Deakin VC calls for vaccination unity from universities
Deakin Uni chief Iain Martin backs mandatory vaccination for staff and students and wants all unis to have a common position.
Deakin University vice-chancellor Iain Martin has called on Australia’s universities to seek a united position on whether vaccination against Covid-19 should be mandated for employees and students.
“I have been in touch with Universities Australia out of courtesy to say: ‘I’m about to bring this up. I think it would be a good thing for you to be considering where the national position sits as well,’ ” Professor Martin said. “The best situation would be that there is an agreed national position across all of the universities and it is consistent.
“But the debate is really important and somebody had to start it. I thought the time was right now because of the heightened awareness of what’s happening in Sydney and Melbourne at the moment.”
However, Universities Australia chief executive officer Catriona Jackson said while vaccination was the pathway to recovery from the pandemic, “exactly how best to continue to ensure the safety of students, staff and the wider community is an operational decision for each individual university and one we know is being considered very carefully.”
Professor Martin, a medical doctor and believer in Covid-19 mandatory vaccination unless there are grounds for exemption, said he had been thinking about the ethical issues involved for the past four or five months and the matter had been raised with him at the university council’s last audit and risk subcommittee meeting.
He wrote to staff recently and would be meeting with university health and safety representatives next week. “We’ll (also) talk with the union and with the students organisation. We wanted to do this openly and with sufficient time to get all those views in because Deakin’s a community of 72,000 people, staff and students.”
He hoped to get an agreed position at Deakin by the start of next year.
Although it was unclear what the legal position would be in mandating vaccination, he said: “I don’t want this to be lawyers at 50 paces deciding the policy, but there’s a legal overlay. What is our duty of care as an organisation to our staff and students, and what does that mean in common law? ”
“But also I think there is an ethics or community overlay, which is what does our community want?”
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