Mandatory vaccination in the federal spotlight, as One Nation and Jacqui Lambie take shots at the issue

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson introduced anti-vaccine mandate legislation into the Senate, but the Coalition, Labor, Greens and others voted it down.

One Nation sought to make it unlawful to discriminate against Australians who choose not to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Five Coalition senators crossed the floor and voted with One Nation.

They want Prime Minister Scott Morrison to override state government mandatory vaccination policies. The federal vote came after tens of thousands of Australians attended peaceful "freedom rallies" on Saturday, amid an undercurrent of opposition to vaccine mandates.

The protests happened despite 85 per cent of people aged 16 and over in Australia being double-vaccinated.

As well as governments, many corporations and companies have also introduced - or plan to introduce - vaccine mandates in workplaces.

The movement against mandatory vaccination has been complicated by its connection to far right nationalists, anti-vaxxers, libertarians and conspiracy theorists.

This has also obscured those raising reasonable human rights concerns about mandatory vaccination and restrictions against the unvaccinated.

Benjamin Saunders, senior lecturer at Deakin Law School, wrote on the ABC website that while many will agree with compulsory vaccination, it "sets a precedent of government control which is unlikely to stop with vaccination". "Mandatory vaccination signals that there is no area of life exempt from political and governmental control. Even fundamental questions of human autonomy and bodily integrity are now subject to regulation by the state - in this case, by executive order," he wrote.

The Australian's conservative commentator Henry Ergas wrote recently it was "undoubtedly true" that banning the unvaccinated from activities open to the vaccinated involved "a degree of coercion".

However, he concluded that "no one has a right to impose a harm on others by negligently disregarding their rights and interests".

"And it is surely clear that negligently infecting another person with a potentially serious disease breaches their right to live safely and securely, undermining a fundamental freedom that governments have a duty to protect."

He added that the unvaccinated were getting a "free ride" on community immunity that the vaccinated had established.

Senator Lambie probably represented most Australians when she said that being vaccinated was "a patriotic act to get the country out from lockdowns and keep fellow Australians safe".

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