Human Rights -

Dr. Mark Hobart revisits the erosion of conscience rights for doctors and their patients as it has unfolded across Australia in recent decades. This post is based on recent talks and articles from Dr. Hobart.

In this piece I wish to explain and describe the progression of government control over medical practitioners that has occurred over the last 20 years, starting with:

the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act in 2008
the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act in 2010 (particularly with regards to the illegality of being able to discriminate according to gender identity and sex which is essential in the practice of medicine to avoid life-threatening disasters
the “no jab no pay/play” vaccination of children in 2016,
the legalisation of euthanasia in Victoria in 2017,
the Covid injection mandates in 2021,
and lastly the removal of conscientious objection to euthanasia by doctors in the amendments to the Victorian VAD law in December 2025.

I contend that these are all examples of conscription of medical services by the state governments and, because they must be paid for by Medicare which is an Australian government agency, are in contravention of section 51xxiii(A) of the Australian Constitution, which prohibits “any form” of conscription of medical services.

The term “services” in this context means the private contract between the doctor and the patient for a medical service to occur, for which you need both parties, and for the contract to be valid you need informed consent and no coercion of either party.

Abortion

In October 2008, Victoria passed the Abortion Law Reform Act¹ which stated that the doctors
must refer to a “non-objecting practitioner” when a patient presented to them requesting an
abortion if the doctor had a conscientious objection to the abortion. The doctor was not to
proceed with any further discussion or advice regarding the abortion. This law spread to all
the other states over the next few years.

In late November 2011 a woman presented to me who was 19 ½ weeks pregnant, accompanied by her husband. They requested an abortion because the baby was a girl and they did not want a girl because they already had one. I refused to refer her, explaining that it was dangerous for her health, and eventually I had to explain to her that it was also against my religious beliefs, when she replied that she was not concerned about the health risks.

On 17 May 2013, the medical board commenced an own motion investigation into my actions because I had failed to refer to a non-objecting practitioner and demonstrated a disregard for patient rights. On 30 January 2014, I was cautioned because I had stated in the media that I knowingly acted in contravention of section 8 of the abortion laws reform act, that is the section which prohibits conscientious objection.

Doctors unable to discriminate regarding gender or sex

According to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 2010², attributes protected by law are:

age, race, and disability
gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation
marital, parental, or carer status
religion, political belief, and industrial activity

Of course it is necessary for doctors to discriminate on the basis of gender and sex and do so with every patient; not to do so would be very dangerous because men and women are anatomically and genetically different. However, this legislation has permitted hormonal and gross surgical mutilation, leading in many cases to misery and death.³

In July 2015, I was reported to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission by a patient whom I had not seen previously, because I did not prescribe female hormones as the patient requested. The patient appeared male, and they said they were undergoing treatment to transition into a woman, and they said they were “legally a woman”.

Their usual doctor was not available at the time. It was a new patient. The patient had located me using the internet. I refused to prescribe the medication and explained to the patient that in my opinion it is dangerous to prescribe for a genetic male female hormones.

The complaint was looked at by the Human Rights Commission and conciliation of this complaint was attempted which was unsuccessful. The commission decided to close the matter pursuant to section 115 of the act. They said that conciliation of this complaint had been attempted but was unsuccessful, and that they had decided to close the matter pursuant to section 115(2)(a) of the Equal Opportunity Act which directs to 116(e):

“having regard to all the circumstances, the Commission considers it is not appropriate to provide or to continue to provide dispute resolution.”

So I think I dodged a bullet there!

Other doctors have not been so lucky: for example, Dr Jillian Spencer, the psychiatrist who lost her job at the Brisbane Children’s Hospital for three years because she didn’t follow the policy directions of the hospital with regards to puberty blockers in children. Recently, she has won her case against the hospital, and hopefully she’ll be reinstated.

No jab, no pay/play

In 2016, the Victorian government brought in “no jab, no play” laws which meant parents were required to have their children vaccinated with the recommended childhood vaccines or they would be penalised by withholding of the tax rebate, which could amount to up to $800 per fortnight, so that they could not afford to put their children into childcare or kindergarten.

Wealthy parents could afford to do this, but families where both parents had to work to pay the mortgage and put food on their table could not. I think most reasonable people would define this as coercion.

There is no avenue for the parents to refuse these vaccinations for the children because they are worried about their safety or adverse effects on the health of their child or the fact that some of these vaccines are manufactured from aborted foetal tissue.

Any doctor who advises against these vaccinations is highly likely to be suspended from practice and factor home. Doctors who advised against the vaccinations are highly likely to be suspended from practice and face cancellation of their licence. Dr John Piesse was suspended in 2017 for this and is still suspended.

Euthanasia

In 2017, Victoria legalised euthanasia⁴, calling it “voluntary assisted dying.” In most cases, this involved a doctor giving the patient a bottle of a very strong sedative, phenobarbital, which could be drunk later at a time of the patients choosing and which would, in most cases cause the patient’s death.

It is not called voluntary assisted suicide, possibly because assisted suicide is still a crime in Victoria punishable by five years imprisonment. Although suicide is not illegal, assisting or encouraging another person to commit suicide remains a criminal offence in Victoria.

Section 6B(2) of the Crimes Act 1958⁵ makes it an indictable offence to:

incite another person to commit suicide if the other person does so or attempts to do so.
aid or abet another person to commit suicide if the other person does so or attempts to do so.
be a party to a suicide pact.

The maximum penalty for these offences is five years’ imprisonment. As stated previously, the Victorian government amended the euthanasia law in December 2025, making conscientious objection to euthanasia illegal and stating that the doctor “must” give the patient information regarding euthanasia if the patient presents enquiring about euthanasia:

Conscientious objection of registered health practitioners.

(1) In section 7 (a) of the Principal Act, for “to” substitute “subject to subsection (2), to”.
(2) At the end of section 7 of the Principal Act insert—
”If a registered health practitioner who has a conscientious objection to voluntary assisted dying refuses to provide information about voluntary assisted dying to a person requesting information about or access to voluntary assisted dying, the practitioner must—
(a) advise the person that another registered health practitioner or a health service provider may be able to assist the person in relation to information about or access to voluntary assisted dying; and
(b) give the person the information approved by the Secretary.”⁶

Now we have Voluntary Assisted Dying, which should be called voluntary assisted suicide, but because assisted suicide is a crime listed in the crime act with a penalty of five years in jail it can’t be called that. It really can’t be called voluntary assisted death either because it’s up to the patient to take the medication which is supposed to kill them (usually phenobarbital which sometimes fails to kill the patient) at their own discretion so the the doctor doesn’t need to wait and make sure that the patient is dead.

Also, the doctor writing the death certificate must not write that the patient has died from the ingestion of the lethal dose of medication but write the terminal condition leading to the patient feeling that life is not worth living any more: for example, cancer, heart failure, multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease (which Neil Daniher, a prominent Ausgralian footballer, had been suffering from for many years).

It is impossible to give an accurate estimation of how long these people will be expected to survive with any of these conditions. The legislation at present states that death is to be expected within 12 months.

According to this legislation, if a patient comes to you as a doctor requesting “assisted dying” and wants information as to how to do it, (i.e. they want to know how to kill themselves) instead of asking them why, and whether you feel it is a genuine possibility they would do this, and instead of calling the CAT team or the police surgeon to stop them, or certifying them yourself (as you could formerly do), you must give the advice on how to kill themselves including information approved by the government secretary.

I hope she’s a good secretary.

Imagine a patient coming to see a doctor requesting advice regarding euthanasia, and instead of the doctor asking them why they want to die and arranging urgent psychiatric evaluation, he or she must give them advice on how to do it. It really is beyond belief but here we are.

It is needless to say that if doctors criticise this legislation, they are putting themselves at risk of suspension in the same way as I was cautioned when I criticised the abortion legislation in 2013. Indeed, this happened to me.

On 26 February 2020 I was reported to the Health Complaints Commissioner by Dr Cameron McLaren, an oncologist at Peter McCallum hospital who promoted euthanasia and facilitated euthanasia for his patients and was featured prominently in “The Age” and “The Australian” newspapers on December 26 2019 and February 21 2020 respectively.

He also wrote an article in the “Australian Doctor” magazine on February 26 2020 on which doctors were invited to comment. He was asked “What are the reasons behind the patients coming to you?” He replied,

“for the vast majority, it is not due to the physical suffering they face. Dealing with pain, with physical suffering, is something that palliative care does manage exceptionally well… They might be very comfortable, even peaceful, but through voluntary assisted dying we can provide closure in ways that assist the grieving process for the patient and the family. It’s an existential problem – not just about pain management.”

I made a comment simply stating that Adolf Hitler suspended his euthanasia program on August 18, 1941 after public protests, which I quoted from the “History Channel.” The complaint was forwarded to AHPRA but no further action was taken.

COVID mandates

From the AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) position statement on COVID-19 vaccination:

“Any promotion of anti-vaccination statements or health advice which contradicts the best available scientific evidence or seeks to actively undermine the national immunisation campaign (including via social media) is not supported by National Boards and may be in breach of the codes of conduct and subject to investigation and possible regulatory action.” ⁷

In November 2021, I was suspended from medical practice by the medical board, being charged with professional misconduct. The main reason was that I had issued temporary COVID injection exemptions to my patients because I could not comply with the position statement.

By that time, it was widely known that the COVID injections caused death from myocarditis and pericarditis, and this was reported in the mainstream medical literature. It was also widely known that the vaccines did not prevent transmission of the virus, and that they caused myocarditis. Indeed, Dr Nick Coatsworth, Commonwealth deputy chief medical officer at the time of COVID, in an interview on “A Current Affair” in March 2025 has since admitted this and said that the covid mandates were “unethical”. (see 7.20 – 8.10)

This was also published in a poster by the NSW ambulance authority in August 2021. (see below).

In November 2021 I was suspended by AHPRA because I gave temporary medical certificates usually of three months duration to my patients who were being forced to have the COVID injection otherwise they would lose their jobs and or have an injection which was dangerous to their health and or also conflict with their religious beliefs because the injections were made from aborted human foetal parts.

When I had the opportunity to ask, about 50% of them had suicidal ideation about this, so I had no hesitation in giving them a certificate saying that they should not have the injection. I am still suspended now almost five years later waiting for the decision of my last trial which finished on the 16 June. The medical board is attempting to prove that I am guilty of professional misconduct and a danger to the Australian public.

I am one of four doctors who have been suspended for this in Victoria because we all stood up for this violation of one of the most basic of human rights the right to be fully informed of your medical treatment and the right to refuse this treatment if you don’t want it.

Dr Luke McLindon, Catholic, a specialist obstetrician and gynaecologist specialising in fertility treatment at the Catholic Mater Hospital in Brisbane, in an affidavit to the Supreme court QLD found that 73% of his patients that were vaccinated within 6 weeks of conception against COVID had miscarriages compared with 13% of the patients that had not been vaccinated immediately prior to or just after conception. He was sacked by the hospital in June 2022 and has been unable to work in medicine since. He told me that the Mater hospital was the only public Catholic hospital in Australia, offering tubal surgery restore fertility; these are no longer offered and patients are now told “there’s only IVF”, as cost is a significant barrier.

Several other doctors throughout Australia have been suspended for comments they made about COVID in social media or in the mainstream media, or they were sacked from their jobs because they refused to have the COVID injections.

Implications for Catholic doctors

These laws are contrary to fundamental Catholic teaching regarding the right to life, and to live according to the truths of the Catholic faith. Even if you are not Catholic, these laws are against the natural law. The Hippocratic oath from 500 BC contained fundamentals precepts: first do not harm, do not prescribe or administer a poison, do not procure an abortion and there must be confidentiality between the physician and patient; the term “patient” derives from the Latin patientem: “suffering”.

Catholic doctors and doctors who follow the natural law cannot assist patients to kill themselves. We should not stand by and not give a good counter argument to a woman who wants to abort their child and certainly not be complicit in abortion. We should not comply with giving a medical treatment the patient is forced into accepting because they believe it is dangerous or against their beliefs, or that we think may be dangerous for them and but recommended it to the patient because the government says it is so. On the other hand if we do not do these doctors are not able to practice medicine in our society.

What can be done?

As I said at the outset I contend these are all examples of conscription of medical services by the state governments and, because they must be paid for by Medicare, which is an Australian government agency, is in contravention to section 51xxiii(A) of the Australian continent Constitution, which prohibits “any form” of conscription of medical services.

This amendment to the Constitution was brought in by the Robert Menzies in 1946, in the context of the then recent Nuremberg medical trials which punished doctors who performed forced experimental medical treatment.

Although it may be sometime before we can use the Constitution to rectify the situation logically, it should be possible if there is sufficient public opinion to push things towards this end.

The main purpose of my talk is to raise public awareness of the current state of affairs so that people can form an understanding of how we got to the situation, which is completely untenable and unacceptable, and then take steps to change it.

Dr Mark Hobart, MBBS.
30 July 2026

Dr. Mark Hobart is an Australian GP in the state of Victoria, who was unjustly targeted for his stance against government overreach during the COVID pandemic. When it became known that he was writing exemptions from the mandatory, experimental mRNA vaccines, Dr. Hobart’s clinic, located in the Melbourne western suburb of Sunshine, was raided by the authorities and he subsequently was suspended from practising medicine.

ENDNOTES

Tag: Human Rights

The abolition of doctor and patients’ rights since 2008