By Niamh Harris – The People’s Voice
A Queensland judge ruled this week that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for frontline workers was unlawful.
The Covid vaccine mandates enforced on Queensland police and ambulance workers were declared “unlawful” in a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Justice Glenn Martin of the Queensland Supreme Court found the Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll’s direction for mandatory Covid vaccination, issued in December 2021, to be unlawful under the Human Rights Act.
Dozens of Queensland Police Service (QPS) and Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) staff challenged their workplace mandates in 2022.
The Daily Sceptic reports: A similar Covid vaccination order issued by the Director-General of Queensland Health at the time, John Wakefield, was determined to be “of no effect”, with enforcement of both mandates and any related disciplinary actions to be banned.
Justice Martin held that the Police Commissioner “did not consider the human rights ramifications” before issuing the Covid workplace vaccination directive within the Queensland Police Service (QPS).
While the Covid vaccination directive to Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) workers was found to be lawful, Justice Martin said that the Director-General had failed to “establish that the direction he made is a term of employment of the applicants”.
Justice Martin chastised the Commissioner and the Director-General for their inflexibility in the implementation of vaccination directives and suggested that their actions were not properly supported by the evidence.
“Neither the Commissioner nor Dr. Wakefield gave close attention to the possible range of solutions. Each was presented with a proposal for mandatory vaccination with little in the way of well-developed critiques of alternative means of reducing illness and infection,” stated Justice Martin in the decision.
Moreover, justifications offered by the Commissioner and the Director-General for the workplace vaccination mandates, were “taken out of context” or “not supported by the evidence”, while modelling relied upon by the Commissioner was in fact “nothing of the sort”, said Justice Martin.
Tip of the iceberg?
The decision, which resolved three lawsuits brought by law firms Alexander Law and Sibley Lawyers, is the “tip of the iceberg”, said Bond University Associate Law Professor Wendy Bonyton.
Prof. Bonyton told the Australian: “There are other cases, based on similar grounds, similarly challenging the legitimacy of directions given during the pandemic. This one is interesting because it is the first one to go through… There will be more of these cases to come.”
Australian businessman and founder of the United Australia Party, Clive Palmer, who reportedly contributed between $2.5 to $3 million towards funding the lawsuits involving 74 police officers, civilian staff and paramedics, said he is considering further legal action following yesterday’s win.
“We could look at the class action for the ambulance workers and the police workers who have been subjected to harassment by their colleagues at the police department on the direction of the Government to try to drop this case,” he told the press outside the Brisbane Supreme Court after the decision was handed down.
Condemning the Government for its “coercion and bullying”, Palmer paid tribute to the police and healthcare workers for their “extreme courage” in resisting the Covid vaccine workplace directives.
“Unlawful”, but not a breach of human rights
Human rights lawyer Peter Fam, of Sydney law firm Maat’s Method, praised the Supreme Court decision.
“This decision will force future employers and Government officials to properly consider human rights when implementing vaccine directions in future, at least in Queensland where there is a Human Rights Act which obligates them to do so,” he told Dystopian Down Under.
Fam noted that Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have similar human rights legislation, but other states and territories do not.
However, Fam cautioned that the Court decision has an “ominous” caveat.
“They won because the Commissioner did not appropriately consider the human rights advice she received. However, the court also found that although each of the directions limited the workers’ rights to full, free and informed consent (under Section 17 of the Human Rights Act), the limit was reasonable in all the circumstances.
“So, if the Commissioner could have proved that she had considered the advice she received regarding human rights, her workplace vaccination directives would likely have been considered lawful.”
Fam gave his full assessment of the Supreme Court decision in a video published to his Substack today.
In a Senate hearing on February 1st of this year, Fam testified that a range of human rights were violated by vaccine mandates and other aspects of Australia’s pandemic response, which he said warranted investigation in a Covid Royal Commission.