At least 3000 take part as Newcastle becomes one of 30 Australian centres to host rallies against mandatory COVID vaccination on Saturday

Organisers of the Newcastle protest say their "experienced" crowd counters put the number at almost twice the police estimate of 3000. Regardless of the actual number, they say the size of the crowds in some 30 cities and towns across the country shows a substantial degree of community dissatisfaction with the vaccination program.

Protesters gathered at Foreshore Park and marched under police escort down Wharf Road to Queens Wharf before returning to the park.

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Various interest groups identified themselves with placards and flags, including mineworkers from Muswellbrook's Mount Arthur mine, where the CFMEU has taken BHP to the Fair Work Commission over the company's refusal to allow unvaccinated personnel on site.

The BHP case is being closely watched as a de facto test case for employer vaccine mandates. CFMEU district president Peter Jordan said on Friday that mandatory vaccination was not "a lawful or reasonable direction" for an employer to make.

"If the NSW chief health officer doesn't see fit to impose mandatory COVID vaccinations, then it shouldn't be up to BHP," Mr Jordan said.

A BHP spokesperson said on Friday that the number of stood-down unvaccinated workers had fallen to 35 in a workforce of about 2000.

One of the speakers at Saturday's rally, Nadine Sisterson from the Australian Vaccination-risk Network (AVN), said she had told the crowd that the government was not telling the truth about vaccination, and that unvaccinated people had become a scapegoat.

"This time last year we were supposedly 'all in this together', but now it's a two-tiered system with the unvaccinated seen as unclean and disease-ridden," Ms Sisterson said.

VACCINE BATTLES:

She insisted that people were being hospitalised for adverse reactions to vacccines that were not being fully reported.

She was extremely concerned about vaccinating children and said governments were using COVID for undemocratic "overreach" to control the population.

"Telling people they can't do all these things if they are not vaccinated is, in effect, mandatory vaccination."

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