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No Jab, No Pay and vaccine refusal in Australia: the jury is out

Frank H Beard, Julie Leask and Peter B McIntyre
Med J Aust 2017; 207 (9): . || doi: 10.5694/mja17.00566
Published online: 6 November 2017

The main thrust of our Perspective1 was to weigh the potential benefits of legislative changes in increasing immunisation coverage against the identified potential for unintended adverse consequences,2,3 in order to assess the balance of risks and benefits. On this basis, we emphasised the importance of fully evaluating the No Jab, No Pay legislation and of teasing out the relative impacts of its three main policy components2 and associated measures, including free catch-up vaccines and incentive payments for GPs, on immunisation coverage.


  • 1 National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW
  • 2 University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW



Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

  • 1. Beard FH, Leask J, McIntyre PB. No Jab, No Pay and vaccine refusal in Australia: the jury is out. Med J Aust 2017; 206: 381-383. <MJA full text>
  • 2. Leask J, Danchin M. Imposing penalties for vaccine rejection requires strong scrutiny. J Paediatr Child Health 2017; 53: 439-444.
  • 3. Paxton GA, Tyrrell L, Oldfield SB, et al. No Jab, No Pay — no planning for migrant children. Med J Aust 2016; 205: 296-298. <MJA full text>
  • 4. Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP. Doorstop with David Coleman MP; 2017. https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2017-03-12/doorstop-david-coleman-mp (accessed June 2017).
  • 5. Warren D, Haisken-DeNew JP. Early bird catches the worm: the causal impact of pre-school participation and teacher qualifications on year 3 national NAPLAN cognitive tests. Melbourne: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne; 2013.

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