Is It Time To End C0VID Vaxxine Mandates? Mark Latham Says They’re Stopping Thousands of Unvaxxed Nurses From Working in Understaffed Hospitals
By Ashley Nickel
Mark Latham has slammed the government for allotting $4.5 billion to find new healthcare staff while ignoring thousands of unvaxxed nurses.
On Monday, Mark Latham told 2GB that Covid vaccine mandates have ‘become very, very expensive’ for key industries now facing staff shortages and rising costs.
The NSW state government has set aside a whopping $4.5 billion to help the public health system recover from mass staff shortages in the upcoming budget.
The funding is expected to go towards hiring another 10,000 nurses, doctors, and health staff in the next four years.
However Mr Latham believes the solution to the problem is allowing unvaccinated workers to return to their jobs, scrapping vaccine mandates across the board.
‘It just shows you how these vaccine mandates become very, very expensive,’ Mr Latham said.
‘Many thousands of health professionals were pushed out of the system because of the mandates and now they’re spending four-and-a-half billion dollars to try and recruit extra health professionals.’
Healthcare workers in NSW are currently required to be vaccinated to work or provide an NSW Health-approved medical contraindication certificate.
Mr Latham said that maintaining the ‘inconsistent’ mandates is driving up prices across Australia – despite no longer being enforced under public health orders in several sectors.
‘It’s expensive in the health sector; it’s expensive in our schools. It’s also expensive with the supply chain shortages that are driving up prices and adding to inflation,’ he said.
‘The mandates are long due for abolition. People want to get back to normal.
‘You can go to a football game and sit there with tens of thousands of people, not knowing who’s vaccinated and who’s not.’
Mr Latham also accused the mandates of no longer being effective at keeping Covid from spreading within the community and believed the flu was the bigger threat this season.
‘While the vaccination program was successful in holding down hospitalisation rates and did a bit to hold down the death rate, it didn’t stop the spread of the virus,’ he said.
‘Early this year, numbers went to 50,000 a day, so if it’s not stopping the spread of the virus – and quite frankly, the flu strain we’ve got at the moment is even worse in keeping people away on sick days-then why wouldn’t you end the mandate and get back to normal?’
Last Wednesday’s 2GB show heard from several listeners that the mandates are ruining their lives.
One reader, Suzanne, said the mandates had ‘crushed’ her family.
‘My husband was a taxi driver for 17 years,’ she said. ‘I have worked in a supermarket for 15 years.
‘We didn’t want to have the Covid jab – so we are out of a job.
‘Our daughters are watching us struggle.’
‘I’m a nurse with 18 years experience and was fired for declining to accept the vaccine,’ one listener, Sally, wrote.
‘I have used all my savings and leave in order to stay afloat.’
‘I’m a registered nurse with 40 years experience. I had to leave the profession because of the mandates,’ another, Cherryl, said.
‘My friends and I are now doing cleaning jobs.’
‘I am a registered nurse who was working in patient transport,’ Helen said.
‘I am now unemployable and I have no choice but to sell my home.
‘After one recent breakdown- I found myself on the phone to Life Line,’ Deb said.
‘I am a nurse of 13 years. I was terminated in December.’
‘My mental, emotional and financial health has suffered.
‘I just want to go back to work’
‘Thank you so much for raising this issue.’
‘I worked as a teacher for 3 decades but lost my job in November,’ Judith said.
‘My husband and son were working at one of Australia’s biggest airlines.
‘Our oldest daughter had trained to be a speech pathologist.
‘We made a family decision not to have the jab.
‘These mandates have utterly destroyed our lives.’
Mr Latham also used Tuesday’s show to address rising power prices and blamed NSW’s lack of self-sufficiency for the price-hike.
‘New South Wales, disgracefully, is five per cent gas self-sufficient,’ eh said.
‘What did people expect was going happen? If we’re five per cent sufficient of course the prices will go up when international crisis hits.
‘Matt Kean’s plan to close down the coal-fired power stations means they don’t do the maintenance on them anymore.
‘They’ve got units out all the time at Liddell, Bayswater, Eraring. They don’t put the maintenance investment in.
‘As a result we’ve got electricity shortfalls, at the moment’s we’re lucky we haven’t had blackouts.’
