Doctors fight on after Davis intervention #qldpol #keepourdoctors #smoqld
Negotiations may be over, but Queensland doctors have vowed to continue the fight against the government’s individual contracts – with or without the assistant minister’s support.
Hundreds of the state’s doctors will meet at Kangaroo Point’s Pineapple Hotel on Wednesday evening to discuss the contracts and the possibility of mass resignations.
The issue had been at a stalemate until Assistant Health Minister Chris Davis wrote a letter, which was released to the media by a third party, urging the government to return to the negotiating table.
In the letter, which was intended to be distributed at Monday’s party room meeting, but was not, Dr Davis wrote “contracts that could harm patients and be detrimental to the broader community make my position in this government untenable”.
On Tuesday morning, Dr Davis held a brief media conference where he said he would stay on as Health Minister Lawrence Springborg’s assistant minister, “for as long as we are making progress”.
“If there was any suggestion that we were going backwards, then I could not actually be party to any process that might result in us going backwards,” he said.
But Dr Davis also said that he and Mr Springborg were “all on the same page in terms of the vision for Queensland Health”.
Mr Springborg has ruled out returning to formal negotiations.
Dr Davis later released a statement, which Mr Springborg said had been “agreed” upon by his office, where Dr Davis again acknowledged that formal negotiations would not be re-opened.
Dr Davis said “any issues regarding clarity and detail can be addressed through the normal negotiations that occur with the relevant Hospital and Health Services or the individual doctor” when the individual contracts were discussed.
Mr Springborg said after he spoke with Dr Davis, he was able to change his mind on the issue through the use of “sheer fact”.
“What we are seeing here is the triumph of emotion over fact,” Mr Springborg said about detractors.
“Every doctor I have spoken to one-on-one is comforted with what’s on offer, but unfortunately there has always been, as is the case with this, people getting around with the normal hyperbole and scaremongering and misleading information which sometimes creates a state of affairs which is not helpful.”
But Mr Springborg could not adequately answer why his assistant minister had fallen victim to what he called a misinformation campaign.
“We’ve been dealing in a very emotionally charged environment where people, in many cases have been concerned, by perception, and they are concerned by the emotions of people coming forward and I understand that,” Mr Springborg said.
The majority of contracts will be sent to doctors by their Hospital and Health boards in the next two weeks.
Doctors have until the end of April to sign.
Source: Brisbane Times