Civilisation is under attack from Australian doctors, warns pro-Israel psychiatrist Doron Samuell. Royal Children’s Hospital agrees. Wendy Bacon and Stephanie Tran investigate.
In September, Sydney psychiatrist Doron Samuell wrote to the CEO of the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) advising him that a scheduled staff panel on ‘Children and War’ would risk inflicting “moral injury, vicarious trauma, and harmful workplace behaviours” on Jewish staff and patients.
Talking exclusively to the Tel Aviv-based newspaper The Jerusalem Post, Samuell said that CEO Peter Steer wrote back the next day, thanking him for expressing his concerns and announcing the cancellation of the event because “risks of distress [to Jewish staff members] …outweigh the intended value and would not reflect our values as a hospital community.”
Steer cancelled the event without discussion with his staff. In an email to staff, Steer denied “external pressure” had played a role.
‘Moral injury’ is a term that refers to psychological and social damage that results from transgression of one’s core moral or ethical beliefs and values. How either Steer or Samuell assessed the alleged moral and psychological injury that could be caused to health professionals who believe they have a duty to speak out about the impacts of war on children is unknown.
Staff, senior academics, physicians, psychiatrists and public health experts called for the event to be reinstated.
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Doron Samuell
Samuell is a Sydney psychiatrist and member of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC). The group, which is part of the Australian Alliance of Academics Against Antisemitism (5As), has also been involved in the complaint laid against Sydney cardiologist Peter Macdonald.
Samuell, who is a long-term active member of the Liberal Party, does not hold back in attacks on fellow professionals. He claims that the RCH event was comprised of a “one-sided panel of high-profile advocates critical of Israel”, and would “inadvertently provide a platform for groups that have engaged in hateful, partisan campaigns against Israel and its supporters.”
He specifically named Médecins Sans Frontières, the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which had speakers on the panel. He accused MAPW’s Sue Wareham of referring to the Israel-Hamas War as the “genocide of the people of Gaza”.
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In a piece for Croakey Health, Sue Wareham and Fiona Stanley said Samuell’s claims were “ totally baseless” and “lack any shred of evidence”.
As MWM’s investigation shows, this is not the first time that Samuell has attacked fellow health professionals dealing with psychological damage from torture and war.
Discrediting research
In the mid-2000s, Samuell attracted significant public scrutiny for his role in challenging academic research on the psychological harm of detention for children and refugees.
In 2004, 11 psychiatrists, psychologists and child-trauma specialists published research showing that long-term detention of asylum seekers almost inevitably led to serious mental illness. Their findings documented how uncertainty, deprivation and institutional confinement precipitated depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm and suicidality among both adults and children.
Soon afterwards, Doron Samuell personally contacted the Department of Immigration, attacking the research as “politically motivated” and “advocacy rather than science.” The Howard government responded by paying Samuell ($) to produce a report which critiqued the research as “fatally flawed.” Contrary to standard practice, the contract was untendered.
The ABC covered this affair, quoting the researchers as accusing the government of sponsoring a deliberate effort to smear and discredit their work and
undermine the consensus on the harms of detention.
In a submission to a Federal parliamentary inquiry, Chair of Suicide Prevention Australia Professor Michael Dudley wrote, “Dr Samuell is unknown in refugee networks and research, is a member of the Liberal Party and had a self-confessed agenda to discredit the findings from the outset. Dr Samuell’s accusations of academic misconduct have been found to be completely without substance by an independent university inquiry.”
Insurance expertise
Samuell has spent much of his career advising insurance companies. He is well-regarded in the industry and, in 2024, received an award for doing research on dishonest disclosures by complainants. He is a qualified economist who provides advice on minimising risk.
Like any professional medico-legal witness operating in an adversarial system, courts have both upheld and rejected his opinion on many occasions. While he is concerned about psychological damage that might be done to healthy professionals by a workplace seminar, he regularly argues against claims for psychological damage and trauma sustained in accidents and in workplaces as not sufficient to warrant compensation.
In a 2015 ACT Supreme Court case in which Samuell found a plaintiff suffered no psychiatric illness, Justice David Mossop described Samuell as at least “a conservative reporter of psychiatric conditions” for two major insurance companies and that although he did not have the opportunity to cross-examine him, his opinion should be treated with caution.
He referred to Samuell’s CV as having “a considerable promotional flavour” and that his professional experience is
heavily weighted towards assisting authorities engaged in resisting claims.
Skills such as strategic analysis and planning, program services and products and media management were more prominently featured than medical practice.
Professional Opinions
Mossop quoted Samuell’s own description of his company, Professional Opinions, as
“ A bespoke provider of high level medical risk management services and strategic in-house innovation and consultancy for workers (sic) compensation, CTP and government clients’. This company has ‘commercial relationships with all WC panel providers and is a preferred provider to 4 of the panel members and all TMF [Treasury Managed Fund] providers’ and has ‘held substantial contracts with the ATO, Axa, ComSuper and corporate and government entities.”
In a 2018 case before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in which Samuell was the only psychiatrist who failed to diagnose a psychiatric illness, the Tribunal found that Samuell presented as a “very competent professional, but a person with a somewhat dogmatic approach and someone who could be intimidating, particularly to a patient suffering from anxiety.” A review of previous decisions came to the conclusion that “he can come across to some patients as being aggressive”.
The Tribunal found that Samuell was an outlier and that “the applicant claimed that he felt degraded by Dr Samuell. The Tribunal described Dr Samuell’s assessment as “less than ideal, and that Dr Samuell’s approach to interviewing the Applicant proved to be counterproductive to obtaining trust from him, or, put another way, the gleaning of information that would have been essential to making a proper clinical assessment.”
In recent years, Samuell extended his practice into Behavioural Economics. A recent CV states that he still has 400 specialist medico experts working with him. His Professional Opinions website contains little information.
In 2022, in the dying days of the Morrison government, he was appointed by Science Minister Melissa Price to the Industry Innovation and Science Australia Board, where he led research on the commercialisation of research. The appointment was for three years at an annual fee of $47,430.
Political campaigning
Earlier this year, leaked WhatsApp messages from a Liberal Party campaign group in the Sydney seat of Reid showed Samuell captioning a photo of Greens volunteers as “Nazis at Chiswick wharf.”
His remarks drew criticism within the group, but Samuell doubled down: “They are Nazis. Truth is a defence. I’m fine with it. You do you,” he wrote. “You can live fearful and woke or call a spade a spade.” The comments were later deleted.
Just after this incident was reported by the SMH, Doron and his wife, Chantelle, joined an election strategy meeting of Better Australia, a third-party campaigning outfit formed to target Greens and Teal candidates. At that meeting, Chantelle became director alongside Sophie Calland, a member of the Alexandria branch of the Labor Party.
Only six people were present, including Scott Morrison’s former principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein and ex-NSW Labor Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel. The strategy developed by the group was used to target Teals as deceptive and Greens as supportive of terrorism.
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Chantelle Samuell replaced Liberal Party strategist Alex Polson as director. While he continued to be involved in Better Australia, Polson became a senior advisor to the US-based Combat Antisemitism movement and an organiser and media advisor for its recent Gold Coast summit,
MWM attempted unsuccessfully to contact Samuell by phone. We visited one of his offices twice, but both times it was empty.
We emailed questions that remain unanswered. Six days after we sent the questions, he told us he would look at them “in due course” and rang off.
In his interview with The Jerusalem Post, Samuell raised the case of Peter Macdonald, who is on leave from St Vincent’s Hospital after an AAAHC complaint against him for alleged antisemitism was lodged.
In relation to both the RCH event and Peter Macdonald, Samuell said, “There is far too much radicalisation, far too much aggression and hate …. Medicine has become hijacked, and it affects patient outcomes. There is also intense pressure on medical colleges to take a stance against Israel, and it’s hurtful.”
“Doctors are supposed to practice within their areas of expertise, and now we have doctors cheering on the deaths of others,” Samuell added.
He recommends depoliticising hospitals and mandating civility training.
“This is not just a threat against Jews, this is a threat to civilisation,” Samuell said.
We asked Samuell to explain what he meant by ‘civility training’. In the absence of an answer, we assume it means no criticism of Israel. All of which leaves us questioning whether Samuell is himself more driven by politics than science.
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Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Stephanie is a journalist with a passion for uncovering stories that hold power to account. With a background in both law and journalism, she has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.