe and to achieve the highest possible rates of vaccination through building confidence in the vaccination program and supporting workers to get vaccinated. The ACTU and the BCA acknowledged that the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccination policy was that it should be free and voluntary.

They said they believed that for most Australians their work or workplace should not fundamentally alter the voluntary nature of vaccination. But for a small number of high-risk workplaces there may be a need for all workers in a workplace to be vaccinated to protect community health and safety. Both employers and unions say these are serious decisions that should not be left to individual employers and, where mandatory vaccination requirements are necessary, they should be implemented through the use of nationally consistent public health orders.

We agree there are instances in which workers should be compelled to be vaccinated in the interest of wider public health. Naturally, employees should be free to object, but they should realise it means they will have to change the nature of their work. Given the experience in aged-care homes and evidence of how the virus has been allowed to escape from quarantine through contact with unvaccinated support workers, we are critical that not enough has been done. This is particularly so in regard to protecting the most vulnerable members of the community. An outbreak at a Sydney school for autistic children is a tragedy that raises the question of why, once again, have the most vulnerable been left behind. It smacks of a political class more obsessed with daily media performances and reputational harm minimisation than ensuring the difficult job of community protection is getting done.

It is easy to sympathise with comments by Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar that parts of government do not want to make the hard decisions. The Giant Steps outbreak is symptomatic of a bigger failure by government to see beyond its own immediate interest. The job of government is to ensure everyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Arguments about compulsory vaccination are a distraction from the failures in getting vaccinations to those who want them and who need them most.