Thousands of Australians coerced - survey

Australian survey of reasons for COVID-19 vaccination

Thank you to the 26,680 Australians who completed the anonymous online survey carried out by Clarity on Health between 18th February and 28th March 2022.

The survey results are now available. They indicate that thousands of Australians felt coerced to have the COVID-19 vaccinations. Many of them got vaccinated because it was mandated for their job, and not for medical reasons.

Just a note of caution though: the findings are not likely to be representative of the Australian population. Instead, these results mainly reflect the views of people who felt marginalised by the pandemic response.

When looking at the results we need to bear in mind the Australian Immunisation Handbook’s standards for consent. It says that for consent to be “legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation”.

Clearly, the vaccine roll-out has failed to meet these standards for most of the vaccinated people responding to this survey.

This raises the question of just how many vaccinated Australians in total felt coerced and hence did not give ‘legally valid’ consent?

Surely a single Australian being coerced is one too many!

Key findings were:

  • 7,559 vaccinated Australians said they had felt “extremely pressured” to have their COVID-19 vaccination
  • 8,362 unvaccinated Australians said they were currently (in Quarter 1 2022) feeling extreme pressure to be vaccinated
  • 57.9% of vaccinated respondents said their primary reason for having the injection was either to keep their job or because it was mandated for their profession.
  • Only 11.3% of vaccinated people reported a main reason for vaccination connected with COVID-19 disease itself.


Although all Federal MPs and senators were asked to share the survey, and the media were informed by press release, it turned out to be shared largely by people with concerns about the vaccination campaign. Hence results shown as proportions or percentages are unlikely to be representative of the Australian population.

The links embedded here can be used to see our press release, a more detailed breakdown of the results, along with individual reasons for vaccination and additional comments left by respondents. 

© Mohamad Faizal Ramli | Dreamstime.com

On April 19th, Clarity on Health wrote an open letter detailing the survey results to:

  • Professor John Skerritt, who leads the Therapeutic Goods Administration
  • Professor Nigel Crawford, who is Chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI)
  • Professors Michelle Giles and Katie Flanagan, who are co-leads of ATAGI’s COVID-19 working group
  • Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly
  • The Chief Health Officers (or equivalent) in all Australian states and territories.


To date, only Dr Andrew Robertson and Professor Brett Sutton, the Chief Health Officers of Western Australia, and Victoria respectively, have acknowledged receipt of the open letter, saying that our comments had been noted.

Raw data

Spreadsheets containing the individual data for Australia as a whole, and for each state and territory, can be downloaded using the links below:

All Australia

ACT

NSW

NT

QLD

SA

TAS

VIC

WA

State Analyses

Victoria – Final vaccination survey report

Victorians’ free-form comments

Interview

Clarity on Health editor Clare Pain interviewed by media site Discernable

Australians’ comments presented as a scrolling feed by Discernable

Share the Post: