Bills – Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022 – Second Reading, 9 March 2023
Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (12:11): I rise to speak regarding the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022. This bill provides a perfect opportunity for our parliament, all of us here, to remedy a great injustice. That injustice is the injustice of vaccine mandates. For much too long in our country hardworking Australians have been discriminated against by employers, by authorities—by everyone, really. These employees are dedicated and highly skilled Australians, but do you know what’s happened? They’ve been shut out of careers that they love. That’s what’s happened—just completely shut out from careers they have given long, dedicated years of service to. As an example, there are nurses, teachers, firefighters and volunteers. I’m sure you’ve all seen in the past where volunteers weren’t able to go and fill sandbags because they weren’t vaccinated. Ridiculous! We’ve created division, an unneeded division, amongst our people, which has torn apart family members, friends, colleagues and even strangers.
The Australian Human Rights Commission states:
The guiding human rights principles for considering measures taken to advance public health are:
They must be reasonable, necessary, and proportionate.
They must take into account the potential for discrimination.
Mandatory vaccination policies, and the accompanying use of vaccine passports and certificates, have significant implications for freedom of movement and association, access to everyday goods and services, privacy and autonomy, and equity and discrimination.
Vaccine passports and certificates are more likely to be consistent with human rights principles when they are used as a tool to ease more burdensome lockdown restrictions and improve public health outcomes.
I ask you all in this place to think long and hard about the words that I just quoted directly from our Human Rights Commission. Mandates are an egregious abuse of basic human rights, and this bill provides an opportunity to prohibit mandates once and for all. Why have mandates been put in place? In the name of science, apparently.
We were told that mRNA injections through mandates were necessary to stop transmission and to end the pandemic. That’s what we were told. We were told that it would save lives and it was the only solution. That’s what was said.
Now, a study funded by none other than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published in The Lancet found that the level of protection from past infection is at least equivalent to if not greater than two doses of mRNA vaccine. I use the term ‘vaccine’ loosely. These COVID vaccines have potentially dangerous side effects, and I keep harping on about this every chance I get. You’ve all heard me talk about it before. As Dr Marty Makary, Professor of Surgery and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University, said in sworn testimony before the United States House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: ‘Myocarditis is six to 28 times more common after the COVID vaccine than after COVID infection among 16- to 24-year-old males.’
Debate interrupted.
Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (12:37): When I was speaking before on the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022, I was talking about myocarditis. I’ve been speaking about this since I first stepped into this place. It is six to 28 times as common after the COVID vaccine as after COVID infection in males between 16 and 24 years of age. It is critical that a system of work health and safety derived from this legislation minimises the potential for harm to workers, of course. What we know, and what every employer in the country should know by now, is that mRNA vaccines can cause injuries, and indeed they do: myocarditis, pericarditis, Bell’s palsy and neurological conditions. These are serious adverse events that could result in lost-time injury attributed to mandated workplace mRNA vaccinations. Every workplace must strive for the protection of its workers. Every single workplace must take into account the inherent risk posed by mandating mRNA vaccines. This bill, as it stands, unfortunately fails to address the biggest elephant in the room in relation to workplace health and safety. Let’s not let this opportunity go to waste. Let’s get that amendment in there. Let’s protect people from mandates, although I suspect that many in this place will not do that.
Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (12:47): I move the amendment as circulated in my name on sheet 1848:
(1) Page 10 (after line 17), at the end of the Bill, add:
Schedule 2 — Prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine discrimination
Fair Work Act 2009
1 Section 12
Insert:
COVID-19 vaccination status means the status of a person relating to whether, and to what extent, the person has been vaccinated against the coronavirus known as COVID-19 (including any subsequent variants of that virus).
2 Subsection 15 3(1)
After “intersex status,”, insert “COVID-19 vaccination status,”.
3 Subsection 195(1)
After “intersex status,”, insert “COVID-19 vaccination status,”.
4 Subsection 351(1)
After “intersex status,”, insert “COVID-19 vaccination status,”.
5 Paragraph 351(2)(a)
Before “not unlawful”, insert “for action taken other than because of a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status—”.
6 Paragraph 578(c)
After “intersex status,”, insert “COVID-19 vaccination status,”.
7 Paragraph 772(1)(f)
After “intersex status,”, insert “COVID-19 vaccination status,”.
8 Section 789HB (at the end of the heading)
Add “—breastfeeding, gender identity or intersex status“.
9 At the end of Part 6-4E
Add:
789HC Extension of anti-discrimination rules — COVID-19 vaccination status
Sta te referral laws
(1) Subsection (3) applies for the purposes of the operation of the provisions identified in subsection (2) in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status.
(2) The provisions are as follows:
(a) section 153;
(b) section 172A;
(c) section 195.
(3) In applying sections 30H and 30S in relation to that operation of the provisions identified in subsection (2), assume that:
(a) the matter to which that operation of those provisions relates is not an excluded subject matter for the purposes of:
(i) the State’s referral law mentioned in sections 30H and 30S; and
(ii) Divisions 2A and 2B of Part 1-3; and
(b) the referral of that matter by that referral law results in the Parliament of the Commonwealth having sufficient legislative power for those provisions (to the extent of that operation) to have effect.
Protection against adverse action
(4) The provisions identified in subsection (6), as they operate in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status, apply to action taken in a State.
Note: Action taken in a State includes action taken by a State public sector employer in a State.
(5) For the purposes of the provisions identified in subsection (6), as they operate in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status:
(a) a reference to an employee with its ordinary meaning includes a reference to a law enforcement officer of a State or the Northern Territory; and
(b) a reference to an employer with its ordinary meaning includes a reference to the Commissioner (however described) of the police service or police force of a State or the Northern Territory; and
(c) the Commissioner (however described) of the police service or police force of a State or the Northern Territory is taken to be an employer of law enforcement officers of the State or the Northern Territory, as the case requires.
(6) The provisions are as follows:
(a) section 351;
(b) any other provision of Part 3-1, to the extent the provision relates to section 351.
(7) Subsections (4) to (6) apply despite sections 30G, 30R and 337, and do not limit the operation of sections 338 and 339 (which deal with the application of Part 3-1).
10 In the appropriate position in Schedule 1
Insert:
Part 14 — Amendments made by the Work Health and Safety Amendment Act 2022
86 Application of amendments
(1) Subject to subclauses (2) and (3), the amendments made by Schedule 2 to the Work Health and Safety Amendment Act 2022 apply on and after the commencement of that Schedule.
(2) The amendments of section 195 made by that Schedule apply in relation to enterprise agreements made on and after the commencement of that Schedule.
(3) The amendments of section 351 made by that Schedule apply in relation to adverse action taken on and after the commencement of that Schedule.
I have been in this place, obviously, not as long as many of you here have, and I campaigned very strongly on the issue of vaccine mandates. People out there are hurting. People are injured. Despite the fact that the bureaucracy and the government and even some in the opposition would like to cover it up, it can’t be covered up for long. A day of reckoning is coming and you have a chance to be on the right side of history. Start speaking up. Start standing up for the people out there that have been hurt by big pharma. These guys are corrupt. These guys are dodgy. These guys lie to all of us in this place. Admit that you were misled and that you were wrong and do the right thing.
