Anti-jab dental nurse Beverley Mackenzie fails in unfair dismissal bid, ordered to pay over $7000 in legal costs
A nurse with 40 years’ experience who was sacked from her job for refusing the Covid-19 jab has had her case for reinstatement rejected and has instead been ordered to pay thousands in court costs.
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The full bench of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission has thrown out an Innisfail Hospital employee’s bid for reinstatement and ordered her to pay $7000 in legal costs after being sacked for refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
Beverley Mackenzie had almost 40 years of experience working for Queensland Health as a dental therapist when she became subject to mandatory vaccination requirements to receive at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by September 30, 2021, and a second dose by October 31, 2021.
Ms Mackenzie applied for an exemption from the vaccine mandate on October 12, 2021 but the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission rejected this on December 3, 2021, and a subsequent review concluded the decision was not unreasonable.
A disciplinary process followed, and Ms Mackenzie’s employment was terminated by Queensland Health on March 9, 2022.
Ms Mackenzie filed a reinstatement application where she argued that she “sought evidence from QLD Health to substantiate their claims and to prove the safety of the Covid injections but they have not responded to my safety concerns; some of which were shared by way of scientific evidence and data presented by other respected professionals with differing beliefs (and agenda) to QLD Health”.
“I did not comply with the directive under Sect 84 of the WHS Act as to comply would put me at risk of harm or death,” she said.
In May 2023 a full bench of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission struck out her application for reinstatement, refusing to even hear her matter.
President Justice Peter Davis, Vice President Daniel L. O’Connor and Commissioner John Dwyer found it was “entirely reasonable, and necessary, that having regard to the identified risks, coupled with the workplace health and safety obligations incumbent upon the department and employees, that the department required employees in high-risk groups to be vaccinated against COVID-19”.
They said: “The underlying rationale for the directive is that the relevant departmental staff must be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to minimise the effects of the virus on the relevant employees … and to deliver public health services …”
The trio ultimately found that “The applicant has failed to articulate why her dismissal was arguably unfair.”
In September, the Commission then made an order for Ms Mackenzie to pay Queensland Health’s legal costs as her case was “so lacking in merit or substance as to be not fairly arguable.”
“Ms Mackenzie has fundamentally failed to grapple with the true nature of her application for reinstatement and has, instead, focused on trying to mount an argument to justify her decision not to obey a lawful direction of her employer” the QIRC said in granting a costs order for Queensland Health.
In December 2024 Industrial Registrar Madonna Shelley determined that Queensland Health’s costs would be $7,685.17.
Ms Mackenzie told the Cairns Post: “This has been a very stressful time. We are never going to win and we didn’t get a fair trial.”
“We just want this to go away,” she said.
“We want to move on.”
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Originally published as Anti-jab dental nurse Beverley Mackenzie fails in unfair dismissal bid, ordered to pay over $7000 in legal costs
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