As we come back to work in 2023, many Australian companies are still mandating that their staff be ‘fully vaccinated’ against Covid. But there has been some movement, and it’s all in one direction.

There is new information on the airline industry provided through the Mandate Update project being run by Clarity on Health.

Recently, probably on December 16, Qantas became the first Australian airline to move towards removing their injection mandate. In an email, a spokesperson for the Qantas group (which includes Jetstar) said: ‘We have made the decision to remove the requirement to be fully vaccinated.’

However, things might not be as black and white as this email from Qantas suggests, according to former Virgin Australia pilot Glen Waters, now of the Aussie Freedom Flyers support and lobbying group.

Waters has seen an internal Qantas document sent to staff announcing the removal of the Covid vaccination policy ‘for Australian-based employees’.

This document goes on to state: ‘Some of our operational work groups (mainly cabin and tech crew, as well as those who travel internationally as part of their roles) will still be required to be fully vaccinated against Covid to meet specific vaccination requirements to enter some countries.’

When they were asked, Qantas did not respond as to whether some pilots and cabin crew would thus still, in effect, be mandated.

Virgin Airways confirmed it was still mandating on December 1, but ‘politely declined’ to say why it considered this necessary, and was not prepared to say whether it was still requiring vaccinations on December 23.

Rex and Alliance Airlines have not responded to repeated attempts to clarify their Covid vaccination policies but, according to Waters, both were still mandating the injections as we went into the Christmas period.

Waters says that for staff on domestic flights and on the ground: ‘There is no need to mandate airline staff, because you can come and go freely in Australia now.’

And although a few countries, including some Pacific islands, still insist that air crews be vaccinated, other international airlines have managed without forcing vaccinations on their employees.

For example, Air France, British Airways, and Finnair did not mandate the injections for their pilots and cabin crew. Instead, they were prepared to put in the administrative effort to enable staff, who chose not to have the shots, to be rostered on routes to countries with no injection requirements, says Waters.

‘Basically, these international airlines move their crew around what they are capable of doing,’ he says.

Air New Zealand also never mandated the vaccines, he adds. Instead, they offered staff unwilling to participate in the injection program up to ten years of leave without pay.

There has also been movement in the food retail sector since the last report in The Spectator Australia of results from the Mandate Update project. Two supermarkets – Woolworths and Aldi – have removed the requirement for their staff to be injected.

Only Coles was still mandating when they were last contacted (on December 23).

Underpinning the situation, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, have been the mandates required by the states and territories, and these too are on the retreat. WA removed all mandates, including for health workers, on November 4. NSW did the same on December 1.

Only Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia entered Christmas 2022 with mandates in place, and these are only for workers in the healthcare or aged care sectors, with the precise requirements varying by state.

Meanwhile, information from some employers has been elusive. BHP, McDonald Jones Homes, Officeworks, and Mosaic Brands (which runs chains of fashion retail stores including Noni-B, Rivers, Rockmans, and Millers) have all failed to respond to repeated requests from the project for clarification on whether they have mandates in place.

And the two councils which have been contacted – Brimbank City Council in Victoria and the City of Subiaco in WA – have also failed to respond.

With the Department of Health and Aged Care now admitting that none of the Covid vaccines were assessed for their ability to stop transmission in the clinical trials, surely these employers have a duty to tell the Australian public whether they are mandating, and, if they are, why?

Results for 41 large employers contacted by the project so far can be seen on www.clarityonhealth.org

Clare Pain is the editor of Clarity on Health.