A VICTORIAN Government mandate that all authorised workers across regional Victoria must have a first COVID-19 vaccine dose within the next week to continue working onsite has been labelled “heavy-handed” and “inconceivable”.
Member for Mallee Anne Webster said that while vaccination rates in the Mallee had been “really good”, the government’s latest restrictions on “basically all of us” would only “ruffle feathers and cause great unrest”.
The government nominated October 15 for authorised workers to get the first dose of the vaccine and November 26 for workers across the state to be fully vaccinated and continue working.
Authorised workers include, but are not restricted to, emergency services; retail goods workers; personal trainers; thoroughbred, harness and greyhound racing participants; farming activities and building and construction services.
Mr Andrews said it was “critically” important to keep case numbers down.
“This is not about stopping people going to work. It’s are about making sure we can open up,” he said.
“It’s are about making sure people can go to work, that they can be safe, and that we can defend and deliver our roadmap for opening.”
The October 15 deadline will not apply to workers who already have existing requirements under Chief Health Officer directions, however groups including construction, freight, health care, aged care and education workers will still have to comply with previous advice.
Dr Webster said regional Victorians were already stepping up to get vaccinated and she feared there would be a backlash to the government’s directive that “every person who is working, basically, needs to have the jab”.
“We’ve got plenty of people who have been calling this office deeply distressed, who have their own reasons for not wanting to have the jab,” Dr Webster said.
“The fact that (Premier Daniel Andrews) has used this heavy-handed way of enforcing his will on the population, I find extraordinary,” she said.
“When you lay down the law, as opposed to having belief in the people of Australia, I just think you’re on the wrong tram.”
Dr Webster said that while “under no circumstances” did she support the violent protests that resulted in Melbourne after the construction industry was shut down for two weeks, “the reality is that this is really quite inconceivable”.
“It is one thing to call on healthcare workers and aged-care workers to step up, to do the right thing by vulnerable cohorts to protect them, but it is another thing to make people do the same who are already stepping up,” she said.
“For those who object, all it will do is have them dig their heels in.”
Dr Webster said she had great confidence in Australians to do the right thing “and that we will have enough people getting the jab”.
“If everyone was saying ‘no, I’m not going to’, and we had a 10 per cent vaccination rate, then you might consider putting in place carrots and sticks, but people are already being vaccinated,” she said.
“All this does is ruffle feathers and cause great unrest – it is a social unrest that we are being forced to behave in a way that most people were already doing anyway.”
Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh said the ultimatum wasn’t just unworkable but “has descended to policy by panic”.
He said the decision bordered on the “insane”.
“I understand frontline workers, doctors, nurses, aged care, police and ambulance – but where does agriculture fit in this profile?” he said.
“Most of Victoria’s farms are still family owned and operated and is the Premier seriously going to tell all these people that if they are not vaccinated they cannot walk out the back door of their house, which is on their farm, nowhere near anyone else, and go about their daily business of running an agricultural business?
“This is just about the most stupid thing to come out of almost two years of stupid decisions – who does this Premier think will run agricultural Victoria if he bans any farmers because they don’t want to be vaccinated?”
