Ms Amy Thomasson1
1University Of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
Biography:
Amy is an Associate Lecturer and PhD candidate at the UWA Law School. Amy’s PhD thesis considers the legal response to vaccine mandates in Australia and comparative jurisdictions as part of the MRFF funded MandEval: Effectiveness and Consequences of Australia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates project. Amy relishes the opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary research projects and collaborate with others.
Abstract:
Much was written early in the pandemic about the legal structures that might impact the government and an employer’s decision to introduce vaccine requirements – which became known as ‘mandates’ – in Australia and what form they could or should take. Post-pandemic, it has become clear that many of the legal avenues through which vaccine refusers sought relief were not fit for purpose in the way they may have expected or hoped. In fact, at the time of writing only one group of claimants has successfully challenged public health orders requiring vaccination for police and ambulance service workers at a superior court level. An employee of the Victorian Police force was also successful in challenging what the Chief Commissioner of Police thought was a mandate, although the Victorian Supreme Court concluded that the relevant policy did not in fact direct an employee to be vaccinated. Public health orders requiring vaccination were common across different states and territories for those working in health and aged care and community-facing public services like the police force. Some individuals have had more success at the commission level, particularly in the context of personal injury arising from the way in which their employer implemented and communicated about vaccine mandates.
This presentation maps the legal response to vaccine mandate challenges in Australia, focusing on superior courts, and considers whether such challenges were addressed consistently by courts and the level of judicial deference exhibited in the legal reasoning.