"...there needs to be some sort of incentive stick..." Dr Nick Coatsworth, a former Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Australia

In August 2020, during a Department of Health press conference, Dr Nick Coatsworth, one of Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officers at the time, publicly discussed incentives and restrictions intended to make people submit to COVID-19 vaccination, such as “not being able to go into restaurants, not being able to travel internationally, not being able to catch public transport” without the intervention.

This was a defining moment.

Looking back nearly six years later, it is devastating to consider the chain of events that followed, and the role medical leaders played in shaping them.

As a registered medical practitioner, Dr Coatsworth should have been well aware of practitioners’ personal, non-delegable obligation to obtain valid voluntary informed consent for medical interventions, including vaccination.

How could he publicly engage with proposals to deny people freedom of movement and association, to coerce them to submit to a medical intervention?

Ironically, just a month later, in September 2020, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) brought to practitioners' attention guidance on informed consent from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC).

That ACSQHC guidance emphasised that informed consent must be given voluntarily and that properly obtaining informed consent is a legal, ethical and professional requirement for all treating health professionals.

And yet, despite that ACSQHC guidance affirming that informed consent must be given voluntarily, Australians were subsequently subjected to coercive vaccination mandates, implemented by practitioners, with incentives and restrictions designed to drive COVID-19 vaccine uptake, just as Dr Coatsworth had publicly contemplated in August 2020.

Australia became a country with ‘freedom incentives’, where vaccinated people were granted ‘personal freedoms’, and the freedom of the unvaccinated was restricted, in order to drive vaccine uptake. See for example:

So the question is…

How could medical leaders engage with coercive vaccination policy, when practitioners remained under a legal, ethical and professional obligation to obtain valid voluntary informed consent for vaccination?

Below is the relevant clip from the Department of Health press conference in which Dr Coatsworth discusses incentives and restrictions intended to drive COVID-19 vaccine uptake, thereby setting the scene for the vaccination mandates that followed in 2021:

But there will be strong, I suspect the majority of Australians will get vaccinated and there will be a strong public view that those who choose not to get vaccinated need to, there needs to be some sort of incentive stick perhaps, through the current programmes, including No Jab, No Pay, to make that happen.

So I think that is a very reasonable interpretation of what the PM had to say today. Again, looking at specific things like not being able to go into restaurants, not being able to travel internationally, not being able to catch public transport or more broadly having what in the olden days would have been a yellow fever vaccination certificate, these are clearly policy decisions that need to, will be discussed. But there’s no current mechanism to enforce that sort of thing at the moment.

Note also Dr Coatsworth's reference above to "what in the olden days would have been a yellow fever vaccination certificate". This was August 2020, before COVID-19 vaccination had even commenced in Australia, and one of Australia's Deputy Chief Medical Officers was already publicly discussing what was effectively a ‘vaccine passport’.

Australians would subsequently become familiar with the COVID-19 digital certificate, which was used to verify vaccination status. In practice, this certificate became the 'vaccine passport to life', without which many unvaccinated Australians were prevented from participating in everyday life, including travelling interstate or internationally, entering hospitality, entertainment and sporting venues, and pursuing sport, recreation and other social and cultural pursuits.

But what happened to valid voluntary informed consent?

What happened after both the RACGP and the AMA published the ACSQHC guidance in September 2020 affirming the obligation for valid voluntary informed consent? Apparently nothing. No-one in authority – or at least no-one publicly – addressed the obvious conflict between vaccination mandates and practitioners' personal, non-delegable obligation to obtain valid voluntary informed consent for vaccination.

Looking back, it’s extraordinary what occurred in this country, with COVID-19 vaccination mandates imposed upon the population with the wholehearted collaboration of the medical leadership, both in government and within the profession at large.

This scandal waits to be exposed:

I am now seeking answers from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

For example, what action, if any, did the ACSQHC take to uphold, promote or communicate the principle that informed consent must be given voluntarily, as stated in its 2020 guidance, when COVID-19 vaccination mandates were imposed in 2021? See my recent article:

For the full context of Dr Nick Coatsworth's comments, watch the complete 19 August 2020 Department of Health press conference on YouTube. The full press conference is well worth critically reviewing:

The official transcript of the press conference is available here: https://www.health.gov.au/news/deputy-chief-medical-officer-press-conference-about-covid-19-on-19-august-2020

And a copy of the transcript is also attached:

See also this contemporaneous report published by news.com.au on 20 August 2020: Coronavirus Australia: Deputy CMO Nick Coatsworth reveals possible restrictions for refusing vaccine. 20 August 2020: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/coronavirus-australia-deputy-cmo-nick-coatsworth-reveals-possible-restrictions-for-refusing-vaccine/news-story/cdac44a40f36040128f585da696147cd

Acknowledgement: ChatGPT was used as a reasoning partner and drafting tool in the preparation of this article. Claude was used as an additional review tool to test aspects of the analysis and structure. All content was initiated, developed, directed, and refined by the author.