It’s no secret that I thought the conscientious objectors exemption for the Family Tax Benefit A  vaccination requirement was total bullshit and it infuriated me to no end that what sounded like a great policy ended up being trivialized. The fact of the matter is that whilst you might think that vaccination is a personal decision it is anything but as choosing not to vaccinate puts other people at risk, usually those who are least able to fight off the dangers that you or your children will now present to them. Still the moronic ideal that vaccines somehow cause more harm than they prevent prevailed with a choice group of people, seeing the number of unvaccinated children double in the past decade.

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The government was obviously aware of the fact that their legislation was being routinely circumvented by a disturbingly large number of people and just yesterday introduced new legislation dubbed “No Jab, No Pay“. Whilst the crux of the legislation remains the same, people who refuse to vaccinate their children will lose several tax benefits and rebates until they get current, however this new bill removes the get out of jail free card that the conscientious objector exemption provided. Now the only way to get around losing your tax benefits is if you can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons (something that’s extremely rare and would be covered off by herd immunity normally) or if you have a religious reason for doing so.

Thankfully the latter provision has said to be extremely narrow which will most likely derail any attempts the anti-vaxxers have of trying to circumvent it with something as ludicrous as the Church of Conscious Living, a religious group set up specifically for that purpose. Whilst that might not stop anti-vaxxers from joining up some of the more esoteric, but established, religions that have such exemptions I’m sure many of them will be thinking long and hard before they associate themselves with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In any case it will likely force the hands of many to get their children vaccinated so they can receive those benefits from the government, a win-win for all involved if you ask me.

The fact that the government has had to step in like this shows just how serious of an issue the anti-vaxxer movement is becoming. The fact that the number of unvaccinated children has risen so sharply in recent times is cause for alarm on its own however the flow on effects of that are far, far worse. We’re seeing a resurgence in diseases that were essentially considered eradicated in Australia, some of which can have dire consequences for those who don’t have the immunity granted to them through the use of vaccinations. The anti-vax movement will argue that the vaccines do more harm than good or don’t prevent diseases that they say they do however the science simply does not line up with any of the claims they make and yet they continue to perpetuate the myths.

There’s really no argument to be had here, vaccinations work, are incredibly safe and for those precious few who are unable to get vaccinated the benefits of herd immunity will ensure that they will not suffer from the diseases they cannot protect themselves against. The more people that refuse to vaccinate the worse off we will be as a nation as we’ll be once again battling diseases that we would otherwise not have to. The cold hard fact is that vaccines are several orders of magnitude better than the diseases they prevent and to argue otherwise is disregard decades of science, numerous public health studies and your own morality that goes against harming other humans.

If you’re willing to look past all that then you can see why I’m not sympathetic to you losing a few dollars from the government.

About the Author

David Klemke

David is an avid gamer and technology enthusiast in Australia. He got his first taste for both of those passions when his father, a radio engineer from the University of Melbourne, gave him an old DOS box to play games on.

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