Last week the Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison announced that from January 1 next year parents who do not vaccinate their children for reasons of “conscientious objection” will be denied access to child care payments (Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate) and the Family Tax Benefit Part A end of year supplement. These payments are worth up to $15,000 a year.
The government claims that “parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to child care without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others.” Exemptions on medical grounds remain, as does a highly restricted religious exemption.
These changes are occurring in the context of falling vaccination rates and a resurgence of preventable diseases, including measles, mumps and rubella.
However it is questionable whether punishing parents by removing access to welfare payments will actually produce the intended results.
Parents face an enormous responsibility in making choices for the health and wellbeing of their children, choices that can produce anxiety. Vaccines themselves are neither 100% safe nor 100% effective for individuals and cases of adverse side effects to vaccines have been documented.
In this case, punitive measures designed to boost vaccination rates may backfire and erode public confidence in vaccinations. Additionally parents who feel that they are being forced to vaccinate their children are more likely to develop ideological opposition to vaccinations. These changes will also disproportionately affect families who are less well-off and disadvantaged.
Rather than being a neutral attempt to raise vaccination rates, these measures are a coercive attack on welfare recipients by the government. In the face of the chance of enlivening the anti-vaccination movement and adversely affecting disadvantaged families it can be said that these changes are yet another attack by the Tony Abbot government, though this time disguised under the cover of public health.
In order to be seen to be doing something, the Abbott government has chosen to punish parents rather than tackle the actual reasons for the observed decreases in childhood vaccination rates.
Rather than seeking to alleviate the real concerns of worried parents and dismantle the massive sham that is the anti-vaccination lobby, Tony Abbot has revealed yet again the class nature of the government that he leads, as well as its lack of vision to effectively solve the problems to which it professes to have the answers.
Public vaccination programs are one of the great triumphs of the 20th century, making once common childhood diseases such as polio and measles that caused great suffering throughout the world uncommon, allowing more children to grow up to live adult lives.
Vaccines are at their best when they have high rates of coverage, preventing infections to immunocompromised individuals as well as young children. Ensuring higher vaccination rates will take much more than a vain, superficial and ideological approach.
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