FreethoughtJournal.com
Palaszczuk betrayed Queenslanders on vaccine mandates
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk betrayed Queenslanders in November 2021 by overturning her earlier announcement that businesses would have a choice about whether to require patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
A commitment she made in October implied there would be no vaccine mandates for patrons of hospitality and entertainment venues. That changed just 19 days later.
On October 21, Mark Ludlow of the Australian Financial Review reported: "The Palaszczuk government will not mandate COVID-19 vaccination for Queensland business, but it will offer a 'carrot' of increased capacity if a company decides to take it on themselves to make staff get the jab and check the vaccination status of their customers."
Further on, the story stated: "Unlike NSW and Victoria - which have enforced mandates on retail and hospitality staff - the Queensland government is taking a more hands-off approach."
A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk had said: "No one is forcing businesses to do anything. The opportunity is offered to those wanting increased densities to open to fully vaccinated patrons only.
"Venues open to only fully vaccinated patrons would not have to comply with restrictions meant to curb the spread of the virus because people who are fully vaccinated are 86 per cent less likely to contract the virus and pass it on," the spokesman said.
Then only 19 days later on November 9, Ms Palaszczuk announced that only fully vaccinated patrons would be allowed to enter hospitality and entertainment venues from December 17.
Listen to the government sleight-of-hand in its December 17 information:
"From 17 December 2021, there are no capacity restrictions on businesses that are only permitted to allow fully vaccinated people to attend."
Did you catch that? The rule changed from involving no capacity restrictions for those that chose not to admit the unvaccinated to being no capacity restrictions for those that are not allowed to admit the unvaccinated. The website wording seems crafted to suggest that the change primarily involves that there would now be no capacity restrictions in a certain scenario, but the more significant change was actually that unvaccinated people would no longer be allowed at certain businesses at all.
Why was this change a great betrayal? Because freedom of movement is a generally accepted human right in a civilised society, and affirmed in Australia through its signing to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 in 1972. Accordingly, any justification even to temporarily limit those rights needs to be strong, but wasn't at the time.
Importantly, it was also a betrayal because she went back on her word. But it was worse than a regular case of that. The short period of just 19 days, plus the lack of circumstantial changes in the virus's spread justifying such a change so quickly (for example, the Omicron variant came weeks later), suggests the Premier deliberately manipulated Queenslanders with incentives of freedom for getting vaccinated despite intending all along to renege on her commitment unless the state achieved a higher rate of vaccination than what she publicly touted as the goal.
In other words, to get us to do what she wanted, she gave a commitment not to coerce us - a commitment she may never have intended to keep, as was strongly suggested by the fact that she reneged on promised freedoms despite Queenslanders doing what she had asked. And in doing so she showed everyone that following her own intentions was more important to her than human rights or her own word.
I suggest that the only way she could defend herself against allegations of misleading Queensland would be to admit that she has had very little idea how to manage COVID-19. And if that's the case, why should she be the one setting the rules?
Copyright © 2022 FreethoughtJournal.com and the article's author. All rights reserved except those granted in the Statement of Purpose and Copyright Notice.