Antisemitism finally named in our health system

There is a particular kind of trust we place in the health system, and we usually place it without thinking. We hand ourselves over, frightened, unwell, at our most exposed, to the person in front of us, and we trust that they will care for us without judgement about who we are.

For generations of Jewish Australians, that trust felt safe to give. It is worth saying plainly that, for many in our community, it no longer does.

We have heard the stories, and many of us have lived them. Jewish doctors and nurses made to feel like intruders in their own workplaces. Patients uneasy about disclosing who they are. Complaints and whispers and cold shoulders that have nothing to do with the quality of anyone’s care and everything to do with the fact that they are Jewish. For too long this has gone on with little protection and even less confidence that raising it would change anything.

That is why I want to be direct about what has just happened. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and committed to practical measures alongside it. This is real progress for our community, and one worth naming as such. For years we have asked our institutions to recognise antisemitism honestly and to act on it. One of the most significant regulators in the country has now begun to do exactly that.

This did not happen on its own. It is the product of sustained work by many organisations, including my office, to move our institutions from sympathy to substance. When the peak regulator of the people who care for us adopts the definition our community has long championed, it sends a signal well beyond one agency. It tells Jewish practitioners that their safety is a matter of serious concern, and it tells the wider health sector that antisemitism will be named and addressed like every other form of hatred.

The IHRA definition is the standard this country endorsed in 2021 and has stood behind under every government since, including a re-endorsement this year. Our community knows it well, and knows too how often it is misrepresented by those who would rather it went away. IHRA names hatred directed at Jews. Ahpra adopting it is not a constraint on legitimate argument. It is a commitment to recognise antisemitism when it appears in a clinic, a ward or a professional body.

I would not ask anyone to read this uncritically. Many of us will greet the news the way we have learned to greet these things, with hope but also with caution earned the hard way. That caution is fair. Trust worn this thin is not restored by a media release. It is restored by what happens next, by a complaints process that is genuinely fair and transparent, by patterns of abuse spotted early rather than after the damage is done, by Jewish practitioners actually feeling safe when they walk onto the ward. Ahpra has laid a foundation. The building is still ahead of us.

The measures themselves are sensible and, frankly, overdue. Ahpra is reviewing its framework for vexatious notifications, so that the complaints process stays fair to everyone who comes before it, including those who have been targeted through it. It is establishing an advisory panel that includes practitioners who have lived through complaints driven by antisemitism, which means our experience will be in the room rather than described from outside it. And it is backing independent research to establish the true scale of the problem, so that what we already know anecdotally can be met with evidence. These are the right actions, and they will be judged, rightly, by their results.

We should also be honest about the limits of any single body. Our health system is federated and fragmented, and the responsibility here does not rest with Ahpra alone. It sits with state medical boards, hospitals, the Australian Medical Association, the medical colleges and the unions. Ahpra has set a standard. Now the rest of the sector should be held to it, and I intend to keep pressing them.

The deeper goal is larger still. It is to take the heat of conflicts overseas out of our health workplaces altogether, so that a hospital or a surgery is a place of care, not a stage for political battle. The answer is not to police what anyone believes. It is to insist that the clinic, the ward and the staffroom remain safe and professional for everyone, whatever they think about events far from here. Depoliticising these workplaces protects the Jewish nurse and the Muslim doctor at once, and it protects every patient who simply wants good care. But make no mistake, it is our community that has borne the cost of its absence, and our community that stands to gain most from putting it right.

So I say to our community, with confidence, this is real progress, and we should recognise it as such. It is also a beginning. The true measure will be the safety Jewish Australians actually feel, at work, and when we ourselves are the ones in the bed. That work is urgent, it is already underway, and I intend to keep pushing until it is done.

Jillian Segal is Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.