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senate vote 2023-03-09#6
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2023-03-17 14:08:48
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Title
Bills — Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022; in Committee- Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022 - in Committee - Prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine discrimination
Description
<p class="speaker">Malcolm Roberts</p><p>We have an amendment on sheet 1839 that's not on the run sheet?</p> <p class="speaker">Penny Allman-Payne</p><p>It hasn't been circulated.</p> <p class="speaker">Malcolm Roberts</p><p>by leave—I move One Nation amendments (1) and (2) on sheet number 1842 together:</p><p class="italic">(1) Schedule 1, item 25, page 9 (line 23), omit ", without reasonable excuse".</p><p class="italic">(2) Schedule 1, item 25, page 10 (lines 2 and 3), omit subsection 272A(2).</p> <p class="speaker">Anthony Chisholm</p><p>I'm just indicating that the government will be opposing this amendment.</p> <p class="speaker">Michaelia Cash</p><p>In relation to the coalition's position on the amendment, whilst I understand the intent of the amendment, what it will do is mean there are no exceptions to the banning of insurance or indemnity from work health and safety penalties. The coalition can't support the amendment. The reasons being the main object of the Model Work Health and Safety Act is to provide for a balanced and nationally consistent framework to secure the health and safety of workers and workplaces. The amendment would mean that the Commonwealth is actually departing from the concept of the model work health and safety laws. I note that the Victorian government, in their legislation that passed in 2021, and the New South Wales government, in their legislation that passed in 2020, both have used similar wording to what is presented in this bill. On the basis that what we want to see is that national consistency, it is important for employers and employees that we continue to provide the nationally consistent framework of work health and safety laws and regulations.</p> <p class="speaker">Malcolm Roberts</p><p>I moved this amendment because the bill contains a reversal of burden of proof. We cannot accept that. Without that, we're not going to support the bill.</p><p>Question negatived.</p> <p class="speaker">Ralph Babet</p><p>I move the amendment as circulated in my name on sheet 1848:</p><p class="italic">(1) Page 10 (after line 17), at the end of the Bill, add:</p><p class="italic">Schedule 2 — Prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine discrimination</p><p class="italic"> <i>Fair Work Act 2009</i></p><p class="italic">1 Section 12</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic"><i>COVID-19 vaccination status</i> means the status of a person relating to whether, and to what extent, the person has been vaccinated against the coronavirus known as COVID-19 (including any subsequent variants of that virus).</p><p class="italic">2 Subsection 153(1)</p><p class="italic">After "intersex status,", insert "COVID-19 vaccination status,".</p><p class="italic">3 Subsection 195(1)</p><p class="italic">After "intersex status,", insert "COVID-19 vaccination status,".</p><p class="italic">4 Subsection 351(1)</p><p class="italic">After "intersex status,", insert "COVID-19 vaccination status,".</p><p class="italic">5 Paragraph 351(2)(a)</p><p class="italic">Before "not unlawful", insert "for action taken other than because of a person's COVID-19 vaccination status—".</p><p class="italic">6 Paragraph 578(c)</p><p class="italic">After "intersex status,", insert "COVID-19 vaccination status,".</p><p class="italic">7 Paragraph 772(1)(f)</p><p class="italic">After "intersex status,", insert "COVID-19 vaccination status,".</p><p class="italic">8 Section 789 HB (at the end of the heading)</p><p class="italic">Add "—breastfeeding, gender identity or intersex status".</p><p class="italic">9 At the end of Part 6-4E</p><p class="italic">Add:</p><p class="italic">789HC Extension of anti-discrimination rules — COVID-19 vaccination status</p><p class="italic"> <i>State referral laws</i></p><p class="italic">(1) Subsection (3) applies for the purposes of the operation of the provisions identified in subsection (2) in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status.</p><p class="italic">(2) The provisions are as follows:</p><p class="italic">(a) section 153;</p><p class="italic">(b) section 172A;</p><p class="italic">(c) section 195.</p><p class="italic">(3) In applying sections 30H and 30S in relation to that operation of the provisions identified in subsection (2), assume that:</p><p class="italic">(a) the matter to which that operation of those provisions relates is not an excluded subject matter for the purposes of:</p><p class="italic">(i) the State's referral law mentioned in sections 30H and 30S; and</p><p class="italic">(ii) Divisions 2A and 2B of Part 1-3; and</p><p class="italic">(b) the referral of that matter by that referral law results in the Parliament of the Commonwealth having sufficient legislative power for those provisions (to the extent of that operation) to have effect.</p><p class="italic"> <i>P</i> <i>rotection against adverse action</i></p><p class="italic">(4) The provisions identified in subsection (6), as they operate in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status, apply to action taken in a State.</p><p class="italic">Note: Action taken in a State includes action taken by a State public sector employer in a State.</p><p class="italic">(5) For the purposes of the provisions identified in subsection (6), as they operate in relation to COVID-19 vaccination status:</p><p class="italic">(a) a reference to an employee with its ordinary meaning includes a reference to a law enforcement officer of a State or the Northern Territory; and</p><p class="italic">(b) a reference to an employer with its ordinary meaning includes a reference to the Commissioner (however described) of the police service or police force of a State or the Northern Territory; and</p><p class="italic">(c) the Commissioner (however described) of the police service or police force of a State or the Northern Territory is taken to be an employer of law enforcement officers of the State or the Northern Territory, as the case requires.</p><p class="italic">(6) The provisions are as follows:</p><p class="italic">(a) section 351;</p><p class="italic">(b) any other provision of Part 3-1, to the extent the provision relates to section 351.</p><p class="italic">(7) Subsections (4) to (6) apply despite sections 30G, 30R and 337, and do not limit the operation of sections 338 and 339 (which deal with the application of Part 3-1).</p><p class="italic">10 In the appropriate position in Schedule 1</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">Part 14 — Amendments made by the Work Health and Safety Amendment Act 2022</p><p class="italic">86 Application of amendments</p><p class="italic">(1) Subject to subclauses (2) and (3), the amendments made by Schedule 2 to the <i>Work Health and Safety Amendment Act 2022 </i>apply on and after the commencement of that Schedule.</p><p class="italic">(2) The amendments of section 195 made by that Schedule apply in relation to enterprise agreements made on and after the commencement of that Schedule.</p><p class="italic">(3) The amendments of section 351 made by that Schedule apply in relation to adverse action taken on and after the commencement of that Schedule.</p><p>I have been in this place, obviously not as long as many of you here have, and I campaigned very strongly on the issue of vaccine mandates. People out there are hurting. People are injured. Despite the fact that the bureaucracy and the government and even some in the opposition would like to cover it up, it can't be covered up for long. A day of reckoning is coming, and you have a chance to be on the right side of history. Start speaking up. Start standing up for the people out there that have been hurt by big pharma. These guys are corrupt. These guys are dodgy. These guys lie to all of us in this place. Admit that you were misled and that you were wrong, and do the right thing.</p> <p class="speaker">Anthony Chisholm</p><p>The government will be opposing this amendment. We believe the Fair Work Act's existing framework provides sufficient protection from COVID-19 vaccine discrimination and strikes an appropriate balance between protecting the rights of workers who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 and protecting public health and protecting the rights of workers vulnerable to being infected with COVID-19 as well.</p> <p class="speaker">Gerard Rennick</p><p>I would like to talk to this amendment, and I start by noting that just this week former prime minister and the member for Cook, Scott Morrison, said that when he was prime minister the advice was that mandates weren't advised in any setting other than health settings. The question is: why do we have mandates and why are employers imposing mandates that weren't actually the advice of the government medical authorities themselves? That in itself shows that these mandates are completely unnecessary. We have also got evidence from the FDA. They themselves admitted in November 2020 that there is no evidence the actual vaccines stopped transmission. We've subsequently found out that they not only didn't stop transmission but haven't stopped infection. What is the purpose of discriminating against people in the workplace if it doesn't actually stop people from getting sick?</p><p>If you look at the initial outbreak of COVID and COVID generally, the people who were most at risk were older people who weren't working. In the working-age population, where people are healthy, there is a very low risk of actually getting seriously ill from COVID. Why have we gone out and imposed all these draconian mandates, the lockdowns, the border closures and everything like that happened earlier on? Why are we still here in March 2023, two years after the start of the vaccine rollout, imposing these mandates? They are completely pointless. Not only are they completely pointless; they are cruel and unnecessarily because for the last 18 months, from late October onwards, I have daily received messages from people who have been injured by the vaccine.</p><p>A lot of these injuries are in people who were healthy and young and would not necessarily have become seriously ill from COVID. There are also people who had pre-existing conditions—and I'm referring to Natalie Boyce who had an antiphospholipid condition and was at risk from taking the vaccine because the vaccine uses phospholipids both in its lipid nanoparticle that encapsulates the spike protein, or the mRNA that coats the spike protein, and yet again, when it crosses the cell membrane, the cell membrane is also made up of phospholipid. We know that when these trials were carried out, they weren't performed on people who had immune conditions, so it is a great risk. We're putting healthy working people at great risk by imposing mandates on them.</p><p>I might add that a lot of these mandates are out of date because a lot of workplaces are saying you can actually still work for them if you've had two shots. There are people who would have got two shots back in August to November 2021, and even if you look at the initial trial data it was only good for about 35 days, so their immunity from the vaccine is no longer relevant anyway. A lot of these mandates are just in place for the sake of imposing power, command and control, rather than actually doing anything substantial.</p><p>I note that Senator Chisholm said we have proper protections in place around the COVID vaccine. I want to touch on this nonclinical evaluation report yet again, for the umpteenth time, because it seems to me that people in this chamber don't actually want to read it. If you actually read it, you would see how pointless these vaccine mandates are. The one that I think is really important to start off with is that in their trials it was shown that there is an almost similar microscopic lung inflammation observed in both challenge control and immunised animals after peak of infections at day 7, day 8. In other words, they knew from the get-go that there is no difference between those animals that were vaccinated and those animals that weren't.</p><p>Let's have a look at the risk we're taking here. We know what the risk from COVID is because we have about three years of data now and we know there is a very low risk of people under 60 in the healthy working-age population actually getting seriously ill from COVID. Here's the risk we are taking, if we go on the initial trial data: there was no distribution or degradation data on the antigen-encoding mRNA. In other words, we have gone and used an entirely new form of vaccine and we've coded the mRNA inside the lipid nanoparticle codes for a spike protein. But they never tested how quickly it degrades in the body or how far it travels throughout the body. And that's very, very important, for a couple of reasons, because the normal vaccine will stay in the shoulder, because it's a much, much larger protein.</p><p>I mean, I know the word gets thrown around a lot—the lipid nanoparticle—but it actually does mean something. It's one billionth—one to the power of negative nine. That is a very small molecule. What that means is that it can cross the endothelium, get into your bloodstream and then travel throughout your body. We know that because this paper shows, on page 44, increases throughout nearly all the body organs. I'll just concentrate on one of them. In women's ovaries, the concentration doubled from day one to day two, and then they stopped the trial. Women are born with only one set of eggs, oocytes, and they get inherited. They're passed on by generation.</p><p>So, to recklessly impose this on our children is incredibly risky. Yet again, weigh it up against the risks of COVID to children, whom we know have very few ace receptors on their cell, versus the risk of what this can do. And this is the other thing about this product: this product uses transfection. Unlike most natural organisms or molecules in the body, they can cross the cell membrane only with either the use of an enzyme or the use of an ion channel.</p> <p class="speaker">Honourable Senator</p><p>An honourable senator interjecting—</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
- The majority voted against [amendments](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2023-03-09.70.1) introduced by Victorian Senator [Ralph Babet](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/victoria/ralph_babet) (Liberal), which means they failed.
- ### Rebellion
- NSW Senator [Hollie Hughes](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/nsw/hollie_hughes) (Liberal) crossed the floor to vote 'No' against the rest of her party, who voted 'Yes'.
- ### What did these amendments do?
- Mr Babet [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2023-03-09.70.1):
- > *I have been in this place, obviously not as long as many of you here have, and I campaigned very strongly on the issue of vaccine mandates. People out there are hurting. People are injured. Despite the fact that the bureaucracy and the government and even some in the opposition would like to cover it up, it can't be covered up for long. A day of reckoning is coming, and you have a chance to be on the right side of history. Start speaking up. Start standing up for the people out there that have been hurt by big pharma. These guys are corrupt. These guys are dodgy. These guys lie to all of us in this place. Admit that you were misled and that you were wrong, and do the right thing.*
- ### Amendment text
- See [OpenAustralia.org.au](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2023-03-09.70.1) for the amendment text.
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