Toowoomba Regional Council votes on vaccine mandates as large protest gathers outside City Hall

A large crowd of anti-mandate protesters packed outside City Hall to listen to Toowoomba’s councillors vote on the controversial restrictions and how they would apply to public facilities.

Councillor Nancy Sommerfield; Mayor Paul Antonio; an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Toowoomba.

The State Government’s controversial vaccine mandate has split the Toowoomba Regional Council in a fiery debate that raged for more than an hour.

With hundreds of residents and activists listening to the meeting both inside and outside the chambers on Tuesday, councillors voted 9-2 to endorse Mayor Paul Antonio’s motion that the council would comply with any public health directives issued by the Queensland Government around restrictions to people who weren’t unvaccinated.

The vote acted as an acknowledgement of the mandate, which could mean unvaccinated residents might face restrictions or requirements at council-owned facilities from the end of the week.

The motion also ordered Mr Antonio to write to Small Business Minister Di Farmer for further clarity about how small businesses were supposed to apply the mandate.

The scene had been set for conflict after anti-mandate protesters staged a large gathering outside City Hall, with controversial One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts addressing the crowd before the meeting started at 9am.

Members of the crowd called Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk a “murderer”, while Senator Roberts in his speech accused the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which approved the vaccines, of being “guilty of a genocide”.

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts addresses the crowd at the Toowoomba anti-vaccine mandate rally outside City Hall on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.

Inside the chamber, the matter acted as a vehicle for the 11 councillors to voice their feelings on the upcoming restrictions and about the efficacy of the vaccines.

Mr Antonio said the mandates were the “most difficult issue I’ve seen in my time in local government”, but praised the efforts of health officials and frontline workers for keeping the region safe.

Councillors Nancy Sommerfield and Bill Cahill spoke passionately against Mr Antonio’s motion, with the former calling it “wordy and benign”.

Ms Sommerfield, who has become one of the most prominent local voices against the restrictions in recent weeks, said she had never seen residents more divided.

“Our communities are in turmoil, the last time I saw our community divided like this was the recycled water debate (in 2007),” she said.

“It took years for our community to mend, and I didn’t think I would see it again in our lifetime, yet here we are.

“As a council, we can decide whether we open our libraries and facilities to all, and it’s definitely our duty to communicate the views of our community to the state government.

“Our constituents are crying out for us to support them, to lobby them on their behalf.

“This is about embracing diversity and respecting an individual’s right to choose autonomy on our own body,” Ms Sommerfield said.

More than 200 people made their voices heard at the Toowoomba anti-vaccine mandate rally outside City Hall on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.

Councillor Megan O’Hara Sullivan was one of the aggressive supporters of the motion, pointing out how many residents supported vaccinations and the restrictions.

“I’m standing with our frontline health workers, and the overwhelming majority of people who in our community, almost 92 per cent, who have done the right thing and gotten vaccinated,” she said.

“Whether you like it or not, unfortunately mandates are there for a reason – they’re there to get people vaccinated.

“This is, to me, a first-world problem, where people are rejecting a vaccine here whereas people in the third world are begging for it.”

Mr Cahill used his speech to question the number of reported side effects potentially linked to the vaccines reported by the TGA, while also calling the mandate restrictions “coercive” and “assimilative”.

“Educate yourselves and don’t be accepting of a single source of data to base your decision on,” he said.

“Do we subscribe to the assimilative behaviour that has manifested in the majority?

“I’m not being melodramatic, the erosion of family and community fabric (is real).”

In speaking for the motion, Councillor Tim McMahon took issue with the language used by many protesters to describe the mandate.

“We as a community have used some interesting language to describe this current situation,” he said.

“To liken it to previous events in history, words like ‘civil rights movement’, ‘apartheid’, ‘holocaust’, Hitler — this morning I heard the word ‘genocide’ being used.

“Those words just don’t sit right with me — I would ask as a community in this debate that we refrain from using these words.”

For excerpts of every councillor’s speeches, head to thechronicle.com.au.