Anti mandate bid loses in NSW supreme Court.
Delivering his judgment on the matter on Friday afternoon, Justice Beech-Jones noted it was not the court’s function to “conclusively resolve legitimate debates concerning the appropriate treatments for COVID-19 or the effectiveness of the vaccines”.
Those are “matters of merits, policy and fact for the decision-maker, not the court,” he said.
Rather, it was the court’s function only to determine the legality of orders made under the Public Health Act.
Justice Beech-Jones noted that one of the main grounds for the challenge cited by the plaintiffs was the effect of the orders on the rights and freedoms of those who choose not to be vaccinated. The plaintiffs had argued, among other grounds, that the vaccine mandate violates a person’s “right to bodily integrity”.
In his reasons for dismissing the challenge, Justice Beech-Jones said “so far as the right to bodily integrity is concerned, it is not violated as the impugned orders do not authorise the involuntary vaccination of anyone.”
He said a “proper analysis” is that the orders “curtail freedom of movement, which in turn affects a person’s ability to work and socialise”.
Those sorts of restrictions, he said, “are the very type of restrictions that the Public Health Act clearly authorises.
“All of the asserted grounds of invalidity raised by both sets of plaintiffs have been rejected. Both proceedings must be dismissed.”