The wheels of justice often grind slowly.
That was the case for frontline workers in Queensland who resisted the COVID jab and were consequently subjected to autocratic decrees by public service officialdom with a considerable number losing their livelihoods.
For these workers, the judgment two years later by His Honour Justice Glenn Martin in Queensland’s Supreme Court must have been a huge relief. In a well-reasoned judgment, Justice Martin found that the public service had breached its human rights obligations as set out in the state’s own Human Rights Act.
Queensland’s legislation is not replicated in other states, so its application to others who were victimised by bureaucratic bullies elsewhere can take little, if any, comfort from the ruling, other than a huge sense of vindication that their treatment was unreasonable and unfair.
The Labor premier’s arrogant reaction to the ruling that he was proud of the state’s handling of the pandemic highlights the disconnect between some of our political elite and the rights of individual citizens.
Instead of a circumspect response, which might have indicated that the circumstance—where public service authorities had been found to break state legislation and denied fellow Queenslanders their human rights as entitled by legislated law—was a matter of concern, he simply doubled down on the appropriateness of the response by authorities.
This is the breathtaking disregard some in the political elite have for the laws of the land and the rule of law.
A response that breaches human rights laws must surely at least be cause for a little concern. Not so our gallant Queensland premier.
The provision in the Queensland legislation on which Justice Martin adjudicated is similar to legislation in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
One could reasonably expect a trial case being run in the ACT to establish the same principle as has been in Queensland.
No Reason to Double Down
Good men and women lost their livelihoods, and as a result their marriages, homes, and security.The dismissal of hundreds, if not thousands, of Australian workers, for simply being concerned about the efficacy of the various vaccines on offer—which had not been through the normal rigorous testing regimes—was, and remains, a national scandal.
Many were jabbed against their will for fear of losing their employment. The consequences for some were clearly death.
There is even a compensation scheme for people to claim from because it is now recognised that some people reacted very adversely to the COVID jab.
Given this undisputed fact, those who held out against the jab had reasonable grounds for doing so.
The internal inconsistency of the line of officialdom was that you needed to get vaccinated to protect others. So as soon as everyone who wanted to be vaccinated had been vaccinated, the unvaccinated could not cause any threat unless it was recognised the vaccination was not effective.
After all, those who wanted vaccination had availed themselves of the opportunity, so there was no need to insist that the remaining few be vaccinated or sacked.
This test case shows how the manic pursuit of government dogma can very quickly become an oppressive rod over the back of people who do not comply.
In a democratic and freedom-loving country like Australia, the rights of individuals were thrown away in favour of “compliance” with government edicts.
It is to be hoped that the COVID pandemic and the response to it by various governments in Australia will be consigned to the “mistakes” category in any publication dealing with the handling of pandemics.
The Queensland government has been jabbed by the Supreme Court.
The government’s response suggest it has been inoculated against the application of the rule of law or sound reasoning based on Queensland’s own legislation.
