Vaccinations are a cornerstone of public health yet a Herald investigation has found parents who are happy to undermine the system by paying anti-vaccine doctors and nurses to falsify Medicare records to enrol their children in childcare and fraudulently claim government payments.
These parents are using an anti-vaccine Facebook group with more than 40,000 members to help find medical staff willing to help them game the system by changing their children’s immunisation records.
Some even boast of obtaining a medical practitioner to falsify documents, while others talk of knowing somebody who knows a nurse who will agree to rort the system for $2500 per child.
Our investigation by Kayla Olaya listed scattered cases around Australia where medical professionals had abused the system under the nose of authorities with few consequences. It told the heart-wrenching story of a three-week old baby boy whose needless death resulted from meeting somebody who had neglected to be vaccinated against whooping cough.
The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have turbocharged anti-vaccination sentiment across the country, and now vaccine uptake in Australia has stalled below national targets amid a global climate of rising anti-vaccine sentiment, partly fuelled by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and sovereign citizens.
Against a plethora of unqualified opinions, health experts warn that unvaccinated children risk infecting themselves with preventable diseases while lowering herd immunity, leaving others at risk of severe illness or death.
In a 2025 study of Australian parents of 2000 under-fives, 47.9 per cent of unvaccinated parents did not believe vaccines are safe, and 46.7 per cent would not feel guilty if their unvaccinated child got a vaccine-preventable disease. Nearly 40 per cent did not believe vaccinating children helps protect others in the community.
In NSW, health authorities have issued a warning about an increased risk of measles – a vaccine-preventable airborne disease – with 14 cases since December 1, 2025. The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is given free to children in doses at 12 and 18 months. There were 181 measles cases in Australia in 2025, according to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System – more than three times the number in 2024.
Such figures must be frightening for the childcare industry. Currently, two health policies – no pay, no jab and no jab, no play – mean unvaccinated children cannot be enrolled in childcare or preschool in most states and families lose tax benefits unless they have a medical exemption or are on a vaccination catch-up program.
Both the federal Department of Health and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency were unaware of any confirmed cases of parents paying health practitioners to fraudulently update children’s records.
But the popularity of the anti-vaccine Facebook group, which is being used to find doctors or nurses sympathetic to its own beliefs, suggests authorities have little idea as to the extent of the true problem. Clearly, more oversight and investigation is needed to protect all children from the dangers of being infected by a minority of dishonest families.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
The Herald’s View – Since the Herald was first published in 1831, the editorial team has believed it important to express a considered view on the issues of the day for readers, always putting the public interest first.
