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AHPRA bureaucrats and investigators went to extraordinary lengths in order to unearth Dr Jereth Kok’s private beliefs.

This wasn’t regulation. It was persecution.

This wasn’t oversight. It was a digital inquisition.

Victorian general practitioner, Dr Jereth Kok, who was the subject of a recent shocking adverse ruling by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, had his medical career destroyed not because of any clinical wrongdoing, but because of a long-running investigation into his personal social media posts.

What began as anonymous complaints triggered a years-long, taxpayer-funded witch hunt to comb through over a decade of his online religious and political commentary, ultimately branding him “unfit to practise” for holding and sharing Christian beliefs.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal may have only just handed down its ruling against Dr Jereth Kok, but behind the scenes, the witch hunt began years ago. And now, following eight items of correspondence to and from AHPRA to other parties (that have been secured by Nation First), we can see the full scale of the ideological operation to break a Christian GP for the crime of expressing his beliefs online. (For legal reasons, we cannot show you the documents as they contain names and details of people who personally work for the agencies and corporations involved in this witch hunt.)

However, let’s walk through what really happened, because it’s worse than we thought.

AHPRA Ordered Facebook to Hand Over 5 Years’ Worth of Kok’s Activity

On 5 August 2019, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) sent a formal demand to Facebook’s Sydney office. The letter, marked Private and Confidential, required Facebook to produce:

• Every post and comment ever made by Dr Kok
• Comments made under his posts by other users
• Deleted and archived content
• Evidence of any community standards violations
• Details of any warnings or bans
• The dates, times, and content of every interaction

This wasn’t a narrow review. It was a blanket data trawl from 2014 to 2019, a five-year dragnet to scrutinise his private thoughts, satire, and Christian commentary.

And this was all done without a single complaint from a patient. Not one.

Facebook Pushed Back and Refused to Comply

To its credit, Facebook’s legal team at White & Case LLP pushed back.

In a strongly worded letter dated 16 August 2019, they informed AHPRA that Facebook’s position was that:

• It does not fall under Australian jurisdiction
• AHPRA’s “Notice to Produce” had no legal force internationally
• They could not and would not release user data without a valid court order or subpoena
• They suggested AHPRA seek the data directly from Dr Kok instead

So not even Facebook, hardly a haven of conservative sympathy, would play along.

Even Big Tech saw this for what it was: government overreach on a global scale.

AHPRA Outsourced Surveillance to Private Forensic Investigators

Undeterred by Facebook’s refusal, AHPRA went nuclear.

They hired Ferrier Hodgson, a private forensic firm, and commissioned them to scour not only Facebook, but also websites and blogs, where Dr Kok had posted comments over the years. The result:

• 239 web pages crawled
• 122 pages identified with Kok’s name
• Sophisticated “scrolling” software deployed to uncover hidden and de-ranked comments
• Facebook’s own privacy settings bypassed using test accounts
• A full quote for this particular item of work: one email dated 5 June 2019 cites an estimate $4,800 to $6,000 in taxpayer funds.

It is not known by Nation First whether AHPRA engaged Ferrier Hogson or other forensic investigators, at further cost to taxpayers, for other work trawling through social media pages looking for posts and comments by Dr Kok.

This was not standard medical oversight but, rather, a government-ordered deep-dive into a man’s personal and political life.

They didn’t just want to know what Dr Kok had said. They wanted to know everywhere he’d said it, everyone he’d said it to, and everything anyone said in response.

Guilt by Association: The Muehlenberg Connection

AHPRA specifically targeted comments made by Dr Kok on Bill Muehlenberg’s website and Facebook page. Why? Because Muehlenberg is a well-known conservative Christian commentator who publicly opposes abortion and gender ideology.

More than a mere investigation into professional conduct, this is where it crossed into a systematic effort to profile and punish a doctor based on his ideological environment.

AHPRA didn’t only go after Kok’s own writings. They targeted his associations, his networks, his interactions with others in the Christian conservative space.

Read that again.

They investigated a doctor’s licence because of comments made on someone else’s blog.

The Pretext: Public Confidence in the Profession

Let’s be clear. This level of scrutiny is usually reserved for criminal probes.

Yet here, it was triggered by anonymous complaints over social media commentary.

AHPRA and VCAT claimed their goal was to maintain public confidence in the profession. But what confidence is restored when a bureaucratic machine combs through your old Facebook memes with a forensic scalpel?

This went well beyond anything resembling a fair review of clinical standards. It bordered on an ideological profile in search of a justification.

They weren’t protecting patients. They were punishing dissent.

The Precedent Is Chilling

If this can happen to Dr Kok, it can happen to any Christian, any conservative, any professional who holds a licence or registration with a government body.

Let me spell it out:

• If you post on Facebook about abortion being wrong, they can investigate.
• If you comment on a friend’s page about gender ideology, they can subpoena it.
• If you question a public health order, you might face a panel.
• And if you share satire, post Scripture, or defend biblical truth, they’ll call it misconduct.

This is not hypothetical. This is now documented reality with the case of Dr Kok.

We Now Have Proof That Dr Kok Was Hunted

AHPRA used taxpayer money to try and reconstruct Dr Kok’s digital life.

They outsourced the job to forensic tech firms. They tried to pressure Facebook into compliance.

They pulled comments off blogs. They treated satire as threat. They treated biblical beliefs as hate.

All for what?

• No patient was harmed.
• No clinical error was made.
• And yet this man has been banned from practising for six years. With more to come.

The State Wants to Scare You Silent

This wasn’t just about Dr Kok. It was about sending a message.

Keep your Christianity quiet.

Keep your thoughts to yourself.

Toe the line or lose your livelihood.

Well, we’ve seen the line.

We’ve seen the lengths they’ll go to.

And now, we must fight.

What you can do:

• Share this story. Flood the internet with it. Let the world know.
• Support Dr Kok’s legal battle by donating to the Human Rights Law Alliance.
• Contact your MP and demand legislation that protects freedom of speech and belief, not just for the loud and famous, but for ordinary working Australians.
• Contact your Senators and request a Senate inquiry into AHPRA’s underhanded actions in its crusade to destroy Dr Kok’s career.
• Speak up. Every time they silence one of us, ten more must rise.

Because if we don’t draw the line now, there won’t be a line left to draw.

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Republished with thanks to Nation First. Image via Nation First.