A TV host has blasted Australia’s vaccination passport plan, claiming it breaches the Government’s own guidelines in a wild rant.
Sky News host Rowan Dean has lashed NSW’s vaccination passport policy, claiming four key words proves it breaches the government’s own guidelines.
In an epic rant this week, Dean began by insisting he was not against vaccinations themselves, but accused leaders of double standards, warning the scheme could create “two classes” of people.
“I’ve repeatedly said I have no problem whatsoever with people being vaccinated or not being vaccinated – what is not acceptable for multiple reasons including constitutional, and legal and ethical and moral reasons, is mandatory vaccination,” he said.
He then claimed the Australian Immunisation Handbook spells it out “very clearly” that consent to vaccination must be given “in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation”, and urged NSW politicians including Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Deputy Premier John Barilaro, Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet to “read it”.
“Once you start down this path of dividing any society into two distinct classes of people, you have abandoned liberty and democracy and replaced it with tyranny, fear and suspicion,” Dean said.
“Worse, and this is what really disturbs me, once the authorities have decreed that there are now two classes of Australians, the good and the bad, and that one class is superior to another and gets special privileges while the other class is shunned, locked out, vilified and loses their employment, you have by definition created an inferior class.”
According to the Australian Immunisation Handbook, which Dean cites, for consent to be legally valid, four key elements must be present.
“It must be given by a person with legal capacity, and of sufficient intellectual capacity to understand the implications of receiving a vaccine,” the handbook states.
“It must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.
“It must cover the specific procedure that is to be performed.
“It can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.”
It’s those four key words – “undue pressure, coercion or manipulation” – that anti-vaxxers have long taken issue with, with many claiming the government’s threats of withholding freedoms for the unvaccinated contravene those standards.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Senate candidate for the Liberal Democrats Campbell Newman in an opinion piece in The Australian today, in which he argues that vaccine passports “open the door to ugly segregation”.
He predicted that if passports are to proceed, “there will be millions of vaccinated Australians who are typically citizens of goodwill who, if vaccine passports are mandated, will continue to have an overly alarmist view of the Covid threat. These people will falsely, but in a real way, consider many they know to be unclean and dangerous. That will be a very ugly Australia, and reprehensible for our leaders to legislate that outcome.”
Dean directed the bulk of his anger at the NSW government, which previously announced that some freedoms – such as heading to the pub and travelling in the regions – will be given to the double-jabbed by mid-October, provided they can prove their vaccination status via the Service NSW app.
However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also staunchly supported the vaccine passport plan.
“If you get vaccinated, there will be special rules that will apply to you,” he said back in August.
“Why? Because if you’re vaccinated, you present less of a public health risk. You are less likely to get the virus. You are less likely to transmit it.
“You are less likely to get a serious illness and be hospitalised, and you are less likely to die.”
He also doubled down on that stance last week during an interview on Sky News, insisting that “any venue, any pub, any cafe, any restaurant, any shop can – has every right under Australia’s property laws – to be able to deny entry to people who are unvaccinated.”
Associate Professor Ron Levy from the Australian National University, who specialises in constitutional law, told news.com.au last month a decision would need to be made about whether states or the commonwealth introduce new laws.
“In general, it seems relatively clear that the states or the federal government are able legally to create and run vaccine passport systems. There are some specific considerations and worries, however,” he said.
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Sydney doctor: ‘No vaccine against stupidity’ State makes big call on vaccine passports“For example, if the passports were federal in origin, then the federal government would need to be able to show that it has the constitutional power to create the scheme. There are a couple of possibilities in the Constitution.
“One of them is the so-called ‘nationhood power’, which can be used, for instance, in a crisis. But the nationhood power is not unlimited. Especially if the vaccine passports are ‘coercive’ (which of course they are to some extent), then a court would want to be satisfied that they are on balance worth it.”