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....
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