No More. It Ends Here.
- AHPRA / MBA fees to be reduced to ½ of current fee levels. Increases to be approved by vote of practitioners. . GUVNOT.COM/1/3
AHPRA / MBA (medical Board of Australia) are supported by registration fees of approximately one thousand dollars for each of hundred thousand doctors in Australia. This gives an annual budget of $100 million per year.
This is a lot of money to play with, to build an empire and to allow a trove of lawyers to be employed. I think every action against a doctor needs to be a “considered ”action not a reflex accusation and judgment of guilt. Financial constraint is an obvious way to limit uncontrolled legal activity against doctors.
And remember, allowing AHPRA / the Boards to do this, costs individual doctors even more by driving up legal indemnity costs: probably another $4000-$8000 per practitioner per year. So the total community cost is approximatley One Billion Dollars annually- funded by doctors.
The Australian Government committed an $8.5 billion package in the 2025-26 Budget to Medicare and General Practice. 1/8 of that budget funds a supervisory and punishment process for people whose main reason to get out of bed every day is to try to help their communities and their patients.
Why should doctors be forced to underwrite an expensive mechanism destroying lives and causing harm.
A belligerent regulatory body such as AHPRA and the Medical Boards (too much money and resources), guarantees not only high registration fees but also high legal indemnity bills as well. Doctors pay twice – at registration and in terms of indemnity bills.
A belligerent regulatory body such as AHPRA and the medical boards also guarantees that doctors and patients are injured, (remember the campaign to look at the deaths of 16 doctors under investigation). (16 doctors that we know about.) There are likely more.
We know of one practitioner where internet references to his death have been cleaned up – but at whose direction?). There is a well-known dangerous drugs monitoring doctor who was forced to cease practice. Statistics apparently show a 16% increase in the crime rates across Brisbane as a result of this. The view of AHPRA and the Boards about this: “We are keeping the public safe.”
Restricting finances is the most obvious method to reduce AHPRA / (Medical Board ) MBA fees- and keep the public and the medical community safe.
The purpose of the boards is to maintain a register of doctors and to provide some supervision for the medical workplace.
This appears to currently default to the current standard that every patient complaint will be investigated and begins on the basis that every patient complaint is correct - with the doctor being guilty. This is an exceptionally costly , complex and unreasonable process.
It is also out of control! The government does not do this to themselves. Put in a complaint about how AHPRA has treated you, and see what happens? We doubt any of your complaints will be investigated vs Every complaint against a doctor must be investigated and most result in a conviction.
Cutting down the resources of an organisation that is running out of control, is the first step in forcing considered decisions to be made not just knee-jerk punishments, justified by self-serving pronunciations of “keeping the public safe”. I think many members of the public would not agree with what AHPRA and the boards are doing either. Unfortunately, no one is listening to members of the public either. In the case of the Opioid Substitution Therapy patients denied access to a doctor – they are generally among the more fragile members of our society, with little capacity to defend themselves. There have been a number of deaths and critical hospitalizations in this group resulting from AHPRA /the Medical Boards’s actions. Yet it keeps on happening.
The boards have far too much money to play with and far more money is necessary for them to fulfill their basic duties. It is also patently obvious in many complaints that:
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the complainant has committed an offence in the process of engaging with a doctor e.g. violent behaviour e.g. stopping a doctor be able to work e.g. refusing to pay legitimate fees for medical services e.g. coercing a doctor to give them a script or certificate they want.
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the complainant has made spurious or false accusations against a doctor e.g. some accusations made are obviously physically impossible to have occurred but yet the doctor will still be investigated and likely punished for these complaints. One case we have heard about is AHPRA investigating a doctor for being a “Witch”. (And a male doctor too).
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The complainant is engaged in an illegal activity.
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Anonymous complaints are made. Our legal system demands the right of every person to be able to face his accusers.
The boards have also defaulted to providing an extra layer of punishment to any person who is caught up in the judicial process. This is not the duty of the Boards. They are there to protect Doctors and Patients, not to spend time and energy working out how to kick doctors in the arse.
AHPRA and the Boards' actions often hurt the public in many ways.
Let’s limit how much money they have to cause trouble with.
A final issue is that the doctors cross subsidize registration activities and many other professions – namely the allied health professions. There is no justification for doctors subsidizing other medical industries. And no justification for doctors financing the persecution of other allied health professionals.
Fees
THE AHPRA POINT OF VIEW: on this issue
Calls to halve AHPRA and Medical Board fees and submit future increases to practitioner votes reflect a basic misunderstanding of what effective regulation costs. Modern regulation is not a “register and forget” service. It is an active, intelligence-led compliance function requiring legal expertise, investigative capacity, policy development, and the infrastructure to respond to every concern raised about practitioner conduct. The community does not tolerate selective enforcement. Every complaint must be examined, and every potential risk to the public must be pursued, regardless of inconvenience to practitioners or impact on professional morale.
AHPRA’s budget reflects the scale of its authority, not the comfort of those regulated. Modern health systems generate continuous risk signals, and it is the regulator’s responsibility to pursue each signal to its conclusion. If this requires expanded investigative teams, more expert opinions, and prolonged legal engagement, then those costs are inherent to contemporary regulation. Any model that restrains regulatory capacity to reduce practitioner expense is, by definition, a model that accepts greater patient risk. That trade-off is not ethically defensible.
Assertions that registration fees drive indemnity premiums confuse correlation with responsibility. AHPRA does not price insurance risk; insurers do. Where increased scrutiny raises indemnity costs, this reflects the true risk profile of contemporary medical practice. The appropriate response is not to dilute regulation but to require practitioners to adapt to safer, more defensible standards of care. The regulator cannot be expected to accommodate resistance to oversight by lowering the financial cost of accountability.
Claims that doctors “cross-subsidise” other professions misunderstand the efficiency of national regulation. Shared infrastructure enables consistent enforcement across health disciplines and prevents fragmentation into insular professional cultures resistant to external scrutiny. Allowing practitioners to vote on the costs of their own regulation would be analogous to allowing regulated entities in any other high-risk industry to vote on the frequency of safety inspections. Such arrangements are incompatible with credible governance. Regulation must be insulated from professional sentiment, especially when that sentiment resists modernisation and accountability.
Regulation is not a service purchased by doctors; it is a condition imposed in exchange for the privilege of practice. The community expects a regulator capable of decisive intervention, sustained investigation, and uncompromised enforcement. Discomfort with this arrangement is not evidence of regulatory excess; it is a predictable response when professional autonomy is subordinated to public protection. Doctors who contest this premise demonstrate a misunderstanding of their position within a regulated profession.
Erasmus (the old dog): Call It As I See It
Legalistic view:
When a regulator sets its own scope of enforcement and controls the resources used to pursue that enforcement,
structural safeguards become thin. In administrative law, budgetary constraint is not merely an accounting issue;
it is one of the few practical checks on institutional overreach. A system in which expansion is funded by those
being pursued risks drifting from appropriate proportional response into self-serving empire building.
Human interest view:
Rising fees and indemnity costs rarely appear dramatic in policy documents, but they accumulate quietly in the
lives of clinicians. Over years, these pressures translate into delayed retirement plans, reduced clinical hours,
and the slow erosion of willingness to work in difficult or high-risk settings. The harm is gradual, and for that
reason, easy to dismiss — until access collapses.
Patient view:
Patients experience regulation not as “safety infrastructure” but as waiting lists, closed books, and the loss of
continuity when doctors step away from practice. The safety that is promised in theory is often paid for in
practice with reduced access, rushed consultations, and fewer clinicians willing to take on complex or "Politicaly Incorrect" patients.
Legal fairness view:
A regulator that funds its own expansion through compulsory fees imposed on those it investigates occupies an
ethically awkward position. Even if lawful, the appearance of self-interest is corrosive. Systems that rely on
perceived legitimacy cannot afford to look as though enforcement activity is financially self-rewarding.
Public policy view:
When doctors finance the machinery used to discipline them, trust in regulatory neutrality weakens. Over time,
scepticism replaces cooperation, and defensive compliance replaces genuine engagement. This is not how healthy
regulatory cultures are sustained.
Workforce sustainability view:
Escalating regulatory and insurance costs concentrate harm in already fragile sectors — rural medicine, addiction
care, mental health, and high-complexity practice. The system protects itself while hollowing out precisely the
services the community most needs.
