There are a number of COVID-19 venue restrictions coming into effect from 17 December which will affect legal practitioners who are not fully vaccinated.
Unvaccinated people will be unable to visit vulnerable settings from 17 December, including prisons, hospitals, residential aged care facilities and disability accommodation services. These restrictions will apply to unvaccinated legal practitioners who may usually meet and attend to clients in these settings.
Yesterday’s announcement regarding Queensland’s border reopening on 13 December does not bring the planned venue restriction date forward for unvaccinated people.
Queensland Chief Justice Catherine Holmes issued a new COVID-related practice direction yesterday for people entering court buildings. It requests that any practitioner or unrepresented party who is not fully vaccinated, notify the relevant registry at least 24 hours before attending. Read more on the courts’ policy.
Please note that ‘fully vaccinated’ means having received two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine. Proof of vaccination can be shown through your ‘Check-in Queensland App’, by linking your digital vaccination certificate to the app. Further guidance regarding COVID-19 restrictions, or more information about vaccinations, can be accessed from Queensland Health.
For more information about the legal profession’s coronavirus response and key developments, visit the QLS COVID-19 page.
8 Responses
Unless I’ve missed it, it appears the QLS has had nothing to say about the impending segregation. The executive is introducing a policy that lacks logic or sense – the same non-vaccinated people who can currently enter a variety of buildings and venues without restriction will now magically become unsafe on an arbitrary date later this month, just in time for the Christmas break. The executive has not deigned to share with us what ‘health advice’ justifies this unprecedented policy. Indeed, when this segregation was announced, our modest Premier declared that it was a ‘reward’ for the vaccinated.
When the executive introduces policies that infringe on fundamental rights, in an arbitrary manner, the public ought to be afforded the protection of its institutions. At the very least, one might have expected the “peak representative body for the legal profession in Queensland” to urge caution before the government used the powerful organs of state to introduce and enforce such a radical and discriminatory policy.
Perhaps the QLS does not consider advocacy against capricious policy to be within the remit of any of the 29 standing policy committees. If so, so much the worse.
Thank you JC.
Consider also if a body is making decisions that could cause harm or discrimination and whether the common law principle against acting under dictation or at the behest of another comes to mind.
With regard to the lack of transparency as to the evidence that there is an emergency that warrents overriding the democratic parliamentary process for law making. Consider the Public Records legislation and Right to Information Act. We have a right to hear a debate in parliament on these so called “laws”.
Also consider all of the international ratified treaties and Federal laws that are inconsistent with the “directions”, likely making the “directions” repugnant and invalid.
Agreed
Well said JC. It would be good to see a response from QLS to your thoughtful comment.
Thank you JC, for a well crafted response.
Coincidentally, (and ironically), today, 10 December 2021 is also “International Human Rights Day”, and is also commemorated in the following Proctor Article: https://www.qlsproctor.com.au/2021/12/today-is-human-rights-day. Too much order; too little law
Thank you JC for another champion voice of intelligent reasoning.
What appears to be a “narrative” force, has censored and/or silenced many experts around the world(including the inventor of the PCR Test and the inventor of the mRNA “vaccine”) who provided definitive testimony that this declared “emergency” has no substance or foundation in Law.
This would intimate that any enforced restrictions, as has been fore-warned, is purely discriminatory and a trespass on our natural born inalienable rights.
Is anyone really surprised that the QLS is merely “passing this along”?
I’m not. It’s kind of infuriating that the next time I have to go to Court to instruct or actually appear I will be noted by everyone present to be “unclean” according to the arbitrary and unscientific stance taken by the Chief Justice. But the QLS doesn’t really care about anything that relates to the profession. It hasn’t for years.