The Ethics of Mandatory Vaccination | Q+A

tonight as the re-opening approaches how will the next phase of covert work what are the legal and ethical challenges of requiring proof of vaccination and winding back income support when is the right time welcome to q a [Music] hello and welcome to the program i'm david spears we're coming to you live from melbourne tonight joining me on the panel founder of catering and events company the big group bruce keyboard actu secretary sally mcmanus in canberra ceo of the business council of australia jennifer westacot in brisbane emergency doctor and disability advocate dinesh palapana and in sydney executive director of the ethics center simon longstaff great to have you all here and remember you can stream us on live on iview and all the socials quanda is the hashtag please join the debate you can publish your comments we'll put them on screen from facebook instagram or twitter our first question tonight comes from tom ahern as a renter student an out of work hospitality worker who relies upon the disaster payments it's really distressing for me and many others in the industry that have it far worse hearing that it's getting wound back once we reach 80 percent vaccination once we reopen at that stage of the andrews government roadmap i will be lucky to get two shifts a week does the panel believe that state and federal governments actually care about workers that have been impacted by the pandemic or do ideological differences and political point scoring still remain their number one priority is sally mcmanus to you first on this well first of all all the hospital workers they lost their jobs so many of them overnight last year and again and again and again and they've really been knocked down and they got cut out of job keeper last year if they were not long-term casuals and this year now to be told what it was at yesterday that they're going to be cut off payments when things are reopening i think that a lot of them and at their right to feel like this they're abandoned it's like the government's cutting and running and leaving it's not their fault they're in this situation it's not their fault that we've got to have limitations on the opening of things and it's like the hose can't be turned on you know you know strong enough when it comes to you know harvey norman and jobkeeper and the money that they get but when it comes to casual workers it's like well as soon as i can take it off people they will and so i think that all the hospitality workers and retail workers and also in events workers really as a country we need to be supporting them get back on their feet well jennifer westacot i mean clearly these support payments have to come to an end at some point but tom's question really goes to the fact that he's not going to get many shifts at that 80 reopening mark there are still going to be uh various restrictions in place density limits and so on uh do you think it's fair that those income supports are turned off at that point well as you say they do have to be turned off at some point and look though that the hospitality workers have done it really tough and look you know the states have signed up to a national plan the the support payments taper off uh in line with that plan but we are going to have to be flexible about these things and and what's been the case all the way through this pandemic is state and federal governments being responsive and making sure that you know we correct things when they're not working we we do have to remember that you know people did think that when job keeper was finishing that things were going to get really bad they didn't the economy bounced back what really matters is that we safely reopen the economy so that we can get people working again because people want to work and it's important that we give them that opportunity uh i do believe that uh that there are many people tell me that there are labor shortages and they're keen for people to get back but you know i do believe that we've got to always make sure that we are responsive that we're flexible that we're sensitive and and look i think we should be really proud of the way governments have been uh able to sort of step in and say well that's not working let's do something else we are going to have to be very careful with small business because as you say many of them are not going to be able to get up and running to 100 we might have to do some startup grants uh taper their assistance differently i think with all of this we've just got to do what's practical what's right but the most important thing david is to safely reopen the economy and get people working again yeah sure but when you say flexibility is going to be required uh jennifer westacott i mean what what does that mean for a hospitality worker should there still be some income support for tom or should he just go on to job seeker well i think they're the sorts of things that we've got to start working through what do you think well well i think if if people can't get those hours if they're not able to get back to work because of the restrictions that are in place then we do need to look at those things really carefully uh and maybe continuing some level of income support yeah i think so but you know there is a plan to taper these things in line with the opening and i just think that we we have to be willing to sort of make sure that people don't slip through here yeah i don't know there's no plan from the government to taper these payments as a plan to end uh the payments bruce if for a business like yours is the biggest australia's biggest privately owned um events business hospitality a hospital you employ a hell of a lot of casuals what will the ending of this support payment mean for them well i suppose firstly tom in in answer to your question i really feel your pain right because i totally understand where you're at and part of our hospitality you know circus is is about young people you know coming through and earning some money to maybe end up doing something else and so job keeper was a really great thing and it really helped that but for our hospitality industry apropos and many others we had no revenue coming in whilst job keeper was there so many in many ways many hospitality providers were merely an extension of the social services from the government so it's not until job keeper had no power for us until revenue came in now where we see this next stage where 80 vaccination rate comes in our industry has been locked down and has had multiple restrictions and restraint of trade for nearly 540 days so we actually have never been able to recover from this so someone like tom comes back in and yes it's 80 but the density restrictions and the quotients that are there make it really difficult for us to come back to capacity so retail can come back quickly and to a certain degree construction can too once those density limits go but our industry is very tough so someone like tom is stuck between a rock and a hard place that said we have to come off this welfare nation like you know part of you know being australian is getting out there working and being part of a team and we don't want to rely on welfare but what must happen from government is the understanding that some industries are not the same as others and the major event sector live theater live performance these people will not come back and have revenue until march april or may of next year so we don't really know we don't but we must understand that some industries recover quicker than others and a black and white policy from government doesn't actually lean in to support multiple industries of variance sally mcmanus when do you think these sorts of payments should end well i think part of the bounce back last time was because job keeper meant that you kept your workers and so immediately you could just go to the extra hours and those workers still had enough uh income and that's the unknown this time so the problem the problem with job keeper though was you sure there were businesses that needed it but we know now there were businesses that didn't need it they could stop the roads and keep the good things about it i think that you would stop payments when the jobs come back and when people have the hours they have before it's not hospitality workers fault though perhaps but you know businesses we've got to see them survive in the long term and it's not the fault of those workers all those businesses that we need to have these density limits for for a period of time we're not opening up to covert zero we're opening up with with cases and so it's a different mindset and i am worried about it because last time we saw a v-shaped recovery because people were already in employment and people effectively and now got two weeks to go scramble and try and find a job um so that's going to be a big problem i think the other thing i just want to throw in the mix here too we know some states are going to keep their borders shut until beyond the 80 vaccination uh threshold and and today where we are here in melbourne we've had a big jump in case numbers to more than 1400 uh and the premier dan andrews has even suggested there may he's kind of hinted there may have to be a pause in the reopening plan maybe depending on where things go um jennifer westacott to you uh on that i mean what what would that mean if the reopening that's been announced were to be paused or changed in some way well i think we need to understand what pausing means i mean what's going to be the trigger for that what's going to be the trigger for it to end i mean this stop start opening closing that that is really killing people because they can't plan they can't sort of like oh i'll stock up i'll put my inventory back on i'll employ some people i'll tell everyone to come back because they don't know whether i'm going to be going for two weeks six weeks two days we you know if we're going to do this we need to give people much more direction than we might pause this under what circumstances and what circumstances would trigger it return this is what's really hurting small businesses particularly but businesses across the country in these lock lockdown areas and it's it's what's hurting the confidence of families it's what's weighing on people's mental health their sense there's no light at the end of the tunnel so if we're going to pause what does that mean how do we come out of it what are the triggers so that people can actually plan dinesh let me just bring you in here um you're an emergency department doctor there in queensland but you know as a doctor watching what's happening here in in victoria and what's been happening in new south wales should we be worried about the pressure on the hospital system as well at the moment certainly here in victoria so i have friends in other states that works as doctors both in covid and outside and the pressure has increased on them over time and i have phone calls with them all the time saying they've got so many covert patients and it's challenging to manage and some of these patients particularly when they're ventilated require a lot of manpower and resources to keep going i think around the world we've seen some really difficult situations i was reading today that idaho for example has initiated their crisis standard of care which means that they're starting to ration health care and ration critical resources and for people that they don't think will survive this situation they're either providing a different level of care or referring them to palliative care so that is the most extreme situation and i think that is uh what's scary how does how does a doctor make that decision so i was talking about it today with my partner about how how do we make that decision because you never want to make that decision right i'm a 37 year old guy with a spinal cord injury and my chances of surviving any significant respiratory infection is less than someone else so if you had to ration it between me and an 80 year old person how do you decide that i never want to be in this situation where i have to make that decision and i think that's what we're trying to avoid um but it's it's a heart-wrenching thing to get to that point i don't think any of us would want to or indeed want doctors to have to make uh that decision it's fair to say let's get to our next question it comes from janice and leon i run a pub in sydney with a reopening of hospitality to the fully vaccinated there comes the expectation that hospitality workers will be enforcing a vaccine mandate without any public health orders in place how are hospitality workers who have no training and conflict diffusion going to turn away unvaccinated patrons it'll definitely be awkward but what happens if it gets aggressive simon longstaff let me bring you in here what are the ethics here for you know a pub or a restaurant required to police vaccination status well in a sense pubs and restaurants have been doing this now for decades i'm not sure when the responsible service of alcohol rules came into place but when i was a kid and trying to get into pubs below age there were people there who would check your identity nowadays they do something similar and if they believe a person to be intoxicated they can't come in or they won't be served so i imagine that it's going to be the same kind of activity here where you've got to exercise some judgment about whom you admit according to the evidence they're able to present and it'll bring some burden i mean already there will be aggressive people there who can't get into a pub because they've had too much to drink or they don't fit some other requirement and we're going to be building upon that capacity yeah look i take your point that pubs have to check for age they have to check you're not drunk um but this is checking everybody and restaurants and cafes and so on are sort of in uncharted territory here as well where where do the rights of the rights and ethics lie for staff and businesses contemplating this new world summit well it's part of a general situation in the new world let's assume that it's deemed to be necessary to exclude certain people if they don't meet particular conditions such as having had a vaccination if that's necessary then what we need to do first of all is to make sure that everybody sees that there's a legitimate basis for the rules that are in place secondly we need to have people being equipped with adequate support to be able to make those checks and to give them the tools to do that with as least disruption to the normal commerce that takes place as possible so from an ethical perspective you want to balance the need to act with prudence and to safeguard the welfare of people assuming that to be necessary with finding ways to impose the minimum degree of burden both on those who have to exercise discretion as to who can and can't enter and those of course who are seeking to be admitted into premises there's an employment law um aspect to this too so employers are responsible for for safe workplaces so it can't fall back on to the individual worker to have to do that so for example if you're in a cafe and you're the waiter and someone is aggressive or they're saying i'm not going to show you my vaccination status and they start threatening someone that worker really should take themselves out of that situation and this is a problem as well because the employer or the owner or a small business owner is then in that situation as well so i think it's important it's a bit of what simon was saying is that people understand that these rules are not ones being imposed by that individual worker or that individual business this is what is required for everyone and for that to be backed in by governments to to be you know public education campaign about that then there's the other moral obligation really on all of us to put yourself in the shoes of that worker who has to do that every day that could be any of us and what would that be like and for us all to be respectful um and kind to them well and that's very good advice and let's hope everyone follows it but jana's question bruce goes to the prospect of aggression absolutely how real is that risk do you think 100 so you know going back to simon's point it's very easy to say that simon but it's really hard to actually administer it and and the hard thing for these you know kids and we're talking about a 25 year old barista is all of a sudden um in charge of the health security or status of someone coming in and out for yana's question you know the issue is right now we have to check that vaccine status of you know only the vaccinated to come in and the unvaccinated over here but as of december 1 we diminish these rules so they're all gone so all of a sudden i'm getting in new south wales new south wales correct we're not sure about other jurisdictions no we're not but they're not sure and to jennifer's point before the term maybe makes it bloody difficult in business to get things going so here is um you know this young person trying to solve this problem but it's a six week issue that goes about morality and ethics and a whole lot of things and you're supposed to stand at the door and say you can come in and you can't i just think the burden on business is too great if it's government mandated it's a rule it's a law okay we've got a no different than the lock downs and the restrictions they were pretty bloody tough and we all had to maintain them now all of a sudden from the prime minister down we're saying oh we won't mandate it it's up to you to choose and i don't think that's fair for business these rules and jennifer west got keen for your views on whether there's enough clarity for business and workers at the moment about how this is all going to work it is state government certainly new south wales and victoria saying you can open but only for vaccinate fully vaccinated customers how will that work well it is going to be very difficult and sally and i have been arguing for a long time that this has got to be done through public health orders you can't leave this to individual employers and so the people who go into a cafe know that the team there is basically delivering on a public health order and we've been calling for that uh look i think uh you know businesses aren't you know law enforcement bodies and i think the longer this goes on the more impractical it's going to be and that's why you know i've been very supportive of what new south wales is proposing for the first of december i think a lot of businesses are sort of like well okay maybe i can do this between now and when we get to those uh to those targets but it's very hard to ask a young person uh in a in a cafe to stop someone coming in off the basis of you know a proof of vaccine and you just wonder how practical and realistic this is going forward and i i think that's why uh what new south wales is proposing is just you know common sense that we just can't go on like this and and sort of may i say something i mean what i don't understand is you know like i sit here as a sort of a business owner and and of course with sitting inside the hospitality sector but if our national goal is 80 85 or let's just call it 90 why is that not my goal as a business why if i ever got 100 staff or 10 or a thousand staff 990 or nine can be vaccinated and i've got room and gap for those who either choose not to or cannot be vaccinated we don't want to live in a society where all of a sudden that trains for the vaccinated and that train's not and so i can go to the pharmacy in the supermarket and get on the tram of the train of the bus but when they come to my venue all of a sudden i'm policing um this with staff who really don't have to so it worries me you know yes simon can i ask about it what i cannot understand is why people aren't addressing the initial point i made that there has always been for a long long time at least been an imposition upon people in pubs and other places to actually check access i mean we found a way to do that without having to expose all of the bar staff young and otherwise why is this so different that's what i'd like to say i'm happy i'm happy to answer that simon and especially if we if we take the lens of the the major events industry we're very used to registration check-in you know we have the detail and the data of our customers very easily so that's that's a sector that understands and is very flexible to to bounce back to that no different than 9 11. you know our terror reports and how we approach that industry was you know rock solid that said this thing you know like let's use a smoker as an example right i don't smoke maybe do you use it no i don't okay you don't either way the smoker in my venue is sent outside because he decides or she that that smoking is something you know that they enjoy but that's their own health choice to make that the secondary smoke that comes out is shared between our staff and our patrons and we say to them you need to go outside so we're sort of now trying to or do i feel like what you're trying to say is that we're doing the same now with the vaccinated and the unvaccinated that that's how we should treat them in our bars clubs and restaurants and i don't know if that has such a foundry especially when the line in the sand on december 1 dismisses that all of a sudden very tough to implement it and then let it go the next day so i get rid of 10 staff and tomorrow i want them back sally oh well it is a difficult question but if people aren't vaccinated they've got a bigger chance of passing it on so this is also a safety problem so and in this case it's you know government health orders or the government roadmap to do this so different way of looking at simon's question is is people in bars have to do training in responsible service of alcohol as you know and also about how to deal and that's about how to deal with people in those circumstances if you're in a cafe or those other places a whole lot of new places that have to do that those workers aren't trained for it they're not paid for it and all of a sudden they're going to be thrown out and asked to do it and it's retailers well look dinesh i'm just came for your perspective as you know a doctor what would you say to small businesses staff who are worried about how all this will work is this just a necessary reality it's better than being in lockdown at least we've got to work out how to do this or you share some of these concerns well actually my my perspective is not as a doctor at all but you know i grew up in a country uh where people couldn't get her on because of their ethnicity and people couldn't get it wrong because of their political views and i saw people being burnt alive i saw people being beheaded when i was growing up as a kid so i'm really sad to hear about the aggression that the person asking the question made but i think more fundamentally i don't think we are a country that's about that that's about becoming aggressive that's about becoming violent and i think we need to go back to being a bit more compassionate towards each other i get that we're going through hard times but right now i think unity among our people is more important than ever if we're going to get through this important perspective there let's get to our next question it comes from lorraine blunt as a homeowner do i have the right to ask tradesmen who are coming to my house to carry out work if they have been vaccinated or is it considered an invasion of their privacy simon longstaff let me go to you on this is it clear what rights homeowners have in this sort of situation i'm not sure if it's absolutely clear what rights are if you're talking about legal rights but from an ethical perspective it all depends on whether you believe that something like covert 19 is a genuine threat to the health and well-being of people in their homes and in that sense rather than seeing this as about whether or not there's a particular declaration about a private matter it's a question about whether or not you meet the conditions whether you have the qualifications to come in so if a person turns up to do your plumbing for example you're perfectly entitled to ask are you a registered plumber can you show that you've done the apprenticeship and things of that kind and in this case i would think that it's a similar kind of concern amongst the qualifications you might ask a person to reveal is whether or not they are safe to enter the premises to perform the functions which you want them for whether or not they're going to be exposing you potentially to some kind of additional risk and at that point it's not about doing something to the plumber or the person wants to come in whoever it is it's about you being able to as a homeowner lorraine make an informed decision about whether or not you'll contract with that person for their services so i think that's the way we should start to think about this even though people might say oh well it's a it seems like a personal issue in this case assuming that it is a threat then in those circumstances it's a reasonable question to ask yes sally mcmanus what do you think it's okay to ask the plumber who's coming to fix your tap have you got a vac are you vaccinated i think it's a reality i think lots and lots of people will ask that they'll ask that about lots of things they'll ask about taxi drivers they'll ask that about any situation they're in and from a union perspective that's that's okay well this one is a you know a contract that that someone's making with someone to to to perform something and i guess as simon said people will ask a whole lot of things that when determining if they're going to contract someone to do a job and you know part of their vaccination status i'm not sure i'm not a lawyer myself whether that's legal but i think ethical i think it's inevitable i think it's fair enough for people to know that if they're coming to their house i think we've also got to remember too though that we can't just think just because people are vaccinated that that that you're completely safe like there's other um protections you're still going to need you know you still can spread it but just not as much it's a good protection but it's not everything i'm told that on dating apps apparently that's what you can ask you know are you fully vaccinated or not apparently that's that's cool on dating apps so bruce what do you think would you ask a tradie come into your house if you've been jabbed it's a really interesting condundra it actually happened to me this week right so i'm not dating 29 years married this this saturday but no not dating um but you know it's interesting because i'm really pro-vaccine you know i i you know believe in the science whether others do or don't i think it's our way out and i think it's a really important thing that as a nation we come together and get as many people vaccinated as possible however i'm also pro-choice because i do believe there are people that you know and whatever their reasons i think that's what democracy is all about we have to have different people in our society or it gets pretty boring very quickly however to your point i had the issue in my own home and all of a sudden i had to basically make the decision of is that person vaccinated or not and did i want them in my home and all of a sudden i became very pro-vaccine so it's pretty interesting isn't it and you know i'm not ashamed to admit that but it became a personal conundrum over my ability to laser focus on my business and so i didn't want someone who wasn't vaccinated i just want you remained pro-choice what you said is you respect the choice of a person not to be vaccinated and you wished also to have a choice about whether to admit their them to your home one of the things we've tended to forget about all this is yes we might be totally in favor of choice and in fact there is no single person in public or private office who is arguing for genuinely mandatory or compulsory vaccination everybody has a choice but choices have consequences and we've tried to pretend too much in this debate that you can choose whatever you like and nothing else flows from it i think yes you can choose as the plumber or whatever it happens to be not to be vaccinated or not to disclose but you shouldn't pretend that other people even if they respectfully engage with you surrender their right to their self-interest or to discharge duties they owe to others you make your choice but you also have to understand that in doing so that will have effects as it has always been the case look i should note too some there are you know a lot of people uh struggling with the competing rights and what to do and so on you've set up an ethics call center called ethical uh for anyone who wants to find out you know what rights outweigh uh which which rights it's um i think we've got the website we can put on the screen as well but what's the thinking there well it's been actually set up for over 30 years now so there you go one of those instant successes that it's coming to its own it's the only uh free national service of its kind in the world it's there for people who've got really complex ethical questions and it ranges from people in very senior roles in government to farmers and of course to people wrestling in medicine end of life decisions and all the rest and the ethical service is there for anybody irrespective of their means irrespective of their worldview to come and be assisted to work through an issue so they can resolve some of these very difficult questions you might be getting a few more calls in the coming months quickly say on this though you know we're being light-hearted in one bit about the home environment but from a workplace issue and and then we saw worksafe have issued this um you know complaint against the department of health now that is major right so i'm running my little business or i'm in regional victoria and someone is unvaccinated in my environment and then they drop dead of covert on the floor i as the business owner are potentially up for manslaughter you know so that's a really dangerous why are you well am i or not i don't know the answer i don't think so and if my patron comes in and they contract covert from another customer there is that a public liability issue and so the concern i think from business is that we don't know the answers to these fundamental questions about where our liability rolls and that's pretty nervous when you've got a small business well i think the prime minister spoken about indemnity for businesses who have not mandated uh vaccines but there's no legal protection for businesses that have uh mandated which we will come to but i want to get to our next question which comes from elenia del piologo the royal commission on the vaccine rollout has raised some concern over the fact that some of the states have announced that we are going to open up when 70 of the threshold is met leaving behind people with disability who haven't been able to get fully vaccinated how can we ensure a safe opening of our country making sure that the most vulnerable people are not left exposed now denise i want to come to you on this you pointed out earlier that you suffered a spinal cord injury you are a leading advocate for people with disabilities um the report that elenia is talking about there from the royal commission this week suggested it was unconscionable to open up at 70 vaccination if people with a disability have not been given the opportunity to be fully vaccinated do you agree with that well you know the thing is people with disabilities have always experienced inequities always education has been a challenge employment has been a challenge access to healthcare has been a challenge so we've always had these gaps in peoples with disabilities and i think in a time of crisis which is where we are now it's all been exposed and it's all uh it's all come out and amplified so people with disabilities particularly some disabilities are at an increased risk of mortality in the uk most of the deaths six out of the ten people that have died in the uk have been people that have had disabilities people with intellectual disabilities in the uk are eight times more more likely to die from coveted infections so these risks are real these risks are high and if we get a whole heap of infections we come back to that question of how do we ration this health care some countries in the world have de-prioritized people with disabilities from accessing life-saving health care so this has amplified the whole issue and it's a scary thing for a lot of people i have a good friend who is a lawyer and she is immunosuppressed so her immune response to even the vaccine is potentially compromised so we have people like that in our community as well that are particularly vulnerable i think at the end of the day mahatma gandhi said that the true measure of a society is how we look out for each other's most vulnerable populations and i think that's something that we have to keep in mind as we move forward so so again do you think we should reopen if uh groups like people with a disability have not reached that 70 or indeed 80 vaccination rate i think we have to do everything that we can to make sure that they are uh vaccinated and they are not at risk but there are so many complicated challenges around this but i think we have to ask our society have a bit of compassion around the people that haven't been able to access these vaccinations and that are at risk and to work towards a plan where we can all come out of this together and look we also know that another vulnerable group indigenous australians is still well behind where the national average is at when it comes to vaccinations simon i'm just getting your ethical view on this as well should the reopening happen until those vulnerable groups are at those target vaccination rates well firstly i think it's unforgivable that we're having to have this conversation at this point where the most vulnerable members of our community have been left exposed it seems in part because of a conscious decision to do so we should not from an ethical point of view expect those people with those vulnerabilities to bear the burden of what we would prefer to do in terms of opening up and i know there's lots of arguments about the mental health costs of not opening up and all the rest but i unfortunately suspect that we will open up before that's been achieved and i think we as a society are going to have to accept that those who become infected and die because of their additional risk that will be something we have to wear on our own conscience you know our hands will not be clean when we do it if we do it and i just think that it's almost beggars belief that we've allowed this to be the situation where such a choice has to be made i really agree with that i visited disability service in april this year in southwestern sydney and at that stage even though people were in 1a they weren't vaccinated the workers weren't the residents weren't the employer had no idea what was going to happen and what drives me insane is that people in victoria people elsewhere but in particular people in victoria made a huge sacrifice last year like during the lockdown and all of those all of those days they went through it to drive it down to covert zero and then we had this nine months we bought the nation nine months and and other people around the country did two in those nine months things needed to be sorted like the hotel quarantine getting vaccines doing the vaccine roll out and we had the time to do it and it was all bungled and so like i feel angry about that i feel as though that that's a the heavy lifting was done by the people and then we were let down and the fact that we're in this situation we're having this debate is partly because of that but i do agree that there's a obligation on all of us to make sure that we direct all vaccines to people with disabilities and obviously indigenous people especially in remote areas and not you know have all the pressures to reopen and expose them because this is not their fault the difficult the difficult question here i suppose and this is what the royal commission report and indeed our questioner alina is talking about is do we delay reopening until these vulnerable groups do reach those benchmarks jennifer i know business want to get things open as soon as soon as possible but but what do you think should there be we shouldn't be we shouldn't let ourselves get into this position like we've got the supply um we've got uh the state systems now are working pretty well in remote communities a lot of companies are willing to step up because they've got medical teams in those communities and get people vaccinated we should pull out every single stop we have got available to us to make sure we are not in that position because we should not have been in that position but we've got to make sure that we do every single thing we can that we're not leaving people who are vulnerable unvaccinated and and and that's what at the top priority of the rollout needs to be there's a sort of simple australian who you know doesn't go down the rabbit hole and everything my assumption was that february march and april the top people who needed to be protected were protected and you know whether it's government this is a war and you know you should be absolutely putting that at the top of the list and there's no excuse i mean if you're in business you'd be fired for not actually fixing your remit and it's a disaster and we shouldn't be having this conversation if i might add something to that too there is a time critical component to this because we have lockdowns we have lockdowns coming in and out but the first set of people to get locked down are people in residential care facilities and there are lots of people with disabilities lots of elderly living in those facilities and for the last year and a bit every time there's an outbreak they're the first to be locked away they're the first to be cut off from their families and they've been doing this for a long time actually a lot longer than the general population so we need to get them vaccinated we need to get them access so they cannot be locked down in these facilities all the time and there are lots in queensland there's about 1600 people living in these level 3 facilities and there's a lot more floating around as well so we need to make sure that these people get their freedoms and some modicum of life as quickly as possible let's get to our next question it comes from ivan balan i'm a registered nurse of 38 years experience i'm currently not vaccinated against covert i've worked in emergency coronary and intensive care medical surgical rural and remote and for 23 years as a midwife delivering and caring for babies and their mothers i now find myself to be almost a pariah amongst my peers and unable to apply for positions in health care due to mandatory vaccination requirements do you think this is fair given that all health care staff treat all others as infectious and are themselves treated as infectious thank you dinesh let me start with you on this one does it surprise you there are healthcare workers who don't want to be vaccinated is this a common thing and what would you say to a nurse like ivan about it i have come across um healthcare workers that are worried about getting vaccinated and i think we've always had compulsory vaccinations when i first started working as a doctor or in a medical student i had to provide evidence of a number of vaccinations and immune status so it's always been a thing i think right now we're in a really difficult position but there are a couple of interesting things i was talking to a very senior colleague of mine who said that apart from making things uh compulsory he had a few human-level conversations with some colleagues about the topic and it changed the direction so i think conversations are important and i guess the other thing is the some of these issues are being tested in the courts at the moment and when we can't come to an agreement between the employers and people that's where it has to be tested and we'll probably get an answer for that simon where do you stand on mandatory vaccinations in various sectors particularly the healthcare sector well the first thing is i would never ever have used the word mandatory or compulsory these vaccinations are not mandatory they're not compulsory they are conditions that people have to meet for a range of activities including employment i'll come back to that the first thing i wanted to say though is i really felt for ivan and his comment that he's treated as a pariah one of the things i hope we can avoid doing is ridiculing or ignoring or certainly demonizing people who either choose or particularly choose not to be vaccinated that's not the way to deal with it their concerns ought to be taken very seriously but in doing so and and treating them with the kind of respect for their intrinsic dignity and the kind of choice that ivan wants to make that doesn't mean that we should say well just come and do whatever you happen to feel like because you're concerned if and this is the thing i'm not really qualified for if there really is a serious reason to require vaccination for the health and safety of the people that ivan wishes to care for then one of the conditions that he has to meet to do that today in today's world which is different to the 20 plus years he spent maybe that issue of vaccination and if he chooses not to be vaccinated then he's also choosing not to meet the conditions by which he can continue and this is an in some senses an entirely unremarkable thing airline pilots reach a point where conditions change where if they don't undertake their testing and if they have if their eyesight starts to go they have to discontinue what they've been doing over many many decades in some cases because they don't meet the conditions i think if we took the heat out of it by not seeing it as about compulsion or mandate but rather about these are the conditions only those which are strictly necessary making provision where we can for those who can't or won't take that so that they're not excluded but at the same time absolutely reserving the right to make that prudential judgment then i think we're in a better position but let's not ridicule or make people like ivan finla pariah well the points you raised there simon do feed into our next question which comes from dan packham behavioral science has shown us that a core tenet of human motivation is autonomy a sense of being in control and having a choice whilst the recent covert mandates do come with good intent they can be perceived as taking away people's autonomy thereby creating feelings of frustration right through to intense anger and resistance as we've seen recently in victoria and elsewhere as we move towards a world where vaccinations are required in certain settings how can policymakers guide behavior change in a way that doesn't invoke a threat response are there better ways to nudge people in the right direction without the need for the parental do as you're told approach and the backlash that that can create bruce let's hear from you on this is it possible to nudge rather than order or tell people uh they have to be vaccinated well dan it's a really good question and i know i'm big for autonomy you know like i think that that you know teams are really interesting things like i was sort of the daggy kid at school and i wasn't great at sport right but i learned a lot about teams and and when you get people together and you've got a goal and you know where you're going to everyone's happy to run and get there so leadership then you know really plays into that and i think part of what dan's question is is is how do we actually get us all running to the same goal post and at the moment i think we've got such a disparate amount of information coming and going and i think people are really confused you know jennifer used that term maybe before and in business we can't have maybe we have to be black and white we have to have a goal and we have to go exactly where we're running to and so it's a problem and it stems to leadership so i mean this opens the the question around mandating or um conditional vaccines as i think simon would prefer to call them um we know sally and jennifer you're kind of on the same page on this jennifer just explain to us what your view is about where businesses or indeed sectors should be able to mandate a vaccine well let's let's go back to simon's point because he's absolutely right we should not be using that term we should be saying this is a condition of your employment like there are many conditions you you know if you're working on a mining site you have to test absolutely zero for alcohol so you know i think he's absolutely right i think we should reframe this is about condition and clearly um you know there are some sectors where the risks are so high uh health uh in the example that we were just talking about where there are essential services where there is a risk of a system breakdown where employers will have to require people as a condition of their employment to be vaccinated and sally and i have been arguing that that should ideally be done through public health orders and that they should be consistent now the states haven't gone there so that means that employers have to do that the fair work ombudsman has put out some pretty helpful guidance around that you know the people should consult with their teams uh that they should consult with the unions and qantas is a masterclass on this they've done this extremely well so there are going to be circumstances where the risks are so high health aged care very high risk industries essential services where people are going to have to say look as a condition of your work you need to be vaccinated but but what sally and i have been arguing for a long time is that the fundamental discussion that we need to be having is a positive agenda to get people vaccinated making sure that we aren't painting people as pariahs as simon said giving them a sense of you know what are the advantages giving them the right information and making it not a finger wagging exercise but but what is what's the benefit to people our campaign get one shot closer is all about getting one shot closer to your grandma or getting one shot closer to your mates at work and getting one shot closer to your friends it's not about saying you're doing something wrong and i think that's turned a lot of people off so sally and i have been very much we've got to run a positive campaign governments have rightly decided this is voluntary but there are going to be some high risk industries whereas a condition of employment in order to protect the safety of people and their teams and their customers and and protect continuity of services we're going to have to say people as a condition of their employment have to be vaccinated but jennifer in the absence of a state government public health order some businesses are and plan to introduce these conditions of employment or a mandate call it what you will uh spc qantas telstra are you saying they shouldn't be doing that no i'm saying that they should be doing it they've they have to do it because they have to be able to guarantee the safety of their workers and their customers they don't have the public they don't have this public health order you're talking about no no but we it would have been what we said selling eyes it would have been better to do this through public health orders consistently is that what you're saying sally um well those public health experts make it where they see it as a broader public health issues telstra telstra workers no so in the case of health care it's obviously about the workers but it's also about the people they're caring for for us it's a safety issue so it's a safety issue in the workplace and so in the case of other workplaces where there's no public health order you have to assess whether or not someone who chooses not to get vaccinated it proposes a greater risk to the other workers and also to themselves exactly and so in this example of say spc what do you think should they be well first of all i think they jumped the gun um seriously and it caused a lot of division as as the person was pointing out in that workplace and it has in a whole lot of the other workplaces where this has happened to despite you know everything australia is on track to get one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and that's because you know we're all being positive about it um not divisive like it is in the u.s so so you don't think these companies should be going it alone i don't i think that they need to do a proper assessment they need to talk to their workforce if it is the case that there's really good reasons that there's no other way of keeping everyone safe well they might then say it's condition of employment here but there is a whole lot of other options too like rapid tests like mass like all of those others if they can't do that there is no other option in the end you do have as someone said it's a freedom of choice of course to get the vaccine but if there's consequences for you not to choose and if you choose not to and there's a higher chance you're going to make others sick well then everyone's got a right to safety so there are however some public health orders issued for healthcare workers in i think all states and territories in victoria a public health order was issued for construction as well now do you think that was the right thing to do or not also in um in new south wales and the lgas to leave those lgas as well as public health orders so it's not just in victoria in the case of that those experts made that decision you know as they say around the fact that it's the only way to keep those workplaces safe at the moment now those public health orders expire as well they're not there forever it may be in another couple of months it's no longer necessary but in order you want to work the next couple of months you want to work the next couple of months in order to keep those workplaces safe they made that decision is it the right decision though that's what i'm asking i think there should have been more consultation i think there might have been ways that they could get other ways to make sure that you totally reduce the risk but in a circumstance where you're saying only you know 25 or 50 of people can come to the workplace anyway we're in the middle of a terrible pandemic with really high numbers here in melbourne you've got to respect that they've made that decision to keep people safe so is it the right decision or not well you know i'm not the public health expert you're asking me to sort of yeah i don't have the data or all of that i respect their decision and that um it should be it should be fun and what about the protest i just want to follow this what about the protest that followed uh because sally mcmanus you did say this was an attack on the union orchestrated by the far right do you now accept there were actually union members involved in that protest i always accepted that there was union members involved there was construction workers there it's more about why did we get to a point where people were so angry about this issue and goes back to where we started like when you mandate things a lot of people will get their backs up and say well you're not telling me what to do did fire up those protesters yes absolutely it did but there was a whole lead up to this like for months and months and months where on social media and elsewhere and let's face it you know craig kelly um clyde palmer the murdoch press um christensen are all saying that this is like an impingement on your freedom and so and you could see it happening on social media every day where people have been told that so by the time that mandate happened people already had strong views about this and so it i think that that was a volatile conflict-based environment that should have been avoided having said that that was stoke stoked and fed by those very people far right and those anti-vaxxers some of those union members and other workers suck it into it well you think about it like the majority of construction workers and union members weren't at that protest like there's like most construction workers are getting vaccinated and are pretty upset that they're not working at the moment like a small small group of people yeah jennifer you know i just think we've got to get this right back into the perspective that that we're talking about this is about keeping people safe yeah this is about making sure that you're keeping your team safe you're keeping your customers safe and making sure that you are doing whatever you can to do that and if companies and businesses particularly in those high-risk areas particularly in essential services like telstra high-risk industries like qantas if that's the only way that they can keep their people safe then they ought to be able to say as a condition of employment you need to be vaccinated and people have choices of course but we need to make sure that that the safety of people is paramount to this discussion and can i just say i i agree 100 jennifer with what you're saying but could it not be the case that if the national average is 80 or 90 that then that is the the average for business as well like do we need 100 mandate for construction or can that industry not being front-line health care worker be 90 and that business owner needs to reach that target to move forward but you've got to remember that that's at this moment at this moment while there's a big outbreak in melbourne that is what's needed and may not be what's needed when we get to 90 which i reckon we really will um and may not be you know next year either so but at this moment that's what's needed you can't apply those sorts of general statistics i mean there are some areas where small margins of error can have absolutely disastrous consequences and everyone thinks they'll be the 10 percent the other thing i want to put on the table about this is i think part of the anger that you see in many parts of australia is that ordinary people are really annoyed that they're held to strict account as to whether they wear the mask or whether they're vaccinated or a whole plethora of things but they look at the people who are at the top of the tree the people with the real power and more generally they're not accountable for anything that they do i mean bruce was making this point i think a little bit earlier and i just reckon that when it comes to things like going back a bit the sports routes and any number of other areas we are paying the price in part in the country now for the end of accountability and responsibility amongst our political leaders which has really annoyed people and i just think that we've got to also take stock not just about the particular issues but about the larger notion of our political culture and what impact it has when you reach a crisis like we have before us today it's a fair point it's a whole other program i think so we'd need another hour for but no it's a very good point let's get to our final question of the night though which comes from the silly effemor thousands of queensland residents like my partner and i have been locked out of the state since july the only way for us to return home is to fly to queensland and hotel quarantine at 4 000 per couple a lot of people cannot afford that among those stuck at the border are grain nomads who followed the government's pledge to travel within australia and to support the local economy the queensland government weren't even conceded to allow fully vaccinated covered negative people to return by land and home quarantine the financial and mental toll is immense this is unnecessary illogical and inhumane what does the panel think of the queensland government stunts and of those forgotten australian citizens thank you i should note it's not just queensland other states have hard border closures tasmania have also said now they're not going to reopen to the whole country until we get to 90 adult vaccination bruce what do you think of these border closures look i think for me and vasily it's a really valid point but when we pull it apart the issue of federation in this country is a real problem right like here we are with the prime minister who actually really should be this is a national response i call it a war and it is and we should have been engaging everyone and yet we've politicized a pandemic and we've got all these different seven eight nine ten different opinions and so we really should have gone in this together and we should have come out of it together and it frustrates me terribly when i look at the land mass that we have as australia and we look at the land mass of china or the us you know 1.3 billion and 330 million in this little country with 25 million people and these different opinions now yes that might have meant that covert spread to all areas but we would have gone in together with the same targets and we would have come out together with the same targets it's a real problem you'd like to see these borders open before the melbourne cup i'm guessing well look business is one part of it but i'm more interested in getting our communities back together and seeing people you know have life again you know like it's not about money it's about living and we're not living at the moment and it's a it's a terrible way to be so yes i want to see the borders open i want to see grandparents and kids to see each other and i want i want that stopped but what i really want stop is the waste and all the bureaucracy of seven eight different health officials and blah blah blah and all those business cards which probably go nowhere it should be one decision and one direction for our country i guess it's probably been a revelation to many through the pandemic but constitutionally the states have all these powers to do this you know um i trade being in queensland tomorrow like i would you know what we're going through in new south wales and victoria is our choices of this uh live through more lock down and that's so hard open up and a lot of people are going to die and so neither choice is a good choice in queensland what have they got they've got put aside what's happening um at the moment without outbreak so let's take wa they've got covert zero and they've got the opportunity to try and get to 90 plus and not face those choices now if i was there i'd be doing everything i could keep it that way and i don't like and it there's like lots of people suffering and lots of rules that just seem crazy but we're still following them um and they've got to be done to keep people safe and i don't blame the queensland government or the wa government for wanting to keep it that way jennifer oh look i i i understand that point and i understand that philosophy but i just don't think that we can go on like this i mean we've got a national plan we've got those targets we've got to do everything we can in those states to beef up those vaccination rates get the health capacity right because it is about you know what kind of a country are we now we're a very fractured country you know we we've got to get back to being one country where people can move across borders freely and it isn't just about business although that's starting to have its toll we're hearing stories that people can't get machinery in they can't get workers across borders to to do things in airports and and in some of the logistics and some of the mining areas the longer this goes on that the more difficult this will be we're starting to paint a picture to the international community that we're a very confused place to do business but i come down to bruce's point this is the personal stuff you know a friend of mine couldn't go and visit her dying mother in brisbane but the wives of footballers could get across i mean it's those inconsistencies that those disproportionate uh decisions that are being made that are really hurting the fabric of australia we need as quickly as possible to stick to that national plan and become one country again because a fractured country is a much more weak country and i think this is really starting to take its toll on people dinesh you're there behind that close border in queensland how do you feel about it i mean like it was said these are complex decision public health is a complex science but what i can tell you is today just before i came up to the studio i watched my grandma in a hospital through facetime and it was hard enough to get her into a hospital in that country and my mom and i don't where is she we'll see her again she's in sri lanka so will i ever see her the woman who held me as a child alive again i don't know but uh this is definitely an emotionally charged thing for a lot of people no it sure is and look we still don't have a lot of certainty about the international board of reopening either simon longstaff let me finish with you on this it's been a vexed issue throughout the state border closures how do you view them and and when they should open well i'd rather than talk about specific borders i'd go to a matter of principle and jennifer touched upon it and that's the notion of proportionality every government in australia should only be imposing limitations that are strictly necessary with the lightest burden that is possible and so if they can explain why it's strictly necessary and how they've sought to alleviate that burden and do that consistently across the commonwealth yes there might be some variation but that's something i think we could all live with indeed all right well that is all we have time for thanks to all of our panel and for a terrific discussion uh tonight bruce keyboard sally mcmanus jennifer westacott dinesh palapana and simon longstaff and thank you for all your questions tonight uh some terrific ones there next week are we preparing for a cyber pandemic stan grant looks at why online crime and misinformation is on the rise and he'll be joined by communications minister paul fletcher shadow education minister tanya plibersek journalist mark fennell former national cyber security advisor alastair mckibben and co-founder of online news site the daily oz zara seidler and i'll see you on insiders on sunday morning stay safe good night [Music] you

Channel: abcqanda

Views: 4,215

Rating: 3.5142858 out of 5

Keywords: Q&A, QandA, auspol, australian politics, politics, abc, abc news, Q+A, Jennifer Westacott, Sally McManus, Simon Longstaff, Dinesh Palipana, Bruce Keebaugh, vaccine, COVID, vaccine passport, mandatory vaccination, closed borders, disability, David Speers

Id: 7Jgun8gaIHs

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 30 2021