As Australia’s largest cities prepare to emerge from lockdown, law firms are doubling down on their efforts to vaccinate staff, with some going so far as to implement a ‘no jab, no office’ policy.
Victoria’s health and safety regulator WorkSafe has filed proceedings against the state government over alleged health and safety breaches relating to last year’s disastrous hotel quarantine program failures which kicked off the state’s second wave of COVID-19.
A judge has ruled legal challenges to orders requiring COVID-19 vaccines for certain workers in New South Wales are not exceptional enough to warrant the disclosure of cabinet documents, with the judge noting he did not think the state health minister’s orders made vaccines “mandatory”.
Personal lender ClearLoans has lost its bid to strike out claims in ASIC’s first case related to the COVID-19 pandemic after a judge found the regulator’s action, which accuses the lender of breaching the hardship provisions of the credit laws, was “sufficiently clear”.
Cases challenging the NSW government’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for the state’s police officers, teachers and healthcare workers are exceptional enough to warrant production by the government of documents presented to state cabinet before the public health order, a court has heard.
Thousands of emails have inundated the inbox of the judge overseeing legal challenges to the NSW health minister’s orders mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for certain workers, prompting a public warning against interfering with the administration of justice.
An appellate panel of the Fair Work Commission has upheld an aged care worker’s termination for refusing a flu vaccine, but a full-throttled dissent by one commissioner warns Australians against “a system of medical apartheid and segregation”.
A judge has set aside a subpoena that allegedly sought to “embarrass the New South Wales government”, in lawsuits contesting compulsory COVID-19 vaccination orders made by state health minister Brad Hazzard.
Nine Network, Seven Network and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have won a temporary injunction barring the Civil Aviation Safety Authority from declaring the area above the Melbourne CBD to be a restricted area in response to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests that have disrupted the city.
BHP Billiton has resolved a case by an employee who claimed the company breached the Fair Work Act by sacking her for alleged social media harassment of a co-worker who failed to self isolate after an interstate trip at the start of the first COVID-19 wave.