10-15-2021, 08:51 AM
Judge dismisses challenges to NSW COVID-19 vaccination orders for workers, abc.net.au.
The judgment was broadcast over a live stream on YouTube where some 40,000 people watched. Let’s hope the vaccine hesitant now have another reason to stop tilting at windmills and get their jabs like responsible citizens do for the public good.
Of course, the Victorian challenges may be able to find more support in the bill of rights, but the more general notion that vaccine mandates are unfair and unreasonable has taken a major hit.
Quote:Each unvaccinated worker cited similar concerns about insufficient long-term data on COVID-19 vaccine safety and side effects.
The cases used various arguments to attack the validity of the health orders but contained common threads.
They contended that the orders violated rights to bodily integrity and privacy, implemented civil conscription, represented a breach of natural justice and were made by Health Minister Brad Hazzard without clear legislative authority.
He said any consideration about the reasonableness of orders should be undertaken by reference to the objects of the public health act, which were "directed exclusively at public safety".
The judge found that if an order was made interfering with freedom of movement and differentiating on "arbitrary grounds" unrelated to public health risks, such as race or gender, it would be at "severe risk" of being found to be invalid.
"However, the differential treatment of people according to their vaccination status is not arbitrary," Justice Beech-Jones wrote in his judgment.
"Instead, it applies a discrimen, namely vaccination status, that on the evidence and the approach taken by the minister is very much consistent with the objects of the Public Health Act."
The judge further rejected a constitutional argument about civil conscription and an asserted inconsistency with the immunisation register act.
"So far as the right to bodily integrity is concerned, it is not violated as the impugned orders do not authorise the involuntary vaccination of anyone," he said.
"Curtailing the free movement of persons, including their movement to and at work, are the very type of restrictions that the public health act clearly authorises."
The judgment was broadcast over a live stream on YouTube where some 40,000 people watched. Let’s hope the vaccine hesitant now have another reason to stop tilting at windmills and get their jabs like responsible citizens do for the public good.
Of course, the Victorian challenges may be able to find more support in the bill of rights, but the more general notion that vaccine mandates are unfair and unreasonable has taken a major hit.