Vax mandate needs to stay: Qld police boss

Cheryl Goodenough | June 3, 2022

Queensland’s police commissioner says the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine requirement in place for her 18,000 staff members should remain.

Being grilled for a second time during a legal challenge over vaccine mandates, Commissioner Katarina Carroll was asked on Friday whether it had occurred to her to review the direction.

More than 70 police and health workers are challenging the mandates in the Brisbane Supreme Court trial that started on Monday.

Barrister Dan O’Gorman, acting for some police officers, confirmed measures taken during the pandemic that had changed since December included the removal of QR code check-ins and many mask wearing requirements.

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps you should have a really serious look at this direction?” he asked Ms Carroll.

“We have looked at the direction and reviewed it and I still have the view that the direction needs to stand,” she replied.

“Just of this week I think 1060 people have died from COVID just in the last seven months.”

Ms Carroll said the advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) was vaccines were the best way to reduce severe illness.

Ms Carroll earlier told the court she had an “extraordinary abundance of information constantly” provided electronically, in hard copy and during briefings.

She could not recall whether she had read advice from Crown Law about the compatibility of mandates with the Human Rights Act, but said she would have been briefed about it by Deputy Commissioner Doug Smith.

She denied under questioning by barrister Dominic Villa, representing one group of police employees, that it would have been a dereliction of her duty if she had not read the Crown Law advice.

Ms Carroll agreed under questioning that some officers were concerned about longer working hours, but said others were “enjoying an extraordinary amount of overtime” because of pandemic-related duties.

Some officers were discontented about the non-traditional policing nature of tasks but that sentiment changed over the 18 months to two years that they had to perform those activities.

“We took a lot of time and effort to point out that it was actually very similar some hundred years ago, and at the end of the day whichever way you look at it … our role is actually about community safety,” Ms Carroll told the court.

Asked why she did not provide the court with the material on which the mandatory vaccination decision was based, Ms Carroll said material was prepared for her and she constantly had an extensive amount of information before her.

“It was an oversight,” Ms Carroll answered when Justice Glenn Martin said it would help him if she kept her answers brief.

The court action was brought by paramedics, who were required to have two vaccinations in December, and police officers who were directed to have both jabs in January.

The groups are challenging their employers’ direction requiring them to be double vaccinated to continue working, while other actions before the court but yet to go to trial challenge the chief health officer.

Mr Villa earlier told the court the requirement to be vaccinated under the threat of disciplinary action or termination of employment limited human rights.

“The ultimate question comes whether or not those limits on human rights were and continue to be reasonable and demonstratively justifiable,” he said.

Barrister Christopher Ward, for ambulance workers, said those singled out by the direction cannot engage in their profession, but do what everyone does every day, coming into contact with others who may have the virus or being in shared places.

The parties are due to make final submissions on Thursday and Friday.