Launceston General Hospital doctor loses five-year discrimination battle

A Launceston General Hospital medical specialist has come to the end of a five-year anti-discrimination and victimisation battle against the hospital on the basis of his race and Islamic religion. LATEST >

Haematologist Professor Alhossain Khalafallah at the Launceston General Hospital.

A Launceston General Hospital medical specialist has come to the end of a five-year anti-discrimination and victimisation battle against the hospital on the basis of his race and Islamic religion.

Senior specialist and consultant haematologist Alhossain Khalafallah first lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in June 2018 against a hospital boss and the Tasmanian Health Service.

Dr Khalafallah started working at the LGH in 2006 and said since that time, had “constantly faced hardship, undue scrutiny and ongoing harassment”, which he attributed to discrimination on the basis of his Egyptian/African race and his Islamic religion.

In a newly-published Supreme Court of Tasmania appeal judgment, Justice Michael Brett said Dr Khalafallah was reassigned from the Department of Medicine to Cancer Services in 2016.

Dr Khalafallah said that move interfered with his practice of leaving work to attend a prayer session on Friday afternoons, and that he was told he would need to submit applications for leave without pay in order to attend.

Haematologist Dr Alhossain Khalafallah

The doctor also claimed a hospital boss queried him seeing patients in his private rooms instead of at the clinic premises, with Dr Khalafallah claiming this was unfair and unwarranted scrutiny that would not have been directed at others at the LGH.

Dr Khalafallah, among other complaints, said he was subjected to “a general atmosphere of hostility and antipathy”

The Commissioner’s delegate dismissed the doctor’s complaint in 2019 on the ground it was “misconceived and lacking in substance”, noting explanations had been provided for his work changes and the action taken over Dr Khalafallah seeing patients in his private rooms.

The delegate found there was no evidence to support a causal link between the conduct and the doctor’s attributes, and that it was equally possible the situation was caused by “a personality clash”.

Dr Khalafallah lost a subsequent Anti-Discrimination Tribunal review in 2021.

He has now also lost an appeal to the Supreme Court, in which he asked for the determination to be quashed and returned to what is now the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

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