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The recent ruling of the Supreme Court of Queensland to declare vaccine coercion unlawful is a decision in the right direction. On 27 February, the Court delivered its long-expected judgment in three lawsuits brought by 86 parties against the Queensland Police and Queensland Ambulance services for directions to workers issued in 2021 and 2022. These directions required emergency service workers to receive Covid-19 vaccines and booster shots or face disciplinary action, including termination of employment.
Justice Glenn Martin of the Supreme Court of Queensland found that such directions breached a section of the state Human Rights Act. As a consequence, Covid-19 vaccines mandates for the Queensland police and ambulance services were made unlawfully because such directions limited the human rights of workers who were required to undergo a medical procedure without full consent. Justice Martin stated that non-compliance had “life changing consequences” for the applicants and ordered the police commissioner and the director-general of Queensland Health be restrained from enforcing the directions or continuing any disciplinary proceedings against the applicant parties.
However, the judgment did not make a ruling, or attempt to decide, about the health risks or efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines. Apparently, the workers only won because both the commissioner and the health director-general did not appropriately consider the human rights advice they received. Besides, the Court also (quite ominously) found that, although each of the directions limited the rights under s17 of the Human Rights Act because each had the effect of requiring an employee to undergo medical treatment (a vaccination) without the employee’s full consent, the limit was reasonable in all the circumstances.[1]
So, if they had been able to prove that the advice received was carefully considered, these public officials would have been given the green light. Accordingly, Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman says the government is now even considering appealing the court’s decision. She argues that the court’s decision was merely technical as it did not explicitly mention that Covid-19 vaccine mandates were contrary to the state Human Rights Act, since the ruling was in relation to how the directives were made, not the directives themselves.[2] “His Honour did find the limit on people’s human rights to have healthcare imposed on them without consent was justified because of the pandemic”, Fentiman told reporters.[3]
An appeal from this decision may eventually lead to a final and authoritative decision by the High Court of Australia, which, under special leave, would then have the ability to decide on the constitutionality of vaccine mandates. This matter, of course, has been carefully considered in our book entitled Emergency Powers, Covid-19 Restrictions & Mandatory Vaccination: A Rule-of-Law Perspective (Connor Court Publishing, 2022).
Any assessment of the legality of vaccine mandates, understandably, should start with a review of the relevant section of the Australian Constitution. Section 51(xxiiiA) stipulates that “the Parliament shall … have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to … pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services (but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription).” This section was included in the Constitution following a successful referendum, held in 1946.
The High Court first considered the concept of “civil conscription” in 1949 in British Medical Association v Commonwealth.4 The Court ruled that requiring doctors to comply with professional standards to receive Medicare payments did not amount to civil conscription. But the Court also decided that legislation requiring that medical practitioners use a particular Commonwealth prescription form was invalid as a form of civil conscription. In the opinion of Chief Justice Latham, civil conscription included not only legal compulsion to engage in specific conduct, but also the imposition of a duty to perform work in a particular way. Justice Williams, in his judgment, stated that “the expression invalidates all legislation which compels medical practitioners or dentists to provide any form of medical service.”5
In 2009, in Wong v Commonwealth; Selim v Professional Services Review Committee,6 Chief Justice French and Justice Gummow held that ‘civil conscription’ is a “compulsion or coercion, in a legal or practical sense, to carry out work or provide services.”7 Hence, a government directive, addressed to the medical profession to mandatorily vaccinate people, would constitute an unconstitutional civil conscription. Such directive would interfere with the relationship between the doctor and the patient – a relationship which is based on contract and trust.
Importantly, the jurisprudence of the High Court indicates that the prohibition of civil conscription must be construed widely to invalidate any law requiring such conscription expressly or by practical implication. This point is particularly addressed in a comment of Justice Webb in British Medical Association v Commonwealth:
If Parliament cannot lawfully do this directly by legal means it cannot lawfully do it indirectly by creating a situation, as distinct from merely taking advantage of one, in which the individual is left no real choice but compliance (emphasis added).8.
In other words, no law in Australia can impose limitations on the rights of citizens that directly or indirectly amount to a form of civil conscription. If governments cannot constitutionally force everyone to be vaccinated, they certainly cannot indirectly create a situation whereby everybody would be forced to take the vaccine. Therefore, from a constitutional point of view, the jurisprudence of the High Court indicates that what cannot be done directly, cannot be achieved indirectly without violating s51 of the Constitution.
There are two constitutional challenges to overcome when attempting to interpret section 51(xxiiiA) as allowing vaccine mandates: (i) the construction of the section as granting a constitutional right to patients to refuse vaccinations, and (ii) the applicability of the section to the states.
The first challenge relates to the construction of section 51(xxiiiA) as conferring a constitutional right on individuals to refuse vaccination. If that section were to be interpreted as allowing mandatory vaccination, then the contractual relationship between doctor and patient would be effectively abolished because the ability of patients to enter a contract for the receipt of vaccination services would be fatally compromised. Yet, Justice Michael Kirby opined in 2009, in Wong v Commonwealth; Selim v Professional Services Review Committee,9 that the purpose of prohibiting the civil conscription in section 51(xxiiiA) was to ensure that the relationship between medical practitioner and patient was governed by contract. For him, the test whether civil conscription has been imposed is “whether the impugned regulation, by its details and burdens, intrudes impermissibly into the private consensual arrangements between the providers of medical and dental services and the individual recipients of such services”.10
Justice Kirby’s point reveals that compulsory vaccination destroys the contractual relationship between doctors and patients and, therefore, it imposes an impermissible obligation on people to accept a medical procedure which they can refuse on constitutional grounds. Section 51(xxiiiA) could thus be regarded as an implied constitutional right of patients to refuse vaccinations. Hence, a medical treatment which is imposed upon a person without his or her informed consent is a trespass upon that person. In Bowater v Rowley Regis Corp (1944),11 Lord Justice Scott explained that consent to treatment, including vaccination, is needed to proceed with the treatment:
… a man cannot be said to be truly ‘willing’ unless he is in a position to choose freely, and freedom of choice predicates, not only full knowledge of the circumstances on which the exercise of choice is conditioned, so that he may be able to choose wisely, but in the absence from his mind of any feeling of restraint so that nothing shall interfere with the freedom of his will.
The second challenge relates to the applicability of section 51(xxiiiA) to the Australian states. Although a state government can institute its own public health orders, any component of such order cannot impermissibly intrude into any matter which may be regarded as coming within the sole legislative authority of the Commonwealth Parliament. When this occurs, of course, the state must make application to the Commonwealth to enact that specific component of the health order. Accordingly, the issue of vaccine mandates is not whether an Australian state can issue a public health order, but rather whether such state is constitutionally authorised to issue a public health order which unreasonably intrudes into a matter that comes within the sole purview of the Commonwealth.
This foray into the interpretation of section 51(xxiiiA) reveals that, if a person is directed to be mandatorily vaccinated, such direction comprises an unconstitutional civil conscription. Such direction would interfere with the relationship between the doctor and the patient – a relationship which is based on contract and trust. Of course, medical doctors who freely perform their medical service do not create conscription. However, as Justice Webb explicitly mentioned:
When Parliament comes between patient and doctor and makes the lawful continuance of their relationship as such depend upon a condition, enforceable by fine, that the doctor shall render the patient a special service, unless that service is waived by the patient, it creates a situation that amounts to a form of civil conscription. 12
Justice Webb’s statement also indicates that, even if the doctor were compelled to provide a service, the patient would have the right to waive that service. In other words, no citizen shall be in any way coerced into any medical treatment whatsoever, including vaccination. A medical treatment which is imposed upon a person without his or her informed consent is a trespass upon that person.
Naturally, the “no jab, no job” health order of the government in Queensland constituted an egregious violation of a fundamental right of the citizen. In this context, Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which entered into force on 3 January 1976, stipulates that, “The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.”
Furthermore, compulsory vaccination adversely affects the democratic principle of equality before the law. If unvaccinated Australians were to face serious restrictions of rights, these restrictions would violate the democratic principle of equality before the law. The deliberate exclusion of unvaccinated Australians from participation in certain activities discriminates against them on the ground of vaccine status. Accordingly, in Leeth v Commonwealth (1992),13 Justice Deane and Justice Toohey referred to the Preamble to the Constitution to support their view that the principle of equality is embedded impliedly in the Constitution. They argued that “the essential or underlying theoretical equality of all persons under the law and before the courts is and has been a fundamental and generally beneficial doctrine of the common law and a basic prescript of the administration of justice under our system of government.” 14.
It is also worth approaching the matter from the perspective of the self-determination of individuals. This was highlighted in Airdale National Health Service Trust v Bland (1993), when Lord Justice Mustill expounded on this danger with the following clarity:
If the patient is capable of making a decision on whether to permit treatment and decides not to permit it his choice must be obeyed, even if on any objective view it is contrary to his best interests. A doctor has no right to proceed in the face of objection, even it if is plain to all, including the patient, that adverse consequences and even death will or may ensue.15
Similarly, in that same case Lord Judge Goff remarked:
[I]t is established that the principle of self-determination requires that respect must be given to the wishes of the patient, so that, if an adult patient of sound mind refuses, however unreasonably, to consent to treatment or care by which his life would or might be prolonged, the doctors responsible for his care must give effect to his wishes, even though they do not consider it to be in his best interests to do so: To this extent, the principle of sanctity of human life must yield to the principle of self-determination.16
The right of an individual to refuse vaccination is also supported by the Nuremberg Code – an ethics code – relied upon during the Nazi doctors’ trials in Nuremberg. This Code has as its first principle the willingness and informed consent by the individual to receive medical treatment or to participate in an experiment. And it is precisely the experimental nature of the Covid-19 vaccines and the widespread disagreement about the capacity of vaccines to provide protection against a virus that is responsible for the lack of confidence in their effectiveness. The unvaccinated, in relying on health implications for the purpose of refusing the vaccine, may thus ironically invoke the same argument used by proponents of vaccinations, who also rely on health grounds to promote the vaccine. Indeed, in a climate of uncertainty, characterised by a demonstrable lack of confidence, as is amply demonstrated by the vaccine hesitancy in Australia, a programme of mandatory vaccination cannot be regarded as consensual. Hence, the refusal to be vaccinated may be based on the ground that these vaccines are still experimental and their long-term effects and safety on its recipients are unknown. Of course, vaccine mandates also adversely affect the employment rights of people because it gives the government and employers an enormous amount of invasive power over their lives.
Regrettably, the deep unease and fear that saturate Australia’s society created a population disposed to governments whose insatiable thirst for power and control leads to authoritarian measures. To avoid the growing concern of human rights violations and outright suppression of the constitutional order, the political establishment has learned about the importance of manipulating public perceptions to win support of what normally would be rejected as arbitrary and oppressive measures.
Significantly, the political class has not acted alone, relying on so-called “chief health advisers” who then become the de facto rulers over the people as the establishment’s effective enablers. Providing discretionary directions, these health advisers are perfectly positioned to function as the mastermind behind most of the government’s extra-constitutional schemes. Part of such a master plan, of course, involves dismantling the rule of law. Paradoxically, the nation’s political class has managed to undermine the rule of law through legal means. The success at sustaining legitimacy to arbitrary rule and maintaining a façade of legality arises out of a narrow positivistic justification used to shroud otherwise unconstitutional exercises of power that violate the most elementary principles of the rule of law.
Without the protection of civil liberties, a government cannot call itself truly democratic and under the rule of law. To avoid the growing concern of outright suppression of basic human rights, the political class has learned about the necessity of manipulating public perceptions to win support of what normally would be rejected as unconstitutional measures. Government propaganda, which is disseminated by the mainstream media, has been successful in justifying these arbitrary measures, thus making the media an effective means of censoring anti-establishment messages. Without an alternative view, of course, the public tends to view reports of human rights violations merely as “excesses” or “collateral damage” – the price to fight a “deadly virus”.
Although it is not feasible to predict what the nation’s highest court, the High Court of Australia, might do if it were called upon to consider the constitutionality of coercive vaccination, it is still possible to ascertain how the Australian Constitution should be interpreted. Of course, the Constitution must be interpreted in a manner that promotes its purposes, values, and principles. The High Court, in assessing the constitutionality of these vaccine mandates, should consider that the primary purpose of having a constitution, one based on the principles of liberal democracy and representative government, is the establishment of a system of checks and balances capable of limiting arbitrary power and ensuring the realisation of the principle of legality, known as the ‘rule of law’.
It is understood that criminal charges should be laid against those involved in this gross violation of human rights. We are therefore sympathetic to the opinion of Campbell Newman, the former premier] and mayor of Brisbane, who correctly stated:
All the officials involved in the disgraceful policy of vaccine coercion should be held to account for their actions. None of them should escape “facing the music” for their unlawful decisions and the misery they inflicted on so many people. None at all. You should all resign now.17
We couldn’t agree more. As constitutional law academics, we hope that the Queensland government “dares” to challenge the decision just made by the Supreme Court of Queensland, thus eventually providing the High Court an opportunity to make a final and authoritative decision on these important legal/constitutional matters. As mandatory vaccination sits uncomfortably with the jurisprudence of the High Court, one would expect the Court to acknowledge its previous jurisprudential approach, thus deciding that vaccine coercion constitutes not only a gross violation of basic human rights but also a violation of the letter and the spirit of the Australian Constitution.
Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University. Zimmermann and Moens are the authors of Emergency Powers, Covid-19 Restrictions & Mandatory Vaccination – A Rule-of-Law Perspective (Connor Court Publishing, 2022), available at https://www.connor[1]courtpublishing.com.au. Their most recent book is entitled The Unlucky Country (Locke Press, 2024)
[1] Johnston v Carroll (Commissioner of the Queensland Service) & Anor; Witthahn & Ors v Wakefield (Chief Executive of Hospital and Health Services and Director General of Queensland Health); Sutton & Ors v Carroll (Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service) [2024] QSC 2, at https://www.queenslandjudgments.com.au/caselaw/qsc/2024/2.
Summary at https://www.sclqld.org.au/caselaw/14152
2 Talissa Siganto, ‘Mandating COVID-19 vaccines for some Queensland frontline workers found to be unlawful, judge rules’, ABC News, 27 February 2024, at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-27/qld-vaccine-mandate-police-paramedics-frontline-workers/103515692.
3 ‘Police service, health department bungled vaccine mandates, judge finds’, Brisbane Times, 27 February 2024, at https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/police-service-health-department-bungled-vaccine-mandates-judge-finds-20240227-p5f85p.html.
4 (1949) 79 CLR 201; [1949] HCA 44.
5 (1949) 79 CLR 201, at 287 (Williams J).
6 (2009) 236 CLR 573
7 Ibid at [62]. See also Alexandra Private Geriatric Hospital Pty Ltd v Commonwealth (1987) 162 CLR 271, at 279; 69 ALR 631; Halliday v Commonwealth (2000) 45 ATR 458; [[2000] FCA 950 at [11].
8 (1949) 79 CLR 201, at 293 (Webb J)
9 (2009) 236 CLR 573
10 Ibid.: [151].
- Bowater v Rowley Regis Corp [1944] KB 476, R 479 (Scorr LJ).
12 (1949) 79 CLR 201, at 293 (Webb J).
13 (1992) 174 CLR 455.
14 Ibid at [8].
15 Airdale National Health Service Trust v Bland [1993] AC 789, at 889. (Mustill LJ).16
16 Ibid at 866.
17 Campbell Newman, 27 February 2024, at https://twitter.com/CampbellNewman/status/1762318197142007827
Well, there was never and is not any “vaccine” for the cold and flu from Wuhan. We must always remind the CCP and its acolytes where the outbreak started. The muck the governments forced on people was untested experimental drugs. The corrupt CDC changed the centuries old definition of a vaccine to have the sheeple accept it, all the while they and their mates in Big Pharma were making billions. Makes one wonder how many politicians/parties, media and corrupt public servants were on the take.
A win is a win but it would have been better if a principle of medical autonomy for employees had been established. It bears recapitulating that the EXPERIMENTAL and toxic injections not only had a minmal and short-lived impact on the course of the disease, they had no significant demonstrable effect on transmission. Given the mildness of the infection in those of working age, with minimal risk of hospitalisation, there was no public health justification for compelling involvement in the EXPERIMENT. In fact if public health had been the concern an abundance of caution in offering the EXPERIMENT to those under forty should have been evident given the still unknown medium term effects.
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The whole event was an exercise in mass indoctrination and control whether for the sake of innoculating as many as possible with a latent toxin or simply as a proof of concept, a multi-billion dollar cash grab or just as a mechanism to break the will of the cattle.
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Any prosecutions under the Nuremberg code were retrospective. Standards were different in the 1940s, particularly during an existential struggle killing thousands of people a day. Australia had its own poison gas experiments in North Queensland during the war, supposedly involving volunteer servicemen. https://vwma.org.au/collections/home-page-stories/the-mustard-gas-men
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Thank you for an excellent article!
Vaccine mandates are not just a violation of patient rights (in which the profession providing the mandated service collaborates). They are also an egregious intrusion which violates the relationship of doctor and patient. Part of the elaborate apparatus of coercion implemented by government and AHPRA during the ‘pandemic’ was the silencing of doctors who opposed the Covid vaccines on medical grounds. Even if the doctor thought the vaccine was not medically necessary for a particular patient, to give that advice might have attracted unwelcome attention from AHPRA. The result of these strictures – designed purely to support public health objectives – was that the patient could no longer trust the doctor for personal medical advice on whether to ‘get vaccinated’.
This interference with medical practice extended further when doctors were prevented by the TGA from prescribing Ivermectin for Covid patients on the grounds (stated on the TGA website) that this would promote ‘vaccine hesitancy’. If doctors are to retain the trust and respect of the public, they must guard their professional independence. Doctors should insist on their right to advise and treat each patient purely on medical grounds relevant to the individual.
This review raises but does not deal with several issues:
1. The authors have taken a narrow, legalistic view of an important issue which should be examined in the context of the welfare of a whole community.
2. They have ignored the herd of elephants in the room, these being the multitude of things citizens are compelled to do for the greater good, such as voting, wearing seat belts, not smoking at the workplace, obeying laws and regulations….
3. They have much to say about rights but little to say about the responsibilities which rights bring with them and without which societies would lapse into anarchy
4. Why has Covid caused all this fuss ? I am a retired health professional. All of us in the service were required to have a range of vaccinations over the years. This never made the news. How is Covid different ?
The only people who stood to benefit from the extremely novel and thoroughly experimental injections were those at high risk from infection. It was they who should have been offered the treatment whilst everyone else should have had access to ivermectin and sunlight rather than being locked up like rats in Melbourne. The concept of reponsibility not to infect, inaugurated with HIV cannot reasonably be extended to breathing near someone whilst feeling perfectly well, particularly when the pathogen of concern is so benign.
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The solution to government over-reach is not more of the same particularly when dealing with compulsory medication. With non-smoking and wearing seatbelts there’s no plausible harm from complying and in the case of seat belts one can choose not to wear if one wishes. I don’t agree with the outdated and high-handed ADF attitude to immunisation. The rationale for each jab, the risks and benefits, should be made clear to each serviceman.
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I have sympathy with your plaint about rights over responsibilities but as I pointed out in the first paragraph there was no defensible rationale for forcing injections through feat propaganda, travel restrictions and threat of dismissal.
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Why all the fuss? An entirely novel injection less than a year old was given to virtually the entire adult and much of the child population after a year long period of house arrests, social and psychological deprivation, in many cases to unwilling recipients who stood to lose their livelihoods This was despite very limited efficacy. Massive media censorship and deregistering of dissenting voices in the media and lying about possible alternative treatments and public health strategies, like Sweden’s, facilitated this.
dissenting voices in the medical community
Someday the political consensus might think the greater good was mandatory abortion for all pregnancies, mandatory vasectomy for all males at birth or mandatory euthanasia for all those retired and no longer contributing through productivity to society as say part of a response to a climate/population ’emergency’. You might wish to disagree (after all it is your body and your life), too bad if the high court determines you have no say in the matter.
How is Covid different?
1/ The “vaccines” were a new and virtually untested technology, requiring the WHO to change the definition of “vaccine”.
2/ Even Pfizer’s own trial (involving gratuitous adulteration of protocol and data) showed a higher all cause mortality in the “vaccine” group than the placebo group.
3/ A primary reason given for the mandates was prevention of transmission.
Pfizer admitted this was never assessed.
There is essentially no parallel with any other vaccine.
As a mature adult I am responsible for my own health. The nanny state is not responsible, period.
There was an, to me, interesting case 10 years ago where a judge of the NSW Supreme Court ordered that staff at the Sydney Children’s Hospital be allowed to give a blood transfusion to a 17 years and 8 months male who, with his parents’ support, refused the procedure because he was a Jehovah’s Witness.
He told the doctors he would rip the IV out of his arm if forced to have the transfusion, which he believes is akin to being raped. The judge wrote “X is still a child, although a mature child of high intelligence”.
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He appealed but the 3 appeal judges upheld the order.
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I don’t know what happened in the 4 months before he turned 18.
PS, he was 17 years and 8 months when his Appeal was denied, a few months younger when the original order was made,
This could turn out to be The Castle Mk2.
Well the ‘vaccines’ maybe weren’t very effective, but at least a number of recent studies have proven they are safe. We now know that deaths from vaccine-induced heart attacks are “very rare”. It’s good that deaths from vaccine-induced blood clots are “very rare” too. Inflammation of the spinal cord following vaccination is very rare, as is Guillain-Barré syndrome. The vaccine may also cause brain inflammation, but this too is “very rare”. The CDC says anaphylaxis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare. Hearing loss is rare. Your chances of developing ‘Long Covid’ are increased following vaccination, but that’s rare too.
So they’re all rare. Phew!
Add them all up though …
🙂
Then there’s the sliding scale to qualify rareness:
Hen’s teeth rare
Super rare
Somewhat rare
Slightly rare
Not really that rare
The recent study published in the journal Vaccine and sponsored by the US CDC assessing adverse events across 10 countries was deeply methodologically flawed by a cut off period for adverse event detection was just 42 days post administration of the ‘vaccine’. Even this was not universally applied across the study. This is a woefully inadequate longitudinal appraisal of adverse events arising from the mRNA ‘vaccines’ given the known etiology of adverse events from the presence of foreign proteins being synthesized endogenously is likely to extend into years not days.
I reluctantly must say that I found this article unconvincing in so far as the legal argument went.
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I have noted the comment above by Andrew Smallman about elephants in the room and that nothing was written to distinguish these matters from that of compulsory vaccination.
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I have also noted the comment by Citizen Kane about compulsory euthanasia etc. The question implicitly raised being, what is the protection of fundamental rights for Australians?
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I believe that the answer lies in the rule of interpretation of statutes (which our federal and state constitutions are). In Potter and Minahan the High Court stated; “It is in the last degree improbable that the legislature would overthrow fundamental principles, infringe rights, or depart from the general system of law, without expressing its intention with irresistible clearness.” Our constitutions do not contain that “irresistible clearness”.
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Justice John Toohey also had something to say about fundamental rights in the Australian Constitution. He said; “W]here the people of Australia, in adopting a constitution, conferred power to legislate
with respect to various subject matters upon a Commonwealth Parliament, it is to be presumed that they did not intend that those grants of power extend to invasion of fundamental common law liberties.”
(Justice Toohey, “A Government of Laws, and Not of Men” (1993) PLR 158 at 170)
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As I mentioned our state constitutions are statutes requiring interpretation according with Potter and Minahan. They also are constrained by section 106 of the Australian Constitution in that they are only continued “subject” to it.
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It would be an interesting article if our learned authors could write something about the protection of fundamental rights in Australia along those lines.
Have not many of the States already enshrined in relevant Euthanasia legislation for the right for an individual to refuse medical treatment if that refusal means certain death. In Victoria they even call the relevant legislative instrument the ‘Refusal of treatment certificate’.
The following passage is from a Australian Human Rights discussion Papaer on Euthanasia;
With regard to passive voluntary euthanasia, the common law allows a competent adult to refuse medical treatment, even where that refusal will lead to death. Where a patient’s refusal is both voluntary and informed, the decision must be respected and practitioners acting in accordance with such decisions are shielded from liability.
‘….EVEN if that refusal means certain death. ‘
Furthermore, as I understand it, one’s ongoing malaise that may be the subject of a refusal for treatment certificate is not medically restricted to prevent potentially terminal infectious diseases (such as pneumonia, meningitis etc ), as long as they are advanced and progressing being the subject of the refusal to treatment and the right to die.
Any jurisprudence (future high court decision) in relation to vaccine mandates (any treatment really) that removed the right for an individual to refuse treatment as part of informed consent could get very messy indeed! There could be thousands and thousands of advanced health care directives not worth the paper they are written on, under such a scenario.
So when we took our claim to Fairwork for unfair dismissal because we did not fall to the lunacy of being jabbed with the poison, the Fairwork representative said our claim would not succeed because we could not prove we had an allergy to the poison.
But neither the employer nor Fairwork could prove it was a Pandemic nor the number of deaths from the flu had dramatically increased nor that we were biologically highly allergic to the poison nor if the employer had legal right to breach our Human Rights.
An out of court settlement was reached via a written agreement. How is that agreement valid now when the Supreme Court proves the actions of employers were illegal?
I am with Andrew Smallman on this issue. I wish we had a Common Sense Act that could support the work of health professionals. While I can understand that sections of the community may oppose vaccinations it is mind boggling that health professionals would refuse vaccinations unless they had a confirmed serious reaction to the vaccine. Their training and experience would normally lead them to have such vaccinations. I know a retired nurse (SRN, Midwife, Paediatric Nurse) who tells of the occasions when babies and small children were admitted suffering from Diphtheria or Whooping Cough and their anti-vax parents came in to visit, some of the stressed parents, at the sight of their child’s dramatic symptoms would berate the nurses for not doing enough to care for the child. Most of the time she would grit her teeth and get on caring for the child but on one occasion she told the mother that if the child had been vaccinated it would not be in such a parlous situation.
The main problem that arises, if health staff associated with hospitals do not get vaccinated for a disease that is potentially deadly and is in pandemic mode, is that they could become infected and pass it on to their colleagues and hospital patients, with the result that the whole system of hospital healthcare collapses. You don’t need a degree in Logic to see that. As Andrew Smallman points out health professionals have been getting vaccinated in the past with no hoo-ha. It did not result in Australia turning into a Marxist totalitarian state, bereft of human rights. We all drive on the same side of the road, we all go to school, we all need to work to earn a decent living, we all have to pay rates and taxes, pay our train fares etc. These may be infringements on our liberty to do as we like, in a strict sense as individuals, but they are in the interest of society as a whole and based on common sense. When I started travelling in the 60s there was no outrage when people had to get smallpox, cholera and typhoid vaccine when travelling overseas and this resulted in those diseases fading away with the result that those temporary restrictions were eventually lifted. Two generations before me in our family lost children through whooping cough and diphtheria because there were no vaccines available at the time. When they became available for my generation our parents did not hesitate to get us vaccinated. My generation had to cope with the possibility of getting polio until the Salk vaccine was made available in the late 50s. Prior to that if a child was infected with polio word spread like wildfire in the neighbourhood and our mothers kept us from going to school until the outbreak was contained. For generally non-fatal childhood diseases, like mumps, measles and chickenpox, for which there was no vaccine at the time, antibodies were produced by sending the kids to play with an infected child down the street. Such diseases, if not contracted in childhood, had severe health effects if contracted in adulthood. It was a case of “Needs must, when the Divil drives”, a concept alien to modern generations well protected by past advances in therapies.
Padraic, I think you completely miss the point…and that is the covid pandemic was a multinational fraudulent scam. The so called covid vaccine is not a vaccine that went through a rigorous ten year trial period. The covid vaccine neither cures you nor prevents you from getting the flu. The majority of so called covid deaths resulted from those who injected the failed syrup.
Now vaccines for whooping cough, diphtheria etc are the real deal because they were vetted under strict lengthy trials before release to the public and they also work as intended to defeat the complaint.
A covid vaccine is a ridiculously false gammon on a par with the negligence of scientific forethought for example thalidomide and cane toads.
A lot of medical professionals unfortunately were forced to a choice of either sucking up the poison or loss of employment.
It is worth noting also that the state premiers in Australia at the time who were promoting the fraud scheme have all since resigned runaway or retired. They take their pension but for most us who believe in basic human rights and freedom copped unemployment with no pension but we did go where the truth is.
I don’t think I missed the point, Phillip. I was just stating the facts. For those outside the health professional cohort the issue surrounding vaccination is one of a duel of opinions at 50 paces a la Americaine. Such duels will only die down when the facts are revealed. That could happen if there is a nationwide review of the effects of Covid in terms of health outcomes such as the number of deaths attributable to Covid pre and post vaccination implementation, the number of hospital staff affected and other criteria. Obviously there should be an economic review as well as the legal review as we see in this article. There was a similar article in Quadrant in 2021 postulating that s. 51 (xxiiiA) may be used to put a brake on community vaccination when I made some comments which I have partially reproduced below in an expanded edited form and with reference to this article.
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In this article it states that “In the opinion of Chief Justice Latham, civil conscription included not only legal compulsion to engage in specific conduct, but also the imposition of a duty to perform work in a particular way.” Is that an opinion different from the other judges? The judgement was clear that a bureaucratic requirement of the scheme to use a special prescription form did not constitute “conscription”. Today, a doctor still writes out prescriptions in accordance with the requirement set out in the original legislation (The pharmaceutical Benefits Act 1947-1949) that medicine obtained under the scheme was obtained free by the public on compliance with certain conditions one of which was that the medicine must be prescribed by a medical practitioner on a form supplied by the Commonwealth.
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The Civil Conscription case in the High Court in 1949 (Federal Council of the British Medical Association in Australia v. Commonwealth 79 C.L.R. 201) was about a requirement in The Pharmaceutical Benefits Act 1947-49 that a medical practitioner could only write a prescription for a drug on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme on a form supplied by the Commonwealth. The Court did not see this as a form of civil conscription within the meaning of s. 51 (xxiiiA) and further held that the prohibition in this paragraph – “but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription” – applies only to medical and dental services.” That clause had been incorporated into s. 51 (xxiiiA) through pressure from the medical profession in Australia because in both Britain and Australia the NHS legislation was intended to have urban GPs working as State employees (as were doctors in public hospitals). This was opposed by the profession in both countries after the WW2 in 1945. In Britain the 1942 Beveridge cross-party report established the principles of the NHS which was implemented in Britain by the Labour Government in 1948, with public hospital doctors and GPs there working for the government. The profession in Australia managed to avoid that, by having the civil conscription clause inserted in the section that went to a successful referendum in 1946. It had nothing to do with vaccinations. On the basis of the above I have difficulty accepting the view expressed in the essay that “Section 51(xxiiiA) could thus be regarded as an implied constitutional right of patients to refuse vaccinations”, given that it applies only to “medical and dental services”. The Commonwealth has the constitutional head of power over the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme but not “Health” as such, which is the prerogative of the States. The States run the hospitals, register the various health professionals and so on – that is their responsibility. So the question is “Do the States have the power to enforce compulsory vaccination?” Prior to Federation the individual Colonies and later on States legislated for Health. In 1854 Victoria passed (and enforced) the Compulsory Vaccination Act and earlier in Tasmania the State government passed (but failed to consistently enforce) an “Act for the Prevention of Small-Pox by rendering Vaccination Compulsory in certain cases” (17Vic, No 20). This was following the example set in Britain not long before with a compulsory Act. A similar Act for compulsory smallpox vaccination was passed in Ireland in 1863, with beneficial results. For information I have reproduced a part of the brief Tasmanian Act of 1853:
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“AN ACT for the Prevention of Small-pox by rendering Vaccination compulsory in certain Cases. [6th October, 1853 ] WHEREAS there is Reason to apprehend the Introduction of Small-pox into this Colony, and it is expedient to adopt Means to avert the Ravages which would be caused amongst the Inhabitants by that fearful Disease, and for that Purpose to promote the Practice of Vaccination by rendering the same compulsory in certain Cases; Be it therefore enacted by His Excellency SIR WILLIAM THOMAS DENISON, Knight, Lieutenant-Governor of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land and its Dependencies, with the Advice and Consent of the Legislative Council thereof, as follows :- The Parent of any Child above the Age of Six Months and under the Age of Fourteen Years, who on and after the First Day of April next shall not have caused such Child to be vaccinated, shall, in respect of every such Child, be deemed guilty of an Offence against this Act, and shall for every such Offence forfeit and pay a Penalty not exceeding Five Pounds; unless such Parent shall show, to the Satisfaction of the Justices, before whom the Complaint shall be heard, reasonable Cause or Excuse for not having caused such Child to be vaccinated.”
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I suppose the main question about this issue of compulsory vaccination from a legal viewpoint is whether the civil conscription clause in s. 51 (xxiiiA) applies only to medical and dental services subject to legislation based on the Commonwealth Constitution or whether the States have the power to enforce compulsory vaccination as was the case prior to Federation. If the civil conscription clause in s. 51 (xxiiiA) covers all medical services, including those provided by the States, does that mean doctors in the States are exempt from State legislation compelling them to carry out services related to euthanasia?
TL;DR. The injections did not prevent transmission. The infection was mild in the non-elderly. The worldwide propaganda and censorship of dissenting views was egregious.
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There was no medical reason to allow experimental use in young people, whether hospital workers or not, let alone mandate them to be experimented upon
Your argument is playing a leg glance to a ball well outside off. This is because you use the term ‘Vaccine’ as if the very word itself has magical powers and or on the basis that all vaccines are created equal or are of equal utility. One could seek to mandate the flu vaccine, it ain’t going to prevent large flu outbreaks. If we go back to first principles; the question is should anyone be subject, against their will, to forced medical treatment through both mandate and coercion? Especially when that treatment is invasive, involves a novel genetic agent and has been untested in a manner that is the usual requirement for the introduction of a new medical treatment.
Add to this that the novel mRNA treatment did not act as an effective vaccine, preventing infection or even nullifying the severity of disease, then your argument falls flat on its face. If you can demonstrate any statistics from anywhere in the world, that;
a) demonstrate the reduction in infection transmission and positive cases after the introduction of the ‘vaccines’ in 2021.
b) demonstrate a reduction in mortality after the introduction of the ‘vaccines’ in 2021.
c) provide any convincing statistics that demonstrate those unvaccinated were more likely to be infected, and suffer from a greater burden of morbidity and mortality after the introduction of the vaccines in 2021.
It would then be beneficial to your case to provide a full explanation as to excess mortality rates that continue in many if not most highly vaccinated countries (Australia has just agreed to a parliamentary inquiry on this) that are not associated with acute Covid infection. Furthermore, any commentary on mRNA vaccine efficacy and safety should be accompanied by a reasonable understanding of how this agent works in your body. In the absence of that, commentary is simply akin to cheering on your favorite footy team and cheering on mass, mandated introduction of mRNA material to encode the endogenous production of a foreign protein, even in very young children, downright irresponsible.
P.S. In 1853 in Van Diemens land, patients were regularly subjected to bloodletting, Mercury and Arsenic treatments. Convicts were treated with appalling cruelty and the only true attempt of Genocide of Aboriginal people had not long past transpired. I’m not sure it serves as the high-water mark of good public policy.
given that the High Court is basically a bunch of diversity hires, I fear this will end badly.