Tuesday, 19 March 2024

COVID-19 vaccination

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:30): (785) My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to vaccine mandates. Naomi is a midwife who has been unable to work in Victoria’s health system for more than two years due to the government’s COVID-19 vaccination mandates in healthcare settings. Whilst I understand the issue around vaccination and keeping healthcare workers safe, I think this does need to be reviewed. Naomi developed a reaction to her second COVID-19 vaccination, which also affected her ability to breastfeed her newborn son at the time, and she does not want to risk having another booster while still breastfeeding. Her condition does not qualify for an exemption from the mandated three doses for healthcare workers here in Victoria. Having only received two COVID vaccinations under the government’s policy, she is deemed not to be fully vaccinated for the purposes of employment in the public health system.

While the Victorian government persists with this outdated requirement, Naomi could work as a midwife in any other state in the country. New South Wales and South Australia require two doses. Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia have ended vaccine mandates for their health workers. So there is a really big inconsistency here, and it is incredibly frustrating for these workers who just want to work. Naomi supported vaccines at the height of the pandemic and as a healthcare worker understands that patient safety is paramount, yet the government’s policy to persist with COVID-19 vaccination mandates is out of step with other states and the views of experts. Leading expert in vaccination uptake Julie Leask AO said recently:

Given that we are now in a situation where most people have immunity from both initial vaccines and from COVID itself, and vaccinated people can still transmit COVID, it is very difficult to justify ongoing vaccination requirements …

for COVID-19. She said that in the Sunday Age on 11 February this year. Last month the Queensland Supreme Court ruled in favour of police and paramedics who challenged the state’s vaccination mandates for frontline emergency workers. They found that the mandates were unlawful and in breach of the human rights of those employees.

The lost income for Naomi’s family has also taken its toll when cost-of-living pressures are going through the roof and the ongoing taxes are hitting her household, like all Victorians. They have even been considering moving interstate, which is also concerning when Victoria has a desperate shortage of midwives.

It makes absolutely no sense that this policy remains in place. The action I seek is that the policy on which the directions are made by the Secretary of the Department of Health be reviewed urgently and scrapped so that willing and capable healthcare workers like Naomi can get back to work and provide essential care for the Victorian community, that they can be consistent with other states and that we can have our midwives and nurses and other frontline workers like firefighters all supported in the work that they can undertake.