Back in May, Prime Minister Scott Morrison started talking about a vaccine passport, of sorts. In a future Australia, the vaccinated could have more rights than those who refused, including exemption from interstate border restrictions, meaning greater freedom to travel even when outbreaks have flared up.
Two months later, with Sydney stuck in indefinite lockdown and Melbourne still not returned to normal, sporting bodies, arts and events organisations are increasingly talking about proof of vaccination as a ticket to normal; a carrot that could draw people away from hesitancy. It comes as countries like the US and France continue to require vaccination in certain settings, and grant greater freedoms to people who have received the jab.
But on a political level, support for a vaccine passport is tepid. State premiers were cool on Morrison’s proposal. And he faces stiff opposition from conservatives within the Coalition.
Morrison’s thought bubble
Vaccination passports are already technically a thing in Australia. A person’s jabs show up on the Express Plus Medicare App. Last week, Morrison said by this month they’d be in a form that could be dropped into Apple Wallets on iPhones. By October, he says they’ll be recognised internationally.
But proof of vaccination makes it no easier to leave the country. Australia has the ability to grant greater freedoms to people who are vaccinated. But with most of the population still not fully vaccinated, we’re not doing that yet.
In May, Morrison first started talking up the prospect of allowing people who could prove vaccination travel more freely between the states.
“I think that’s something that Australians would support and I think it recognises the reality that states and territories, from time to time, will be making decisions which will restrict movements of Australians across the country,” Morrison said.
Morrison wanted to take the proposal to national cabinet. But even before he could, state premiers had expressed their dissatisfaction with it. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian didn’t like the premise, and said states should never be closing their borders to each other in the first place. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she wasn’t sure “how a passport would work around Australia”. Leaders in Western Australia, Tasmania and Victoria expressed similar reservations. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese also rubbished the idea.
National cabinet came and went, with no mention from Morrison of vaccine certificates. The thought bubble had been abandoned. When asked last week about vaccine certificates as a step to take when Australia achieved a higher level of uptake, Morrison noted they already exist, but gave no clarity about how they might be used.
“We’re not a country that mandates vaccines, and we’re a country that respects the individual rights and liberties of our citizens. But, at the same time, we have to act in accordance with public health,” he said.
The issue could return to national cabinet tomorrow.
Conservative backlash
Morrison’s apparent back-down on vaccine passports could also reflect the division within his own party on the issue. In general, the most conservative voices at the back of the Coalition’s broad church are dead-set against any form of vaccine passport, and the concept is regularly attacked in the Sky News bubble.
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan told the ABC vaccine passports were “unAustralian” last month, and has been a vocal opponent of their introduction.
Former Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly introduced the No Domestic COVID Vaccine Passports Bill last month. While Kelly now sits on the crossbench, his private member’s bill secured the support of outgoing Coalition MP George Christensen. Christensen is running paid Facebook ads attacking vaccine passes, which analytics show have been viewed by around 400,000 people. Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz has expressed support for Kelly’s bill. Senators Alex Antic and Gerard Rennick are also opposed to vaccine passports.
Australia largely has the technology to create vaccine passports. While not enough of the country is yet vaccinated to make them fair, the promise of greater freedom could drive uptake of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being abandoned by many who are eligible.
But vaccine passports seem to have lost the support of everyone.
I was a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with a father in the British Army on posting to West Africa and later to Singapore.
I recall my parents ensuring that I had had the polio vaccine, a check fro TB and and update of my small pox shot . Also requiring yellow fever and typhoid shots for travel to these places.
Most of this on 4 page vaccination card that was kept in my mother’s passport and later when I had my own passport it was kept in that.
This card needed to be produced at all ports of entry both overseas and in the UK.
Until the 80s it was the norm to be fully vaccinated when visiting exotic climes.
It was a little more than a fashion, the leaving of Australia didn’t require proof of immunization, returning certainly did.
If you did not have that vaccination passport, you were put into quarantine or turned around.
I was referring to the world experience, not surfers in Bali.
Until the EEC (later EC/EU) began standardising medicine & hygiene, anyone going from Britain to the Costas, or Germans to the Adriatic on their packaged 10 days had typhoid/cholera shots.
All Europeans, even Brits, had smallpox (le Rage) vaccinations in school.
I had to laugh yesterday when Steve Price (regrettably now networked to regional NSW after being booted by Macquarie last year – “I have more work now than I can handle!!!”) claimed that he had been vaccinated against smallpox in school in this country which is demonstrably untrue.
In school in the 50s we used to wonder why the funny foreign kids (aka New Australians) all had the indicative scar and they wondered why we did not.
Desmond,
Quarantine has been the purview of the Federal Government since 1908,it is clear that the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic and its arrival in Australia with the Ruby Princess. that the buck stopped with the Federal Government, in particular the then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and his Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo.
The Federal Government, with the appalling fiasco of letting infected passengers from cruise ships go unchecked into the community as well as a biosecurity collapse at airports, has made it obvious that there are deficiencies in both Commonwealth emergency management by Australian Border Force and Federal quarantine authorities, though I agree it was not helped by some State incompetence, however that was not the fault of the Port of Sydney as below as came out in the Ruby Princess Inquiry*
And now. with a slavering Dutton moved to Defence, there is a screeching Karen in charge of Home Affairs/ABF no improvement there.
*Harbour master called by Border Force
…Cameron Butchart, the port services manager and duty harbour master for the NSW Port Authority, told the inquiry he had “a concern for the occupational health and safety” of sending a pilot on board to help the ship dock, because of Covid-19.
He said on the night of 18 March and again on 19 March he was called by representatives of Home Affairs and the Australian Border Force.
“This particular person certainly had concerns with the situation,” he said. “I used the phrase on the night ‘turn it around’ [which] was probably the simplest way to explain it to someone on shoreside.
“But we more than likely could have held the ship in a certain position. We could have dropped an anchor … to allow us to gather some more facts.”
Commissioner Bret Walker SC asked Butchart: “Had you ever experienced anything like that before?”
“Never,” Butchart said.
The inquiry heard on, that the Ruby Princess was allowed to dock after a second call from the same Border Force officer.
Butchart rejected the idea that Home Affairs and Border Force were “not decision makers” and said they “would have been working very closely with biosecurity in making this decision” to let the ship dock.”…
For is it not the ABF, a large part of the Department of Home Affairs, that is responsible for offshore and onshore border control enforcement, investigations, compliance and detention operations in Australia.
Should not its intelligence gathering and analysis of such have been aware of the Ruby Princess situation from very early on?
If not, what use is the Passenger profiling and watch lists doing when using a “big data” analysis ecosystem to monitor people and cargo entering and leaving Australia?
One would have expected that, given the occurrence of Covid-19 on cruise ships world wide, any cruise ship entering Australian territorial waters would have been immediately flagged for attention and communications opened with such to determine its Covid-19 status?
Specifically given that part of the ABF is the Maritime Border Command as Australia’s lead civil maritime security agency operating in the maritime domain, to ensure compliance with Australia’s maritime legislation by foreign and domestic non-state actors.
It is a multi agency task force working in direct collaboration with the Australian Defence Force as such is responsible for civil maritime security and coast guard activities.
grâce à wikipedia
Thanks for the correction – appreciate it
I agree that the Federal Government has imported all the infections from day 1 – and they were hesitant even to reduce importing the Delta variant from India – by the way I know one guy who has had 3 trips for surfing in Bali since 2020 just comes and goes – he doesn’t mind the 2 week quarantine when he comes back and he is truthful that he is leaving for surfing .
Any law that requires someone to do something needs deep consideration. In liberal democracies the default legal approach is, that which is not forbidden is permitted, which underlines the importance of that consideration. At the same time, it is clear there is a limit to the exercise of your rights, when they impinge upon others rights, well being. Life being what it is, bumping up against such limits is the norm. We rely on democratic government to negotiate the rules and extents of competing freedoms and give those rules legitimacy.
A requirement that someone be vaccinated is a strong rule, to exclude them from certain activities because they have not been vaccinated is a lesser rule. It is akin to traditional shunning practices. From a public health point of view, stating that non-vaccinated people, who have chosen to be that way, will not be permitted to endanger others and free ride on efforts others are making, is a no brainer. Certainly individuals and businesses should be allowed to discriminate against serving or associating with people who have chosen to follow a non-vaccinated course. This is about their behaviour, not something like race or gender discrimination.
That the Coalition contains people against such rules or permissions shows how far to the whako right the Parties have drifted, floating off the liberal democratic spectrum into a muddled grab-bag of irrational positions. Positions grounded in profound ignorance and sewn together with illogical threads into a reactionary and incoherent narrative. They and their followers are entitled to their views but the rest of us, the vast majority, should be free to shun them. The government should legislate that freedom, to remove any doubt or bush lawyer trouble-making.
Sky News cannot be equated with ‘conservative’ in the normal sense but radical right libertarian socio-economic ideology masked by white Christian nativism, masquerading as ‘conservative’ but to ultimately sell the former.
If Covid outbreaks continue, evidence of vaccination would be invaluable for micro lockdowns versus whole states and borders.
When it comes to the point of certification and app there is no need to have a ‘mate’s’ company developing one locally from scratch, most nations existing Covid apps in the EU are more or less open source, e.g. one could be adapted if needed for Oz.
Morrison – “We’re not a country that mandates vaccines, and we’re a country that respects the individual rights and liberties of our citizens.”
Unless, of course, you are a citizen who wishes to exercise their individual rights and liberties by supporting a charity which ScoMo and his minions hate. Charities which truly represent rights, liberties and decency. No wonder ScoMo, his ilk, and their masters in the goebbelisque media are out to crush charities.