[FairmontGS]

Originally Posted by Bossxr8

Will be interesting to see the legal challenges. Does the UN charter not mention something along the lines of not forcing medical treatments on people? It's making people get it via a different direction.

What happens to the people who for various medical conditions cannot get it? Are they going to be blacklisted too?

The article did consider those questions.

Hang on, is that legal?

Probably, yes.

The pandemic has provided a striking demonstration of just how powerful some legislation is in overruling rights plenty of people have taken for granted.

In a public health crisis, governments can force people to stay onshore, to stay home and to avoid their friends and family under threat of heavy penalties.

And while mandatory vaccination has been explicitly ruled out many times, legal experts say governments can certainly make life difficult for the unvaccinated if they want to.

Associate professor Ron Levy from the Australian National University, who specialises in constitutional law, said any legal challenge to restricting the unvaccinated would face an uphill battle in the courts.

"There isn't too much that can be done, constitutionally speaking," he said.

He said the High Court would likely be averse to preventing governments acting on public health matters.

"It's practical, it's pragmatic, it's about balancing, and this is true not just during COVID but for decades now," he said.

"The court doesn't necessarily want to tie the hands of governments in addressing social problems of various kinds.

"And so in Australia in particular — this is quite different from other countries — our High Court has tended to give governments a free rein."

President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Pauline Wright, said it was pretty clear cut: Australia's powerful health and biosecurity laws gave governments the right to do this sort of thing.

"At both state level and federal level, it is legal for the government to impose restrictions on people in times of health emergency," she said.

"So if a declaration is made, that there is a health emergency, then health orders are able to be declared.

"And we as citizens have to comply with that."

What if you can't get jabbed?

The policy aims to make life difficult for those resisting getting vaccinated in an effort to get inoculation rates up as high as possible, as quickly as possible.

But there are, of course, some who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons.

Work is underway to figure out how to ensure those who genuinely cannot get the vaccine are not subjected to undue restrictions through no choice of their own.

Exemptions could possibly look like those already in place under the "no jab, no pay" childcare policy, which sees childcare subsidies withheld from parents who do not vaccinate their young children.

Under that policy, medical exemptions are granted to those who have had anaphylactic reactions to vaccines, are significantly immunocompromised, or have natural immunity.

Ms Wright wants broader exemptions than that.

"If people do have genuine, religious or cultural reasons for not being vaccinated, then they shouldn't be restricted as a result of that," she said.

"As long as they can show that they've been tested and they are free of COVID-19.

"Because that's the other answer to it … either you've been vaccinated, or you can prove that you've been tested and you're COVID negative."