The prime minister has warned businesses moving to make Covid vaccinations mandatory for their staff to be careful, with neither the federal government nor the states and territories prepared to create special laws to enforce vaccine mandates.
Instead, employers will have to navigate existing workplace laws, which include “reasonable” directions to staff, if they wish to proceed with vaccine mandates, although Scott Morrison warned that would still be open to court challenges.
Australian canned goods giant SPC announced it would be mandating the vaccine for its employees earlier this week, and other major employers, including Qantas, have previously indicated they would look at a vaccine directive for staff.
Morrison, speaking after the latest national cabinet meeting, said it was up to employers to make their own decisions, but they would have to be made within the existing legal framework and public health directions.
“We do not have a mandatory vaccination policy in this country,” he said.
“We do not have that. We’re not proposing to have that. That is not changing. But an employer may make a reasonable directive to staff and if they do so, they will have to stay consistent with the law and particularly in dealing with a situation where an employee may be in direct contact, potentially become infected and acquire the virus.”
Public health directives do explicitly allow vaccine mandates in some high-risk environments, including healthcare, working with vulnerable people, hotel quarantine, in a frontline service, or airlines when staff could come into contact with people carrying the virus.
“You see, in our country, everyone has choices and they have choices that are supported by the rule of law, and I am simply making the point that those choices have to be exercised and are consistent with the rule of law,” Morrison said.
“But in terms of the commonwealth government or the state governments making mandatory or issuing public health orders or taking some statutory approach, then well, except in the areas I’ve already nominated – in the areas of quarantine and aged care – the commonwealth and the states are not making any moves in that area, otherwise the rule of law applies as it normally does.”
On the flipside, someone wanting to claim discrimination over their vaccine status at work would also only have existing discrimination laws within which to work, and someone denied service or entry to a business based on whether they had been vaccinated would be privy to property law, which does allow refusal of entry.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, on Thursday indicated that Covid vaccination could be required for employees in some industries to return to work as the state endures an extended lockdown due to the Delta outbreak.
“We do want to incentivise people for getting the jab, in terms of occupations that…
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