‘I won’t be having it’: Pauline Hanson says she will refuse to take a coronavirus vaccine and accuses the government of inflating COVID death numbers to scare people.
- Australia on Tuesday signed an agreement to buy a vaccine once approved
- The Prime Minister said he would make one ‘as mandatory as possible’
- Pauline Hanson has vowed not to take a vaccine as a matter of principle
- The vaccine will be extensively safety checked before being rolled out
Pauline Hanson has vowed not to take a coronavirus vaccine after the prime minister said he would make one ‘as mandatory as possible’.
The One Nation leader, who is not an anti-vaxer and has vaccinated her four children, said the jabs should be optional.
‘I tell you what, I’m not happy about this,’ she said in a Facebook video filmed in her garden in Scenic Rim, Queensland.
‘I’m quite angry because you have no right to say that I have to have this vaccination because I tell you what, I won’t be having it.’
‘I don’t have the flu vaccination, that’s my choice, even though I know 1,200 Australians died last year, yet you never shut down the country.’
Senator Hanson said she feared a vaccine may be ‘inadequately tested’ even though it would only be available in Australia after extensive safety checks and approval.
‘COVID-19 is a virus, I understand, but when you falsify the deaths of people that say they died of COVID when they actually died of other underlying issues … to put a vaccine into my body that hasn’t been tested is not happening,’ she said.
‘But that is my choice, and I’m just telling you and the PM that I will not have it, and you will not force me to have it. It will be my choice what I do. So what’s going to be your choice.’
The vaccine will be rigorously tested before being rolled out into the community, and no other vaccines have been proven to cause any defects – despite claims from some fringe communities.
Licensed by UK drug firm AstraZeneca, the jab is already in phase three trails on thousands of people in the UK, Brazil and South Africa – with no dangerous side effects spotted so far.
Earlier trials found it generated a strong immune response and a four-fold increase in antibodies against coronavirus in 95 per cent of participants.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Department of Health for comment.
On Tuesday, Australia signed an agreement to bring Oxford University’s vaccine Down Under as soon as it is approved, which could be later this year.
On Tuesday, Australia signed an agreement to bring Oxford University’s vaccine Down Under as soon as it is approved, which could be later this year.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison tours the Astra Zeneca laboratories in Macquarie Park, Sydney
‘It’s not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine,’ he told Sydney radio station 2GB.
‘There are no mechanisms for compulsory… I mean, we can’t hold someone down and make them take it.’
The prime minister confirmed there would be policies to encourage people to take the vaccine.
According to Heath Minister Greg Hunt, these may include banning people from flying or receiving government support payments if they do not take the jab.
‘Nobody’s going to force anybody to do anything as a compulsory measure, but we will certainly be encouraging people to take this up,’ Mr Morrison said.
‘There will be a lot of encouragement and measures to get a high rate of acceptance.
‘What we want to achieve is as much vaccination as we possibly can, should the vaccine actually prove successful.’
