Journey

Minister, you look like you need a break, so I will give you a break from your legal jousting and setting up definitions of terms for the future. In proposing this bill, the government says the bill aims to secure jobs. My amendment on sheet 1768 goes to the heart of ensuring job security and protecting workers’ rights.

To ensure job security, my amendment on sheet 1768 ensures that unjustified vaccine discrimination is stamped out in employment. The original bill inserts breastfeeding, intersex status and gender identity as attributes that the Fair Work Act protects from discrimination. This amendment copies that approach and simply adds COVID-19 vaccination status as an attribute protected from discrimination. The protection is still subject to the limits imposed on the other discrimination grounds in the Fair Work Act.

An employer will not be in breach of the antidiscrimination grounds where the employer can prove, as they should have to, that it is a genuine and reasonable requirement of the position. This amendment is reasonable in its approach. It is not radical, because it uses and simply extends the existing mechanisms in the Fair Work Act.

We’ve long known that COVID vaccines do not stop transmission. Before this came apparent, however, getting vaccinated to ‘protect others’ was the justification many businesses used to roll out vaccine mandates.

As a condition of keeping their job, many employees were coerced and still are being coerced into receiving COVID injections and boosters they do not want. The vaccine mandates cannot be justified, given the fact that vaccines do not guarantee protection from transmission.

The New South Wales Personal Injury Commission agrees with this view, with workers compensation being awarded for psychological distress stemming from mandates in the determination of Dawking and the Secretary of the Department of Education, handed down on 3 November. Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, yet we are happy that judicial bodies are taking up this self-evident position that broad vaccine mandates cannot be justified.

Despite this, mandates are still in effect across much of the private sector. It’s clear that further legislative action must be taken. Businesses are simply ignoring the evidence against unjustified vaccine mandates. A clear message needs to be sent that unreasonable directions that infringe on workers’ rights have no place in Australian workplaces.

Often mandates do not even account for Australians that have accepted medical contra-indications to vaccination. The Australian newspaper reports that Qantas sacked a pilot for failing to comply with a vaccination mandate while he was off work in a serious health condition: being treated for bowel cancer. Separately, I’ve met a Qantas employee who, after being injected with the first COVID injection, was rushed to hospital with severe disability—possibly life-threatening—due to the COVID injection. After hospital care and partial recovery, he returned to work, where Qantas insisted he get the second injection. He contested it and is on a vastly reduced pay on workers’ compensation. He fears his career with Qantas is finished. How can this be in this country?

This amendment seeks to reinforce workers’ rights to refuse a workplace direction where it is not a reasonable and justified requirement of the job. It leaves no doubt for employees and employers that vaccine mandates must not be in place unless there is a reasonable and justifiable need for them. Minister, given that businesses continue to ignore workers’ rights in this area, will the government support this amendment to reinforce the decisions of the Fair Work Commission and codify protections for workers against unreasonable workplace directions?

Senator CANAVAN (Queensland) (17:11): I’d like to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Roberts and indicate to the chamber that I will be supporting his amendments because I support workers’ rights. A fundamental right of every Australian should be to earn a livelihood to support their family. That should be a basic right. In fact, it’s a right we have signed up to in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. One of the enshrined human rights that we as a country have signed up to is the right to work to provide for your family. With the introduction of vaccine mandates last year, we denied that right to thousands of Australians who were thrown out onto the streets and had no way to provide for their families, in the short term at least.

The mandates were never justifiable. Even I thought at the time that there was no evidence that the vaccine stopped transmission. Really, the only justification you could have to overturn and override that fundamental human right would be if somehow getting the vaccine protected a third party. I said at the time, and I’ll say now that if we had a vaccine that could stop COVID in its tracks and prevent that death, I would consider some limitations on other rights. That’s the way rights work. There is a right to life, as well. Sometimes we have to weigh these different human rights up. But if it wasn’t apparent a year ago, it is clearly and starkly evident today that, for whatever the merits of the coronavirus vaccines, they do not stop transmission. Someone’s else not having the vaccine is of no risk to you or anybody else in our society, and we know that now because we’ve largely got rid of mandates, in any case. They’re gone, largely, but they are not completely removed. They still exist in the resources sector, where I come from in Central Queensland, where people have been locked out from their jobs because some companies have dug their heels in, if you like, and are maybe embarrassed to back down on the very strong stances they took a year ago that have proven to be wrong.

We have an opportunity, when we’re debating this type of legislation, to protect the rights of workers and to protect the rights of individual Australians to provide for their families. There can be no justification now to continue these mandates. Keep in mind, too, that even if you supported the mandates—I’ve never seen a mandate for a booster; I actually don’t know. I think some health authorities might, but all of the mandates I’ve seen in private companies are for the original two shots. For anyone who took the original two shots on the timeline for most of us—that is, by late last year—they’ve already worn out. We know that from the science. The science says that, after 12 months—well, after six months really, but after 12 months definitely—there is no more impact of those first two shots.

So, if you thought this was an issue or if these private companies thought there was a risk, why aren’t they mandating the third shot—the booster—or a fourth shot? They’re not doing that because they’d lose a lot of their workers if they did. These have no basis in science. All they are doing is hurting Australian families—admittedly fewer than last year. Thankfully, most of these mandates, as I say, have gone. The state governments have largely got rid of them in their laws, but there are still people being hurt by this. There are still people being harmed by it. They have no justification. I will once again stand up for the right of all Australian workers to make decisions about their health care when it doesn’t affect the health of others.

Senator ANTIC (South Australia) (17:15): I want to make some brief comments in support of this, and I thank Senator Roberts for bringing this important amendment to the chamber. To add to Senator Canavan’s comments on the subject: I think this is a topic which has picked up some acceleration over the last period. We’re not in December 2021 anymore. A lot of the stuff we actually did know at this time last year—or that many of us knew—is now plainly evident. And as Senator Canavan said, the science is now settled on this issue. Transmission of the COVID virus is not affected by the use of these therapies. They are experimental therapies, and, at the end of the day, people have to accept that. I know there’s a degree of cynicism in this room and there has been a period of 12 to 18 months of name-calling—antivax and this, that and the other—but the reality is that people have been forced into a very difficult decision over the past 12 to 18 months in order to keep their livelihood or take a risk on this therapy, and that has been wrong.

What we have seen in the last two years, in my view, is one of the greatest scandals in Australian history—certainly in Australian medical history. This parliament and this Senate need to take the opportunity now to support this amendment—I support this amendment—and allow people the opportunity to return to work without the fear of losing their job because of a medical choice. There is no risk to the public. We have got private companies that are still engaging in this, and we need to set the tone here now. We hear a lot about the party of the workers: the Australian Labor Party. Let me tell you: the trade union movement bailed out on Australian workers on this issue.

Senator Canavan: CFMMEU did.

Senator ANTIC: Well, that’s true. It would be very interesting to be where I’m standing in defence of the CFMMEU, but, in any event, that is a very fair point and I’ll take that from Senator Canavan. But there are workers out there. If you’d seen the emails that come through my office and no doubt Senator Rennick’s office on a daily basis—surely there is some humanity left in this place. It’s time for us to support this. I support it and I ask that others do.