Dear Parliamentary Counsel Office,

It is noted that elsewhere (by Ministry of Health) in responses to the Freedom of Information requests, the matter relating to mandatory vaccination to the Novel Coronavirus (covid19 and its variants) for members of parliament and cabinet has been determined to be inappropriate as it then acts as a preclude for the democratic process - despite the fact that there are already established conditions to be met for an individual to be eligible to become a member of parliament, so this argument needs to be followed to a logical conclusion.

That argument aside, I note that there is now consideration to make vaccination against the Novel Coronavirus mandatory for all visitors to the house of parliament.

Can you please outline, or forward to the appropriate authority the query as follows:

1 - Why can't vaccination (or medical exemption in lieu of vaccination) for the Novel Coronavirus be added as a precursor for eligibility to stand as a member of parliament (much in line with mandatory vaccination for other lines of work), with immediate effect.

2 - Following on from this line of consideration, if the decision not to mandate vaccination for members of parliament is a barrier to democratic process - then how does the need to mandate that visitors are vaccinated not breach the precedent that mandatory vaccination is a barrier to the democratic process - since most people will attend the house of parliament in order to establish that the democratic process is being appropriately followed by their elected members.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Sharpe