. The A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025 is a bill which stands for the principle of conscientious objection. The bill seeks to restore freedom of choice for parents who, for personal, philosophical, religious or medical reasons, elect not to have a child receive a vaccine from the standard vaccine schedule. It would achieve this by repealing the changes made to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No Jab, No Pay) Bill 2015. In 2015, the so-called no-jab no-pay amendment made certain family assistance benefits conditional on meeting vaccine and vaccination requirements by amending the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999. Access to the childcare benefit, childcare rebate and family tax benefit part A became conditional on a child meeting all the immunisation requirements. Childcare benefit and childcare rebate have since been replaced by the child care subsidy. No-jab no-pay removed the conscientious objection exemption regarding being eligible for these forms of government assistance for families, meaning that, if parents want to receive those benefits, their child's vaccination schedule must be fully up to date.

Now, the removal of the conscientious objection against vaccination to receive these benefits is, in my view, needlessly cruel and coercive as a measure designed to financially pressure parents, many of whom are of a low-socioeconomic background, into having their children vaccinated, even if they hold personal, philosophical, religious or indeed medical objections to doing so. A decision to vaccinate a child, wherever such reasons exist, should be a personal decision. Contrary to what our modern healthcare apparatus seems to think, legitimate reasons for conscientious objections exist. Indeed, that was the consensus in 1999, with the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, so it wasn't actually all that long ago that the right to conscientious objection was considered important in this country.

The no-jab no-pay laws erroneously assumed that there could not exist a genuine reason for conscientious objections to vaccination. It was simply disregarded. Bear in mind we're not talking about refusing every single vaccine but simply not being up to date. Parents could refuse one single vaccine that they have concerns about for whatever reason in the multivaccine schedule, and thereby be rendered ineligible for the child care subsidy and the family tax benefit.

Before discussing this further, it's worth pausing to reflect on the question of why there was a conscientious objection clause in the first place. In the late 1990s, it was deemed necessary by parliament to allow parents to reserve that right. In fact, it seems to have been largely uncontroversial that access to childcare assistance shouldn't be impaired by conscientious objection. And, as recently as the late nineties, both sides of the Australian parliament would have characterised that as needlessly coercive and a cruel measure. It was regarded as an important right for reasons that really shouldn't require explanation but sadly do require an explanation in the current environment. It should be obvious that, for a start, decisions about vaccination should primarily lie with the parents and not with government. When the government gets to unilaterally decide the conditions of receiving medical interventions and treatments, such as this, a precedent of government unilaterally making those decisions is set. Also established in 2015 was the precedent that compliance with arbitrary government requirements should be personal and that parental decisions allow greater access to benefits and so on. That creates a two-tiered society in which those who object and have reasonable reasons for doing so are denied help.

The government and the pharmaceutical companies have now decided for you that the benefits outweigh the risk—and that's that. If you're the slightest bit sceptical about even one vaccine on the multi-vaccine schedules, then you're cut off from the government's payment. Now, my point here isn't whether or not there's one particular vaccine on the schedule that's safe or another that's not. It's about necessity, and it's about the ability for parents to conscientiously object. My point is that it is obviously the case that a vaccine might not be as safe as we're told because things have happened all the way through the history of these interventions. It's plausible that people could have medical concerns or concerns of another kind, particularly in today's financially challenging society, and be coerced into ignoring them because they simply need the money. That is wrong. It's morally wrong. It's obviously wrong, and it literally shouldn't require any explanation.

Hence, this bill should not be the slightest bit controversial. The no-jab, no-pay laws should never actually have been passed. The criteria for conscientious objections are for reasons that are personal, philosophical, religious or medical. Parents would need to speak with their family doctor and receive guidance, as we encourage, on the risks and the benefits of their decision, but if that decision—and we live in a free society—should lie with anyone, it should lie with the parents. That is reasonable. To give an example of why one might conscientiously object from a religious standpoint, there are Christians who hold concerns about the connections between modern vaccines and cell-lines derived from abortions used by vaccine manufacturers. To be clear, different people hold different perspectives on that question. Not everybody who shares Christian views has that concern, but, at the end of the day, there are those, for reasons of conscience, who would simply not prefer to rely on this technology, especially for relatively mild conditions like chickenpox. Now, whether you personally agree with that decision or not, that's a decision that parents should have the right to make. I think it's evident that one's conscience shouldn't be compelled on this due to financial coercion.

A legal system that's comfortable with overriding people's consciences in this way runs the risk of becoming corrupt. Before no-jab, no-pay, parents had to seek the guidance of healthcare professionals, as I said. In contemporary Australia, there are many parents who would simply have preferred not to vaccinate their children at all with a particular vaccine, but who have been financially pressured into doing so. As I said: that is wrong. If no-jab, no-pay doesn't amount to undue pressure, then, in my view, nothing does. It would, in fact, be irresponsible to assume that the government and pharmaceutical companies only have your best interests at heart, and then, on that basis, you should simply agree with them on every point. Well, it seems to me that that amounts to less scrutiny than what was in place before the mandatory guidance of healthcare professionals who actually knew you and knew your family. Assuming that there is one monolithic concept of 'the science' is just foolish. Different jurisdictions can have different approaches, and it makes sense for there to be some leeway. In fact, it wasn't until very recently that the United Kingdom incorporated the chickenpox vaccine into their schedule.

But whatever one's reason for conscientious objection, at the end of the day, this is simply an illiberal policy. We don't even really need to argue about a hypothetical scenario caused by this precedent, because we've already lived through it in recent years. We saw the logical trajectory of this precedent play out during the COVID period, and just six years ago, many Australians were told that if they refused to have two doses of an experimental injection that didn't actually prevent infection or transmission of COVID—a vaccine itself responsible for a wide variety of adverse events, including death—then they wouldn't be able to work. That's precisely the kind of scenario that people are concerned about with this no-jab, no-pay law. The reality turned out to be much more dystopian, and it happened much more quickly than anybody could have anticipated. We saw how quickly the slope became slippery once an illiberal, irrational and callous principle was entrenched in our laws.

I hope the Senate will support this principle of conscientious objection. I hope they'll remember the abuses of the pandemic period and be able to see that those were made because of the deletion of conscientious objections in the first place. When we dispense with the conscientious objection principle, we dispense with a vital principle of opposing the abuse of power—something that the left of politics is not always that across. I hope the Senate will elect to support hardworking families who, for valid reasons, conscientiously object, perhaps not even to every vaccine on the schedule, instead of agreeing with a system that has demonstrated that it's okay to coerce Australians into decisions, like we saw during COVID.

Over the last few years, I've received much correspondence from concerned parents about this issue. I know those parents are not reckless or careless about the health of their children. Contrary to what the media would have you believe, these parents are thoughtful, intelligent people who want the best for their children. A few short decades ago, their concerns and their right to have these concerns would have been accepted. Well, what happened? We need to act against the slide of governments into every aspect of our life and preserve our liberties while we still have them. The way in which legitimate and well-founded conscientious objection has been demonised is disgraceful, and we owe it to Australians and Australian families to right that wrong by passing this bill.

As a crossbench senator, I only have one opportunity each year to bring a bill up for debate—just one. This year, I chose to bring forward A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025. Thank you to Senator Antic for originally introducing that bill in 2025. This bill restores the conscientious objection pathway, which was removed in 2015, allowing parents who object to childhood vaccination on conscientious grounds to formally declare that objection and remain eligible for family tax benefit part A and the child care subsidy. In a free country, which is what this is supposed to be, parents should not be punished because they make lawful and informed medical decisions for their child—not the government's child and not Canberra's child but their child.

Importantly, this bill is not about banning vaccines, not at all. It does not stop Australians vaccinating their children if they want to. It doesn't stop doctors from recommending vaccines. It doesn't stop governments from providing information. It just restores the right of a parent to parent and to object to a medical procedure without the government going ahead and punishing them financially for that decision.

When the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No Jab, No Pay) Bill was passed in 2015, non-medical exemptions, such as conscientious, philosophical or religious objections, were removed as valid reasons for remaining eligible for family assistance payments. Today, the parents who do not comply can have their family tax benefit part A reduced and their child care subsidy stopped altogether. What does the Commonwealth do? It uses family assistance as leverage to secure compliance with a medical decision.

The bill is so simple. It just restores the previously implemented conscientious objection pathway, where the parent can go ahead and talk about their immunisation with their doctor or whoever else—their recognised provider. They can formally declare their objection and that's it. It's a very simple principle. The government should provide information—fair enough—but, at the end of the day, parents have got to make the final decision. This is a very simple thing. This is something that the Liberal Party should be jumping all over, but I don't know if they will. We'll see later on, because I'm going to call this to a vote today. The government may go ahead and say, 'This is an incentive,' or whatever they might like to say. Do you know what I call it? It's just coercion. That's what it is.

Even the Australian Immunisation Handbook recognises that valid consent must be voluntary and free from undue pressure, coercion or manipulation. How voluntary is a decision when a parent is told, 'You better do this or we're going to cut the financial support that your family relies upon'? It's crazy. Every decent mum and dad—every single one—puts the health of their kids first. Parents who object to vaccinating their children are not acting hastily or irresponsibly, not at all. They've researched. They've spoken to doctors. They've lost sleep. They agonise over what they believe is best for guess who? Their child. Not your child—their child. Some may even have children who have experienced adverse events in the past and they are understandably cautious. That's fair enough. At the end of the day, we don't have to agree with their decision. We don't have to agree with it, but we have to respect their right to make that decision. Freedom is not allowing people to only make the choices that the government approves of. That's not freedom.

Who bears the greatest burden under no jab, no pay? It's not the wealthy families that can absorb the financial penalties. It's the low-income families that need the childcare subsidy, that need the family tax benefit part A. They need it to pay the bills. They need it to put food on the table. They need that subsidy to help them do that. A wealthy parent—what can they do? They can exercise their conscience. They can absorb the cost. But a struggling parent is told: 'You know what? Your conscience has a price tag.'

Family assistance is supposed to support children. It shouldn't be used as a weapon to force compliance from parents, not at all. A 2004 Australian study found that no jab, no pay was linked to about 49,500 more children becoming fully vaccinated. Some will say that this proves that the policy worked. However, more than 95 per cent of those children came from families who had never registered as conscientious objectors. In other words, simply put, the policy encouraged families who were already willing to vaccinate their children to catch up on missed vaccinations. It did very little—almost nothing—to change the minds of parents who had a genuine objection.

If a parent has an objection, it's very clear that threatening to take away family payments is not going to change their mind. It just punishes that family. Even if the financial pressure does convince some parents to comply, we should still ask this question: should the government be using financial pressure or financial hardship to force parents into a medical decision which they would otherwise refuse? For a family that earns under $88,520 a year, the childcare subsidy covers about 90 per cent of eligible childcare costs. If they lose that subsidy because their child is not vaccinated, they can lose around 25 grand a year per child. In some cases, it's more than 35 grand a year. On top of that, family tax benefit part A can be cut by around $950 a year for each unvaccinated child—each one.

I heard from a constituent recently who told me what this can mean in real life. She had separated from her husband. She was struggling financially. She had to go back to work, and, because of her objection, she could not receive the childcare subsidy and thus could not afford child care. She told me that the financial pressure forced her to get her children injected as quickly as possible, and, sadly, one of her children suffered an adverse reaction, a severe one. Is that really a free choice, or did the government make it impossible for her to do anything else? That's exactly what is wrong with this law.

My home state of Victoria goes even further. Under Victoria's no jab, no play laws, children must be up to date with immunisations to confirm enrolment in kindergarten, long day care, family day care and occasional care, subject to some very limited exemptions. Before a child has even reached primary school, access to early childhood education and care can be conditional upon vaccination status. I think it's wrong, and I think it's inconsistent with the spirit of a free country and the rights of parents to make decisions for their own children.

This Commonwealth bill, obviously, is not going to repeal those Victorian laws. That's pretty clear. They're separate state laws. We all know that. But I hope that Victoria is going to reconsider these laws, because the same principle applies. I keep harping on about it every single day in this place. Parents, not politicians—and certainly not unelected bureaucrats—carry the primary responsibility for their kids. That's it.

We should also recall what happened when governments confused coercion with persuasion during the COVID years. Mandates, fines, employment consequences and exclusion have created deep resentment and damaged trust between ordinary people and government, and the institutions as well. Whatever senators might think of the measures that were taken during that period, surely we learned that trust, once destroyed, is very difficult to rebuild. How do you rebuild trust? You do it by treating adults like adults. You give people information. You allow questions, and you respect informed consent. You definitely don't build trust by threatening the family budget, that's for sure.

This bill is modest. It doesn't abolish the immunisation program. It doesn't stop somebody vaccinating their kids if they choose to. All it says is that, if a parent has a genuine objection, they can formally declare that objection and not lose vital family assistance because of it. That's it. We're not going to ask senators in this place whether they personally support vaccination. That's up to you. We're asking a more fundamental question, a more simple question and a very important question: should the government use financial hardship and threats as leverage to secure compliance with a medical decision? Obviously, the answer is no, and your answer should also be no. The government is not the parent—I keep saying it's not the parent. The bureaucracy is not the parent. Canberra doesn't know a child better than that child's mum and dad does, and it certainly does not love that child more. In short, it's this—and I keep saying it and I'm going to say it again: less government, more freedom and more responsibility returned to Australian families. Obviously, I urge the Senate to support this bill, but let's see.

Unfortunately, the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025 is another example of elements of the Liberal Party falling over themselves to out-One Nation One Nation. We've seen that occur with the Liberal Party following One Nation on illegal tobacco policy and migration policy, and now we see it on health matters as well. What's happening here is that this bill that Senator Antic introduced is seeking to repeal a law that was put in place by a Liberal-National Party coalition government—that's right: Senator Antic's own party, under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The only way this bill has even been brought on for debate today is through the generous donation by Senator Babet of his allotted time to the Liberal Party. It's pretty clear that Senator Antic's party didn't want this debated, and he's had to take up the time that would normally be allocated to Senator Babet. That begs the question of whether the Liberal Party even wants Senator Antic in its ranks anymore. Are they actually happy to have a vaccine sceptic in their party who was literally cheered on by One Nation senators during his speech? Senator Antic has not only taken over the Liberal Party in South Australia but is on track to become its president in South Australia. That is what the Liberal Party of Australia has become.

The Albanese Labor government's position is clear: we have no time for those seeking to reduce vaccination rates in Australia, because let's remember—childhood vaccination saves lives. Vaccines are a highly effective, safe and evidence based way of protecting children from and reducing the severity of serious preventable diseases such as whooping cough, measles and more. What this bill would do if it was passed through the combined support of elements of the Liberal Party and One Nation is reduce vaccination rates and increase the risk and likelihood of diseases like whooping cough, measles and more. That's what this bill would do. Delaying or not accessing the recommended vaccinations under the childhood vaccination schedule could risk a child catching a disease and becoming very sick. Some vaccine preventable diseases cannot be cured and lead to lifelong infection, lengthy hospital stays and the development of other health problems. Childhood vaccinations have greatly reduced and prevented a significant number of deaths since their introduction in Australia. Many of these vaccines work best when herd immunity is achieved because vaccinations, of course, don't just protect kids who are vaccinated; they reduce the risk of disease for other kids that arises from unvaccinated kids mixing in childcare centres and other places. Without high vaccination rates, preventable diseases can spread more easily and put more vulnerable people at risk. This is why the government provides a range of incentives and program arrangements to encourage and support parents, carers and families keeping up to date with the recommended vaccine schedule.

No-one is forcing children to be vaccinated in Australia if their parents do not consent. All that the existing law does is provide incentives through the social security system to boost vaccination rates. Of course, there are already exemptions available if there is a recognised medical exemption or where vaccination would pose an unacceptable risk to the child or another person. But, given the strong evidence supporting the benefits of immunisation, expanding the list of reasons for exemptions is not something we're prepared to entertain.

It's worth reflecting, in conclusion, on the massive strides that Australia has made in terms of the health of our citizens through higher vaccination rates. That is the reason that we have seen far fewer cases of diseases like whooping cough, measles and chicken pox—all those kinds of diseases, some of which can be deadly and some of which can be seriously inconvenient and cause other health problems. It is incredibly disappointing to see elements of the Liberal Party, as they have on so many other policy issues, now teaming up with One Nation on health issues in a way that would actually put the health of Australian children at risk. One Nation and elements of the Liberal Party might be up for that, but we are certainly not.

Today I will be speaking to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025. The Greens will not be supporting this bill today. This policy, now in effect for over a decade, requires families to be up to date with their immunisation in order to access family tax benefit part A supplements and childcare assistance fee support. It requires parents or guardians to make sure their kids are up to date with their jabs. Vaccinations have been transformative for public health across the world. They have saved, undoubtedly, many, many Australian lives.

The Australian Greens support universal access to primary health care and to prevention services, which do include reliable and affordable access to vaccinations. Immunisation is one of the great success stories of the modern world and of public health. The evidence tells us clearly that vaccines protect against a range of viral diseases, bacterial infections and insect-borne, parasitic-borne and bloodborne infections. Australia has an excellent record of achievement in the prevention of disease through immunisation. These are the facts. We have seen a reduction in the instances of and deaths occurring from a range of diseases including measles, polio, tetanus and diphtheria. This policy doesn't remove the right to make a decision not to immunise. We all have that choice. What it does is put a financial cost on that decision.

I do want to say though, as has been said when this policy was established 10 years ago, that there is a concern—and we share the concern—that this policy places a financial penalty on people receiving income support payments. Higher income families are less affected by this policy because they do not receive the family tax benefit. We all know that in this cost-of-living crisis our income support payments are much, much too low in this country, and placing an extra financial impost on people who need financial assistance has the potential to exacerbate inequity among people doing it tough. This is especially unfair. This is a reality that we must acknowledge. When the majority of parents or guardians who have not met vaccination requirements for their children face structural barriers to accessing health care, it is about structural barriers rather than access active refusal. It is unfair that our primary healthcare system has let them down and that they are being penalised as a result of this failure for not accessing health care.

While mistrust can be a factor for some people, research has shown that larger contributing factors are the cost of appointments, limited appointment availability, healthcare professionals not being available in their area and a lack of opportunities to have discussions about vaccination with their healthcare providers. This is yet another reason that the government must urgently increase the rebate for GP consultations beyond 20 minutes. You can't have a fulsome conversation with a concerned parent or guardian about risks and benefits in a short period of time. You have got to build that trust. You've got to have that conversation.

To do that and to enable healthcare professionals to do that, you've got to compensate them properly. The government should be increasing availability to and investment in health care to ensure that it is more accessible for people across this country. We need catch-up campaigns. We need local initiatives to improve coverage. We need home visiting programs. These are just a few examples of the things that we need this government to address and to fund in order to remove barriers to access to health care. As I said, we need government to raise rebates for longer GP consults, fund better rural health services, invest in public health education and ensure First Nations controlled health services are adequately resourced. All of these measures will ensure that primary health teams are able to reach kids across the country, including in regional areas.

Additionally, the Greens would like to see the government invest in and commission an independent research study to look at the impacts of this policy. It has been in effect for over a decade. There have been some, but limited, academic evaluations of it, and I think the public would benefit from having an independent study into its impacts. This would give the community confidence in policy settings and the administration of this program, and it would help us make informed decisions about whether settings related to this program need to change, especially in relation to its impacts on driving inequality.

Let me be clear: I do not believe that this bill is being put forward in good faith. Throwing out this policy with no evidence supporting us to do so and with no continued investment in positive encouragement or addressing the public health gaps that are so clear in the healthcare system can leave us with only one conclusion: that this is a scare campaign put forward by people who want to spread fear for their own political purpose with the express intent of reducing vaccination rates and putting kids at risk of diseases, including polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps, just to name a few.

As such, the Australian Greens will not be supporting Senator Antic's bill today, and I would draw that particular section of the Liberal Party's attention and the attention of the entire Senate to one particular fact, and that is that right now the US health secretary, RFK Jr, is encouraging American citizens to be vaccinated for measles as the US experiences its largest measles outbreak in 35 years. This is the scientific reality on the ground right now. And while I am at it and while I have this opportunity to reinforce and underline some scientific facts, I will say that, after decades of rigorous scientific research, there is still no evidence whatsoever that vaccines cause autism. On that note, I bid this individual and his law fare bloody well.

I rise to speak against this bill, the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025, which seeks to reopen a loophole this parliament closed for good reason almost 10 years ago. This was a decision of the former coalition government that helped push five-year-olds' vaccination coverage in this country to over 95 per cent by 2020.

In 2015, the coalition introduced no jab, no pay. The measure removed conscientious objection as a valid reason to opt out of childhood vaccination while still receiving family assistance payments. This was not a new principle.

Full immunisation had already been a requirement for family assistance payments since 1998, so we were not inventing a new form of conditionality. We were closing one specific loophole that had grown from a marginal exemption into a genuine leak in a system that was putting other families at risk. Access to taxpayer funded payment has never been an unconditional entitlement in this country. It's a privilege which comes with some basic responsibilities attached. The policy protects those who, for genuine medical reasons, find themselves in a position where they're not able to be vaccinated and rely on herd vaccination to protect their health. It protects infants too young to be vaccinated themselves, children who are immunocompromised and pregnant women who rely entirely on the choices of the families around them.

The then minister for social services, Christian Porter, drew on his own family history with polio, as his cousin was one of the last children in Australia to contract it. His point was that a hardwon protection can be treated as optional once the generation that lived through the disease it prevented is no longer the one making the decisions. The results of this policy speak for themselves. By 2020, five-year-old coverage had reached the target of 95 per cent, while one-year-old coverage had climbed to 94.8 per cent, nearly reaching the same milestone. That was the result of removing conscientious objection and putting the onus on every family to make an informed, active choice on childhood vaccinations.

I want to be clear about what this policy did and did not do. No jab, no pay has never mandated vaccination. As Tony Abbott put it on the day the policy was announced, people can, if they like, object to having their kids vaccinated, but, if you don't have your children vaccinated, you won't qualify for the supplement. No family has ever been forced to vaccinate a child. No jab, no pay is not a mandate. It does not compel anyone. It simply does not extend a taxpayer funded subsidy on the basis of a choice, and that is the entirety of the extent of it.

That distinction matters more now than it did a decade ago, because the ground has shifted under us in exactly the way it had before we acted in 2015. Coverage that had peaked over 95 per cent in 2020 has fallen every year since. The Australian Medical Association's analysis this year found a concerning downturn across every immunisation program in this country. As the AMA president, Dr Danielle McMullen, put it, we are already seeing hospitals operating beyond their capacity. Now is not the time to let more infectious diseases back into the community. We are already living with the consequences.

Whooping cough notifications reached their highest level in 35 years across 2024 and 2025. Measles cases in Australia have been climbing sharply too. Reopening conscientious objection now, at the exact moment coverage is falling and diseases are returning, would not be a neutral act. It would help accelerate that decline. I ask every member in this place to think about this seriously, because the impact of this proposal would not just sit with the individual families who make the decision. It sits with the infant too young to be vaccinated in the same library storytelling group, the immunocompromised child at the same cinema session and the pregnant woman in the same community. Conscientious objection was not removed to punish parents. It was removed because it was used to bypass a system that protects children who have no say in the matter at all. Now is not the time to step back. The coalition will oppose this bill.

I rise to support the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025. Compulsion has become commonplace. When a government can't convince people of a program's benefit, it turns to coercion. That is the story of no jab, no pay, and it is why this bill is before us. The changes proposed here are not new. They restore rights that families held until 1 January 2016. Before those amendments, a parent with a conscientious objection to the standard vaccination schedule could still receive childcare payments and family tax benefit part A. This bill puts that pathway back. It allows people to make an informed choice about the medical treatment their children receive.

A conscientious objection, as this bill defines it, is a personal, philosophical, religious or medical belief that a vaccination, under the latest edition of the standard schedule, should not take place. A recognised immunisation provider must certify in writing that they have discussed the benefits and the risks with the parent. The parent must then declare the objection in writing. The parent is informed. The parent is then empowered to make the decision they believe is best for their child. This is an informed choice the parent is empowered to make.

Prior to the changes to the law, there were between 30,000 and 40,000 conscientious objectors registered in Australia. With the passage of that amendment, thousands of families had to give up their right to choose. Over time, this place has layered law upon law that takes autonomy away from parents. In the vast majority of cases, parents are the people best placed to decide what is right for their children. For decades, the government has stayed out of the inner life of the family. We let parents do their job and parent. We let them make the decisions personally, because blanket rules can go awry. Governments can always go sideways and the majority can get it wrong. A free society does not treat the family as subordinated to the state. The family unit is the very building block of a free society.

I understand that people have strong feelings about vaccination. Many believe some sacrifice of individual autonomy is required for the greater good. We have already seen what happens when we ignore autonomy and coercion takes its place. COVID-19 was the ultimate social experiment in that method. We learnt what happens when government promotes compulsion, ignores bodily autonomy and encourages people to treat one another as disease vectors. We were told the vaccinations were safe and effective. We watched manufacturers rake in $200 billion in revenue while experts, media and politicians pushed every citizen towards the needle or towards punishment and ostracism. People were locked out of ordinary life. They were shunned if they had not been vaccinated. I was working away when Western Australia locked its borders. I was kept out of my own state and treated as a threat.

But, slowly, through the great work of citizen journalists and sceptics that refused to be silenced, the truth came out. It turns out these vaccines weren't safe, as we'd been promised, and they certainly weren't effective. But by then it was too late for people who had been injured by a vaccine they never wanted. Many would never have taken that jab if the price of refusal had not been their job, their travel or their place in the community. They couldn't even see family members that were dying in hospital. That is what horse-trading rights looks like—'Give up bodily autonomy and you may have your freedom of movement back.' That is a bargain struck under duress and false compliance. But, when the truth came out, all those responsible said that there was never any compulsion. We have not forgotten. There will be a reckoning. This amendment is a step in the right direction.

The worst feature of the current law is that it rations the right to choose by income. Families who are not eligible for family payments can refuse the schedule and keep their money because the state is not holding a payment over their heads. Families who need a hand up are told that assistance comes at a price. They have to surrender the right to decide what is placed in their child's body or lose the support that's designed for the worst off. We said we would help those families. Then we attached a medical condition to the help. If the science is as settled as advocates claim, they should be able to win the argument without docking the payments of low-income parents. If the schedule is so clearly in a child's interest, persuasion and information should be enough.

There is also a practical point. The 2016 changes did two things at once. They abolished conscientious objection and they extended the immunisation test well beyond early childhood. This bill restores the objection and treats a child aged seven or older as meeting the requirement. That is a return to the principle that family assistance should not be a running penalty through adolescence for a decision made when a child was small.

None of this requires anyone to change their own mind about vaccination. Parents who want to vaccinate will still be able to vaccinate. Doctors will still advise. The National Immunisation Program will still exist. What would change is the state's willingness to use the family payment system as a bludgeon against parents. If we learned anything from the last few years, let it be this. There is no emergency so tidy and no majority so confident that we should force people to give up the right to choose what is right for them and their families. Rights that exist only for people who can afford to lose a payment are not rights; they are privileges. This bill returns the right to choose. It removes a form of government coercion that falls hardest on the families we claim to help. This bill should be supported.

Thank you to Senators Babet and Antic for this bill, A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025, which One Nation wholeheartedly supports. The bill simply provides for the conscientious-objection clause to be restored to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, which will allow children who are not fully immunised to access social security.

Specifically, this will allow families whose children may not be vaccinated to access the childcare subsidy and the family tax benefit part A supplement without facing financial penalties. Under this amendment, if a parent files a written declaration of a conscientious objection and an immunisation provider certifies they have discussed the risks and benefits, the child is legally deemed to have met the immunisation requirements. This provision only applies to age seven, after which the child is deemed to meet the schedule irrespective of vaccination status.

This bill is sensible. It's fair. It restores the fundamental principle that parents make decisions for their children—not governments. Childhood vaccination rates in Australia are currently at a 12-year low, dropping below the federal government's target of 95 per cent. Vaccination rates at 12 months are 90.5 per cent, down 4.3 per cent over the last five years. At 24 months, the rate is 88.4 per cent, and, at 60 months, the rate is 92.5 per cent. According to the latest data from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, approximately 80,000 children under the age of five are not fully up to date with their standard childhood immunisations.

The timing of this fall is no coincidence. Immunisation was a major casualty of Australia's criminal response to the COVID scandal. It turns out that, when you force vaccination on people and destroy the careers, businesses and, in some cases, marriages of those who refuse, many people do not react with acquiescence. They react with understandable suspicion, distrust, resentment and anger. They saw the harm people were experiencing from the COVID injections, they look at the harm some childhood vaccines are causing, and they ask, 'What else have our authorities lied to us about?'

The reduction in support for vaccination takes two forms. Firstly, parents are increasingly choosing not to give some or all of the schedule to their child. Secondly, parents are delaying the shots until their baby is older. For instance, in 2025, two in five children received their first measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, dose later than recommended. That's 40 per cent.

When looking at vaccination rates across Australia, national averages can be highly misleading. The national average sits at around 91 per cent, although this does not mean every area is vaccinated to that level. There are growing regional differences. The drop in vaccination rates is not happening evenly across the country.

The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance map data from the Australian Immunisation Register onto a standard unit called an SA3, statistical area level 3. This is important when comparing vaccination rates in one area against those in another. Five years ago, more than half of all SA3, statistical area level 3, areas had reached or exceeded the 95 per cent target. Today, the number of SA3 areas meeting that target has plummeted to just 18 per cent—less than one in five. This shows that the fall in confidence in vaccination is happening right across the country.

It can be argued that these SA3 areas with vaccination rates below 95 per cent no longer have herd immunity. Herd immunity has come under scrutiny following the failure of the COVID vaccines, the COVID injections, the COVID gene therapy treatments, to effect herd immunity, despite the level of coercion which went into achieving very high vaccination rates So far, this healthy scientific re-examination has shown measles, mumps, polio and rubella vaccines can achieve herd immunity because their outer shell is stable over time.

Many countries, including the United States, have found the level of preservatives in the MMR vaccine is too high for safety and require those shots to be given separately and spaced out. One Nation supports that position. Viruses like COVID and influenza mutate rapidly and, as society proved with COVID, do not allow for herd immunity. This was conventional science before our COVID response tore up the rule book and threw out the science. Surprisingly, the areas of lowest vaccination are not in rural and regional areas. They are in growth corridors and inner-city areas. That's interesting. Conservatives are frequently blamed for lower vaccination rates, yet where are the lowest rates? They're in inner city left-leaning electorates. Vaccination rates in the bush, though, can be delayed, owing to distance and scheduling.

Growth corridors are showing lower vaccination rates, and this is where the babies are and where mothers live with concern about government agencies' actions dishonestly compromising their precious babies' health. The bill does not address the issue of unvaccinated children attending child care. State governments control that policy. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia all have laws preventing unvaccinated children attending child care. Queensland allows the centre to make the decision. The ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have no regulations similar to no-jab no-play. Vaccination status is not relevant to child care. Canberra always makes rules for others that it does not impose on itself. Recall Commonwealth agencies inhuman, antihuman, immoral, dishonest COVID restrictions and lies contrary to the science. This is interesting. If vaccination status is critical to keeping children safe, we would see New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia having lower disease rates than the ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania, who allow vaccinated and unvaccinated children to mix. Not surprisingly—to me anyway—there is no difference in disease rates between the states on average over time. Don't you just love competitive federalism? I sure do!

If you look at the raw infection numbers that the Australian Centre for Disease Control, the CDC, publishes, New South Wales regularly records the highest numbers of whooping cough and measles cases in the country. This may be because Australia does not screen new arrivals for vaccination status. For clarity, new arrivals are those visa types which are counted towards net overseas migration. Although the same no-jab no-play rule covers children of the net overseas migration and Australian children, when new arrivals apply for permanent visas, they come under the migration medical examination, which does check their vaccination status and requires makeups where required.

What's the take-home here? We go to all this trouble to achieve childhood vaccination, then we let in millions of new arrivals and don't even ask their vaccination status. For the record, India and China have vaccination rates higher than ours. Pakistan is down at 80 per cent, and Somalia and Yemen are at 50 per cent. I've asked about this in Senate estimates hearings and always get nothing answers—crap—and that's the problem. Unless we can talk honestly about these issues, confidence in health authorities will continue to plummet. Their hubris will be fatal to public health. We also know is that we have a 35-year high in whooping cough, pertussis, notifications and public measles alerts. Something is going wrong, and we have every right to ask about it.

One Nation has concerns around no-jab no-play laws. In medical ethics the relationship between coercion and vaccination is a complex topic, with two competing ethical duties—respect for individual autonomy and the duty to protect public health. In Australian clinical practice, coercion is against ethical guidelines. Under the Australian Immunisation Handbook for a patient to give legally valid medical consent that consent quote 'must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation'. A doctor cannot ethically use physical force, direct threats or deception to compel a patient to take a vaccine. Doing so violates the foundational bioethical principle of autonomy, and that's the right of an individual to make decisions about their own body. It is this autonomy Senator Antic's bill seeks to strengthen, with the re-inclusion of a conscientious objection. As such, the bill fits perfectly within the existing legal and ethical vaccination framework. Here I must make the point that during COVID this fundamental protection against coercion was torn up and ripped to shreds with apparent glee from our health authorities, who revelled in operating in an environment without ethics. The very people who should have displayed ethics instead chose hysteria with an added layer of financial gain.

The fundamental rule here is that, if you ignore the rule on informed consent, the risk—in this case, COVID—has to be proportionate to the measures taken. The vaccine has to be proven safe and effective. The measures taken must be the least necessary to be the least infringement on the code, and, finally, the measures have to be necessary. The COVID immunisation agenda met none of these four tests—not one. The COVID shots were not tested. The skimpy so-called testing was done on a different version of the vaccine to the one actually sold in Australia. The term 'safe and effective' was two lies. They were not safe; they were not effective. And we know the health agencies and departments knew that at the time. I'll say it again: we know the health agencies and departments knew at the time that they were not safe and effective. They were not necessary. Vaccinating for influenza has never worked and did not work in the case of COVID, and, lastly, they were not the least infringement on the code. Ivermectin and similar accessible, affordable, safe drugs were proven safe and effective yet were banned by our health authorities.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, Ahpra, should have acted to defend the rights of patients and stood in defence of informed consent, which is supposedly an Ahpra objective. Instead, they chose to police medical practitioners to ensure none dared to follow the Australian Immunisation Handbook guidelines. Ahpra tried heavily and determinedly to ensure health practitioners did not comply with the Hippocratic oath. These dishonest travesties Ahpra continue today.

Secondly, childhood vaccines have never been tested for safety against an inert placebo—never—which is what is required by the ICH Guideline for Good Clinical Practice E6, which Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, has ratified. Australian vaccines have not been tested against this standard. Instead, the TGA, in Senate estimates hearings, relies on the lack of reported serious adverse events to assume vaccines are safe. Despite there being high levels of adverse events such as autism that parents associate with the vaccines, the authorities, with no examination, brush off that the cause is vaccines. It's this, more than anything else, that's causing a loss of confidence in vaccination. A One Nation government will require this safety testing to be done and, given the significance of the exercise, fund the trials, in the public interest.

Finally, under America's health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC in America, announced an unprecedented revision of the routine childhood immunisation guidelines, shrinking approved vaccines from 17 to 11. Australia has 14. This move is currently blocked in American courts after the pharmaceutical industry fought back. I hope the measure is approved, as it will provide a very immediate answer to the question of a potential link between childhood vaccines and adverse events that agencies with connections to big pharma currently and blindly do not accept as being vaccine related.

Greg Beattie's excellent book, FoolingOurselves, provides a proper statistical evaluation showing that the incidence of childhood diseases and their effects plummeted before the vaccines were released. That means that vaccines were not the cause of the near eradication of the diseases. Rather, it seems that improved hygiene, improved sanitation and improved nutrition were the causes of falling disease incidence. It means that there will be no harm in not forcing childhood vaccines—no harm.

In summary, parents have every right to be wary of the harm these products may be doing to their children. They have every right to exercise their religious or conscientious objections to forced vaccination. They should not be treated differently for not having vaccinated their children in whole or in part. And childcare centres should be free to make the decision to accept or not accept vaccinated or unvaccinated children. One Nation will proudly support this bill.

I move:

That the question be now put.

Question agreed to.

The question is that the bill be now read a second time.