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Vaccine mandate: Protesters in Australia’s major cities take to the streets
Protesters in Australia carried placards with phrases like "free Victoria" and "sack Dan Andrews" in Melbourne as they marched towards the Parliament House expressing their opposition to the mandatory vaccination rule
Several hundred protesters took to the streets in several parts of Australia demanding the government to repeal the mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 rule on Sunday.
Protesters in Adelaide and in the state of Queensland saw several hundred residents demanding the government repeal the mandatory vaccination rule, Australian news media outlet 9News reported. Sydney also saw hundreds of protesters marching with slogans like “Your Body Your Choice”, another news outlet Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The protests were aimed at Australian state Victoria’s premier Daniel Andrews who also introduced the Pandemic Management Bill which will allow the premier of the state to declare a pandemic and extend it in three-month blocks. The bill also allows the Australian health minister to enforce public health orders with much freedom.
Protesters in Australia carried placards with phrases like "free Victoria" and "sack Dan Andrews" in Melbourne as they marched towards the Parliament House expressing their opposition to the mandatory vaccination rule as well as the bill. A report from Sky Australia said that Andrews said that citizens of Victoria who remain uninoculated will be subject to Covid-19 restrictions in 2022 as well.
The polls conducted by media outlets however show that anti-vaxxers in Australia are much smaller compared to the people who would get vaccinated.
Where else in the world are people protesting vaccine mandates?
Several Western nations have seen protests against mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations with the US seeing large scale protests among others as the Biden administration recently asked large companies to mandate that their workers get vaccinated against Covid-19 or submit to regular testing.
The Republican attorney generals in Texas, Florida, Missouri and 23 other states have sued to block the rule proposed by the Biden administration.
France, which has a Covid pass rule, managed to extend the rule which allows the government to make use of the pass till July next year. The system is one of the strictest in Europe, reports news agency AFP, but the protests against the rule which were a weekly occurrence until recently have diminished recently.
(with inputs from ANI)
