On 17 June the Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (Ahpra) announced they would use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference tool when investigating complaints against practitioners. But opposition in the healthcare sector is growing.
This announcement was released as a joint statement with the Australian Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism (ASECA). Ahpra has taken on the ASECA handbook as an additional tool.
Examples given within both the definition and the handbook conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism and will now be applied to close to one million health workers in Australia.
It has since come to light via the Royal Commission that the definition and handbook will not only be kept as reference tools for investigating complaints, but also for Ahpra’s active monitoring of health practitioners’ social media for criticism of Israel.
Nurses and midwives in NSW have organised at the grassroots of their union against Ahpra’s decision, passing motions to oppose it in 15 branches of the NSWNMA around the state.
Hospital branches rejecting the definition include Liverpool, Auburn, Bankstown, RPA, Nepean, Broken Hill, Bellingen, Ryde and Tweed, as well as Lismore, Shoalhaven, Sutherland and Sydney LHD Mental Health branches.
This helped push the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the union’s national body, to release its own statement opposing the move on 10 July. ASMOF NSW, the doctors’ union, has now also called on Aphra to rescind the IHRA definition, as has the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) in Victoria.
Hundreds of delegates of the NSWNMA also voted up a similar motion at their annual conference in late July, committing the union as a whole to fighting Ahpra’s decision and defending members investigated using the new “tools”.
In Melbourne, HACSU is helping organise a protest against Ahpra on Friday 14 August, rallying at the State Library at 4pm and marching to the Ahpra offices.
Rank-and-file organising in the NSWNMA follows a protracted arbitration process which resulted in a dismal pay outcome earlier this year, with a union election later in the year.
Eighteen months ago, when the union leadership encouraged an end to industrial action for wages and took members down a path of arbitration, the networks of members who have organised together against Ahpra’s decision did not yet exist.
Outrage over pay and an ineffective use of industrial power brought members together to argue for a different way forward in the next fight for wages.
These same networks have been strengthened in the process of fighting off the IHRA definition.
Members are continuing to meet to discuss how to escalate their fight, with plans to hold branch-endorsed workplace actions across the state.
By Alex McInnis
