To read the other pages of parent’s impact statements, please click the links below:
https://avn.org.au/…/03/suffering-continues-government-care/
https://avn.org.au/no-jab-n…/families-suffering-share-story/
https://avn.org.au/2016/03/stories-families-adversely-affected-no-jab-no-payplay/
https://avn.org.au/2016/03/suffering-continues-stories/
I am writing to share my story about how No Jab No Pay and No Jab No Play have affected the lives of my family.
In 2015 my family and I (husband, self and two daughters aged 3 and 4) lived in our family home on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He worked full time as a teacher and I worked from home as a business mentor/wed designer.
Upon learning about the new legislation in late 2015 I attempted to find additional work in our local area (Sunshine Coast) to cover the increased cost of childcare for my two daughters who were in care 2-3 days per week. The only work I was able to find did not pay enough to cover Childcare fees, so we had to find an alternative solution.
My husband found a job in remote Victoria (Merrijig) that included accomodation as part of his salary package. We reluctantly decided to move out of our home, which is currently rented and we enrolled our children into kindy programs in the closest town (Mansfield) prior to 31 December 2015 to ensure we were not excluded from care by virtue of the No Jab No Play policy in Victoria.
Unfortunately the stress of the move, including financial duress and the isolation of the new job has taken its toll and I now find myself returning to Sydney with my two daughters. I am currently making inquiries to find a kindy program for them (because this is more affordable than long daycare), rental accommodation and work to pay for rent, childcare, food and other bills. I am currently relying on the kindness of family and friends.
My children are understandably distressed and unbalanced by the lack of routine and constant change. I do not know how we will manage going forward as I am in the paradoxical situation of looking for work that will barely be enough to cover Childcare costs, let alone other bills.
I am appalled and disheartened at the bullying domination tactics of the government to force parents that act with responsibility and in good conscience, to vaccinate their children.
My husband and I both serve our community. He is a police officer and risks his life every day protecting others. I am a counsellor and work to help make the lives of others better.
We refuse to be bullied by the government and vaccinate our children. I refuse to allow money to dictate our childrens’ health and put their health and wellbeing at risk by giving vaccinations we do not agree with.
As a result of the government’s domination tactics, our family suffers financially. We are an average family paying off our mortgage and trying to keep ahead of the bills, and this has an impact. You want families to have more children, to raise the next generation in an ageing population, and yet you are doing everything in your power to hinder us, not help us.
The way our government is going has me seriously consider moving to another country. Australia is becoming a communist country run by insane power hungry men, and it is frightening.
Since the no Jab-no Pay legislation, my wife has had to take on another job. She now works week nights from 6.30pm – 12:00 midnight on top of her Monday, Tuesday and Thursday day job. This is taking an extraordinary toll on her mental and physical health. I have to juggle work on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday with a toddler, and every evening during the cross-over of my wife’s and my shifts.
We did have a place in a day care centre, which they then revoked when this legislation came through. Our daughter was then allowed to attend after we asked for their decision to revoke her place to be put in writing.
Over the next two weeks, our daughter was systematically ignored by staff, was not fed lunch on one occasion, and left to cry when we dropped her off. On the third week, she attended day care for 1.5 hours, before staff called my wife to pick her up immediately because she had a heat rash! Our daughter was only to return with a medical clearance because she had “been sick”. When we pointed out that she hadn’t at all been sick, we were told it doesn’t matter, and when we asked if this would happen every time she got a heat rash, we were told “yes”. We will not take her back there.
Our daughter (and all our children), have in fact been incredibly healthy, thanks to the lifestyle and dietary decisions that we make. Parents who formula feed their children by choice, introduce solids too early, don’t encourage movement, and generally feed their children inappropriate foods, should be targeted for the financial drain that they are on our health system. By comparison to the average child GP visit rate (and therefore drain on the Medicare budget), our FIVE children who are aged 2 years up to 13 years, have attended a GP 6 times all up (that’s right, between the lot of them), and have never been seriously ill. In fact, the only GP visit that our daughter has had, was the waste of time and money visit that we were forced to have for a clearance to go back to day care. Our children have never required antibiotics, and have no chronic illness! How dare this government punish us for having made good health choices for our children.
Here’s my statement that you’ve asked parents for in your email:
I’m a single mother of a 1 year old boy. The new No Jab No Pay legislation has a devastating effect on both of our lives and diminishes mine and my son’s chances in life significantly.
After ending my marriage with a husband who turned out to be violent, which I never expected, I inadvertently became a single mother caring for our child 100% of the time. I do not have any family support as my family and close friends live in the Netherlands, and I cannot return there as my son is Australian and his Australian father, whom we currently have an ADVO against, has the right to see him, even though he isn’t exercising those rights.
I would love to make something of myself, to improve the lives here of both me and my son by returning to the work force or to study something first, but this new legislation makes that absolutely impossible for me. Being a mother 24/7, I do not have the opportunity as it is to work or study. For that, I would need my son to be able to go to daycare at least several days a week.
Furthermore, this new legislation is detrimental to my son’s development, as he needs to develop his social skills and needs preparation for his later school years. He needs to be around other children regularly to develop these skills, and to playfully learn and enjoy himself. Daycare would be the perfect setting for this, yet the No Jab, No Pay is preventing him from going there.
As you can see it’s a catch twenty-two. If I had a job or would be able to complete studies to get a good job, I could pay for the daycare myself. To achieve this however, I would need daycare.
I’m a healthy, young woman and there is no reason for me not to work or study if it weren’t for No Jab, No pay.
As for my decision not to vaccinate; until our current vaccine schedule is safer, and there are more studies done to ensure this safety, I’m not going to be bullied into vaccinating my son by the No Jab, No Pay legislation. In my view, the approach of withholding money from already disadvantaged families is completely immoral. How about reassuring families that vaccinations are safe by taking the appropriate steps, rather than using financial pressure?
Thanks for taking the time to read my testimony.
The following letter was sent to the Liberal MP for Port Stevens, Mr Bob Baldwin. It is shared with permission:
Dear Mr Baldwin,
I’m writing today in the hope that you will make a change to the NO JAB/NO PAY legislation.
Personally, I am angry that as I parent, I am put in a position to be blackmailed into immunisation or I lose FTB A. No longer will have the right to choose what is best for my child. I’m put in this position as I am a low income earner. I’m not even an earner because, since such injuries, I have been at home caring for my children. No chance of working. So I’m placed in a position that if I don’t do the last doses of immunisation I will lose my FTB A benefits which is $1400 approximately a year that I will now not have.
So how do I make up these monies to pay for therapies? Oh NDIS. NO, I don’t even have access to that yet, and even when I do, I’m still short of money to put food on the table. Where is my freedom of choice???? Human right to choose? Sucked away from the big income earners. I think there is a conflict of interest in Malcolm Turnbull via his wife’s chairmanship of Prima BioMed. Could that have influenced his decisions on No Jab No Pay? $5.5 million investment after the announcement. OMG.
To put this into perspective, I diligently vaccinated both my boys up to the age of one. A friend did suggest I get informed before doing so, but I believed that doctors knew what they were doing and put all my faith in them. I have since become informed because my children are injured from their vaccines. What has surprised me too is that when I attended a doctor’s appointment later on with my youngest with an ear infection, this Doctor didn’t even know what Autism was??
Since I learned that Doctors only learn the standard curriculum to be a GP. If they want to learn more they have to investigate and learn on their own will, just like me. Just like what is in a Vaccine? Do you know? Are you aware of all the poisons in the vaccines? Are you aware of the poisons in our water just to add another genocide into our population?
I have studied for years after my children were injured. As you do as a caring parent and wanting to do the best for them, not the worst. That’s why I’m writing. I am so angry. No report was made of my child’s injury, not by the GP. I have to go through websites to somehow inform the general public that my children were injured. The doctor was not interested.
I want the choice and I will make the choice to still not vaccinate. I am starving myself now to ensure my kids have food and specialised education – that costs. So starve more I can do, but should I? I will not vaccinate for monetary gains. Blackmail.
I am happy to meet in your office to provide plenty of information (CDC Studies that were tampered with, also charts showing that all diseases were dropping big time by the time vaccines came in) so why vaccinate? The government seems to ignore these and tries to dumb us down with the same rhetoric of ‘vaccines are safe’. ‘Vaccines don’t injure’. Happy to provide information to show the other side of the story, which the government is not interested in. I am also happy to provide signatures of many more parents who have been put in this position since the legislation passed.
Disgusting.
What is your view on this, Mr Baldwin? Will you ask Mr Turnbull if Lucy’s interest in BioMed is ethical? And will you stand up for all low income earners reliant on a Carer’s pension?
The Australian government goes on about equal rights for gays, women’s rights and a right to abort babies without being penalised or victimised in any way. Yet the same government is penalising and victimising people for not vaccinating their own children and that can have a profound effect on their health.
We are a family with 6 children. Our older children have been vaccinated, and all of them have speech, social interaction problems and learning difficulties to say the least. We are now being punished by our government for not vaccinating anymore. None of our children have had all the vaccines required by our government. We are taxpayers ourselves and yet, we are not entitled to all our family payments that we contribute to. We must pay our taxes – all of them, – yet we are treated like second-class citizens and our government is virtually stealing our income away from us.
The Australian government taxes families the same way as single people without dependents and equals things out by the family tax benefits. This system makes people rely on government payments that can easily be manipulated.
Our government does not allow us to split the income we earn so we can live independently from them. It makes it harder to earn more income because we will be taxed at a higher rate, therefore severely reducing the income that we make.
Families that rely on one income to survive are taxed higher than a two income family. A two income family has two tax free thresholds of approx $18,200. A single income family only has one tax free threshold.
But in order to be a two income family with young children, you need childcare. Now our government has made it impossible by taking away childcare rebates for those who do not want to poison their children with vaccines.
The family tax benefits are designed so all parents can cater for their family needs, food, clothes, housing, utilities and outings so children get to explore their world.
The Australian government has introduced a policy to manipulate people to do things against their will. We have a fascist government in place that dictates and blackmails people into submission.
The Australian government is also working on the development of a National Adult Immunization Plan. https://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/national_adult_immunization_plan_final.pdf . Why? Do they intend to withhold benefits to the unemployed or pensioners for not being up-to-date with all their vaccinations?
No rich person will ever have to vaccinate. Even if there was a fine. These people would just pay it. They have plenty of money.
