Covid dissident doctor William Bay exonerated, suspension overturned

In a blistering repudiation, the Supreme Court Justice said that the conduct of AHPRA and the Medical Board had been “less than profoundly unsatisfactory”

A Queensland doctor has won back his right to practice medicine after the Supreme Court overturned his suspension for political statements and activities during the Covid pandemic.

Dr William Bay was suspended by the medical regulators, AHPRA and the Medical Board, on 17 August 2022, after publicly questioning Covid vaccine safety, often with bombastic, live-streamed theatrics.

However, in a decision on Friday, Justice Thomas Bradley ruled that Dr Bay’s suspension was to be set aside, as AHPRA and the Board had acted with bias and did not afford Dr Bay procedural fairness.

“It might be difficult to characterise the conduct of the Board and AHPRA as anything less than profoundly unsatisfactory,” said Justice Bradley in a blistering repudiation.

Justice Bradly criticised the regulators’ “animus” and “combative approach” towards Dr Bay, along with their failure to demonstrate that Dr Bay had contravened any relevant legislation or guidelines. AHPRA and the Board have been ordered to pay costs.

Dr Bay, a GP registrar and devout Christian, made waves during the Covid pandemic for his dramatic stunts raising awareness of Covid vaccine harms, at a time when medical professionals were under strong pressure not to be seen to undermine the Covid vaccine rollout.

In 2022, Dr Bay established the Queensland People’s Protest, a pro-freedom group dedicated to raising awareness about medical censorship, informed consent, and freedom of speech.

In a ‘peak stunt,’ Dr Bay interrupted the National Conference of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) with a live-streamed tirade. During the confrontation, Dr Bay accused Chief Medical Officer at the time, Paul Kelly, of lying and of gaslighting doctors, and called on the medical professionals present to, “join with the people of Australia and stop forcing these vaccines on people who are being killed by them.”

Present at the AMA conference was the Board’s chair, Professor Anne Tonkin, who discussed with AMA Chair, Associate Professor Julian Rait, making a complaint to the Board about Dr Bay’s conduct.

Associate Professor Rait’s complaint was the fifth notification made to the regulators, all regarding Dr Bay’s public conduct and statements about Covid vaccines and public health policies. Notably, no complaints were raised about Dr Bay’s medical practice.

Shortly after, Professor Tonkin chaired the meeting at which the decision to suspend Dr Bay’s registration was made, but Dr Bay was not informed of any discussion between Professor Tonkin and Associate Professor Rait about his conduct at the conference, nor about the making of a complaint.

Thus, “a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend that [the Board] might not bring an impartial mind to the resolution of the question” of whether to suspend Dr Bay’s registration, said Justice Bradley.

AHPRA and the Board argued that the pandemic emergency required that they act hastily in suspending Dr Bay lest he continue to encourage “mistrust of vaccinations (in relation to COVID-19), of public health measures, of the health system generally, and of the regulation of the health care system.”

But Justice Bradley took a torch to this line of reasoning, stating that, “None of these [pandemic] measures authorised the Board to abrogate the right of persons, such as Dr Bay, to a hearing before an apparently unbiassed tribunal. None authorised the Board to deny him procedural fairness. None extended the Board’s regulatory role to include protection of government and regulatory agencies from political criticism.”

I interviewed Dr Bay last year, while he was still slogging it out in the courts with AHPRA and the Board. To be sure, he is colourful, eccentric, and highly vocal about his views on Covid vaccines. Some find his approach offensive.

Dr Bay owned it. He told me, “I do not deny that my approach was unusual, but that is the whole point. I signed all the declarations, but nothing was happening, and the tyranny was just getting worse and worse. You know, one shot, two shot, three shot, four. So as the conservative approach has not worked, I thought a bit of flair and colour was worth a try to wake the Australian people up to the horrors that we were experiencing.”

On Friday, Dr Bay took to his signature format – live-streaming from outside the Supreme Court with a group of supporters – to announce his win.

“I have won the right back to be a doctor and more importantly the right for all doctors to speak freely about vaccines,” he wrote on X.

“Truly, God has given me everything. Praise Jesus and thank you to my wonderful supporters without whom none of this would have [been] possible. Freedom!!”

Dr Bay’s win will provide a ray of hope to medical professionals still languishing on the bench under suspensions for things they said on social media, for prescribing off-label, or for giving vaccine exemptions.

Dr Mark Hobart, who has been suspended since November 2021 for issuing vaccine exemptions, but is yet to be found guilty of any misconduct, wrote on X,

https://x.com/DrBillyBay/status/1867407964480377330

“The house of cards is now falling down. Doctors can now tell the truth. This will be unstoppable. This will spread throughout the world and create a revolution. A revolution of truth.”

Read the decision for Bay v Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency [2024] QSC 315 in full here.