The prime minister has ruled out indemnifying employers or using federal public health orders to compel workers to get vaccinated, saying it would amount to a mandatory vaccination program “by stealth”.
Announcing the federal drugs regulator has approved the Moderna vaccine, which will begin to be distributed next month, Morrison also implored “angry” and “frustrated” Australians to stay the course through the current lockdowns.
The government has secured 25m doses of the Moderna mRNA vaccine, comprised of 10m this year and 15m booster shots next year.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration’s John Skerritt said the government had signed off on the use of the vaccine in adults as a first step, and would then consider the company’s application for use in children as young as 12.
The latest vaccine campaign plan suggests a total of 10m doses will be on offer next month, rising to 15min October and 19m in November.
While talking up the vaccine rollout, Morrison said the suppression phase needed to be successful before restrictions could be eased.
The call comes as the NSW government indicates it will lift some restrictions once the state reaches a target of 6m doses by the end of August, when about 50% of people will be vaccinated.
On Monday, NSW recorded 283 new local cases, while the state’s lockdown was extended to Byron Bay and Tamworth amid concern that travellers had spread the virus from Sydney.
“I know Australians are frustrated. I know they’re sick of it. I know they’re angry. I know they want it to stop and for life to get back to where they knew it,” Morrison said.
“But what we have to do now is recognise the reality of the challenge we have in front of us. None of us likes it. None of us likes to have restrictions. None of us likes to have the situation we’re having now,” he said.
Morrison said that in order for the country to move into the next phase of the current national plan when 70% of people are vaccinated, the current lockdowns had to work. He said people had misunderstood the NSW government’s plans beyond a 50% vaccination rate, saying it would only see the state change their “suppression phase measures”.
NSW, like all states, has backed reaching a 70% vaccination target to move to phase B of the national plan. In this phase, called the “vaccination transition phase”, authorities would aim to minimise serious illness, hospitalisation and fatality as a result of Covid-19 “with low-level restrictions”.
“I want us to go into that phase as strong as we possibly can so we have to bear down at this time. We have to push through,” Morrison said.
“We have achieved what few countries have (and) we can’t throw it away now because of any impatience.”
The appeal comes after a Newspoll published on Monday showed the government trailing Labor 53-47 on a two party preferred basis, with Morrison’s approval rating in negative territory and voters unhappy with his management of the pandemic for the first time.
While the country’s vaccination rate is gathering pace, the prime minister on Monday brushed aside calls from employer groups for the government to help industry impose vaccine mandates, with concern that they will be left in legal limbo without the backing of public health orders.
The government has supported mandatory vaccines for the aged care workforce and quarantine workers, but Morrison said these would be the “only areas” of government intervention and it would not support vaccine mandates for other industries.
He also ruled out the commonwealth offering an indemnity to employers who vaccinated their workforce, saying this would amount to the federal government endorsing mandatory vaccinations.
“The vaccination service is free and it is not mandatory. That’s an important principle. We are not going to seek to impose a mandatory vaccination program by the government by stealth,” Morrison said.
The Australian Industry Group’s Innes Willox said he wanted the federal government to give the same indemnity to employers who vaccinated “their willing workers at the workplace” as applied for healthcare workers.
“Indemnity has nothing to do with mandating vaccinations which is an entirely separate issue. It is about reducing the risk for employers who may still face an expensive workplace claim,” Willox said on Monday.
“Employers are very keen to help speed up the vaccination effort in the workplace and an extension of indemnity to them would make this more attractive for many more employers.”
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive, Andrew McKellar, told Guardian Australia the “best pathway towards mandating vaccines in workplaces is through clear public health orders”.
“In the absence of a public health order mandating the Covid-19 vaccine, most employers are currently left in limbo and at the whim of the courts when deciding whether they can legally require employees to be vaccinated,” he said.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said that unions would support public health orders, but also stressed that workers should have access to paid leave to get vaccinated and deal with any potential side effects – regardless of whether it is mandatory for them to get the vaccine or not.
“Our position has always been that if public health officials decide that the COVID-19 vaccine, or any other vaccine, should be mandatory in a particular workforce then we will support that and work to ensure that all workers can get vaccinated without losing pay,” McManus said.
Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler said Morrison needed to sit down with business and unions to “work through” the issues.
“There are complex issues to work through in the workplace. These issues are simply not going to disappear.
“Scott Morrison should be sitting down now with business and with unions to work through these workplace vaccination issues, instead of yet again pretending that it’s all someone else’s responsibility.”
The latest vaccination rates show 22.56% of people over the age of 16 are now fully vaccinated, with a total of 13.72 million doses administered.
