Wednesday, 9 February 2022

COVID-19 vaccination

Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (10:38): I move:

That, in order to continue to protect the health and safety of members, parliamentary staff, electorate officers and community members, and reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19, this house varies the resolution of the house on 14 October 2021 as follows:

(1) Omit paragraph (4) and insert:

‘(4) If any member does not meet the requirements set out in paragraph (3), the Clerk will as soon as practicable notify that member, the Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms.’.

(2) In paragraph (5)(a) omit ‘the second sitting day of the 2022 parliamentary year’ and insert ‘12 May 2022’.

(3) After paragraph (5) insert:

‘(5A) If the Clerk or Serjeant-at-Arms observes a member who has been suspended under paragraph (5) attending the chamber or the parliamentary precinct, they will immediately notify the Speaker.

(5B) If the Speaker receives a notification from the Clerk or Serjeant-at-Arms under paragraph (5A), or personally observes a member who has been suspended under paragraph (5) attending the chamber or the parliamentary precinct, they will inform the house as soon as practicable.’.

With the indulgence of the house, I will move straight into making a few remarks on this motion. The government is bringing this motion to the house today. It is a consequential outcome of the motion that was passed in this house on 14 October last year when this house gave effect to the vaccine mandate requirements that were being put in place at the time for all authorised workers across Victoria. At the time we had a very lengthy debate, and preceding that debate we had many discussions with the Clerk and between parties in the house that led into that debate that I felt—all of our debates are well informed in this place—made it a particularly well-informed debate and discussion about why we needed to implement a vaccine mandate for members of Parliament, because as was then and as is now members of Parliament are not bound by public health orders—all other authorised workers are. But we did need to have a mechanism in place whereby members of Parliament were bound by that.

Also at the time, and I do refer colleagues to the debate and the record in Hansard from 14 October—I do not feel the need today to repeat much of that detail because the record stands—my comments certainly and I am sure comments that others made then remain true today about the very serious nature of what we were putting to the house at that time, the reasons why and also the reasons that the motion was made in the form that it was.

And that is the point that I wanted to come to this morning—that this motion that has been moved today is actually amending that motion of 14 October to make a couple of adjustments to that motion. The first is the adjustment that it recommences the vaccine mandate requirements for members of Parliament from today. It expires today, so it recommences that vaccine mandate requirement to 12 May 2022. I would acknowledge that I have had discussions separately with the Manager of Opposition Business about the government moving this motion today. This enables the vaccine motion to be renewed for members of Parliament and for members of Parliament to comply with that motion. The other amendment that is being made in this motion to the motion that was put on 14 October is that rather than there being a statement made by the clerks in here and therefore in effect a public statement about who may or may not have complied with that motion, that information will now be held with the Clerk and the Serjeant-at-Arms. So that information is being held in that way.

The reasons, as I said, why the government feels very strongly about refreshing the vaccine mandate for members of Parliament remain as strong today as they were back on 14 October. It is about a couple of really key important points of principle. The first is that members of Parliament should not be treated differently to any other authorised worker that the public health orders require to be double vaccinated. That is a very, very, I think, simple principle of equality in our community—that members of Parliament should not be treated differently. That is why we needed to have this mechanism moved in the house in this way.

The other really important point of principle is that it continues to be about workplace safety. It continues to be about us understanding that in our role as members of Parliament when we come into this place not only are we working alongside members of Parliament, we are working alongside parliamentary staff—alongside the clerks, alongside Hansard, alongside the attendants, alongside the catering and hospitality staff, the library staff. We are not little islands when we come into this place. It is a workplace, and it is our duty and obligation to our workplace colleagues to ensure that we can have as safe a workplace as we possibly can. As I said, this was something that was canvassed at length back in October and remains true today.

The third principle I wanted to talk about this morning also goes to the points that have been made previously about recognising that as members of Parliament we have a leadership role within our community. We are leaders in our community, and that does bring with it some additional obligations and a sense of responsibility to show leadership—if you like, to walk the talk and to show leadership on these matters.

A lot of effort has gone in in Victoria over the past two years to managing what has been the most difficult of times for Victorians. Living and working through a global pandemic has been nothing that anyone has wished for, and we certainly do not wish it to be entering its third year, but that is the reality that we are faced with. There have been enormous sacrifices, enormous challenges along the way. What has become very keenly understood, particularly over the course of last year, is the vital role that vaccines play in keeping our community safe, in lowering the levels of transmission. If you do get sick with the virus, we know that the vaccine can mitigate some of the more severe impacts of the virus and reduce its transmission, and we have seen that.

And it should not really be a surprise. For so many decades now science has blessed us with vaccines, whether it is around whooping cough or chickenpox. When your baby is born you are handed the child and maternal health book with the schedule of vaccines that you give your child to protect them from diseases that decades ago killed little babies, decades ago killed people, and in some countries today where they are unvaccinated these diseases continue to cause death and serious injury. We are so very lucky to live in a society where we have a level of wealth, a level of resource to be able to see vaccines provided free of charge to protect, whether it is in the case I have just given, vulnerable little babies, or in this case that we are talking about today the broader community, to provide that broad community immunity that helps keep us safe but also helps keep our community open.

This is something that we have seen emerging particularly over the last few months. There was, if you like, a commitment that the Victorian government made to the Victorian community, which was if you go out and get vaccinated, we can see how we can have a more open community, we can see how we can have a lifting of those restrictions that we all felt so challenged by. I do not think any Victorian was not challenged by the level of restrictions that we have experienced over the past 12 months, but there was that commitment that was given—‘Go and get vaccinated, and when we hit those particular thresholds in the broader Victorian community of 80 and 90 per cent, we can see an opening up of activity’—and that is exactly what has happened.

We got to those targets, and I think we are all—I should not speak for all of us. I was particularly thrilled to see how quickly we reached that 90 per cent target of double-dosed vaccination levels and how strongly Victorians responded through that sense of shared obligation and understanding that it was the right thing to do, and it gave us the opportunity to have Christmas with family and friends and loved ones. It gave us the opportunity, as we saw over summer, to have those crowd numbers at the Australian Open, at the cricket, at the basketball. I was there watching, and sadly Melbourne United lost on the weekend. I was at the John Cain Arena, and there was a good crowd there as well. It has meant that we can go back to what we used to enjoy pre the pandemic but to do it in a safe way because of those strong vaccination rates in our community.

We have seen that particularly acutely in the past couple of weeks with the return of school. For many people one of the biggest challenges of the pandemic has been the learning from home of our students, of our children, and the pressures that has placed on families and on the school system and on teachers and on the children themselves. Because of our strong vaccination rates and because of, particularly since the start of January, the rollout of the vaccine for five- to 11-year-olds, we have been able to see school return with those other measures that have been put in place—with the mask requirements, with the rapid antigen testing requirements of students. And yes, we are seeing cases being picked up. We are seeing kids and families having to isolate, but we are seeing schools remain open in that environment where we have such strong vaccination rates.

I labour this school point a little bit because with that opening up of our community, the sporting events, the family and friend occasions, being able to get out and about, that means for members of Parliament—and this is the third principle I was talking about—we are out and about as well. We can go back to what we like to do: go out and talk to people in our community, go to the school fetes or go to the school assemblies and present awards and certificates, and if you are out on the hustings, go and have your street stall or go to particular community activities. That is another really important reason why members of Parliament should comply with this requirement that they be vaccinated, and in this instance double vaccinated, because we are getting out and about as well. As the community is opening up, we are getting out and about and, as I said before, there is that additional sense of responsibility and obligation that comes with being a member of Parliament that means we have that responsibility to keep those people safe that we engage with in the course of doing our job.

As I said, as much as we would wish it otherwise, the reality is that COVID is still in our community, and some people who contract the virus are getting very sick. There are long-term consequences from this virus, and sadly people are continuing to die from the virus as well. In addition to that we continue to see the pressure this is placing on our hospital system, and this is a fourth principle as to why this motion continues to be critically important today, as it was in October of last year. We have to pause for a moment and think about that responsibility we have to the broader community but particularly to those healthcare workers who are exhausted from two years of a pandemic. We would all have, I think, a personal anecdote of a family member or a friend who works in the healthcare system who tells us about how challenging it is. But do you know what? They do not complain. They do not go out and attend protests on the steps of Parliament. They do not go putting stuff on Facebook encouraging others to not get vaccinated. They go to work every day. They work double shifts. They do not have a break. They work through their breaks. I will leave it to my friend the member for Melton to, I am sure, recount the stories of paramedics who are working very, very long hours treating patients in the back of an ambulance. This is huge pressure. We cannot be blind to this pressure that is placed on our health system and the role that vaccines play in taking that pressure off the health system. The numbers speak for themselves. The science speaks to the effectiveness of a vaccine, and we cannot deny those two fundamental facts in this conversation about why members of Parliament should comply with this motion and why I am asking every member in this chamber to support this motion for those four reasons that I outlined just now.

I do just want to finish by recounting an example. I have mentioned the health workers and the role they have played. Health workers, in addition to really having the most challenging of workplaces as a consequence of the pandemic over the past two years, in addition to doing their day job, have also stepped up and have worked with the government and with the community to successfully see the high levels of vaccination that we have in our community today. We cannot get the over 90 per cent vaccination rates that we have in our community—as of today it is 95.1 per cent of the population over 12 years of age who have had their first dose and 93.6 per cent who have had their second dose—without nurses putting those jabs in arms. We cannot achieve that without asking our health staff to do additional work. In addition to the testing that they are doing, the day job they are doing in working in hospitals and healthcare settings, they are also working with us to roll out the vaccination program in our state-run centres. But I also want to acknowledge the really important role and the additional work that GP clinics and pharmacies are doing in terms of their part of the rollout. This is a source of pride for those healthcare workers.

A few weeks ago I went to the very well run Bendigo vaccination centre and had my eight- and nine-year-old children receive their first dose of the paediatric vaccine. As we were waiting for the 15 minutes to pass, one of the nurses came up and had a chat, and she spoke with pride about the fact that in Bendigo we are well above 95 per cent, as you know, Deputy Speaker. We have a 98 per cent single-dose rate. We have a 99 per cent double-dose rate. The nurse that I spoke to that day talked about how proud she was of our community and the role that she and her colleagues had played in achieving that outcome. That pride came from a level of professional pride, but it also came from a place of understanding that they had a role in keeping our community safe, in taking pressure off our health system, in helping keep people from getting the virus or not getting as sick or maybe dying, and that they understood their sense of duty and obligation to the greater community. That is what we are simply asking members of Parliament here today to emulate—understand that we have a role, we have a responsibility and we have an obligation to keep our community safe. That does come with an additional level of responsibility because we are members of Parliament and there is a leadership question here. It is a question of leadership, which is why it will take a position of leadership for each and every member in this place to support this motion that I have moved today. I commend the motion to the house.

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (10:55): I rise to speak on the motion in the name of the Leader of the House which amends the COVID-19 vaccination requirements for members of Parliament in the Legislative Assembly, and I can advise that the Liberal-Nationals will be opposing this motion. I begin by reading some of the last words I said the first time such a motion was moved in the Parliament back in October last year. I said:

I am very, very hopeful for many reasons that this is the only time we will move this motion. It is the only time we will need to consider this matter. I say that on the constitutional side, but I say it more for all Victorians, because this time at the beginning of February we should not have these restrictions. We should be vaccinated, we should be living … and we should enjoy the fruits of our labours—the fact that we have done the hard work, rolled up our sleeves, got vaccinated.

93.1 per cent of Victorians over 12 are fully vaccinated. I for one—and I know I speak for my colleagues in the house—am strongly pro-vaccination. I have had my booster shot. I had it two days after I was able to have it, and those two days were a weekend. I am strongly pro-vaccination, and I really have very little truck for anybody who is not vaccinated unless they have an exemption from ATAGI. If you cannot get the exemption, I have got to say I do not have a lot of sympathy for you—a position I make clear, I may add, on Facebook fairly frequently. Let nobody say that I and my colleagues are not pro-vaccination, because I am profoundly pro-vaccination, and I would call on any of the 7 per cent of Victorians over 12 who have not yet gone and got themselves double vaccinated—particularly, could I say, those of working age who have not gone and got themselves vaccinated—to go and do so. They should absolutely go and do so for many of the reasons that the Leader of the House has just put forward.

It is our collective responsibility to get vaccinated, to take the pressure off the health system, particularly as we have seen that the government has been unable to manage the health system over the two years of the pandemic. It is up to the rest of us to take the pressure off the health system, so the nurses, so the doctors, so all those in the health system can have the chance to regroup, to have maybe a day off, to really not be working the double shifts that are forced on them because we have had a pandemic, yes, but also because this government has been unable to manage the health system properly over the two years. Absolutely everybody should get vaccinated, and I extend that to all members of Parliament. I absolutely believe that if you can, which is almost everybody, you should. However, as I said at the time that the motion was moved last time, I was really hopeful that we would get to now and we would not need to have an extension of this motion. I do not believe that we do, and there are a number of reasons that I do not think we do.

I think that we should look at what is happening in terms of vaccine mandates—forcing people to be vaccinated to do their job—in other states. I particularly look at New South Wales where those mandates, except for health care and aged care, which are the two areas which are mandated and recommended by national cabinet, have been removed. At some point the government needs to understand and tell Victorians when they are going to remove these mandates—the general mandates. I am not talking about the ones for healthcare workers and aged care; they are national cabinet mandates, and I think we can all understand why you would have mandates in those industries. But national cabinet does not recommend general mandates, and New South Wales has in fact lifted them. We saw in the Australian Financial Review today just how far Victoria is being left behind New South Wales because we have not got a forward-looking healthcare/vaccination/pandemic management plan that allows small businesses back to work, gets people back in the offices, manages the vaccines and actually encourages people to continue to get vaccinated because it is so important.

Rather than mandating, rather than cracking the whip at people, why don’t they advertise? Why don’t they have continual community messaging that says ‘Do the right thing. Get vaccinated’? But, no, this government has to have the hard, heavy hand of regulation, of mandates. At what point do we say to Victorians, ‘We think you can make your own decision. We want you to get vaccinated because it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing for the health system and it’s the right thing for your fellow Victorians’? But if you have not done it by now—and it has been months, so you have not had your job now for months or you have not been allowed into the Parliament for months—clearly the mandates are not really working. They are not getting vaccinated. You need to find a different way, and this is not doing it. Victoria is not so far ahead of other states. In fact it is not ahead of the ACT in terms of its vaccination rates, so it is not simply that a mandate gets those vaccination rates up. What gets the vaccination rates up is having people understand that vaccination is what protects them and their community.

Now, we know with omicron that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US and ATAGI have both said that they recognise, and I quote from the CDC:

… anyone with Omicron infection can spread the virus to others, even if they are vaccinated …

So the key point here and the reason we want people to be vaccinated now is actually so they do not end up in hospital and put a strain on the health system. People should be vaccinated—there is no question about that—but this government has no strategy out. It is extending this resolution now to mid-May, with no indication that it will not be extended after May—and I will come to some of the problems with that. At some point we need a strategy out. We need a strategy that says to Victorians, ‘Go and get vaccinated. It’s the right thing to do. But at the same time, if you haven’t been vaccinated, we’re going to keep encouraging you and educating you to get vaccinated’. But this mandate business across the Victorian economy is just crippling people. It is crippling us. There are labour shortages everywhere. The crucial point about not being vaccinated is if you have got the virus. Now, any of us could have it. That is why I did a RAT yesterday before I came to Parliament—so I did not come to Parliament infectious.

Mr Rowswell interjected.

Ms STALEY: Yes, we are using those now. They were completely unreliable and not to be used, according to the government a few months ago when we suggested it, but now it is the thing we should all do, so I comply. The crucial thing with this virus is to not go anywhere when you are infectious—that is the thing—and get vaccinated, so that if you do get the virus you do not end up in hospital. They are pretty simple messages. But this government seems to conflate all of this mandate business. They completely conflate it with their flawed pandemic management strategy. At some point, and I think that point is now, Victorians need to move to the next stage of the pandemic management, which says we protect our hospital system by people getting vaccinated but we do not exclude people from society because they have not been—we just do not.

Then I come specifically to MPs. There are serious issues that were raised the last time this motion was moved by both the Leader of the House and me in relation to excluding members from Parliament. And as the Leader of the House has noted in her contribution, the reason we have this motion before us at all today is that members of Parliament are not like other workers. We are not employees, except in the very narrow sense for our personal taxation. We are not employees, we hold office, so any government mandates cannot apply to us, do not apply to us. That is why the government feels it needs to put this motion through, because it cannot do it by administrative edict as it can for others. But there are very good reasons why we are not the same as everybody else, and these reasons were ventilated in the debate last time and I will not go into them in as much detail, but they still remain.

It is a constitutional duty of ours as elected members of Parliament to come to Parliament to represent our constituents, and when we are here no person and no body, which particularly includes executive government, can exclude us from coming to the floor of Parliament to represent our constituents, to exercise the rights that have held for a thousand years in parliaments like ours that we derive authority from. Freedom of speech is at the basis of so many of the freedoms that we enjoy in a democratic society, and that freedom of speech fundamentally flows from our capacity to stand up in this Parliament on behalf of the thousands of constituents that we are elected to represent and say things in this place that cannot be said outside. To deny someone that right is not trivial. Members on the other side may think it is trivial. They may not have ever considered this. They may have no conception of what the constitution of Victoria is. It is possible. However, some of us have, and the key point here—

Members interjecting.

Ms STALEY: I hear those interjecting because I might have cut a bit too close. I have cut a bit too close, because they have not bothered to think about why it is important that we should be able to come to this place. They have not bothered to think about it. Actually, this brings me to my next point on this. If the government is so keen that it believes that it is absolutely crucial for all members of Parliament to be excluded unless they can demonstrate that they are vaccinated, why has the government not moved this motion in the Council? They moved this motion in the Council back in October. Both houses put this through. Why has the government not chosen to put a similar motion to the Council? Could it possibly be that they think it might not get up? They have not. So it is apparently only the Legislative Assembly—those of us, the 88 of us, who have the great privilege to be in this place—that the government is concerned about. All of us—there are 88 elected to this place—

Mr Pearson: Only 87 turn up.

Ms STALEY: Well, we can talk about the ones on the Labor side that are not turning up. Shall I name them? I have not seen the member for Kororoit lately. Have you got a few more? I would not be going there. It does seem therefore either that the government is frightened it will not get this motion up in the Council or that only those members of the Legislative Assembly are particularly dangerous if they are not vaccinated, because it is nonsensical otherwise. It is entirely nonsensical.

A member: The green carpet police.

Ms STALEY: The green carpet, it is possible. On that, though—

Mr Pearson: Have you lost your train of thought?

Ms STALEY: No, no, no. I would like to then discuss the other part of our job that this motion, if passed, affects, and that is electorate office attendance, because not only does this motion stop somebody coming into this place, it also stops them going to their electorate office and meeting with constituents. Yet constituents can go to our electorate offices and we do not ask them if they are vaccinated. We cannot shut them out if they are not vaccinated, which I agree with. People should be able to come and see their member of Parliament.

So we have the absurd situation that this government is now proposing in this motion to continue that constituents can go to a member of Parliament’s office who are not vaccinated to see their member of Parliament, but their member of Parliament cannot go to his or her constituency office if they are not vaccinated. That is just absurd. It is absurd. Memo, everybody: the virus does not know whether you are a member of Parliament or not. If the problem is that that is a safety measure, there is no possible advice you could receive from anybody that says that that is a health advice.

So we then come to the health advice. Professor Sutton, the chief health officer, was at the pandemic committee that has been set up, the Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee, the other day, and he was specifically asked about vaccine mandates, and he said, and this was actually in relation to the third dose:

I have not been requested to provide advice on broader vaccine mandates at this stage …

And yet the Premier is out every day—every day—trying to say that we are going to force the third, the fourth. Now, I think people should get their booster. I have had my booster, and if there is a fourth I will get the fourth, and everyone should do that. I do not think people should be forced to. That does not make me an anti-vaxxer, and it does not make me consorting with Neo-Nazis, which is what those on the other side would like to have us characterised as. I just think it is common sense. It is saying, ‘Go and get vaccinated. I think you are, to be blunt, an idiot if you don’t, but I’m not going to force you to. I’m not going to force you to’. I think that is a completely reasonable position, and I am mystified that the government continue with this argument that unless you sign up to theirs—and let us not forget it is just theirs, it is not New South Wales’s, it is not the ACT’s, it is not even Queensland’s approach on this. It is not the same as every other state. Other states are sticking to national cabinet. Now, national cabinet says health care and aged care, and we can understand why that would be, but they do not say general mandates. They do not say the construction industry. They do not say retail. They do not say hospitality, and they do not exclude members of Parliament.

We are well past the time where Victoria should continue to have these general mandates. We should be doing everything we can to bring people with us on the vaccination journey—everything we can—through encouragement, through education, perhaps even through a bit of berating them for making the wrong decision if they are not being vaccinated. All of those options are with us, but no, this government only has one response, and that is to mandate it on pain of people being excluded from employment and the rest of society. That is not the way to go. That is not the way to continue to go. It certainly was the way to go when we did not have high vaccination levels. When people were still being vaccinated, when young people were not able to be vaccinated, children were not able to be vaccinated, then broader mandates, particularly could I say for teachers when their students could not be vaccinated, could be justified.

Mr Pearson: You didn’t support them.

Ms STALEY: We did. We did support them, Minister, across the table—thank you. So what we think though is at 93.1 per cent fully vaccinated the people who are not vaccinated need a different approach. The mandates have not worked for them. They have opted out and they are becoming increasingly disenfranchised, increasingly marginalised. I do not think saying to 7 per cent of Victorians that we are going to shut them out of all economic activity is a long-term strategy. At some point—and we think that point has passed—people need to be allowed back into society. Sure, say that they should be vaccinated, because they should be. Some have said they have been holding out for Novavax—it is here, so now there will be even less excuses for them not to be vaccinated if that was their argument. I know people used this argument when they were only eligible for AstraZeneca: they said they were holding out for Pfizer. Then Pfizer came and there were a few people, even quite close to me, and I said, ‘Well, Pfizer’s there, go out and do it’, and they did. Some have said, ‘I’m holding out for Novavax’. Well, it is here—go and get it. There is a tiny, tiny percentage of Victorians who cannot be vaccinated by any of these means.

People should be vaccinated, but let us not mandate that; let us treat people as adults. Let us treat them as the adult citizens that they are and recognise that some people across a wide variety of spheres make poor decisions. Some people still smoke. You know, some people take prescription and non-prescription drugs in poor ways. Some people have very unhealthy lifestyles that shorten their lives. There is always going to be a group of people in any society who do not adhere to the norms that we would like them to adhere to. That group of people should not be marginalised. They should be encouraged, educated and brought with us, and at the same time the government should fix its health system so that it can actually manage this pandemic.

We cannot support this motion now. We supported it in October, but we are now at 93.1 per cent vaccinated and there has to be a path out. There has to be a path out for all Victorians from these mandates that are not required by national cabinet. We think therefore that we cannot support this motion, and we will vote against it.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (11:18): I rise to contribute to the Leader of the House’s motion. This is a workplace health and safety issue, and it is part of the broader community safety initiatives. Of course, after listening to the previous contributor, clearly this is about leadership, and there is no doubt this Andrews Labor government is showing leadership. It is disappointing that the opposition will not come along with that and are opposing this motion—that is very disappointing. It is about the collective to beat this pandemic, and we MPs should not be treated differently to any other community members. It is not about me, it is about us, being the MPs, our staff, our parliamentary staff and also for the protection of our families. As of today we see 95.1 per cent of the over-12-year-old population has now had their first dose of a vaccine, and of course 93.6 per cent have had a second dose. It just goes to show that Victorians are coming out in droves to get their vaccines and they know how important it is to be vaccinated.

With this variant, omicron, getting the third dose is critical. Across all the state systems and through the local GP networks and through our pharmacies we know there are still appointments available. This omicron variant has shown that people that have had three doses are not coming down as ill as what the previous strains had shown, such as delta, which hit people a lot harder and had hospitalisations quite a lot higher, in particular in ICUs.

It is important that we are vaccinated to be in this precinct—I think anyway—to prevent and reduce and contain this virus here and in our community, and we should be setting that example throughout the community. People will know that my past experience was as a paramedic for some years and then as the secretary of the ambulance union—38 years in the health industry—and I trust our public health officials and our medicos and their advice. I have trusted them not only through my working career but all my life. I trust them with my health now not only because of the pandemic but because of any underlying conditions that I may have. I pat them on the back that they have kept me alive through their expertise. I trust them on the advice around vaccinations, as I have done, as I say, all my life and through all those vaccination programs that we all went through as children through the school ages. Along with these vaccination programs, the other health measures are just as important—that is, wearing the masks, the social distancing and the sanitisation. They are very important to try and keep this virus at bay.

Again I will refer to the fact that I speak to many paramedics and other health professionals, and they plead with me to make sure people get vaccinated. It is crucial to them in their work, but it is also crucial to the community in regard to how many people are affected by this virus. I know the experiences of paramedics that work 10-, 12-, 14-hour shifts and sometimes greater than 14-hour shifts, and they do 14-hour night shifts in a lot of locations around the state. Sometimes, due to this pandemic, they are expected to work past the 14 hours, and that is very tiring and fatiguing, in particular when they have to don PPE in all types of weather—the fatiguing levels of that, wearing that PPE, in particular in the hotter parts of the state, trying to keep their patients safe, trying to keep themselves safe and also trying to keep the other health professionals they come into contact with safe.

So many paramedics are working on a lot of their rostered days off. The normally work a four-on, four-off type of roster, so they are entitled to have four days off, but to keep the system going and to provide services to the communities, their communities, many of them will come in on their rostered days off. I know in the Melton electorate alone in the last quarter there has been a 16 per cent increase in case load just in the last three months due to COVID. These are exceptional times, and we have to understand that. This is a one-in-100-year pandemic. We need to clearly understand that and support our healthcare workers.

To make it easier to explain the importance of vaccinations I am going to use an analogy of a basketball team. Let us say four out of your five players in the team are throwing the ball in the same direction to win the game, but one player keeps throwing it to the other side. You have got two options to deal with this. You can sideline that one player so you can win. If you do not, it takes longer to win or you do not win at all. We all want to win and beat this pandemic, but we cannot have people throwing in a different direction to try and obstruct beating this pandemic, and we see that throughout the community. These are the people that choose not to be vaccinated, these are the people that choose not to prove whether they have been vaccinated and these are the people that keep screaming out saying that they are being disadvantaged. There is an easy way to fix the disadvantage part of it: go and get vaccinated.

We had a popular tennis player recently in this state that thought he was better and bigger than everyone else, and guess where he is? He is back in his own country. He might be lapping up his lifestyle, but he is not here playing tennis and he did not win the open, and I congratulate Rafael Nadal for a great effort. And he spoke strongly about being vaccinated. It is a simple program.

This motion is about a safe and healthy workplace and a safe and healthy community. These vaccinations have enabled Victoria to open up safely, and we will keep Victoria opened up and safe. That is the agenda. It is disappointing those opposite oppose the motion and keep sending a negative message to the community. I am strongly supportive of this motion, and I know that there will be some terrific contributions following me from this side of the chamber, so I support the motion.

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (11:25): I rise to support the position of the Manager of Opposition Business in relation to the pandemic motion put before the house. One of the things I think that we do lose focus on when we are discussing what has happened with COVID, and the member for Ripon described it well, is how we move back to—and we hear in the community—COVID normal, whereas our focus should be how we move back to normal. How do we find our way back to that normal, everyday life?

The issue with this government and mandates is they are a one-trick pony. They have no alternatives other than the mandate. These mandates, whilst they are what we are debating in here today, are affecting everyday life. A volunteer out in the south-east with the CFA cannot get in and go out and do what he loves doing in protecting our community. Worse still—and I am vaccinated; I actually think people should get vaccinated—there are currently six firefighters within FRV who do have double-dose vaccination. They have had their two doses. They have done everything right but for medical reasons, for pregnancies or for breastfeeding they opted to be later with those two doses. Instead of getting the doses when the original mandate came out, they were away on leave for health reasons and could not get them until January. Now the government with the new mandate has no flexibility and has said that by 12 March firefighters must have their third dose. That would include, the member for Melton would be aware, ambulance officers, who must have a third dose by 12 March. If they do not have that third dose by the 12th, it does not matter if they are a paramedic or an ambulance officer, they will not be working at all—the government has told them that as of the 12th, they can no longer work until they get their third dose. Now these are people who are genuinely within these organisations, and they have been told in writing through FRV that they cannot even access their leave. They cannot access their long service leave, and they will not be working until such time. An assistant principal contacted me today who, for a medical exemption, could not get her first and second dose until January and who as of 12 March will be stood down until 16 April when she can get her third dose.

That is simply not good enough. In this place, we are here to represent all people, all of the community. I congratulate the fact that we are at 93.1 per cent. To those that have got the vaccination, we should be saying thank you, and when we get to that 95 per cent double dose, we should be saying thank you. But we have to have a mechanism whereby we are moving back towards the cases where people who choose not to or cannot vaccinate can get back out into society because you cannot lock them up forever. You cannot remove them from society forever. To the member for Melton who said you would sideline someone if you were playing footy: it is not football, it is not basketball and it is not sport. It is about the everyday lives of these people who deserve, like in New South Wales, to get back out into the community.

I would ask why in New South Wales, where they have reopened—they have opened up the community—there is a difference of 1000 cases today. Between New South Wales and Victoria there is a difference of 1000 cases, and they are back open, they are rebuilding and they are recovering. They are getting back to not COVID normal—they are getting back to normal, whereas here in Victoria the only thing we are concentrating on is how we keep people totally away from their lives. Everybody in here knows, because it was read out here before, the member for Forest Hill is not in this place because he is not vaccinated. At the time, and it went against a lot of the things I believed in, we supported the fact that we had to have those vaccinations. But there comes a time when he deserves to be here to represent his community. At the time we had COVID and there were a lot of people away from this place for other reasons, because of travel from regional parts of Victoria into Melbourne. Others in the community within this place would stay at home, but we had a television screen up here, which the member for Mildura was asking questions from. But instead we have excluded 48 000 to 50 000 voters from Forest Hill from having a voice in this place. What we need to do is ensure that we have a screen or we have the ability for that. But we are not; we are working on ways to keep him out.

Now, I will say that whilst there are 7 per cent of people in the community who choose not to get vaccinated—you can call them anti-vaxxers, you can call them whatever you want—they also deserve a voice in this place. They deserve to be heard. Now, I did not agree with the signs out the front or with half the people out there protesting, but I do know that many people who attended those protests were just mums and dads from within my electorate or small business people who have been smashed because they have struggled through what has been happening here in Victoria. They are looking for a plan. When the government continues to have mandates, including in this place, the leadership they are showing out there is, ‘We are going to continue on the same path’. Melbourne itself is dying and we have more ‘For lease’ signs on windows in Melbourne than we have cranes up building our state, and that is a sad place where we do not want to be. We need to see people getting back to work, we need to see changes in mask mandates, we need to see people able to get back to normal. They will not return to work while we still have masks in the workplace. They just will not do it.

I would bet that nearly every member in this Parliament—Labor, Liberal, Greens, independent—whilst in their electorate offices do not wear their masks. That would be almost guaranteed. And if they say they do, it is one of two things: they are lying or they are actually choosing to do it in their place, which is the bare minimum. We need to make sure that businesses have that opportunity. We need councils to come back. We need major businesses here in the city to get back so we can see our cafes start to revive. We have seen Chris Lucas out talking about the restaurant scene in Melbourne and how much it has died from not having people here in the city. I note the Minister for Creative Industries is across the table at the moment. We need to see people coming back to the shows that are in Melbourne. When I was in Sydney recently you could travel wherever you wanted to, you could go and watch the shows and it was vibrant. That should be what is happening here in Melbourne.

It is time that every person—I do not care who you are—is welcomed back into our community. Those that are at the greatest risk are those that are not vaccinated—I agree with that. Our health system has been failed by this government and that is what cannot keep up, because of the failure to plan and invest by this government. When we go out and speak to private hospitals—we were out speaking to them this week—and we talk about elective surgeries, they have been failed because they have not got a plan on how to get back to business. We asked a question yesterday about Rebecca out our way. She is from down in Pakenham. Why wasn’t she given access to elective surgery? Why wasn’t she put in a position where she could get back into the system? Yesterday a surgeon was on social media saying he was turning the lights off in his surgery because he has been told he cannot continue with the surgeries he was supposed to continue with. It is because our mandates are the only answer and therefore the government has not sat down and done what is needed to plan for the future.

We will talk about rebuilding and recovering all the way through to the election. But what we will say on these mandates across our state is that other than in health and aged care we have to find a way to move away from them. When you bring in a mandate, people stop listening to the education because it is compulsory. We need to find a way to remind people that the best outcome for them is to be vaccinated, but we need to make sure that every single person in this state has the ability to be in the workforce, in the economy, at their family events, going out to the restaurants, enjoying what we have of our lives. We need to make sure that we can move away and find a plan—to say to Victorians, ‘We are over the mandates that are happening here in this state’. We want to make sure that people have that personal choice. That is the reason I got into Parliament: to be the voice of every person when it comes to choice. This government only has one option and that is to remove your choices, to remove any decision you can make yourself—and now it is coming to your children. We are going to see mandates here in this state for a third vaccination and possibly a fourth and a fifth. Victorians will not tolerate it. When I go to markets, when I go to stalls and when I go out into the street, they are telling me these things. This is the message I am getting. And if Labor MPs are not getting it, it is because they are not in the community speaking to the people that need to hear what is going on.

Dr READ (Brunswick) (11:35): I will just speak briefly to this to this government motion, which the Greens will support. We will support it largely for reasons you have already heard, but just to reiterate: first, it is very important that if we have mandates covering a large section of the workforce, a good example and leadership is shown by MPs in this place. That is the first important reason. The second is for the protection of co-workers. The vaccine does not absolutely prevent infection, but it reduces the likelihood of infection and it reduces the likelihood of transmission. Both of those things work to protect the people around us: our fellow MPs and staff, both in the Parliament and in the electorate office.

We also know that there are about as many people with COVID in public hospitals or in Hospital in the Home programs or under the care of GPs as you could normally fit into about two large public hospitals. This is an extraordinary stress on the health system whoever is in government. Whichever party was in government would be struggling to manage the public health system—well, the public and private health system—at the moment. Anything we can do to signal the importance of vaccination, which protects the population and reduces the rate of hospitalisation, is worth doing.

While the vaccine is proving less effective than it originally was at preventing infection, it is still very effective at reducing hospitalisation and particularly reducing the number of sick people who require oxygen. We have seen what is like in other countries where people have been bartering for oxygen cylinders at markets. We do not want to get like that here, and realistically we are not going to, but if we mismanage the pandemic badly enough, we will get awfully close to that. So showing leadership at every level and encouraging the uptake of vaccination however we can is vital, and that is why I am encouraging my fellow MPs to support this motion.

I really understand, though, and I respect the arguments from the opposition about the rights of the individual. Our human rights system has evolved around protecting the rights of individuals. It is important that we think, though, about what vaccinations are and how they work. We have not really thought about human rights at the population level. Vaccines protect populations. The population needs the vaccination, and we are all safer because of it. We are safer if we have got 400 or 500 people in hospital with COVID than if we have got 1200 people in hospital with COVID. We are safer if we get appendicitis or an ectopic pregnancy or a heart attack because the ambulance is more likely to turn up on time, and that is because more of the population are vaccinated. These individual rights are actually protected when we think about rights at a population level as well as at an individual level.

Our way of thinking about rights has not evolved. Sadly, the virus has evolved. The vaccine was developed to protect us from a virus that was circulating in 2020, and we have been through several variants—delta and omicron—since then. The vaccine was not developed to protect us even from delta, let alone the current one. So it seems likely that we are going to need repeated doses of the vaccination until a new iteration of the vaccine becomes available. We are already used to this with influenza: the influenza vaccine contains three or four influenza variants chosen based on what is circulating the previous flu season in the Northern Hemisphere.

We will probably end up doing something like that with COVID. We will probably have a polyvalent vaccine protecting us against multiple variants and we will probably all just queue up for it, hopefully just once a year. But we are not there yet, and we have still got—I have not seen the latest figures—something like 600 patients in our public hospitals. Our ambulance system is still under extraordinary stress. We have not found the secret cupboard that is full of freshly trained and rested health workers; we have got to keep using the same ones. So while all that is happening we need to do everything we can, and one thing we can do is show some leadership, make a difficult decision and support this motion.

Ms RYAN (Euroa) (11:41): I am grateful for the opportunity afforded to me by this place to contribute to this motion moved by the Leader of the House on COVID vaccination requirements for MPs. I have to say that I respect the contributions that the member for Brunswick has made in this place over the course of the last couple of years on COVID. Though I do not often find myself agreeing with much of what the Greens say, I do respect his professionalism and knowledge in this space as perhaps the member of the chamber who comes with the most experience on this issue.

He refers to it as an issue of leadership, as many of the government MPs have. I agree that as MPs we should show leadership, and I agree that we should get vaccinated. It is one of the reasons why I personally did not wait for Pfizer to become available to me, although that was initially recommended. I went out and got vaccinated with AstraZeneca because I did not want to wait and I also wanted to demonstrate leadership. But what people are missing here is that this is not about individuals as MPs; this is about very deep constitutional issues in this place. That is what Labor MPs in particular are ignoring here.

We have hundreds of years of principles underpinning this place, and the member for Ripon, as the Manager of Opposition Business, articulated those very clearly when she came into this chamber when such a motion was first introduced back in October. It is about how we have a duty to come here and represent our constituents, and it is not within anyone’s capacity under the rights afforded to us, handed down from the House of Commons in the UK, to block that right. That is what I find very deeply troubling about this motion, very troubling. I am deeply uncomfortable with the notion that the government here is fundamentally using the weight of its numbers to block an individual or any MP from being able to stand here, because it is not about that MP, it is about the 50 000-odd people that that MP represents. It concerns me that we are setting these precedents. We are setting up a position where a government, who always holds control in the lower house, can expel a member on the basis of the fact that the government does not agree with them or the government does not like what they are saying or they are not complying with a government directive. That fundamentally contravenes those principles that are set out under rights of privilege that members in this place hold.

Again, I stress it is not about that individual MP, it is about their constituents and the 50 000 people who deserve a voice in this place through the person that they elect to represent them. It is up to those people, those constituents, to make a judgement on the job that that MP has been doing, and if they disagree with the actions of their MP, then they will vote them out. That is why we have elections. But it is not up to me to say that the member for Brighton or the member for Sandringham or the member for Brunswick or the member for Melton does not have a right to be here. That is not my right. It is fundamentally the right of that person’s constituents. It is for that reason that I am very concerned by this motion, and I am very concerned that there is no end date from where the government sits. We now say that it is 12 May, but the Leader of the House has given us no guarantee that there will not be another motion or another motion or another motion. Now, if you need any evidence of the fact that this is a political move by the government then you have to ask why a corresponding motion has not been introduced to the upper house. We do not have the Council debating this topic at the moment. It is only relevant, according to the government, to members of the Legislative Assembly.

I am also concerned that the government has done nothing to facilitate participation by members who may be impacted by this motion. We saw over the course of COVID that we had remote participation arrangements; indeed the member for Mildura frequently participated remotely in the Parliament because she did not want to travel to Melbourne from Mildura. A number of other MPs made that choice as well. But there has been no effort on the government’s part to facilitate that, to ensure that people who are rightfully elected by their constituents can come to this place or even remotely come to this place and continue to participate. If we are living in extraordinary times then perhaps we should be considering extraordinary measures to ensure that fundamentally we are upholding those very important principles on which this place is built.

I also point to the inconsistencies we have in the rulings around electorate offices. The government says that an unvaccinated MP cannot attend their electorate office but unvaccinated constituents can. Now, I absolutely support the right of unvaccinated constituents to see their MP. I think it is very important that we as MPs do our job for every single person irrespective of their vaccination status. However, there is an inconsistency there, in that the government is saying, ‘Well it’s fine on this hand, but not as an MP’.

On the broader issue of vaccine mandates, and again I do feel that this is purely becoming political for the government, I think they feel that they have got a wedge issue there that they are keen to jump on. They are keen to try and paint the opposition as being anti-science and anti-vaccination, and nothing could be further from the truth. We have been consistent with national cabinet all the way. In fact it is the government that is currently inconsistent with national cabinet. National cabinet said that as of 15 December vaccine mandates should be lifted. That was their position. That is what New South Wales has done. We have not seen a huge explosion in case numbers in New South Wales versus Victoria over that time. New South Wales has followed national cabinet. It is Victoria which has gone against the grain of the other states who sit around that body. Epidemiologists in this state have expressed their concern about long-term vaccine mandates. Even the World Health Organization have said that they believe they should be used as a last resort.

That is one of my real concerns here. The government has done very little. I would say this is not unique just to the state government; I think it applies to the federal government as well. They have not done enough in terms of educating people and addressing the risk and the misinformation that has been perpetuated, particularly across the internet. There needs to be far more done in that space, and we have called on the state government multiple times to redirect the millions and millions of advertising dollars that they are putting into promoting their achievements and their work and the glossy spin campaigns into a health campaign to help combat the damaging misinformation that continues to spread across the internet. They have not done that. There has not been a real effort to actually combat that misinformation and to educate people about the reasons why they should get vaccinated.

Instead we have gone straight to mandates to shut people out of society, to shut them out of work. I think if there has been acceptance across Victorian society for that it is because most people—most of us who are happy to go and get vaccinated—understand our duty to wider society. We understand that it is a way of protecting our fellow citizens and the health system. We just do not want to be locked down again. So most people are saying, ‘Well, I’m happy to do it’, and if they are supportive of vaccine mandates, it is because they just do not want to be locked down again.

There is no pathway out here. We are into the third year of the pandemic. We do not have the 4000 promised ICU beds that the government—that the Premier, in fact—said we were going to get. We have not had the resourcing put into the health system. I mean, if you have any doubt about that just go and read the Productivity Commission’s report on health services, which compares every state and territory across Australia. It makes for very interesting reading about the very low funding into Victoria’s health system in comparison to other states and territories.

Fundamentally the issue at stake here in terms of broader vaccine mandates is that the government has not prepared our health system properly. And so it is now imposing these mandates on the community because it has not done the work that it needed to do. But in terms of this motion before the house, in terms of how this affects the privilege of MPs and their rights and ability to do their job, I would urge members of the government to rethink their position on this. Please just do not be sheep. Do not just follow the political wind on this. I truly believe that is what you are doing. You are not considering the long-term consequences here—how it impacts this place going forward, how it reflects on the principles fundamentally that underpin our right and our ability to do our job. It might be an individual member of the Assembly today; it might be you tomorrow.

Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (11:51): I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to support this motion and follow on from the Leader of the House; the member for Melton, my fellow Parliamentary Secretary for Health; and of course the very well informed contribution from the member for Brunswick.

Those opposite have indeed taken a genuinely bizarre, perplexing position on this motion, and I will come to that. This motion is about safety. It is about the collective health of all of us in this place, but of course, as other members have mentioned on this side of the house, it is indeed about the safety of the fantastic and incredible staff that work in this precinct. And I often, Acting Speaker Kilkenny, as I am sure you do, hear from members on this side of the house and indeed all sides of the house who speak about the incredible work, whether it is done by our clerks, Hansard, the library, catering—everybody that makes this place, this great Parliament of our state, work. All of that work is often mentioned in this place, and this is indeed a motion that is about safety. The motion relates to electorate offices, and all of us in this place know the incredible job that our electorate officers do day in day out. Keeping a safe workplace is a driving force behind this government, and this is a critical step in delivering exactly that.

Vaccine mandates save lives. They keep us all safe. They are a key part about why our state is one of the most vaccinated places in the world, and I ask all members in this contribution and those who have tuned in from home to just take themselves back to what it felt like when COVID hit the world, that time in our lives when there was indeed no vaccine. The research had not been done. COVID had not yet come to fruition, and indeed there was no vaccine. So what options did we as a state, as a country and globally have at that point in time? Right now we have got the luxury, if I can call it that, of having a debate about vaccine mandates, but there was a time not so long ago when the vaccine was not yet developed, and as I have said, we know that there was incredible carnage that was seen right across the world. The member for Brunswick spoke about this—scenes in New York; scenes in northern Italy; scenes that we hope to never, ever see anywhere in the world; scenes in India that were just horrific. Absolute chaos and carnage were caused by COVID-19. We know of course that we are very close to losing 6 million people across the globe, and that number does continue to rise.

We have science to thank for a vaccine, we have research, we have experts, we have healthcare professionals. Without all of these there is absolutely no doubt that this state and all states and territories right across the country would have lost tens of thousands of lives. It is for these reasons and so many more that it is astonishing that those opposite have been so inconsistent, so all over the shop with many of the decisions that this government has taken around restrictions, around vaccine mandates, around COVID-19 management—ideology over reality. I listened really closely to the lead speaker from those opposite, and what I was particularly taken by was the referral to decisions that were made at the back end of 2021.

What is it about October–November 2021 compared to February 2022? What has changed? Of course we know that there is a highly infectious new variant that has spread right across the globe, so making comparisons to when the variant was not yet here is just extraordinary. Decisions need to be taken on what comes in through the gates—not what you think might happen, but what is actually here, based in reality. These decisions impact lives in every single way. These are decisions that are not easy for any government, and we know that through the course of the pandemic there have been many, many tough decisions that this government has had to make. The easy decisions can be made by any government, but the hard decisions are always made by good governments. Indeed the decisions that this government has taken have indeed saved lives and will continue to save lives as we increase vaccine coverage both across our state and across the country.

We in this place have the great responsibility to come in for a number of weeks each and every year and represent our local constituency. We know we have got an opportunity to come in and to be the voice of our local community. We know that we get to work with community groups, we get to go to schools, we get to do community events. We get to do these things to represent our community, and that is a great privilege and a great responsibility. As the Leader of the House referred to in her contribution, members of Parliament should not have a separate set of rules from those that are for authorised workers. Members of Parliament should indeed show leadership in this space, and this is fundamentally important. This is about safety, about leadership, about doing the right thing and of course about supporting the tremendous work that our healthcare professionals do each and every day. The member for Melton, in his contribution, spoke about that work, and we know that the healthcare system is still under extraordinary pressure. We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support our healthcare professionals, and we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can in this place to keep people safe and to keep our local communities safe.

It is not by chance that we have had over 13 million vaccine doses delivered in this state. It is not by chance that 288 000 vaccinations have been provided to 5- to 11-year-olds since their program commenced on 10 January. Indeed it is not by chance that 95.1 per cent of the over-12 population have now had a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 93.6 per cent have now had a second dose. We know that Victorians have demonstrated an amazing effort to come forward and get vaccinated. We know that Victorians of all ages know that the only way forward is through the vaccine program. Indeed numbers show that slightly above 10 billion vaccines have been administered globally and there have been over 400 million cases and nearly 6 million deaths.

We know that we need to continue to work with our healthcare professionals and we need to continue to work with our research professionals—those that are engaged in medical research in this state, those that have played a leading role, a central role, in the development of those vaccines, and those that spend the majority of their working lives dedicated to ensuring that our community, that each and every one of us, has the best possible access to terrific health care. That is something that I am particularly proud of. I do want to acknowledge that incredible work.

We know that in this Parliament we have got an opportunity, as I mentioned earlier in my contribution, to support our local communities, to lead by example and to be involved in work that we can all be genuinely proud of. It is my view that in years to come we will be looking back on some of the decisions that have been taken. Motions such as this one before the house mean that the health and safety of our collective community and of the staff that work in this precinct have been put forward. That is something I know as a local member I am very proud of and as part of the Andrews Labor government I am incredibly proud of.

In the final seconds that I have got remaining I will just remind the opposition that much of the commentary that I have heard on this motion this morning and much of the commentary that has indeed been placed in the media and on social media over the past couple of months, to me, has been about wanting or wishing new variants to just never come through the gates of Australia, to never exist—‘Let’s just move on; it’s not here anymore’. Well, the reality is that it is. I support the motion.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (12:01): I rise to make a contribution to the motion put forward by the Leader of the House with regard to continuing the mandates that have been placed on us in this chamber certainly. Now, I want to make sure that it is on record that I am a firm believer in vaccination. I have had my shots, I have had a booster and I typically have a flu shot as well because I know that it protects me and I know that it protects the community. I do not like what is often implied by the other side, that we are anti-vaxxers, because nothing could be further from the truth. We have got a motion before us that is extending what we have in place until 12 May 2022, so for another few months. Where are we now? We are in early February. When this occurred last year and we supported this motion, we were well and truly expecting things to have changed, and things have changed; things are continually changing. Things are nowhere near as bad as they have been, and what that means for us as a society is we need to work out what the strategy is for Victoria out of this pandemic, because viruses change, they mutate, they get weaker or you might get a tougher one, but typically this is what happens with viruses.

Now, we have had a great response to vaccinations in the country and certainly in Victoria. If you look at the stats, 93 per cent or so over the age of 12 are vaccinated. That shows that the vast majority of people understand and want to become vaccinated, because they were told and they see that this is their path back to a normal life. We are never going to get full vaccination. Even with our childhood vaccinations we are still at only around 95 per cent, so we know from the childhood vaccination rate that there are 5 per cent real anti-vaxxers out there who do not get their kids vaccinated. We still have the no jab, no play, and we understand that not everybody is going to get vaccinated, because they have beliefs or choose otherwise. On top of that 5 per cent we also have another couple of per cent who are not getting vaccinated, and you know, you have to ask, ‘Well, why are they not getting vaccinated?’. Certainly those who have spoken to me say that this is an experimental drug and it is too early for them, and others do not want to be told, so we have got a little bit of a mix there. But collectively it is 93 per cent vaccinated over the age of 12. I think certainly in many parts of my electorate the figures for vaccination for the double dose were well over 95 per cent very quickly, and I commend those communities for what they have done there.

So who is at the greatest risk here? We are all vaccinated; it does not mean that we are not going to get a mutation or a new variety of COVID. My daughter—I like many other people in this place have a family member who has been hit with COVID—had the latest strain. She was not knocked around terribly. She was double vaxxed and still managed to get knocked around for a day with kind of bad cold symptoms. But we also have to look at some of the expert advice that is coming from ATAGI and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the States about omicron, and they say that the disease can be spread if vaccinated. As we all know, there are people who are vaccinated that are getting hit but they are not getting as sick as they perhaps would have been if they were not vaccinated, so we know and understand that.

There are people who are choosing, as I have said, not to be vaccinated, and it is about how long they get excluded from society with these mandates. We have the mandates that we support in high-risk settings like health care, as has been outlined previously, but we need a strategy. For the people that are not vaccinated, how long are they going to be excluded? We know at least here it will be until 12 May, possibly a lot longer, but we want to see a strategy, because you have to have plans, you have to have a strategy. The member for Sunbury talked about having to deal with what comes through the door. Well, you have to do a bit of thinking and a bit of planning about what might come through the door. Are we going to get a worse strain? Are we going to get a better strain? Is it going to peter out? We have got experiences overseas that we can watch as well.

It also highlights the lack of preparation in our health system, our public health system. The Premier has been the Minister for Health. He has been Premier, he has been health minister and he has been Parliamentary Secretary for Health, so for a very long period of time the Premier has had his hands all over the health system in Victoria, and it is at crisis point at the moment. We hear day after day the stories. We also hear, though, of the people who are in hospital and being cared for with COVID and of those that have not been vaccinated, and the ones that have not been vaccinated are really taking a hit. I think a lot of those people who are not vaccinated, who might like to consider again the importance of them becoming vaccinated, would be taking care to minimise the risk of getting infected, because it could be quite damning for them.

With regard to being excluded from this place, we have now had RATs introduced. We are required to have RATs on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Parliament is sitting. For those of us who could get their hands on them easily—it has not been easy—we have certainly undertaken that. I think it is quite amusing to see the government’s huge backflip on RATs, because we called for RATs to be introduced. We stood on the steps of Parliament, and quite a number of people on this side actually had a rapid antigen test at the time. We showed how quick it was, how easy it was. That was six months ago. It was six months ago, and the government has now seen the light and their usefulness. The Premier at the time called it a stunt, and later he went on to complain that we did not have enough RATs. I quote from the Minister for Health:

If you want to stake the welfare of Victorians on one rapid antigen test, then you are a very brave public health official and you are putting the welfare of Victorians at risk.

I want to touch on why we are here. Why are we here? We are all here in this house because we were elected by a constituency to represent it in Parliament. We have some 48 000, 50 000 voters each. We come to this place and we raise matters on people’s behalf. We raise issues of the health crisis. We raise all sorts of things—roads and other issues, lead smelters and some dodgy processes down in the Latrobe Valley. There are all sorts of things that we raise on behalf of our constituents. Excluding someone does not allow those constituents in that electorate to be represented. I think it is important that we consider those people in the electorate we are talking about, and we all know we are talking about the electorate of Forest Hill. They have a member who is not able to go into his electorate office and is not able to come into this place and so is continuing to be excluded and is working from home. He continues to work from home but he does not have the same powers in the way that we do when we come to this place to represent our constituents. It is the constituents who are missing out. He could every day have a rapid antigen test—every day before Parliament, even on the Monday. He could do it for four days. Quite clearly he could do that so he could represent that community.

We really do need to have a strategy out of here. We want to get back to being able to live our normal lives, and we need to see that strategy. We need to see the forward planning and the thinking. We need to have the plan. Any good plan will ask, ‘What if this happens or what if that happens?’, so we need to have an alternative strategy in place.

What we are finding and what we are seeing constantly is a government that is lurching from crisis to crisis because they have not actually thought about some of these things. What we are seeing also, as has come to light in the last couple of weeks with the inquiry set up to look into the pandemic legislation, is that the chief health officer, Brett Sutton, appears to be sidelined now. So his health advice, which was relied on so heavily, seems to be disregarded. He actually said that he is not being asked to make comment on a number of these issues. One of the members earlier said that these issues have relied on the health advice, but Brett Sutton is telling us he is not being asked about this. So who is the person that is giving you this expert advice if you have sidelined the chief health officer?

A member: Politics.

Ms McLEISH: I think the government needs to stop playing politics here. Absolutely we need to make sure that we have a strategy that is showing and leading us on a path back to the normal way that we lived, and the government are failing us in that regard.

Mr NORTHE (Morwell) (12:11): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the motion before the house. Prior to any comments that I do make, I do wish to place on the record my gratitude and that of my community to those people who are working on the COVID response and recovery—everyone—from vaccinations through to testing through to working in our health system. We do appreciate their ongoing efforts in what has been a very trying time.

In terms of the motion before us and indeed the previous motion that passed this place, I can say that I do feel a little torn in terms of where I sit. Previously I had not opposed the motion, which I must point out is different to supporting the previous motion. That really required MPs to be vaccinated to attend Parliament or their electorate office. I did not oppose the previous motion on the basis that government MPs and ministers and other MPs should not have a different set of rules to those that have been imposed upon Victorian citizens. Whilst I still hold that sentiment, I am also concerned that it appears there is no real point in time as to when a general vaccination mandate will be lifted. Indeed I asked this question in question time to the Minister for Health last year, and it still appears that any proposed lifting of the mandate will be many months away.

I have certainly raised in this place previously my position in respect to vaccination mandates. I do not believe in a general mandate. I do not believe it is warranted and I do not think it is necessary—more so now, particularly given the high vaccination rates we have in Victoria, and I do commend Victorians for going out and achieving such high levels of vaccination. The reality of the situation is that even with a vaccination mandate we are not going to achieve 100 per cent, and we would agree that that is the case. So where is the point in time and what is the statistic that we need to get to where we say that a mandate is not necessary? I think with the current vaccination rates at the moment—we are talking 93 per cent or in excess of—it is going to be a hard task to get beyond that. Again, at what point do we remove the mandate?

What I can say from my own experience and the feedback that I have had from my community is that the mandate itself has created enormous division across our country, across our state and in our local communities. I do not think that is deniable at all. That is the reality of the situation. People have lost their jobs, and they have lost their livelihoods, might I say, because in many respects they have dared to do some research—they do not feel comfortable being vaccinated or they cannot be vaccinated. Some are not comfortable with the current vaccinations that are on offer and are looking to other vaccinations such as Novavax to be administered going forward. So we might see those vaccination rates increase a little bit with Novavax being on offer, but the reality is we are still not going to get to 100 per cent. Many people have said to me that they have read the data, they have read the statistics and they are somewhat unnerved by the statistics provided by the TGA on the adverse reactions to vaccinations. Who am I to convince them otherwise or that they should not have their concerns? If that is their concern, that is their right.

People have pointed out to me: why does our overarching government, the commonwealth, state that vaccinations are voluntary yet states can mandate them? I spoke yesterday to an old friend of mine, and I would certainly describe him as not an anti-vaxxer at all but somebody who has done their due diligence, has done their research and has come to the conclusion that with the current vaccinations he and his wife do not choose to get vaccinated. The facts for them now are that both of them have lost their jobs, they have lost their livelihoods, and obviously not only is it a difficult time for them financially but emotionally it is really tough. They feel discriminated against because they have come to a conclusion and a decision.

From my perspective, I am not an anti-vaxxer either. Like many other members, I am fully vaccinated. I have recently had the booster, and that is my choice. I certainly encourage others to get vaccinated if they can and if they are willing to. I understand that vaccine mandates might be necessary in high-risk settings and vulnerable settings. I understand that, but what I would say on the general mandate applying is that we have to, at some point in time, get beyond that and give Victorian citizens some of their liberties and freedoms back. Despite the government saying that people have a choice, those who cannot or do not want to be vaccinated only have one choice, and they face losing their job, their employment and their livelihood and being excluded from being an active participant in society. That is unfortunately what many Victorian citizens are currently experiencing.

We know through omicron that even fully vaccinated persons can easily contract the virus, and I am sure all of us here have had experiences in our own networks where COVID has been contracted by those around us. At the same time, we can also accept the fact that vaccinated persons are less likely to get very ill through being vaccinated. But again, at what point do we turn off the mandate tap and allow all Victorian citizens to enjoy their freedoms and liberties equally?

Many sectors require that regular COVID tests are to be undertaken by their employees so they can continue to work. We as MPs are now required to provide two negative tests to attend Parliament, but at the same time I rhetorically ask: why couldn’t an unvaccinated MP be required to provide a daily negative test so they can attend Parliament? Surely this is a better proposition than banning an MP altogether from this place. I know the member for Forest Hill has been mentioned in dispatches. He has made his choice, but at the same time I believe there are options for him and others to return to Parliament if they are unvaccinated. The member for Forest Hill is a good, decent man. He is a great representative of his community. He loves his community, and he represents it very well in this place. It is a shame that through this motion he and others might not be able to participate in parliamentary forums and represent his community here. As I said, I believe there are options to allow in such circumstances for MPs to be able to be in this place.

The other example which I was going to raise and has been raised by others is the fact that unvaccinated persons can visit their electorate office but an unvaccinated member of Parliament cannot. There are these anomalies, these concerns. My concern is more the fact that we need to turn the page with respect to the mandate that applies generally across the community and to MPs. I think in this time and place there are better options available for people to continue their employment and be a vital part of society, in this case of MPs by having daily tests so they can continue to represent their community.

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (12:20): I also rise to address the motion moved by the Leader of the House to amend the COVID-19 vaccination requirements and to extend the current requirements until 12 May 2022. I support vaccines—I am fully vaccinated—but I oppose these vaccine mandates. I made my decision to be fully vaccinated freely and without coercion. I did so having spoken to my doctor and my family. It was my choice. I have also encouraged members of my community to be vaccinated in consultation with their own doctors. There has been an overwhelming response in my community.

We have hit our vaccination targets. We have reached the numbers that the national plan advised in order for us to open up our state and our nation. So why has the Victorian government chosen to use a stick when the overwhelming majority of our community is getting vaccinated? Why does this government seek to divide us further at a time when, in my very strong view, our community needs hope, needs optimism and needs certainty more than ever. To illustrate this point further I refer to an Australian Associated Press article published today, 9 February. It reports:

The Prime Minister and the Victorian Premier are at odds this morning over vaccine requirements for international tourists when Australia’s border reopens.

The federal government plans to open the nation’s borders to overseas tourists from February 21 for the first time in two years …

The article then goes on:

But Mr Andrews on Tuesday flagged international visitors coming to Victoria could have to fall into line with rules applying to state residents.

These rules require people going to hospitality venues and major events to have had their two doses, plus a booster shot.

‘It’ll apply here, in the state of Victoria,’ he—

the Premier—

told reporters when asked if the same rules would apply.

But on 8 February 7News reported:

Victorians may soon need a third dose to be considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but the state’s chief health officer says he hasn’t been asked for his advice on the issue.

Professor Sutton, addressing a parliamentary inquiry, said:

… he has not provided official advice to the government on the plan to mandate a third vaccine.

He is quoted as saying:

I haven’t been requested to provide advice on broader vaccine mandates at this stage …

And then just earlier today, on the doors here in the Parliament, Labor’s Minister for Tourism, Sports and Major Events, Minister Pakula, said it is too early to make any kinds of definitive statements in advance of ATAGI advice. So you have got the Premier saying that it is a requirement. You have got the chief health officer saying that he has not been asked for advice, and you have got a senior Labor minister saying it is too early to make definitive statements in advance of ATAGI advice. What is it? What is the answer here? Why is there so much confusion around this from the government if what they are doing is solely basing their decision-making on health advice?

In my view politics does come into play here. Let us speak absolutely frankly: there is only one member in this place that is directly affected by the extension of this motion, and that is my good friend and colleague the member for Forest Hill. Why is this motion being moved in this chamber when an identical motion is not being moved in the Council, as it was—

Mr Newbury: It’s 10 metres away.

Mr ROWSWELL: It is 10 metres away, thank you, member for Brighton. That is what happened at the end of last year when a motion like this was first considered. The member for Forest Hill is a very good member for Forest Hill. He is a very decent man. He takes his role as a member of Parliament very, very seriously. He has undertaken significant work on parliamentary committees, as a member of the shadow cabinet, as a member of the outer shadow ministry and as a local member of Parliament. His heart and his soul are in the job of being a local representative, and the effect of this motion is that the member for Forest Hill is no longer able to fully participate and fully represent his community. Other speakers have raised the fact that members of Parliament, to attend their electorate offices, are required to be fully vaccinated but constituents attending an electorate office are not. Why the inconsistency? Why the inconsistency in this case? It is my strong view that freedom of choice and the right to make informed decisions about your own health are key pillars of our democracy. Freedom of choice matters and must always be accompanied by individual responsibility, accepting the benefits and consequences of the decision made.

These concerns that I am expressing are not mine alone. I speak for my community—employers, small businesses, leaders, mothers, fathers and many more who have written to me who are vaccinated but fear living in a state where our community is further divided into a two-class system. I recall speaking to a local Highett resident who works at Mentone Woolworths. She has chosen not to be vaccinated. I respect her choice. She is not able to work at Mentone Woolworths at the moment because of her vaccination status, but she drew to my attention the fact that she can go there and shop for 8 hours of the day with no consequence. She is allowed to do that. She is allowed to see her now former colleagues—she is allowed to spend time with them as a shopper, not as a colleague. There are inconsistencies with this. No other state in this nation has these mandates in the same way that Victoria has rolled them out. It is wrong. It has got to end. We have got to move on, we have got to rebuild, we have got to recover and we have got to get back to the Victoria that we once were, and the one thing in the way of that at the moment, in my view, is inconsistent decisions being made by this government.

Further, the government’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate motion, in my view, undermines the opportunity for democratically elected members of Parliament to attend Parliament and the parliamentary precinct. This should be of deep concern to every Victorian. MPs are democratically elected and represent those who have elected them in this state’s Parliament. By providing the ability to restrict participation in the Parliament this motion places a barrier between the needs of a community and an MP advocating for those needs in the Parliament. This motion has not considered the possibility of rapid COVID testing, as earlier speakers have addressed, as a way for every MP to fully participate in the Parliament. That is indeed a great shame. This motion has not considered the opportunity for electronic participation in the Parliament as a way to bridge the divide between, once again, the member for Forest Hill participating more fully in parliamentary proceedings and representing his constituents and not. That is indeed a great shame. Political representation is essential to a liberal democracy, and without it democracy is significantly undermined.

Again, and finally, I support vaccines, I am fully vaccinated, but I oppose this motion, together with my coalition colleagues. Freedom of choice matters, and that must always be defended.

Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (12:29): I am pleased to rise and speak on this motion. I note that the last time a motion like this was before the house everyone supported the motion, and here we are now, a couple of months later, looking at an extension of it because of the circumstances we have found ourselves in. I think last December, when Parliament rose for the holiday break, we were all hoping that the changes to the laws that had been made may not even be required to the extent that they had been. There was a sense that perhaps we were moving forward from the delta strain. There was just a hint that omicron was on the horizon. Omicron unfortunately has gone wild over the last couple of months, and we have seen the impacts of that on our community. I think it is with great relief that so many in our community are vaccinated, because the impact has been much less in terms of serious illness and death than would have been the case were it not for vaccinations.

In my community so many people have been vaccinated. Shepparton has a very high rate of first and second doses of vaccination, and just today there is the launch of a campaign to really increase the numbers of those people attending to get their third dose of the vaccination. There is great support for vaccination in the community, and by far the overwhelming majority of people have supported it and have been vaccinated.

We saw the predictions in early January of the possible risks to our hospital system, and our health services saw quite an impact on those systems—just barely able to cope, with the furloughing of staff and so many staff away and so many people having difficulty coping—to the extent that these limits on elective surgery were required. It is probably salutary to note that of our hospital beds, something like 50 per cent of those hospital beds are being taken up by people who are unvaccinated. If 6 per cent of the population are unvaccinated and 50 per cent of the beds are being occupied by those who are unvaccinated, there is a real message in that. The importance of vaccinations is really spelt out by that sort of thing.

I think it is really important also to note that the processes around getting access to elective surgery have really been impacted by the overwhelming strain that was put on the hospital system. We have all had people contact our electorate offices—people who have been so negatively impacted by the delays in having surgery. So we have not come out of this. I respect the contributions that everyone has made in this place, coming at it from so many different angles, and they all have good arguments about it. There are many things that we are so tired of as a community. We so want to move on. We so want our freedoms back. We do not want this virus impacting on our community the way it has for the last two years. That overwhelming sense of tiredness with the way we have had to live is just right through our community, and people are looking forward to something different.

Without wanting to be negative about it, it was only days ago that the commonwealth chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said that we may well be facing another surge of omicron as winter comes on. So we are not out of it yet. There are a lot of measures that still will be required from time to time, and we cannot hide from that fact. I am quite influenced by the fact that the chief medical officer of the commonwealth has really warned of that, and I think it will impact on decisions that are made at national cabinet and in our states going forward. Protection of the community is really the paramount consideration that has been at the forefront of governments across the country in determining what steps need to be taken in relation to the community and how we have behaved over the last two years.

Last week there were about 200 Victorians who died of COVID. Today we are told 20 people have died. Every week hundreds of people are dying in Victoria—a lot more across the country. We are not out of the woods—nowhere near it—and it is very important to think about the impact of that. We all probably know someone now who has had COVID. The omicron variant is rife in the community. Do we all know someone who has died? I do. In my community quite a few people have died from it. They are elderly people and they are vulnerable people; they are people who if they had not had COVID would not have died at that time. Their lives are very valuable to them and to their families. As hard as it is for some of these decisions to be made and to be complied with, it is being done for a reason, because those people are a part of our community too—the disabled, the children with autoimmune diseases, the elderly who are dying in large numbers still. We are becoming almost desensitised to the fact that that is the case.

If there were 200 people a week being killed on our roads, we would be taking extraordinary additional steps to address that. We all jump in our cars and put on our seatbelts without thinking about it. We are being asked to do something so much greater here at this time because we are in a worldwide pandemic, a once-in-100-year pandemic, something that is very frightening.

You only need to look back 100 years ago to see how devastating that was to communities across the world. No-one really knows how many people died then. The figures in the parliamentary report on that Spanish influenza pandemic say maybe 50 million. A lot of people in Australia died from it—soldiers coming home from war, people impacted in ways that we forgot about. We did not really put to the front of our minds that we might have a pandemic that would have the impact that this one has had. Well, we have, and we have really struggled as a community to deal with it. Vaccinations absolutely took the forefront as soon as vaccines became available, and they have been successful in reducing the severity of the disease for most people.

Late last year we passed legislation in this Parliament to create much more transparency, to take away the decision-making from the chief health officer alone and make him only a part of the story. We have a Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee, recently established and beginning to start its work, looking at the orders to see that the orders comply with the legislation that was passed last year.

There is an Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee just about to be established. That will be a panel of experts who will additionally be there to advise the government and our community about what they see as the best way forward and advise, no doubt, on measures that governments are taking and how effective they might be. I think we are all waiting keenly to see the appointment of that committee to work with other committees in our community, to work with government and to increase the transparency that has not existed in the past and which is now becoming apparent. As more and more opportunities are being put before the Victorian community to hear from experts, they will come to understand better why decisions are being made and why orders are being put in place in the way they are. And I think it will also lead to much more discussion about what is needed as we go forward. Do we need to have some of the things we have still got? What is a timely way to retire some of the orders that may exist?

These are all steps that are yet to be taken and will be taken, but we have a motion before us today that requires a decision today, and in the absence of any compelling reasons to change from that I will continue to support the motion.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (12:38): I move:

That the question be now put.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The debate has been going for about 2 hours. We have heard from both sides of the house, including the Greens and independents, therefore I am comfortable and satisfied there has been opportunity for members to contribute to this debate.

House divided on Mr Cheeseman’s motion:

Motion agreed to.

House divided on motion:

Motion agreed to.