Between nothing and 40% depending on who is selecting. Orthopaedics scores the verbal referee report at 40% of the rank with the CV at 0% 1; SA adult BPT weights referees 30% against a CV worth 10% 2. Queensland BPT and ACRRM score them at zero 34.
The published weightings span the whole range. Orthopaedics ranks applicants on interview 60% plus verbal referee report 40%, with the structured CV reduced to a hurdle worth 0% 1. South Australian adult BPT is referee reports 30%, interview 60%, CV and cover letter 10% — the heaviest referee weighting published in Australia 2. OHNS runs structured reference reports at 35% plus multi-source feedback at 10% 5. Urology 30% 6; vascular 25% written plus 10% verbal 7; psychiatry 15% 8. RANZCO allocates six points out of a hundred and picks which of your nominees to contact at random 9.
And at the other end, zero. Queensland's adult BPT guide weights referees "N/A", using them for shortlisting suitability only 3. ACRRM states that reference checks "will not contribute to the overall score" 4. RANZCOG abolished traditional referee reports outright from 2026 and replaced them with a mini multi-source feedback tool worth 20%, rated by six to eight people including midwifery, nursing and allied health 10. The direction of travel is away from two hand-picked consultants.
What that means in practice. In the programs where referees carry 30-40%, a lukewarm report is fatal and nobody tells you. Someone who shortlists for a training program says that across a batch of thirty applications with three references each, anything less than glowing stands out immediately and one or two are outright negative 11. You can request your own reference reports under freedom of information after the fact 11.
The dissent worth publishing. A head of department says he places very little weight on references and would rather see multi-source feedback, because a traditional reference mostly tests whether you correctly identified people who would say nice things about you 12. Both things are true, which is why the weighting differs so wildly by program.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
It's far more likely that your application was just not competitive enough or perhaps you chose referees who were ambivalent and not enthusiastic to provide glowing references, rather than someone giving an unexpected bad reference.
I read maybe 30 applications in a batch, each with three references. Of that, 1.) anything less than glowing stands out completely, 2.) there are often 1-2 negative references.
Just FYI you can Freedom of Information Act your reference reports post.
I place very little weight on references; I'd much rather see a multi-source feedback summary with twenty or thirty peoples' comments
Asked 4 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(refere|reference).{0,50}(score|scoring|weight|count|matter|important|bad|good|glowing|poor)|(score|scoring|weight|matter|bad|good).{0,40}(refere|reference)/i. Quotes pair the person who shortlists with three references per applicant against the head of department who says references test insight, not performance.