Questions are being raised about how the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) came to adopt a contested definition of antisemitism that many believe will discourage health professionals from advocating for the rights of Palestinians.
Marie McInerney writes:
Pressure is growing on the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) to reconsider its adoption of a definition of antisemitism that critics say is inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive.
They also warn that Ahpra’s use of the definition puts at risk health workers exercising their responsibility to call out human rights abuses, and trust in the agency itself.
According to The Age, more than 1,400 practitioners and 60 health and medical organisations have signed an open letter to Ahpra warning adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism could “target practitioners for lawful advocacy”.
Meanwhile, the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) says the IHRA definition “has been repeatedly used to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government, including the condemnation by health-workers of Israel’s almost complete destruction of healthcare in Gaza”.
MAPW said Ahpra’s decision “is deeply divisive and contrary to the core values both of medicine and of Australian society more generally”.
“Trust in Ahpra itself as a nonpartisan agency is at risk, particularly if there is a perception that some forms of racism are more acceptable than others,” MAPW said in a statement.
Dr Mohamad Assoum, from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), also expressed concern that Ahpra had embedded the definition into its work
“without the transparency, consultation or evidence base a change of this significance demands”.
It was done in a way “that risks treating legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government as racism and discouraging health workers from speaking out on humanitarian crises”, he said in an APAN statement.
APAN is calling on Ahpra to suspend the decision pending transparent, profession-wide consultation, and to guarantee practitioner representation, including voices critical of the definition, on its new advisory panel.
Joint statement
Ahpra’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a reference tool was announced last week in a joint statement from the agency with Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal AO.
The brief statement said Ahpra’s decision would be supported by the Special Envoy’s handbook, “to support a consistent understanding of antisemitism in its contemporary forms in our regulatory work”.
It said Ahpra is also reviewing its Vexatious Notifications Framework in response to concerns about antisemitic “weaponisation of the notifications process”, is establishing an advisory panel including practitioners with lived experience of antisemitism-related notifications, and is supporting dedicated research into antisemitism in healthcare settings.
Media outlets have reported the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and Anti-Defamation Commission applauded Ahpra’s decision and described the IHRA definition as the global standard.
The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Dvir Abramovich, chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission, saying that Jewish patients and healthcare workers were performing risk assessments before entering hospitals, and writing ‘Australia’ instead of ‘Israel’ as their country of birth.
“What the definition names is the line where political criticism becomes the dehumanisation of Jews,” Abramovich said.
Australian Islamic Medical Association
In a statement responding to Ahpra’s decision, the Australian Islamic Medical Association (AIMA) said it recognises that genuine antisemitism in healthcare settings causes real harm and must be addressed.
However, the association holds significant concerns about the design, scope and likely impact of this initiative, particularly its potential to disproportionately affect Muslim, Arab and Palestinian healthcare practitioners.
AIMA has also criticised an absence of consultation with the communities most likely to be affected by the “unintended consequences” of the definition being adopted.
“A healthcare regulator’s protections should extend equally to all practitioners and patients, consistent with the principle Ahpra itself has articulated,” it said.
AIMA said legal scholars, civil liberties organisations and even contributors to the IHRA definition’s original drafting say that it has been frequently applied to “good-faith political or human-rights commentary, conflating criticism of a state’s policies with hatred of a people”.
“For practitioners discussing the humanitarian situation in Gaza in a clinical-ethics or human-rights context, this creates real uncertainty about where legitimate professional and personal expression ends and regulatory risk begins,” it said.
That “definitional ambiguity”, now embedded in Ahpra, has seen NHS England practitioners subject to disciplinary scrutiny over conduct as limited as displaying a small Palestinian flag, and students and staff at various universities being investigated over commentary critical of Israeli Government policy, AIMA said.
Asymmetry
AIMA also points to “asymmetry” in regulatory protection.
Ahpra’s own notification data since October 2023 indicates that practitioners experiencing Islamophobic targeting, including doxxing, public mischaracterisation and coordinated reporting campaigns, were affected in comparable numbers and by similar methods to those now being addressed under the new antisemitism-focused measures, the association said.
AIMA said the Vexatious Notifications Framework review and the new advisory panel and the dedicated research program announced last week “are each scoped specifically to antisemitism”.
“No equivalent mechanism currently exists for practitioners who have experienced Islamophobia through the same notifications process. AIMA considers this asymmetry inconsistent with Ahpra’s own stated commitment to addressing antisemitism together with all forms of racism and discrimination in healthcare,” it said.
“The IHRA definition was developed, and is described by IHRA itself, as a non-legally binding working tool rather than a legal or adjudicative standard. Embedding it directly into a statutory regulator’s decision-making processes, without independent consultation or a clearly articulated legal basis, creates procedural uncertainty and has already attracted legal challenge in comparable jurisdictions.
“AIMA notes this as a risk to Ahpra’s own regulatory standing, independent of the equity concerns raised above.”
The organisation has called on Ahpra to:
- Extend the scope of the current Vexatious Notifications Framework review to explicitly include Islamophobia-related and anti-Palestinian notifications, alongside antisemitism.
- Expand the advisory panel to include practitioners with lived experience of Islamophobia-related notifications, with representation comparable to that committed for antisemitism.
- Commission research into the prevalence and impact of Islamophobia in healthcare settings, comparable in scope to the research now being supported into antisemitism.
- Establish a formal consultation process with AIMA and other relevant community and professional organisations before further implementation guidance on the IHRA reference tool is finalised.
- Publish clear guidance reconciling the IHRA reference tool with AHPRA’s existing social media guidance, to ensure practitioners can continue to advocate for humanitarian protection and peaceful resolution of conflict without fear of disproportionate regulatory consequence.
- Commit to an independent review of the impact of these measures after 12 months, including disaggregated reporting on the nature and outcome of notifications relating to both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Questions for Ahpra
Healthcare workers 4 Palestine (HCW4P) Qld has also criticised the decision.
“Combating antisemitism and all forms of racism is essential,” the group said in a social media post.
“So too is protecting the rights of healthcare workers, academics and human rights advocates to engage in legitimate discussion, criticism of states, and advocacy for human rights.
“Not only do health workers have a right to engage in advocacy for the protection of healthcare wherever it is under attack, but there is a collective professional responsibility to do so.”
The joint letter signed by healthcare workers expresses concern that adoption of the definition will push Ahpra’s regulatory work “to a standard reaching beyond discrimination against persons and into contested political expression”, which could increase the risk of the notifications process being used to target practitioners for lawful advocacy.
The letter asks Ahpra to detail:
- What the IHRA definition is intended to add that the existing comprehensive framework prohibiting racism and discrimination does not already provide?
- Under what authority this decision was made, in particular whether it was made by Ahpra and the National Boards in their own right, or pursuant to a policy direction from the Health Ministers’ Meeting or any other ministerial instrument?
- What evidence base informed the decision, and how was that evidence assessed against Ahpra’s existing data?
- Whether the decision was the subject of public or stakeholder consultation prior to announcement, and if so, which professional bodies, practitioner representative groups, and civil society organisations were consulted?
- Whether the definition will be reference tool applied by case managers in assessing notifications, and if so, at what stage of the assessment process?
- What training will case managers receive to distinguish protected political advocacy regarding Israeli Government policy from antisemitic conduct directed at Jewish people?
The letter also links to a 2023 open letter from more than 100 human rights and civil society organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urging the United Nations not to endorse the IHRA definition, citing concerns about its impact on freedom of expression and advocacy for Palestinian rights.
It also notes that Kenneth Stern, a principal drafter of the original working definition, has repeatedly argued that it has been misused to target political speech, academic freedom and advocacy for Palestine.
In its statement, MAPW says all racial and religious groups must be treated with respect, as clearly outlined in Ahpra’s policies.
“However, MAPW regards the recent Ahpra announcement as inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive. While claiming to address fear and exclusion, it is likely to amplify them by applying different standards to different groups of health-workers and thereby to undermine social cohesion in this country.”
Consultation concerns
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) has questioned “the apparent lack of meaningful consultation with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim healthcare workers”.
APAN said Ahpra ordinarily consults publicly on significant changes to how complaints are assessed across more than 900,000 registered healthcare practitioners.
“Here it appears to have acted through a joint statement with a political office-holder, without the transparent consultation such a change demands, of the practitioners it governs, the professional bodies that represent them, or the communities affected,” it said.
APAN said those affected do not belong to a single group.
“They include Jewish organisations and practitioners who themselves reject the IHRA definition as harmful to the fight against antisemitism, human rights and civil liberties bodies, First Nations health leaders, and Palestinian, Arab and Muslim health workers who have reported sustained discrimination over the past 20 months,” it said.
In the APAN statement, Executive Member and cultural historian Jordana Silverstein said the definition “embeds anti-Palestinian racism in our healthcare system and threatens all medical professionals and patients”.
“As a Jewish person I know that dealing with antisemitism in this way isn’t an anti-racist approach, it is a way of pitting groups against each other and benefits only those who seek to shut down and exclude Palestinians and their allies,” she said.
“This decision needs to be quickly repealed and proper anti-racist work, particularly that guided by Indigenous colleagues and experts, furthered in its place.”
As well as calling for the adoption of the definition to be suspended, APAN called on Ahpra, the Medical Board of Australia and Australia’s Health Ministers to publicly clarify:
- Which Palestinian healthcare organisations were consulted in the development of these measures
- Which Palestinian, Arab and Muslim healthcare workers were engaged throughout the process
- What consideration was given to anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia
- How Ahpra intends to ensure affected communities are meaningfully involved in future policy development.
Last year the Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) urged Ahpra to fast-track assessments of complaints made against GPs who publicly expressed views on the Gaza conflict, saying they were taking several months to investigate, despite ultimately resulting in no disciplinary action.
“Every effort must be made to improve the timeliness of investigations to minimise the harm caused to practitioners, particularly where a complaint is made vexatiously or deemed frivolous by Ahpra,” said RACGP President Dr Michael Wright in a letter to Ahpra chief executive Justin Untersteiner.
The RACGP said it would welcome the chance to work collaboratively to help put in place a revised process to vet social media posts and political statements more efficiently, and therefore “freeing up time and resources for Ahpra to investigate genuinely harmful content and behaviour”.
Responses sought
Croakey has approached Ahpra for responses to the following questions and will update this post when we hear back:
- Several organisations have raised concerns about Ahpra’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism: What is your response to their concerns? What is your process for responding to their concerns?
- Are you reconsidering using this definition in response to concerns it will target health practitioners for lawful advocacy on health and human rights? If not, why not?
- Will you respond to multiple letters of concern, urging you to explain the background to the decision and who was involved in consultations?
- Will you also review your Vexatious Notifications Framework in response to concerns about “weaponisation of the notifications process” against people who have highlighted the genocide in Gaza?
- Will you also include in the advisory panel practitioners with lived experience of Islamophobia and other expressions of racism?
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