According to Human Right Watch, ‘International human rights law guarantees everyone the right to the highest attainable standard of health and obligates governments to take steps to prevent threats to public health and to provide medical care to those who need it. Human rights law also recognizes that in the context of serious public health threats and public emergencies threatening the life of the nation, restrictions on some rights can be justified when they have a legal basis, are strictly necessary, based on scientific evidence and neither arbitrary nor discriminatory in application, of limited duration, respectful of human dignity, subject to review, and proportionate to achieve the objective.’ (HRW March 19, 2020).

On these premises, I would like to ask you why in Australia the vaccination against Covid 19 has not been made mandatory yet. This can be achieved according to the French model (compulsory vaccination for all people who do not have medical contraindication) or according to the Italian one (only vaccinated people can travel and access services and jobs).
While I very well understand that in the first stage (first half of 2020) the pandemic found all governments unprepared, on the contrary it is very difficult for me to justify today the delay Australia is experiencing in achieving a decent percentage of vaccination among its inhabitants. On top of a very relaxed approach your government has unfortunately constantly maintained with respect to the urgency of the vaccination in this country, today I am observing a lack of effective strategy to accelerate the immunization process and the use of lockdowns and border closure as main tools against the virus spread. This is a very basic approach which after almost two years should have been replaced by a well-articulated strategy with a reasonable planning for the coming months.

My second question is connected to the first one: Why people like my wife and I who promptly booked their vaccination (AstraZeneca) as soon as it was made available for their age range and who are today fully vaccinated, cannot travel around the country and overseas (like it happens for people living in Europe), being also forced to follow the lockdown rules? Personally I have been living indoor for almost two years, working remotely (like many other people), and now, despite the full vaccination, I am still affected by the behaviour of reckless people who refuse or delay the vaccination as a protest in the name of an alleged “freedom of opinion and choice”, free to infect others without any remorse and to cause a condition of restrictions in all states of Australia. How long will we have to wait to get the right to a vaccination certificate that gives us back our freedom?


His Excellency,
By this short message I wish to express my deep disappointment for the blatant inability of your government to handle the situation of COVID 19 pandemic. Continuing on this path will not only destroy the economy, which is obviously a crucial aspect, but more importantly we will pay a very high price due to the effects of your policy on the mental health of Australians and beyond (all the families overseas that have been kept separated due to your border closure policy), as well as the risk of death due to the delay of the vaccination program.

The pandemic crisis forces us to learn as we go, and to realize that there are no simple recipes or shortcuts and that during a pandemic the idea of human survival prevails. In this sense, the request for social (physical) distancing is enforced to avoid the spread of the contagion. But at this pace and with a government unable to act timely and make adequate planning, a time will come when politics will have to worry about rediscovering the dimension of the bios, that is, of a life, so to speak, of quality, which is essentially made up of relationships, rather than domestic self-locking in the name of the “salvation” from the virus.

On a more general level, a consideration must be made: the pandemic confirms the thesis of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (Risk Society, 2000) regarding the policy of ‘global risks’ and how these lay bare the inadequacy of international institutions and the lack of global governance (which cannot be left to transnational corporations) and, let me add, even more the inadequacy of local politics (read Australia).

What is to be done? To paraphrase the title of a famous book by Russian revolutionary and political theorist, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – Lenin (1902). I wish to provide an answer drawing on the words of the Italian philosopher of care (ethics of care) Elena Pulcini (La Cura del Mondo 2009). She observes that caring for the world implies above all, especially in a pandemic situation, the preservation of life and the guarantee of survival: but above all it requires transforming what is only a ‘market universality’ into a ‘universality of meaning.’

Can you please give back meaning to the work you and all other members of the government do on behalf of the Australian citizens?