Anti-vaxxers wage West Australian election crusade

Anti-vaccination candidates are contesting every seat in the West Australian election in March as activists around the country seize on the COVID-19 immunisation rollout.

An anti-vaccination poster on Facebook this week.

Anti-vaccination candidates are contesting every seat in the West Australian election in March as activists around the country seize on the COVID-19 immunisation rollout to under­mine faith in ­vaccines.

In WA, a No Mandatory Vaccination party is standing candidates in all 59 parliamentary seats. The party, which has been preferenced last by the major political parties, is led by a self-described “life member of the Liberal Party” and schoolteacher Cam Tinley.

His group participated in a Perth march last weekend as part of national anti-vaxxer rallies also held in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney two days before Australia began to roll out its COVID-19 vaccination program.

The rally campaign was widely promoted on sites such as Perth-based anti-vaxxer Judy Wilyman’s Vaccination Decisions’ Facebook page. Mr Tinley and Ms Wilyman both addressed the rally, but he said the two groups were not linked.

Mr Tinley said his party‘s Facebook access had been curtailed. “I was personally banned from Facebook and I lost 5000 ‘friends’ because they said I was in breach of COVID-19 policies … but we are getting more members now simply by word of mouth.”

Mr Tinley said his party was recruiting up to 100 members a day since formally registering and hit 500 members on January 10. Party candidates are opposed to forcing people to receive “rushed and unsafe” COVID-19 vaccines “but there are candidates who are not opposed to all vaccination and have vaccinated their kids”, he said.

Mr Tinley said there was “not a chance” he would get a jab. “Vaccination is not necessary,” he told The Australian. “I don’t care if it’s the greatest thing to combat COVID but you can’t force someone to have it.”

He is a serial political candidate who stood for the Micro Business Party in the last state election in 2017. He has said he turned down a winnable South West seat by “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery days into the election campaign.

Another well-known anti-vaxxer Meryl Dorey, who founded the Australian Vaccination Risk Network site, said the vaccine rollout “has made a lot more people realise they are losing the ability to say no to a medical procedure that is not necessarily in their best interests”.

Ms Dorey said the Perth-based No Mandatory Vaccination party was not connected to her group, but she endorsed candidates running in every WA seat “because the commonwealth is putting it on to the states to get people vaccinated”.

“It is good that people have a choice to elect officials who will support their rights.”

She said the potential that some industry workers would be required to vaccinate was “government tyranny”.

Some Facebook groups are amplifying extreme anti-vaxxer messages as the vaccination program proceeds, despite Facebook’s commitment to remove anti-vaxxer pages and content.

Facebook last year said it would ban ads discouraging people from getting vaccinated, and this month said it would remove all posts that made false claims about vaccines.

On Wednesday, a company spokesperson reiterated that posts that violated community standards “including those which spread harmful misinformation about vaccines, will face restrictions or removal from Facebook”.

Vaccination Decisions Facebook site that advertised last week’s rallies promotes ideas such as “pathogenic priming” claiming a vaccine will make you more ill, and associates vaccination with “the most historically corrupt and fraudulent companies in the world”.

It describes high profile US immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci, now the US chief medical adviser, as the world’s most powerful and dangerous man in public health.

Ms Dorey said she didn’t agree with Vaccination Decisions that Dr Fauci was dangerous, but she said pharmaceutical companies “are actually criminal organisations.”

She said her Australian Vaccination Risk Network Facebook page was only shut down temporarily when it was “caught up” in the Facebook fight over news content. She said Facebook had not banned her organisation from its site.

“But we are trying to get off censor-prone sites and onto ones that support freedom,” she said.

“We have formed communities in local areas to avoid a lot of this censorship and suppression, so word-of-mouth has become very big in our community.”

Vaccination Decisions Facebook site that advertised last week’s rallies promotes ideas such as “pathogenic priming” claiming a vaccine will make you more ill, and associates vaccination with “the most historically corrupt and fraudulent companies in the world”.

Vaccination policy expert Katie Attwell, from the University of Western Australia, said the anti-vaxxer movement was particularly visible in the election campaign. “I’m not worried they’ll win seats, given the strong groundswell of support for the McGowan government.

“But I’m concerned they’ll spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccination rollout. “They didn’t say ‘all vaccines are bad’, they latched onto the idea that the COVID vaccine might be mandatory.

“The concern is if people aren’t paying attention, they might think vaccines are mandatory when they are not. It might recruit people who are not particularly worried about vaccines but don’t want to be told what to do by government.”

She said there was evidence of anti-vax ideology invading Australia from the US “that is carrying a strong anti-government, anti-libertarian flavour.”

The Australian government has said COVID vaccination won’t be compulsory, but unvaccinated people may not be able to attend some workplaces (for example aged care) or venues where there are large groups of people, such as gyms and large concert gatherings. Airlines are likely to require vaccination certificates for travel until the pandemic ends.