Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:24): (2682) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Premier. There has been a flurry of policy announcements and changes from the Premier as he tries to set what he calls a new direction. Many of these things I have supported, such as calling a royal commission and dropping the terrible work from home scam. While the COVID era is happily in the rear-view mirror for many people, and they would rather just remember it as a terrible thing that we all went through, that is not the case for everybody. People lost businesses, lost jobs, experienced adverse reactions from the vaccine, and many people had relationships break down. Whilst the government cannot rectify all of these things, there are some concrete actions that the Premier could take to start making amends and create some small sense of justice. People who were coerced into taking the vaccine deserve an apology. The level of coercion was completely outrageous, as was the dishonesty about the ability of the vaccines to prevent transmission.

In late 2024 the New South Wales government withdrew all remaining COVID fines. While this was apparently because of legal advice that they may be invalid due to insufficient information, it should have been done anyway simply because it was the right thing to do. Many fines were for ridiculous breaches of silly rules, and there are still fines in Victoria that are working their way through the courts. This is a needless drain of court resources, and the fines should be withdrawn. The New South Wales police force has recently announced that police officers who were sacked over vaccine mandates would be offered the opportunity to return to work. There were many teachers, health workers, police and others in Victoria who were sacked for refusing to take the vaccine. Not only were they sacked but they were sacked over misconduct. How can it be misconduct to make an informed decision about your own health care? It was a disgrace then and it remains a disgrace now.

Whilst it might be impossible to rectify all of the injustices of the COVID era, that does not mean that we should not try. My request to the Premier is this: to issue an apology to Victorians over the vaccine mandates that resulted in workers being sacked, work with the Attorney-General to withdraw all remaining COVID fines, work with relevant ministers to rectify the employment records of public service workers who received a misconduct finding for refusing to take the vaccine and to explore options to allow them to return to work.