Continue to give every child the opportunity for childcare, kindergarten, school or other education or care, regardless of vaccination status

Eligibility - Queensland residents
Principal Petitioner:
L Bienholz
PO Box 1034
BRIGHTON QLD 4017
Total Signatures - 126
Sponsoring Member: The Clerk of the Parliament
Posting Date: 13/10/2015
Tabled Date: 13/10/2015
Responded By: Hon Cameron Dick MP on 13/11/2015
TO: The Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland

The petition of residents of the State of Queensland draws to the attention of the House in 2013, the Queensland Health and Community Services Committee conducted an inquiry to exclude unvaccinated children from childcare (and kindergarten). The committee recommended that this legislation not be adopted in favour of an education campaign. "Education" proved more successful in increasing vaccination rates than similar legislation adopted by New South Wales. We have been informed that the current Queensland government is to reconsider the 2013 proposed legislation.

  • It is unprincipled to legislate compliance to a vaccination schedule to attend childcare and kindergarten, when the vaccination schedule itself is subject to variation and change.
  • Using mandatory measures for forcing vaccination upon children is a violation of the international Nuremberg Code which states that consent should be voluntary and allow for "free power of choice without the intervention of any element of force... or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion".
  • The rationale behind most legislation to coerce compliance with vaccination schedules is that
    "unvaccinated" children endanger the rest of the public. However, most of the vaccines on the Australian childhood vaccination schedule cannot prevent transmission of disease either because they are not designed to prevent the transmission of infection (rather, they prevent disease symptoms eg. inactivated polio vaccine, pertussis) or because they are for non-communicable diseases (eg. tetanus).

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to continue to give every child the opportunity for childcare, kindergarten, school or other education or care, regardless of vaccination status.