St Vincent's Hospital Sydney was taking calls from patients asking, 'Please take my religion off my record,' after allegations that two former nurses at Bankstown Hospital said they would refuse to treat Israeli patients.
That’s the human cost when a public institution starts feeling unsafe to the people it’s supposed to serve. Jewish patients, according to Sydney Rabbi Mendel Kastel, were trying to scrub their religion from hospital admission information because they feared what might happen if staff saw it. The royal commission on antisemitism heard the complaint on Tuesday, and the detail cuts straight through the polished language of policy: people were worried enough about care to hide who they were.
Who Gets to Feel Safe
Rabbi Kastel, who has worked as a chaplain with NSW Health for a number of years, told the inquiry that many Jewish Australians were apprehensive about attending hospitals after the allegations. He said he filmed a video with a Muslim colleague at Bankstown Hospital to reassure people that it was a safe space. That kind of reassurance shouldn’t have to exist in the first place. But once fear enters a hospital, the institution starts asking the wrong questions: how to manage the optics, how to calm the public, how to keep the machine running.
“After the story with the nurses there was real fear to the extent that even in my discussions with NSW Health, [it] was should we create a diversion or another way that people can get healthcare because they're too afraid to go to hospital,” he said. “My answer was absolutely not. We need to make sure that hospitals are safe and that people feel safe in hospitals.”
That’s the clearest statement in the hearing. Not a slogan. A refusal to let fear become a substitute for care.
The inquiry will hear on Wednesday from South Western Sydney Local Health District CEO Sonya Marshall about the policies and training put in place for staff after the allegations against the former nurses in February 2025. Both former nurses have pleaded not guilty to one charge of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend, while one has also denied a further charge of threatening violence to a group. The legal process keeps moving. The anxiety doesn’t pause for it.
What the Institutions Call Safety
Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell AC SC asked Rabbi Kastel whether, “in the current climate,” hospital staff should be prohibited from wearing Palestinian and Israeli flag pins in the workplace. He said yes. That exchange shows how quickly institutions turn to rules, bans and workplace controls once conflict spills into their corridors. The question isn’t just about pins. It’s about who gets to define order inside a public service and who gets told to swallow their fear quietly.
Rabbi Kastel also spoke about the Bondi Beach terror attack on December 14, 2025, in which his brother-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, died. Fifteen people died in the shooting, which occurred during a Hanukkah event at Bondi's Archer Park. He became emotional as he described the One Mitzvah for Bondi campaign, established to encourage people to do good deeds that would help their community. “We're taught in Jewish values that the way to move forward is by embracing good, creating more light,” he said.
He said interfaith collaboration would be key to fostering social cohesion after the attack. “We're not going to agree on everything. But one thing we can agree on is to be kind to each other, and to demand from the Australian society to be kind to everyone,” he said. “It's a universal message of unity and if we do it together, we have a much better chance of getting it done.” One of the gunmen was shot dead by police at the scene, while the other remains before the courts.
The Public Sector’s Policing of Dissent
The commission also heard about the public sector’s own internal discipline. More than 2,000 public servants signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in early 2024 criticising the federal government's response to the war in Gaza. The letter called on the Australian Government to “take swift and decisive action tend its support of the genocide, ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation of Palestine by immediately ceasing all military exports to Israel.”
That letter, and the response to it, exposed the narrow lane public servants are expected to stay in. According to the Australian Public Service statement of values, the organisation must be apolitical. Australian Public Service Commission acting deputy commissioner Joanne Talbot said it was “highly concerning” and that it did border on being apolitical. She also said, “I believe some people were sanctioned but I don't know what happened to those employees.”
NSW Public Service Commissioner Kathrina Lo went further. She said the conduct was inappropriate and that “public servants crossed the line.” She said she and the secretary of the NSW premier's office sent a joint message to all public servants in the state reinforcing the need to comply with impartiality obligations. A similar message went out after the allegations against the former Bankstown hospital nurses. The line from above was plain: stay neutral, stay compliant, keep the gears turning.
Former federal Department of Employment and Workplace Relations secretary Natalie James, who is Jewish, said she had not personally experienced antisemitism during her time in the public sector. But she said she was concerned about a lack of guidance to combat underlying attitudes that could make Jewish people feel unsafe. “I am concerned there is a hesitancy to lean beyond the overt antisemitism and into some of this very uncomfortable space where … framing around the Middle East conflict means we are in a very grave space,” she said.
The Department of Home Affairs' head of immigration, Clare Sharp, also gave evidence about the levers available to the department to prevent people who could disrupt or cause harm to the community from entering the country. She cited cases including conservative speaker Candace Owens being denied a temporary visa under the character test due to comments she made which downplayed the impact of the Holocaust. Musician Kanye West, who goes by Ye, was also blocked from entering Australia over antisemitic song lyrics.
The hearing kept circling the same hard truth. People at the bottom are the ones who have to navigate the fear, the paperwork and the rules. The institutions answer with training, sanctions, visa tests and statements about neutrality. The public gets told that’s safety.