The vaccine mandate never applied to him, but that didn't save his claim
A Christchurch worker wrongly told he needed a COVID-19 vaccine still lost his case, Authority member William Fussey ruled on 28 July 2026.
Emerge Aotearoa, which runs mental health, addiction and housing support services across New Zealand, decided in 2021 that every role at its Christchurch "Hub" fell under the government's newly expanded vaccination order, including its housing navigator job on Kennedy Place. The company's reasoning: health practitioners worked from the Hub and clients sometimes came in for health services, so the whole site counted as a mixed-use health setting.
The housing navigator wasn't convinced. His job mostly meant visiting clients in their own homes, not treating patients at a clinic, and he pushed back on how his role could count under the order's health and disability provisions. The chief executive told him she would confirm the company's position once the order was formally released, then gave similar non-answers over several more exchanges without ever saying which category applied to him.
With a deadline looming and his job on the line, he got his first vaccination in November 2021. In a letter to the company's leaders, he wrote that he felt subjected to "the No Jab, No Job bullying and coercion tactics of the organisation" he had served for almost nine years, and asked whether any unvaccinated role existed he could move into instead. He got his second dose on time. Nobody ever answered his questions.
Almost five years passed before the Authority weighed in, and when it did, it agreed with him on the substance, then ruled against him anyway. Fussey found Emerge Aotearoa never pinned down which part of the order it was relying on, and only explained its reasoning once the case reached a hearing. Looking at how the job actually worked day to day, he found the housing navigator's desk sat outside the two-metre zone the order required, with no regular close contact with health practitioners or the public built into the role. He was not, in fact, an affected person under the order at all.
None of that helped his case. Fussey said the company's failure to properly check whether the role was covered, and its silence in the face of direct questions, left its conduct "inconsistent with good faith." But the collective agreement covering the housing navigator did not turn that statutory duty into an enforceable contract term owed to individual staff, so no breach followed. Claims that the vaccine requirement amounted to an unlawful change to his contract, a breach of health and safety duties, or a threat to suspend or terminate him under the agreement's disciplinary clauses were all rejected too.
He had asked for $75,000 in damages and a ruling forcing an independent review of the company's health and safety processes. Fussey said he had no power to order that review, since the case was not a personal grievance, and with no breach of contract found, there was no basis for damages either. His claims were dismissed in full, and costs were left for the two sides to sort out between themselves.
