No Jab No Pay: How Australia Manages Vaccinations
As videos circulate suggesting people can’t work in Australia without having the vaccine, we explore the truth behind the No Jab No Pay scheme.
As some opened Twitter recently, they may have seen #NoJabNoPay. It’s a video suggesting Australia would implement a scheme to refuse employees work if they had no COVID vaccination. Journalist Jeremy Vine was one such person to share this video. A simple search later and I had clarity. One devoid of screaming and outrage. Because Australia has lived with this scheme for years. And what you see in a forty-one second video is not always as it seems.
#NoJabNoPay has existed in Australia since 2016. In its basic form, participating states can restrict certain welfare payments for parents, when their children haven’t been vaccinated. Be it through anti-vaccination beliefs or sheer forgetfulness. Exemptions apply for medical and religious reasons, spawning religious institutions solely designed to circumvent the system. One such being ‘The Church of Conscious Living’, crested by the Australian Vaccination Network, later changed to the Australian Vaccination-risks Network after a legal challenge.
The scheme arose after falling child vaccination numbers. Some areas having as much as 15% of children unvaccinated, resulting in children dying from preventable diseases. Parents who had lost children to preventable diseases spearheaded the campaign and in 2016, the legislation came to pass. A catch up scheme exists to capture those who simply forgot, allowing them to vaccinate up to the age of 20. It has one aim – to prevent future generations dying of preventable disease.
The video being shared suggests the No Jab No Pay scheme could be extended to include areas such as accessing restaurants or travel. However, in common social media fashion, the under one minute clip was misconstrued to infer the scheme could be extended to employers. A point that was never explicitly said, nor even suggested.
Whilst you may think this is new information, the idea of using No Jab No Pay legislation to increase vaccination figures in the country is not new. It was discussed by Health Minister Greg Hunt in August 2020. After Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that COVID vaccines would not be mandatory, Mr Hunt was forced to concede that the scheme could be amended to cover other welfare benefits, including adults. All this as the country aims for a minimum vaccination rate of 95% of the Australian population. The question now: whether it is appropriate to remove welfare support for those exercising a freedom of choice.
An interesting suggestion is vaccination predicating the ability to travel or visit a restaurant. But, short of new legislation, it would be unlikely to come to fruition without a swell in public favour. It would also need support from those businesses it would impact. No Jab No Pay already restricts access to childcare settings for unvaccinated children, so extending to adult social settings seems a viable option if vaccination rates slump. One thing is clear though, Australian politicians are exploring every option available under current means to return to normality, using the vaccine as a method of doing so.
The concern of governments everywhere being a large number of the population refusing jabs. Short of mandating vaccination, governments seemingly have few options to increase take-up outside of asking people. A tactic that comes with concern of failure. Especially in a world in which misinformation, such as this twitter video, propagates through social media.
