Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2021, which aims to end unfair, cruel, unnecessary and un-Australian vaccine mandates on the Australian people. You should not need to undergo a medical procedure to earn a living. Everybody should have the right to work and provide for their family, and no government in this free country that I was born in has the right to take away people's right to work and provide for their family. Yet that is what we see a variety of state governments doing across the country. People are being forced to choose between having a medical procedure and keeping their business, keeping their job and, ultimately, keeping their house. I thought I was born in a free country, and a lot of other Australians thought they were too. A lot of Australians respect the sacrifice that previous generations of Australians put in for us to have that right. But those rights are being stripped away from us and will be denied to our children unless we stand up against this tyranny. In the last week, since the Queensland government announced its vaccine mandates, I have been inundated with calls from small businesses and workers who are at their wits' end because they don't know how they are going to provide for their family. They do not know how they're going to put bread on the table next year.

I've always said that coronavirus is a serious thing. We've had to take serious action. The businesses that are calling me have sacrificed. They've willingly shut their doors. They went through cash-flow problems last year to lock down and protect people, but they never thought that their government would turn around after all that and put them out on the street. But that is what is happening. There's a coffee shop in Rockhampton where half the staff are not vaccinated and don't want to be. The owner himself is not vaccinated. He might have to shut his doors in a month's time. His wife is currently pregnant and doesn't want to be vaccinated. She is being told that she can't go to antenatal classes while not vaccinated. What the hell happened to 'My body, my choice'? Why are we making pregnant women undergo a medical procedure that they don't want to have? That is what these laws are doing.

Last year, nurses put themselves on the front line. Now we're saying, 'Thanks for your service; you're out.' There's no leave without pay and no payout of their terms. They're just gone. Apparently, over the past month, 4,000 nurses have walked off the job in Queensland due to the mandate, or they've said it's due to the mandate. They're the ones we know of. There are probably more. That's five per cent of the health workforce in Queensland. Apparently, we're doing this to protect the hospital system, but we're losing five per cent or so of our health workforce. The hospital system is already stretched. There is already a situation where people sometimes can't get a bed. How will these policies deliver their objectives when 5,000 workers in our health system have walked off the job in Queensland over the past month?

I don't support these mandates, and I don't support this legislation—because vaccination mandates don't work. I am vaccinated. I support the vaccination rollout. I encourage others to be vaccinated. It protects us from the severe disease that COVID can inflict. But these vaccines do not seem to be doing a good job at stopping transmission. Therefore, there is no justification for taking the choice away from others, because it is not going to work. For those who support vaccine mandates in this place, name one country where vaccine passports are working. Just one. There are lots of countries doing it. We're in the lucky position in Australia where we have not had widespread coronavirus. We have seen lots of other examples of what other countries have done and what they are doing in response to it, such as lockdowns and Sweden's approach, and a lot of countries have introduced vaccine passports and vaccine mandates. For the advocates of vaccine mandates, an incredibly authoritarian policy that strips rights off people: can they name just one country where the vaccine passports have helped stop the spread of coronavirus? Just one. There are none!

Senator McMahon interjecting—

Senator McMahon is right. There are none. Let's go through a few examples. Austria is experiencing more than 10,000 cases a day—a record. They have vaccine passports. Bulgaria is experiencing nearly 5,000 cases a day, which is a record. They have vaccine passports. The Czech Republic is experiencing 10,000 cases a day, which is just below their previous record of 12,000 cases a day. They have vaccine passports. France is experiencing massive numbers of coronavirus cases. They've introduced vaccine passports. Serbia is experiencing 7,500 cases a day. That's a record. They have vaccine passports. Germany has 40,000 cases a day, almost double their previous record. They're introducing vaccine passports. The Netherlands and Switzerland are in the same boat. Vaccine passports simply do not work. They are a failed policy that we should walk away from before this gets any worse for all of us. Let's walk away from these mandates before we inflict more pain on everybody.

I want to deal with the issue of whether this is the Commonwealth government's responsibility. That's a fair point. These mandates have been put in place by state governments and are no doubt within the purview of state governments with their constitutional power over public health. There's no doubt about that. The Commonwealth government obviously does have powers to override the states from time to time. Indeed, the Constitution says that, where a law at the Commonwealth level conflicts with the state government law, the Commonwealth government law will prevail. The question is: can we legislate in this area? This legislation uses a variety of powers that the Commonwealth government has, like the corporations power, which the High Court has established as one with significant reach and which we apply in many different areas such as environmental policy and industrial relations policy. There's no doubt that it could be applied in public health policy too. But, more importantly, given the rights we are talking about, this bill uses the Commonwealth government's international treaties powers that have also been backed up by High Court rulings that we have the right to make laws that enforce treaties. Where does the treaty come from in this instance that gives us this power? We are a signatory to International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and I'll refer to the Australian government's Attorney-General's website, which says:

The right to work includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his or her living by work which he or she freely chooses or accepts.

It goes on to say:

Where does the right to work and rights in work come from?

Australia is a party to seven core international human rights treaties. The right to work and rights in work is contained in articles 6(1), 7 and 8(1)(a) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

We clearly have the power to enforce these basic rights across Australia, because that is clearly a job of the federal government to enforce human rights in this country. They are basic rights that should be available to every Australian citizen, regardless of where they live, where they are born or whether they are born overseas. It is a birth right of anyone in this country to have the right to work. We have signed up to that and we should implement and stand by that by overriding these unfair, unethical and cruel state government mandates.

In saying that, I think this bill has the power to do these things. I would make some amendments to this legislation. I think it's important to note that this legislation has its origins in a bill that, in the other place, Mr Craig Kelly and Mr George Christensen drafted. Senator Hanson has made some changes. She's changed the approach in that bill from vaccine passports to discrimination, but the basic structure remains the same. I think it is worthy of some amendments. I will support this bill regardless of whether those amendments are accepted or not, but I do think that the Australian government should retain the power of deciding who comes to this country and whether they're vaccinated or not. That was something in the original Kelly/Christensen bill that I would seek to reinsert. I think that we need to look at exceptions in high-risk situations such as aged-care centres and COVID wards in hospitals where perhaps a requirement for vaccination would reduce risk in those situations.

My amendments would ensure that any such exceptions are very narrowly targeted and don't otherwise impinge on someone's rights to work and make a living. For example, in a hospital, if someone doesn't want to be vaccinated that may mean they will not be able to work in the COVID ward. However, hospitals are big places and they will surely be able to find other work for those people. My principle here is that we should respect each other as Australians and respect each other's choices. If someone wants to make a different choice to me, I don't want to make their life miserable, unlike the head of the Queensland medical association when remarkably the other day he said anyone unvaccinated will be lonely and miserable. What an inhumane thing to say about a fellow Australian. I don't want to take anymore lectures from the Labor Party about compassion, refugees or people's rights to work because the Labor Party are not standing by the unions. They're not standing by the CFMEU who are fighting BHP at the moment on vaccine mandates. I am: I'm standing with the CFMEU. I support their case. I'm against big business telling people what to do, but the Labor Party here are not supporting the labourers of this country who just want to work and provide for their families. They have deserted them and, worse, they are vilifying them.

We had the spectacle last week of the Deputy Premier of Queensland, Steven Miles, saying that those people out there protesting are the fringe elements of society—that's what he said. We saw hundreds of thousands of Australians out there on the weekend. Thus far I've seen just one arrest in the whole protest—and the police in Victoria said that that was actually unrelated to the protest. These have been the most peaceful large-scale protests we have ever seen in this country. Then we have the Deputy Premier out there saying to average men and women in this country who just want to work that they are fringe elements. That's the contempt that the modern Labor Party has for the average working man and woman in this country. Mr Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, is out there saying that they're radical extremists, all these people who just want to work, to own a business, to run a coffee shop. You're a radical extremist now, according to the Victorian Labor Premier. That's how you've been labelled. Well, this division has to end, and passing this legislation would be a strike for unity in this country, a strike against further division.

I fear what's going to happen next year. I didn't think we'd end up in this place. When COVID first hit last year, I supported the lockdowns. I thought we were all in this together. Remember that? Remember when we were all in this together? That was a long time ago. Now we're dividing our community, segmenting them up, segregating ourselves, based on the politics of fear. If we do not end this here, what will be next, next year? As I said, the passports aren't going to stop COVID. We know that. Everybody here knows that. They may not express it, but they know that the passports aren't going to end COVID. We will have outbreaks next year. We will have high vaccination rates—that's clear—but we will have outbreaks. What will happen then? If I know governments well, I don't think they're going to get up in March next year and say: 'Sorry about these record coronavirus cases. We were at fault. We were wrong about the passports. That was our fault. Mea culpa.' That's not what governments will do. They will double down and they will blame the unvaccinated even more. They'll seek to blame someone. They'll seek to say, 'These outbreaks are all because of the unvaccinated,' when it's clearly not true. It can't be statistically true in this country, because there are not enough unvaccinated people to have these spreads. But that's what they'll do, and it will further divide our society.

And then what will happen? Then they'll say: 'We've got to have all the kids vaccinated. They've all got to line up.' I'm on the front lines of this battle, because that's where I draw the line. I am not ever going to support governments forcing children to get these vaccines, but that is where we are headed unless we put a stop to this now. That's what they will do. That's what governments will do. When these clearly failed policies fail, then they'll seek to say: 'Let's go after the kids. We've got to vaccinate them too.' There is no justification for that in health terms. The Doherty modelling itself clearly shows that vaccinating children has almost no effect on coronavirus spreads. But that won't matter. There will be new health advice from the failed and hopeless medical associations of this country, who continue to say that opening up will cause massive lockdowns and then are massively wrong. These people should have no credibility now. We need to restore freedom in this country and let every Australian choose. I trust the Australian people to make the right decisions. I trust the Australian people to be the masters of their own health care. I trust Australians to look after their own families. I trust Australians to work and cooperate and do business with each other without the heavy hand of government being over them all the time.