No More. It Ends Here.
- Role of AHPRA / MBA in medical deaths to be investigated and charges laid. . GUVNOT.COM/1/13
16 doctors have purportedly died through suicide while be investigated by AHPRA / the Medical Boards. It is fairly obvious from the stories that have appeared in the media and from the grapevine, that AHPRA / the Medical Boards are the major contributory agency in the causation of these deaths.
It is incomprehensible to us that someone who hasn’t involved in the causation of a death would not seriously reconsider their professional actions.
To then undertake actions that again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, cause deaths , without reconsidering one’s actions, implies a level of sociopathy ( and lack of insight) that is incompatible with medical practice and humanity. ( Doctor, there really are Daleks out here.)
The only appropriate action is to investigate and lay charges against these people.
If a doctor can be investigated and charged with assisting the death of a patient who wishes to die, (a process allowed today, if formal paperwork is completed to allow this process),
AHPRA doctors/ staff who caused the death of an individual against his will certainly deserve to be charged as well.
As a further note, any representatives on AHPRA / the Medical Boards who are in possession of community Honours such as the “Order of Australia”, need to have those Honours rescinded.
Is incomprehensible to us as to how AHPRA / the Medical Boards working for organisations that work to save and preserve life and reduce suffering, can claim to be serving the community by killing its members/doctors and patients alike. (See the example of the “opioid substitution therapy” doctors in an GUVNOT.COM/1/11 and GUVNOT.COM/1/5 and GUVNOT.COM/1/11
THE ACCOUNTABILITY GAP:
Why deaths linked to regulatory processes demand investigation
In any other domain of public administration, repeated deaths temporally and causally associated with a single agency’s actions would trigger independent investigation, coronial scrutiny, and ministerial accountability. The absence of comparable scrutiny in health regulation reflects a political vacuum: no Minister wishes to be seen as weakening “public protection,” even when regulatory methods demonstrably cause foreseeable harm.
The legal issue is not whether AHPRA has the authority to investigate. It is whether the design and application of investigative protocols foreseeably create extreme psychological harm without proportionate safeguards. Natural justice requires that coercive state power be exercised with due regard to human consequences. A system that repeatedly precipitates catastrophic outcomes without mandatory external review fails the proportionality test, regardless of its formal legality.
Politically, the National Scheme operates in a protection bubble: adverse practitioner outcomes are treated as regrettable but irrelevant, while patient harms arising from regulatory withdrawal of services (for example, in high-risk fields) are rarely attributed to regulatory action. This asymmetry creates moral hazard. When an agency can impose life-altering sanctions without personal or institutional consequence for foreseeable harm, accountability evaporates.
At minimum, deaths occurring during or following regulatory action should trigger automatic independent inquiry with published findings, mandatory review of investigative protocols, and parliamentary scrutiny. The community expects that when state power contributes to loss of life, someone answers for it — not with platitudes, but with structural change.
Rescinder
THE AHPRA POINT OF VIEW:
On allegations that AHPRA/MBA causeD practitioner deaths
and should face criminal charges
Any death of a practitioner under regulatory investigation is a tragedy. AHPRA and the National Boards reject the claim that regulatory oversight “causes” such deaths. Correlation is not causation. The Scheme exists to protect the public from harm arising from unsafe practice, impairment, misconduct, or systemic failure. Where a practitioner is under investigation, that process reflects a legal duty to assess risk to patients, not an intention to punish clinicians or to cause harm.
The National Scheme operates within statutory thresholds and procedural safeguards. Notifications are triaged; most do not result in adverse outcomes, and only a minority progress to restrictive actions. Immediate action powers exist precisely because waiting can expose patients to serious risk. These powers are exercised under legislated criteria and are subject to review and appeal. To characterize these mechanisms as reckless or homicidal is legally unsustainable and undermines public confidence in patient protection.
AHPRA acknowledges that regulatory processes are stressful and that any investigation can be experienced as personally distressing. This is why the Scheme publishes wellbeing resources, encourages practitioners to seek support, and works with indemnifiers and colleges to promote early engagement and remediation pathways. The appropriate response to tragic outcomes is system improvement, not criminalisation of regulators performing statutory duties. Criminal liability for regulatory decision-making would create paralysis, deter necessary action, and increase the risk of patient harm by making regulators fear decisive intervention.
Accountability already exists: decisions are reviewable; tribunals scrutinise evidence; ombudsmen and parliamentary processes provide oversight; and independent reviews of the Scheme’s operation have repeatedly recommended procedural refinements. The lawful route to improvement is governance reform, clearer thresholds for immediate action, better communication, and faster resolution timelines — not the threat of criminal prosecution for regulators carrying out Parliament’s mandate to protect the public.
ERASMUS
Formal legal view:
When a regulator’s lawful processes repeatedly coincide with foreseeable catastrophic harm, legality alone is no longer an adequate defence. Natural justice and proportionality require that coercive administrative power be exercised with regard to human consequences. A system that predictably precipitates psychological collapse, professional destruction, and death — without mandatory external review, personal accountability, or procedural redesign — becomes legally suspect in substance even if defensible in form. Delegated authority does not excuse foreseeable harm; it heightens the duty to prevent it.
Human interest view:
Behind every regulatory file number is a person with a family, a practice, patients who rely on them, and a professional identity built over decades. Being placed under prolonged investigation with opaque timelines, shifting standards, and the presumption of wrongdoing creates sustained psychological injury. Doctors report months to years of fear, isolation, reputational collapse, financial ruin, and loss of meaning. When multiple practitioners die in this context, the claim that the regulator bears no responsibility is not credible to the people living through it.
Moral view:
An organisation that continues unchanged after repeated deaths linked to its actions demonstrates moral blindness. If any clinician were associated with repeated patient deaths and “reviewed their processes” without altering practice, they would be suspended immediately. The moral standard applied to doctors must also apply to regulators. To claim virtue while producing predictable harm is not public protection; it is institutional self-justification.
Administrative reality view:
The harm is not accidental. It is structurically produced: opaque complaint handling, adversarial framing, prolonged investigations, poorly defined thresholds for action, and the routine use of professional opinion over outcomes. There is no rapid triage for vexatious or low-harm complaints, no mandatory mental health safeguarding for those under investigation, and no consequence for regulatory overreach. Administrative design choices create predictable human outcomes. When design harms people, design is the problem.
Cynical aside:
A system that destroys its own workforce in the name of safety eventually protects nothing.
