THE ACT government is resisting compulsory covid vaccinations for staff at Canberra’s prison despite calls for a jab mandate from an Indigenous health leader. 

The ACT will make it mandatory for primary school teachers and early childhood educators, disability support workers and in-home and community aged care workers to be fully vaccinated by November 29.

But health authorities in the ACT are not considering a jab mandate for staff at Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC) “at this point in time”.

“But it is very different to disability support work or healthcare work or residential aged care in that correctional services officers are not providing close personal care to detainees.

“And what we have seen in the AMC is a number of detainees being positive, a staff member who was positive at work, and those things were managed very closely and we haven’t seen the spread of COVID-19 in the prison.”

Ms Stephen-Smith says “any consideration” of a mandate will be done in close consultation with prison staff.

Julie Tongs, the CEO of Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service, threw her support behind the ACT’s jab mandate for all healthcare workers, earlier this month.

But says the mandate doesn’t go far enough and is calling for all prison officers and detention staff be vaccinated.

“I have been advocating since the very beginning of the COVID pandemic for special measures to be adopted to ensure that people detained in the AMC and other places of detention in the ACT, namely Bimberi and Dhuwal, to be accorded the highest possible levels of protection against the virus,” Ms Tongs says.

“Because of the arrangements applying at the AMC in relation to the escorting of detainees both within the AMC, for instance to attend an appointment at the health centre or to an outside appointment, such as at court – all detainees come into close contact with prison officers.”

“In order to avoid any confusion the Public Health Order should specifically include prison officers regardless of their designation.”