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

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment that is going forward here. There was never any justification for mandating the coronavirus vaccine, and that is for the simple reason that there was never any evidence that the vaccine stopped or prevented transmission in a material way. We know that now—we know it from evidence from Pfizer themselves—but we knew that at the time, too. Despite some people's attempt to rewrite history, there was never any evidence presented—for all of its other issues, which Senator Roberts and others have gone into—that the vaccine helped to stop someone from contracting or transmitting the coronavirus disease, and that can be the only reason to mandate a medical treatment or a vaccine for someone.

We have various mandates for vaccines in some workplaces. I was subject to one when I worked in a meatworks—I had to get a Q fever vaccine—but those vaccines have been tested and shown to work in that fashion. This one never had been, and I say that as someone who got the vaccination. I'm not arguing against it being of some benefit to some, although I think that was oversold too, but that's not the question here. The question is: should we force some Australians to get a medical treatment to keep their job?

It should be a fundamental right in this free country to work to provide for your family. I would've thought my colleagues on the other side would understand that. It is a basic human right to work and earn a living so you can provide for your family. Through these last couple of years, shamefully, this country has denied thousands of Australians that right to work and provide for their family, because they wouldn't take a vaccine that was invented in record time, just in the last few years, and had questions about its side effects, benefits et cetera. There were certainly questions. On top of that, forcing them to get that vaccine came to no benefit to anybody else who had got the vaccine or made a different decision. There was no benefit to anyone else. There was never any evidence of any benefit, and there was no evidence of that at the time. I remember in mid-2021, when we were starting to roll out vaccines here in Australia, Dr Fauci in the United States admitted that the viral load that was evident in people with the vaccine and coronavirus and those without a vaccine and coronavirus was the same. It was exactly the same viral load.

We learnt just the other week in the European parliament, through testimony from Pfizer officials, that they never even tested whether or not the vaccine prevented transmission. They never tested it. Presumably health officials knew this. They certainly should have known it—they should have asked. We rely on our health officials to subject major large pharmaceutical companies to appropriate regulation and oversight. We would have expected our health officials to have asked Pfizer: 'Well, we're considering mandates or some government agencies are mandating this vaccine. Does it prevent transmission?' Hopefully they would have asked them that question, and hopefully Pfizer would have been honest in saying that. Why didn't we have that information? Why didn't we get it? Too many people have had their lives destroyed and upturned by government decisions based on wilful ignorance. It is absolutely negligent that our governments, our agencies and large corporations as well have failed to get adequate information about the effects of their own decisions, which have destroyed people's lives in this country.

We still have mandates. Most mandates have gone because it's so clear right now—it is absolutely clear—that they had no impact on transmission. We had the omicron outbreak. We were one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and omicron spread like breeding rabbits through this country. There was nothing stopping it. Certainly the vaccine did not do that.

Most mandates have gone, thankfully, despite their terrible impact over the past year. But they still do exist. We still have large companies imposing them. In a space I'm very familiar with, BHP, one of the largest Australian companies, still has a mandate to work at BHP. I know so many who people lost their jobs because of that completely unnecessary restriction. I'm informed Telstra has one in retail—only in retail shops. The office workers are fine apparently. If you're a minimum-wage-earning retail manager in a Telstra shop in Australia you have to be vaccinated. Firefighters in New South Wales have to have the vaccine. I met some of them the other day—terrible stories, painful stories, hearing about people who have dedicated their lives to protect and serve their nation and to protect our livelihoods through some of the most difficult times in our country, during bushfires, and we don't protect them. We haven't protected them.

This amendment is our opportunity to rectify that shameful decision that we have made over the past year, or failed to make, in favour of them. This amendment very simply adds to the list of things you cannot be dismissed for or not employed for in the Fair Work Act. You cannot be dismissed for not receiving just the COVID-19 vaccine—not other vaccines, just the COVID-19 vaccine—for the reasons I outlined. Rightly, you cannot be dismissed in this country from your job because of your sex, because of your gender, because of your religion, and you shouldn't be sacked on this basis either. It should be a basic human right in this nation. Voting in favour of this amendment would allow us to rectify a gross injustice that has fallen on so many Australians over the past couple of years.

This bill we are debating, the overall bill, is all about improving and protecting the health and safety of workers in our workplaces—an admirable objective. It's a bill that coalition senators support. We should also ensure that we do not have unnecessary regulations and restrictions on people that do not contribute to or help the health and safety of the workplace.

Someone's individual decisions around their diet, around their exercise regime, are completely matters for themselves. They should have nothing to do with your employer. Your boss shouldn't tell you how many cheeseburgers you can eat or how many gym sessions you have to do every week. That has nothing to do with them. And a decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine or not falls into those categories. It is something for you to decide for your individual health. It has no impact on someone else—it has no impact on your boss, it has no impact on your work colleagues—so why do we continue to allow a situation where large companies in this country can deny people employment because of their own inability to admit they were wrong? That's the stage we're at right now.

We're at the stage of this where people are too proud to admit that they were wrong. They were clearly wrong. I'm confident that these mandates eventually will go. They'll die of neglect at some point. It's just a matter of how many more people are hurt in the interim. Well, let's swallow our pride now. Let's eat some humble pie. We've all make mistakes in the last few years; these are some of the grossest ones. Let's rectify that and ensure we have proper standards in this country to protect people's rights at work.