Prime Minister Tony Abbot has announced a new “no jab, no play and no pay” policy for childcare support.
The Commonwealth Government have announced they will end the conscientious objector exemption on children’s vaccination for access to taxpayer funded Child Care Benefits, the Child Care Rebate and the Family Tax Benefit Part A end of year supplement from 1 January 2016.
Prime Minister Tony Abbot said in a statement that parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to child care without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others.
From 1 January 2016, ‘conscientious objection’ will be removed as an exemption category for child care payments (Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate) and the Family Tax Benefit Part A end of year supplement.
Immunisation requirements for the payment of FTB Part A end-of-year supplement will also be extended to include children of all ages. Currently, vaccination status is only checked at ages 1, 2 and 5 years.
Existing exemptions on medical or religious grounds will continue, however a religious objection will only be available where the person is affiliated with a religious groups where the governing body has a formally registered objection approved by the Government.
This means that vaccine objectors will not be able to access these government payments.
The new policy will tighten up the rules and reinforce the importance of immunisation and protecting public health, especially for children.
Australia now has childhood vaccination rates over 90 per cent, from one to five years of age, but more needs to be done to ensure we protect our children and our community from preventable diseases.
While vaccination rates in Australia had increased since the Childhood Immunisation Register was established by the Howard Government in 1996, vaccine objection rates for children under the age of seven had also increased steadily, especially under the conscientious objector category.
The vast majority of FTB families meet the current immunisation requirement at relevant age points (around 97 per cent).
However more than 39,000 children aged under seven are not vaccinated because their parents are vaccine objectors. This is an increase of more than 24,000 children over 10 years.
The Government is extremely concerned at the risk this poses to other young children and the broader community.
The choice made by families not to immunise their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.
For more information on child care assistance and family payments, visit www.humanservices.gov.au
Do you think religious exemptions should be allowed for childhood vaccinations? Have your say in our poll and in the comments below!
UPDATE: This poll has closed. 92.2 per cent of you said all children should be vaccinated unless they have a legitimate medical reason not to be; 7.2 per cent of you said it should be up to the parents’ discretion; and 0.6 per cent of you weren’t sure.
All children should have their needles unless there is really and truly a medical reason as far to many from over seas are carriers of different diseases and than includes Meningococcal disease….A three year old nearly dies in NSW and her Grandpa and Father ,who both have money, demanded than the NSW Health test everyone in their town and found a tree year old from India was the carrier but her parents refused help and went home but can’t ever retirn because of DNA and fingerprints but is she going to pass it to others in her own country to go through hell and possibly die???????
Vaccination’s are predominantly safe, yes the odd person may have an allergic reaction but this is rare. For the safety of other children vaccinations should be enforced within schools. If due to religious beliefs they feel they should be exempt, then perhaps they should only attend a school for that religion.
Unfortunately the issue is the Media who blow this all out proportion which causes scare stories and so parents think it is not safe. Long gone are the days of factual reporting, we are now all swamped with sensationalised stories and media companies trying to make their story/headline better than it really is to get more viewers/readers/revenue.
religion should not be included in this conversation!!!! why should my child get sick because of another child not be immunized for religious reasons? if parents have a problem with immunization then they should may be consider not having children who could make other children ill in the first place.
ALL children should be immunised.
I think everyone should think this matter through calmly. If the vaccinations will protect from getting infectious diseases, the vaccinated children won’t get any diseases from someone who wasn’t vaccinated. So in theory, only non-vaccinated children may get the infectious diseases from non-vaccinated children. Whether other children were vaccinated or not, if your children had been immunized, your children are supposed to be safe. If not, what is the point to get your children vaccinated? Anyone can explain?