28 January 2021
Dear Mr Varghese
Your attention as a member of the University of Queensland senate is drawn to the accompanying copy of my letter to the Prime Minister discussing matters of considerable risk and concern to students and staff for whom you provide governance. You are responsible.
Similar letters were sent to the state Premier and to state and federal health ministers.
As a board member you are a person conducting a business for the purposes of Workplace Health and Safety compliance. Given the complete lack of longitudinal studies, ineffectiveness in stopping transmission and serious documented conflicts of interest and adverse events in relation to the COVID vaccines, your university’s vaccine mandate places UQ and you, as a member of the Senate, in a challenging position.
I wonder if you have been afforded independent or critical advice on the risks of the university’s policy of banning students and staff from campus based on Covid-injection status?
Has the UQ Risk Assessment and Management Plan identified that mandating vaccination is necessary and there are absolutely no alternatives to reducing the spread of COVID? How could it be necessary when COVID vaccines do not stop the transmission of COVID? Why is a Rapid Antigen Testing regime not an acceptable alternative to reduce the spread of COVID, given that a vaccinated person with a positive test result can still transmit COVID, presenting a bigger transmission risk than an unvaccinated person with a negative test result?
These are questions that UQ has not adequately answered and which you must answer to satisfy your duty of care.
A finding of misconduct on some students can mean they will effectively never be able to pursue a career in their chosen field. What justification is there for such a heavy-handed punishment for the supposed behaviour of a student or teacher entering land and buildings which taxpayers have funded for the purpose of providing a tertiary education?
Having seen one of the surveys and the Vice-Chancellor’s letter dated 20 December 2021 to students, I am deeply concerned with the process that led to an apparent 80+% implied “acceptance” of these mandates. The process, pressure and leading questions that the university applied to achieve this are a betrayal of critical thinking and an excursion down the slippery path of propaganda. [1]
It seems that feelings and appeals to ‘safety’ rooted in media and political statements have replaced health data, facts and objectivity. Your students and staff have raised with me their fear that their university is destroying the original aim of university as a place for rigorous thinking, and honest and vigorous debate.
The strongest indicators of COVID mortality rate appear to be old age and pre-existing co-morbidity conditions, not vaccine status. Perusal of Queensland’s reported COVID deaths confirms this. Despite a vaccination rate over 90%, transmission is occurring at the highest rate ever, with Israeli studies suggesting that even four injections are not enough to stop the Omicron variant.
Specifically, there is a distinct lack of COVID deaths among young people of tertiary student age and almost all of the few deaths in that age group are reportedly due to underlying health factors.
I know that several senior members of your university’s medical faculty are aware of significant concerns among the university community, at all levels, about the university’s mandatory vaccination policy.
Please refer to the attachment containing remarks and questions associated with the Vice Chancellor’s letter of 20 December 2021, the Risk Assessment and Management Plan and the Policy 2.60.09 COVID-19 Vaccination.
I ask, what have you done to satisfy yourself that the university’s vaccine mandates are soundly based on independent and objective empirical scientific evidence and that the mandates respect the aim of universities to be places of independent thought and critical analysis?
Our political leaders now tell us every day that we need to simply live with COVID, signalling that we are no longer in an emergency requiring declarations and mandates such as the punitive mandate that the university is enforcing.
On behalf of my constituents among the university’s students and staff, I ask that you please provide your students and staff with the respect and courtesy of a reasoned and proportionate policy that appropriately and accurately reflects quantified age-appropriate risks to students and to staff.
In view of the risk of serious adverse health effects, including death from the COVID injections, personal informed choice must be returned to students in place of your imposed risks. This is particularly important because COVID injections are publicly acknowledged among health professionals to not offer protection from transmission to those around them on campus.
It is a hallmark of our human civilisation’s values, and notably of our health system, that wherever there is risk, there must be choice.
In regard to the COVID injections, the federal Minister for Health, Mr Greg Hunt stated, quote: “The world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial.” [2] The COVID injections have been granted provisional approval based on a literature review of overseas data that pharmaceutical companies provided. Australian health authorities have done no independent testing. Yet on that basis the University under your governance is mandating a medical procedure with no longitudinal studies and forcing students and staff to participate in a trial – against their will. You are forcing them to inject themselves with something for which nobody knows the long-term effects. It is essentially experimental.
Instead of being punished and exiled from your community, students who choose to analyse their individual risk profile and make their own choice should be respected and their individual autonomy and critical thinking encouraged. I implore you to take action to oppose and dismantle the vaccine mandate at UQ and to respect individual autonomy as part of the critical thinking process necessary to every university in Australia.
There are alternatives that enable students and staff alike to be safe and to complete their studies, research and work.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely
Malcolm Roberts
Senator for Queensland
c.c. All UQ Senate Members
[1] https://about.uq.edu.au/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccination-requirements
