Just when you thought we were finally through with vaccine-based discrimination, Queensland has managed to pull another absurd stunt.
In what appears to be a nasty last-ditch effort to punish workers who resisted the state’s coercive vaccine measures, the Palaszczuk government’s Department of Education has implemented a policy that will see unvaccinated teachers financially penalised.
Despite (finally!) allowing unvaccinated teachers to return to work, we must not forget that the state put these teachers through mental, social, and financial hell for over a year including forcing them to take leave or even quit their jobs. The Queensland Department of Education has decided that – having survived all this entirely unnecessary cruelty – these teachers will have their pay docked as a ‘disciplinary’ measure.
Body autonomy is something to be ‘disciplined’ now?
As if they haven’t gone through enough! The amount each employee will be docked will vary depending on their pay grade, and this will occur for 18 weeks in total. That’s about four and a half months.
In a notice from the Department (who truly have some nerve), unvaccinated teachers were told:
It is important that you are aware of the seriousness with which the department views your inappropriate behaviour and failure to comply with the direction.
I’ll tell you whose behaviour has been incredibly inappropriate…
I have been clear about my gripes with the NSW Department of Education during the Covid era. But let me tell you, I am absolutely livid with the QLD Department of Education. The ideological virus plaguing the NSW Department of Education has spread to Queensland and there seems to be no cure in sight.
Queensland’s policy is discriminatory in addition to being nasty. It is separating teachers by a medical status they should neither be required nor compelled to disclose if we still believe in our once-cherished privacy laws. The income of vaccinated teachers will remain the same simply because they were good little government serfs. Unvaccinated teachers, despite posing no more risk to anyone than their double, triple, or even quadruple vaccinated counterparts, will lose thousands of dollars of income during a cost of living crisis.
Queensland Labor is reminiscent of a tyrannical regime in which the State punishes dissidents. This behaviour has no place in a democratic nation.
Those who attempt to speak out against these (and other) arbitrary punishments often find themselves victims of Facebook and Twitter censorship as social media battens down the hatches on the storm of post-pandemic ‘truth telling’.
Personal stories are labelled as ‘misleading’ while quoting official health advice can leave users with a suspension. I have learned this on the sharp end of a 7-day Twitter ban. My crime? I quoted a scientific study that found 1 in 6 teenagers developed myocarditis or another heart condition after the second dose.
It is maddeningly foolish that in a time when Australia is facing a shortage of teachers, experienced (and clearly resilient) workers who love their jobs have come back only to be treated with scorn. They are spoken to by authority figures as though they are subhuman and punished for doing nothing wrong. The Department of Education should be thanking these teachers for having the grace to return to work after all they have been put through. But no, the Queensland state thinks they are ‘teaching them a lesson’.
Everything politicians and bureaucrats are doing, every injustice, every potentially unlawful policy, every injury caused, every life torn apart, every attack on human rights and freedoms – all of it will stack up against them and they will be judged by the sharp eye of history.
You may punish the powerless today, but eventually the shoe might be on the other foot.
Joel Agius is an independent writer. If you would like to read more of his work, you can do so at JJ’s Outlook or keep up to date with his musings on Twitter.
