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Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has overseen one of the world's harshest and anti-freedom lockdownsAsanka Ratnayake / Getty Images

MELBOURNE, Australia (LifeSiteNews) – Teachers and other essential workers in the Australian state of Victoria will be fired if they do not take COVID-19 jabs.  

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley confirmed Friday that vaccine mandates would be enforced indefinitely upon teachers as a condition of employment. 

Following this announcement, the Victorian Department for Education told teachers that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they can either go on paid leave or make arrangements with their employer to continue work from home until the end of 2021. However, once the 2022 academic year begins on January 28, unvaccinated teachers will be classified as “absent without leave.” If they fail to be vaccinated by April 28, their contracts can be legally terminated for failing to comply with public health orders. 

In response to the state’s authoritarianism, teacher Belinda Cetnar has filed a class action lawsuit with Victoria’s Supreme Court against vaccine mandates, arguing that the public health orders are not a “legally or ethically justified” directive. Cetnar argues that the public health orders “[d]o not uphold a citizen’s right to autonomy and informed consent in medical treatment and procedures” and added that the mandates are inherently “discriminatory in nature.” 

Unfortunately, the prospect for success in Cetnar’s legal challenges looks grim, as recent lawsuits against mandatory vaccinations in neighboring New South Wales have failed.  

This week, Victoria’s Premier Dan Andrews stated that employment and other freedoms will not apply to the unvaccinated. In a recent press conference, he addressed the growing resistance to vaccine mandates, threatening that failure to comply with public health orders would exclude individuals from the new “vaccinated economy.” 

When questioned by a reporter whether he would be following New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet’s example in relaxing restrictions for everybody once vaccinations reach 90%, Andrews criticized those hoping to avoid being inoculated against COVID-19

“If you make the judgement do not get vaccinated, if you think you can wait us out, the public, whatever you think you are waiting out, you will not wait out the virus because it will be here for a long time, and the only protection against it is to be vaccinated,” Andrews stated.   

“This will be well and truly into 2022.” 

Under Andrews’ direction, industries have begun to apply pressure on employees to be vaccinated, threatening the termination of contracts for failing to comply with government mandated public health orders. 

In response to invasive public health orders, Liberal member of parliament Neil Angus denounced Dan Andrews’ creation of a “medical apartheid”, adding that Victoria is transforming into an “undemocratic” “totalitarian regime”. 

Neil warned that as a consequence of vaccine mandates, “Victoria will become a two-tier society. Unvaccinated people will be sacked from their jobs and will be excluded from the ordinary functioning of society.” 

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.