Australasian Vet Education Accreditor Says It’s Improving Its Standards . . . It’s NOT
'Advancing Education by Ensuring Standards'. Yeah, right:
Will Kate Simkovic, AVBC CEO, Put Her Money Where Her Mouth Is?
The Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) held a Special General Meeting in Melbourne last December, unanimously voting to restructure itself as a company limited by guarantee.
This move, according to the AVBC’s media statement, marked “a significant milestone in the organisation’s evolution as the peak body for veterinary education standards across Australia and New Zealand”.
The decision to “transfer AVBC’s incorporation from an incorporated association to a company limited by guarantee under Commonwealth legislation . . . reflects a strategic alignment with contemporary governance expectations for national organisations operating across multiple jurisdictions”, the media statement went on to say.
Referring to the move as a “strategic evolution”, it continued on: “The new corporate structure will enable AVBC to apply for registration as a charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) under the charitable purpose of advancing education. This designation recognises AVBC’s fundamental role in safeguarding the quality and consistency of veterinary education in the public interest.”
The words chosen by AVBC’s Chief Executive, Kate Simkovic, to elaborate on that decision and the reason for it, are worth examining carefully (because IIIVE has a problem with the gap between Ms Simkovic’s terminology and the reality our Institute has uncovered inside at least one of the institutions AVBC has issued accreditation to i.e. Massey University. Keep reading):
"This decision reflects the collective commitment of (AVBC) members to strong, contemporary governance that supports AVBC's critical role in safeguarding veterinary education standards. Transitioning to a company limited by guarantee positions the organisation for long-term sustainability, enhances regulatory credibility, and enables us to operate with greater clarity and accountability in the public interest."
“Regulatory credibility.” “Clarity.” “Accountability.” “The public interest.”
These are not small words. They are words that carry weight – or that ought to. Hold on to them. They are precisely the words that make what follows so important.
Continuing on with the media statement:
“The revised Constitution clarifies AVBC’s principal purpose as
advancing education by ensuring and maintaining the standards, curriculum, training, and assessment of veterinary education. This articulation directly supports the organisation’s charitable objectives and reflects its
long-standing quality assurance role.”
Yet Here Are the Standards the AVBC Is Currently Accrediting . . . And Is It Aware?
A resounding YES . . . the AVBC is aware.
For over a month, IIIVE Executive Director, Jordan Kelly, has been regularly reporting on the latest – and increasingly disturbing – findings of Massey’s conduct in the case of Harry Kelly.
Ms Simkovic has neglected to acknowledge any of these communications.
On Friday, March 6, 2026, IIIVE sent the formal notification to Kate Simkovic personally at ceo@avbc.asn.au, that you can read under the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council tab in the Correspondence section of the Harry Kelly Case page.
We also sent formal notice of what has gone on at the Massey veterinary facility to other international accreditors and to key stakeholders in Asian geographies as they relate to the impacts upon them of continuing to import Massey graduates trained in, to put it euphemistically, “questionable” practices. We cc’d Simkovic on each of these emails. She has acknowledged none of them.
The substance of that notification includes documented evidence that Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital repeatedly administered catastrophic overdoses of a sedative, purely for the convenience of staff, of Gabapentin, potentiated with a further drug, to Harry Kelly – being not only unnecessary but also specifically contraindicated for his documented condition – that his IV line was (permanently) disconnected for unauthorised student experiments and observation in his distress and state of pharmacological collapse, that his veterinary records were falsified to disguise all these facts, and that his owner, Jordan Kelly (before resultantly becoming the Executive Director of IIIVE), was subjected to a coerced “euthanasia” on the basis of a false “neurological event” diagnosis i.e. with the fact of any sedation never having been disclosed i.e. as the true reason for Harry’s state on that day. Harry Kelly indeed died that day, with his owner left to her own devices to subsequently uncover the truth, and the completely unnecessary nature of her pet’s death.
The named veterinarian responsible for Harry's care and for conducting that termination is Dr Stephanie Rigg. Others were also involved, and at this time, Massey has redacted all their names from the limited veterinary records it has released.
Massey’s overly liberal redactions constitute a breach of both the New Zealand Privacy Act, and also of international veterinary medical records standards – a position confirmed by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (UK), which has stated that there should be no basis for a clinic to redact the names of a patient's treating clinicians from their medical records.
A formal complaint is before the New Zealand Police related to the falsification of records, which constitutes a criminal act under New Zealand’s Crimes Act 1961.
The New Zealand Law Society has accepted a formal complaint against the Veterinary Council of New Zealand's Chief Executive, Iain McLachlan, which has been referred to the Standards Committee – a process the Law Society advises may take many months.
And New Zealand’s Ministry of Primary Industries’ National Animal Welfare Inspectorate has confirmed an impending investigation of animal welfare standards and related conduct at Massey’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital aka “Companion Animal Hospital”.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (UK) (RCVS) and the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) have all been formally notified. So have veterinary regulatory authorities in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The correspondence with these organisations – demonstrating their concern or absence thereof – can be found at the Harry Kelly Case page.
What Accreditation Is Supposed to Mean
AVBC's own program accreditation documentation states that its standards place great emphasis on the attributes of veterinary graduates and how veterinary schools develop and deliver the veterinary curriculum to ensure graduates have developed those attributes.
The standards are reviewed annually. Site visits occur at least every seven years. Annual reports are required in the intervening years.
What the standards are supposed to guarantee – what accreditation is supposed to mean – is that an institution is producing graduates who meet the ethical and clinical benchmarks required to practice safely. That the institution itself upholds those benchmarks internally. That when something goes wrong, there are accountability mechanisms that function.
At Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital, those mechanisms did not function. An animal in acute distress, caused by intentional staff actions, was filmed repeatedly. His records were falsified. His owner's informed consent was compromised. A coerced termination was conducted. And the university management's response - on the public record - has not only been denial but the issuing of legal threats to gag the owner from disclosing the matter.
Moreover – and as if the case in its own right were not sufficiently horrific – the component issues the case has brought to light indicate that the compromised ethics and practices that allowed it to occur at all – are systemic and that students are being trained in precisely these “ethics” and “practices” . . . and will be importing them into veterinary clinics both around New Zealand and around the world, upon their graduation from this compromised training ground.
The Questions Before Ms Simkovic
Kate Simkovic has now committed her organisation – in her own words, in her own issued press releases, in her own revised constitution – to “advancing education by ensuring standards”, to “operating with greater clarity and accountability in the public interest”, and to “enhancing the AVBC's regulatory credibility”.
Those are commitments, not aspirations. They have a specific meaning in the context of what has been reported to her.
IIIVE is now asking these straightforward questions . . . and we’d appreciate equally straightforward answers (to date, we’ve had none at all):
· Will AVBC CEO Kate Simkovic put her money where her mouth is?
· Will the AVBC act on the information it has received?
· Will it initiate a formal inquiry into whether Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital continues to meet AVBC accreditation standards? (Clearly it does not.)
· Will her accrediting organisation address the structural conflict of interest created by the also-compromised VCNZ's membership of the very body charged with providing independent oversight of Massey?
Or will the language of accountability remain exactly that – language?
We will be watching. And we will be reporting whatever answer comes – including the answer of silence.
But Wait There’s More: ‘Separation Between Governance and Management Functions’
The AVBC media statement claims that the accreditor has “a Board appointed by Members to provide strategic oversight and maintain appropriate separation between governance and management functions”.
The IIIVE begs to differ on this key point. Substantially.
To be clear: The Australasian Veterinary Boards Council is the peak body responsible for veterinary education standards and accreditation across Australia and New Zealand. Its membership comprises the veterinary statutory authorities of every Australian state and territory – plus, critically, the Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ).
That is, the Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ) is one of AVBC's constituent members. It sits inside the Council of Members. It participates in AVBC governance.
Apart from the obvious baked-in conflict of interest, there’s the not insignificant current matter that the VCNZ has, in the view of IIIVE and a growing body of evidence, failed comprehensively in its oversight of Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital.
The VCNZ’s CEO, Iain McLachlan, is currently the subject of a formal complaint to the New Zealand Law Society relating both to that failure and to the intersection of it with the fact of multiple points of conflicts-of-interest between the VCNZ and Massey . . . and McLachlan’s apparent habit of not being overly upfront about these.
It’s very much worth noting, therefore, that when the AVBC conducts accreditation oversight of Massey University, VCNZ is simultaneously a member of that oversight body and the domestic regulator responsible for veterinary professional standards at Massey.
These roles cannot be cleanly separated. At all.
Yet, legally, ethically, and realistically – even without the current compromises evidenced both at the VCNZ and Massey – a body cannot conduct any genuinely independent accreditation review of an institution when its own member organisation is the compromised domestic regulator of that same institution.
Ms Simkovic said the restructure would enable the AVBC to operate with "greater clarity and accountability in the public interest."
We are watching to see whether that clarity extends to confronting this structural problem directly.
IIIVE — the International Institute for Improvement in Veterinary Ethics — was founded following the horrifying death of Harry Kelly at Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital on December 1, 2025. IIIVE's formal documentation of the Harry Kelly case, and the full record of correspondence with accrediting organisations, can be found here.
