• The current state of Australia’s vaccine rollout means the government and private sector should re-examine how mandatory vaccination factors into the country’s pandemic response, an expert argues.
• Stephen Duckett, director of the health and aged care program at Grattan Institute, told Business Insider Australia there was a case for mandating employees be vaccinated in certain sectors to reduce risk.
• “I think there are circumstances when it is absolutely legitimate to mandate vaccination for particular employer groups,” he said.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

As the Delta strain forces Australia’s two most-populated states into lockdown, an academic suggests the country needs to consider where and how mandatory vaccinations should factor into the next phase of the pandemic response.

Stephen Duckett, director of the health and aged care program at Grattan Institute, has weighed into the federal government’s approach to mandatory vaccination, including workers who interact with vulnerable people.

With the number of fully vaccinated Australians still sitting at 10%, and with multiple instances where people working in aged care facilities, at airports and hotel quarantine centres have spread the virus, Duckett suggested there should be a reconsideration of which segments of the population should be compelled to be fully vaccinated.

However, he also conceded that many of the current issues are the result of the government’s inconsistent vaccine rollout, which has failed to provide access to vaccines to groups like aged care workers.

Duckett told Business Insider Australia it was unfair to blame individual workers at this stage of the rollout.

“It’s not fair to blame it on the individual workers, many of whom want to be vaccinated,” he said.

“It’s not legitimate and ethical to say, ‘you’re going to be vaccinated’ and then not make it possible for them.”

In late June, Lieutenant-General John Frewen, who was appointed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison to oversee the logistics of Australia’s vaccine rollout , suggested the Australian business community should be empowered to enable vaccinations for employees.

Australia’s banking and resource sectors are “keen” to immunise their own staff but are “currently not empowered to do that,” Frewen said, adding that Australia’s finance and mining titans want to “get out of the way of the public health system” so it can reach the broader community.

In a statement at the time, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian also supported the move for the Australian business community to become involved in an expanded rollout.

It is vital to consider new options, “whether it’s our pharmacy network and also potentially corporates and large businesses that may be able to do vaccines onsite,” Berejiklian said.

The move toward involving the private sector comes as businesses in developed countries that have reached a high level of adult vaccination move to restrict the movement of non-vaccinated people in corporate offices, along with cafes and restaurants.

In the US, investment bank Morgan Stanley told its employees they would not be allowed to return to the company’s New York office unless they were vaccinated.

With lockdown restrictions extended for Greater Sydney, and a snap lockdown for Melbourne announced on Thursday, Duckett said as the country’s rollout expands and the rates of fully vaccinated extend above the single digits, it was legitimate to reconsider the situations where it would be fair for businesses to mandate vaccinations.

In August 2020 when announcing the government had negotiated a deal to procure supplies of vaccines, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would ‘expect it to be as mandatory as you can possibly make [it]’, Duckett said.

In 2021, the national cabinet took the first step toward compelling vaccination in mandating vaccinations for residential aged care workers.

Despite Health Minister Greg Hunt promising that aged care residents and their carers would be vaccinated by March, only about one third of aged care workers currently are.

Duckett said he thinks there are multiple reasons to expand mandatory vaccination to other groups.

“That might be legitimate for a number of reasons,” he said.

However he also suggested compulsion should be used as a last resort and “not to cover up policy failures”, and should be limited to where protection is needed most.

While population vaccination rates are low, governments should mandate vaccination for frontline quarantine workers, including those responsible for driving arriving passengers and crew to quarantine facilities, Duckett said.

He gave the example of an aged care company, TLC Healthcare, which recently introduced mandatory vaccination for all staff, as an example of what the outcomes might look like.

Following a mandate for the full vaccination of all of its workers by the end of April, of the 1,800 staff just eight opted to cease their employment.

Duckett said that as more of the population is vaccinated and the country moves toward living with the virus, it could be reasonable to establish mandates.

“In what circumstances is it reasonable for a business to require its staff to be vaccinated?,” he said.

“[In scenarios] with a risk to customers or a risk to other employees, that the other employees or the customers can’t afford.”

While he doesn’t think mandates are appropriate now, Duckett said they’re something that should be considered.

“I don’t think mandating vaccination should be where we start,” he said. “We should be making it easy for people to be vaccinated, and then look at one of the principles for when we should be introducing mandatory vaccinations.”

“I think there are circumstances when it is absolutely legitimate to mandate vaccination for particular employer groups,” Duckett said.

“To say otherwise… is really [to] disregard for those vulnerable people, which I just don’t think Australians accept.”

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