Govt widens vaccination mandates
Cabinet decides to mandate vaccinations for businesses that will use vaccination certificates for customers, including in hospitality, events, gyms and close-contact retail such as hairdressers
TLDR: The Government will widen the number of businesses able to have vaccination mandates for workers to include hospitality, events, gyms and close-contact retail businesses such as hairdressers that require vaccination certificates for customers.
PM Jacinda Ardern and Workplace Relations Minister Michael Wood announced Cabinet decided this afternoon to widen the mandates from health, education and the border to help improve vaccination rates. Wood said the existing mandates covered about 15% of the workforce and this widening would expand mandates to around 40% of the workforce.
Ardern said businesses that required vaccination certificates would need to have all their employees vaccinated to ensure all their customers were safe. She restated that the mandates would not be applied for ‘essential’ services, including supermarkets, pharmacies and medical clinics.
However, Ardern and Wood said the Government was also considering further widening the mandates to include other public services, such as for WINZ and MSD. Other public services such as the Police are yet to have vaccination mandated, although they did not specifically mention the Police.
From today, I’m publishing and emailing the first four ‘TLDR’ paragraphs of all these articles to both paid and free subscribers, with paid subscribers getting the post in full below the fold. Feel the FOMO? :) I’d love free subscribers to upgrade to paid to make my accountability and explanatory journalism on affordable housing, climate change and inequality financially viable. Here’s a special one year offer available for just the next 24 hours to celebrate the start of this new feature)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Kākā by Bernard Hickey to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.