A local teacher, who cannot be named owing to onerous laws that prevent NSW government workers from speaking publicly, has raised their concerns over the looming November 8 deadline by the NSW government requiring all education and care workers to be vaccinated.
They say the issue has forced them to no longer ‘sit on the fence’ around the issue but to pick a side.
‘That’s what just happened to construction workers, health workers, police etc’, they told The Echo.
‘If you don’t vax by the date they have set, you are forced onto the antivax side, and no longer able to take your time deciding if it’s right for you or not’.
They said vaccine passports, which are operating in many European countries, will exacerbate the polarisation within the community.
‘Many on both sides would rather fence sit and wait until they feel they could make a more informed consent about what is right for them’.
‘And science is not our God. It isn’t always correct, or without bias, and it is such a shitty argument to make people subscribe to when, by nature, [the pandemic] is relative and evolving.
‘Lots of products on the market that were said to be safe by science have been found [to be] not good for us in the long term. A lot of people know about their own body, and what is right for it, and don’t appreciate having their basic freedoms and rights such as being able to earn a living, or access certain facilities (if the passport comes in), intertwined with their choice. This is not consent, is it?
‘The whole Australian school curriculum is going to need rewriting if we continue the way we are as a society, and guess what – there won’t be enough teachers to teach it. There wasn’t before COVID-19, owing to casualisation of the sector’. Link
‘It hasn’t been thought through properly, and our children will suffer deeply for it. It is not as simple as just getting vaxed so we can all get on with our lives.
‘The proposed vaccine passport will create negative changes that will affect generations to come.’
‘Fingers crossed I can work out a different way to earn a living. Some of us have to stand up.
‘We are being forced to. I do not want the current government’s overreach of power to become normalised,’ they said.
A Public Health Order has been legislated by the NSW government, requiring all education and care workers (child day care etc) to be vaccinated by November 8.
It came into force on September 23, ‘and is in force’, according to NSW legislation.
Its full title is Public Health (COVID-19 Vaccination of Education and Care Workers) Order 2021 and is made under the Public Health Act 2010, section 7 (NSW).
Justifications for the order include that, ‘COVID-19 is a potentially fatal condition and is highly contagious’ and that, ‘the risk of transmission… will remain significant and ongoing unless more COVID-19 vaccines are administered’.
The only provision for being exempt from the order is a medical contraindication certificate.
To qualify for a medical contraindication certificate, a registered medical practitioner is required to fill out the relevant form.
It outlines reasons for exemption, being anaphylaxis, a ‘Serious adverse event’, and ‘Other specified medical contraindication’ related to COVID-19 vaccines.
There is no provision for conscientious objectors.
Test cases
It follows a similar recent Health Order requiring mandatory vaccines for NSW health workers.
Retired local magistrate David Heilpern told The Echo, ‘The only thing standing in the way of this are the test cases before the Supreme Court on September 30 [Al-Munir KASSAM v Bradley Ronald Hazzard], set down for a three-day hearing’.
‘The police officer who was challenging her vaccination order had her case dismissed by the Supreme Court a few days ago’ [Belinda Kay HOCROFT v Bradley Ronald Hazzard, Minister for Health and Medical Research].
And the Fair Work Commission has made a judgment on Jennifer Kimber v Sapphire Coast Community Aged Care Ltd.
An unfair dismissal claim by Ms Kimber was rejected by the Commission. She refused to be vaccinated. The judgement is available at here.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
