Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), famed for its Outback desert landscapes, has just put Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian regimes, and also the Biden administration, to shame by issuing the world’s strictest COVID vaccine mandate. Starting November 13, the territory’s workers who come in contact with other people must receive at least one dose of the experimental gene therapeutics, aka COVID vaccine, or face termination.
Announcing the measure on Wednesday, the Territory’s chief minister, Michael Gunner said, “You can’t hold people down and stick a needle in their arm. It is their choice and some are choosing against it.” To translate from the modern authoritarian-Australian into English, Gunner expressed his dissatisfaction with the government being unable yet to literally stab those who refused the shot, and therefore those people must be put into an impossible position when they need to choose between their bodily autonomy and employment.
Per the NT mandate, the following categories of workers will need to roll up their selves to keep their positions:
- Workers who come into direct contact with people who are at risk of severe illness from COVID, including Aboriginal people and people who cannot be vaccinated due to age or a medical condition;
- Workers who are at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 because they work in a high-risk setting where there is a known risk of COVID-19 transmission or outbreak; and
- Workers who perform work in essential infrastructure, food or essential good security or supply, or logistics in the Territory.
The unvaccinated workers who dare to show up at work after the imposed deadline would face a $5,000 (U.S. $3,700) fine. If they do not get their second shot by December 24, they, similarly, would be either fired or fined.
The employers are granted a right to inquire about their workers’ vaccination status, and will be required to keep records of their staff’s vaccinations. The order provides that the workforce will be mandated to receive booster shots of the COVID jab in 2022, “when it becomes available.”
Some categories of workers will face earlier timelines for getting jabbed, such as residential aged-care workers, quarantine workers, and freight transport workers.
The order claims that it goes “in line” with the National Plan to re-open the country.
Gunner provided a simple description of all of those many groups who will face the newly announced requirement: “If you are not sure if it applies to you, ask yourself these three questions: in my work, do I come into contact with vulnerable people? Is my workplace at a higher risk of infection? Do I work on infrastructure or logistics that are critical to the territory?” He added, “If your answer is maybe, or I don’t know, then you need to get the jab.”
The minister further stated that since the workers who come in contact with other people to perform their work duties cannot know for sure if those people are vulnerable, it would be safe to assume that they are. Therefore, hospitality workers, bankers, receptionists, hairdressers, barbers, beauty therapists, retail workers, and “many, many more” who directly interact with the public are now forced to get a jab or get booted.
The exemptions, “of course,” are allowed, but they will be “extremely narrow,” per Gunner. One would have to present substantial medical evidence that there is no way he or she can not be inoculated in order to forgo the shot, the minister said. Seemingly addressing those in the NT who still remember such concepts as “medical freedom,” “bodily autonomy,” or simply “civil liberty,” the minister categorically stated that “simply not wanting the shot is not a reason” to refuse the jab.
Per the NT government website, 76 percent of the territory’s 247,023 population has received at least one dose of the shot, and 62 percent are fully vaccinated. That means that some 59,000 residents have not been inoculated.
Considering the severity of the unprecedented mandate, one might assume that NT has been hit by the pandemic so badly that the officials only resort to such extreme measures out of desperation. But the territory, actually, has barely seen any COVID cases at all. The territory is currently dealing with a whopping seven(!) active cases of COVID. According to media reports, the territory has seen just 214 cases of COVD since the pandemic began, and zero deaths. Still, the officials insist that “that run will not last.” Gunner even implied during the mandate announcement that “If you don’t get vaccinated, there’s a much, much higher chance that you will die.”
The announcement of the sweeping mandate comes amid the growing frustration of the local government that the self-imposed goal of getting 80 percent of the population fully vaccinated by early November will be missed. That may be attributed most of all to vaccine hesitancy among the Australian Aboriginal people that compile a third of the state’s sparsely located population, the local media reports. Of those tribal people living far from the “civilized” part of the NT, 66 percent have been reluctant to take the COVID shot, as of Monday. The slow uptake of the jab has been blamed on the “vaccine misinformation” that is spread by the “American anti-vax lobby” and Christian faith groups, per the states’ top health official.
In the meantime, the country’s most populous state, New South Wales, declared last month that unvaccinated people’s social life would be “difficult indefinitely” since they would be banned from most of public venues. Also last month, Australia’s second-largest state, Victoria, has announced its goal to build a “vaccinated-only economy,” where there will be no place for people who did not take the COVID jab. The authoritarian approaches of the states are fully supported at the federal level.
