Thursday night’s meeting between doctor representatives and the government #qldpol #keepourdoctors #smoqld
A “first date”, not a “consummation” is how Thursday night’s meeting between doctor representatives and the government has been described.
And while both are eager to see each other again, neither has committed to a long-term future.
In short, it’s complicated.
Health Minister Lawrence Springborg, his assistant minister Chris Davis, Director-General Ian Maynard and Queensland Health HR chief Lyn Rowland, met with Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton, his incoming Queensland counterpart Shaun Rudd and intensive care specialist John Fraser at Parliament House on Thursday night.
The meeting to open “dialogue”, not “formal negotiations” capped off a week which began with a letter Dr Davis had written in support of his former SMO colleagues being released to the media, muddled through a “we are united on this” government front, saw doctors meet and pass a ‘no-confidence’ motion on Mr Springborg, ended on a “cautiously optimistic” note.
“We put our position to the minister and we were very pleased the minister told us it was his intention to build a relationship with doctors in Queensland, not break it down,” Dr Hambleton said.
“That was very reassuring. There are a number of things that senior doctors have been very concerned about with the contract issues and tonight, we agreed on a process to deal with each one of those.”
On Monday, Mr Maynard will meet with the doctor representatives again to begin a “dispute resolution” process.
But Mr Springborg again ruled out altering the foundation of the contracts, which would make it difficult to address all of the doctor’s concerns.
Six main issues have been identified – including transfers, unfair dismissal avenues and the power management would have to alter employment conditions without consultation.
Mr Springborg has not conceded that there are problems with the contracts. Instead, the doctors who met with him believe he now understands that doctors have serious concerns about them – and they are happy to build from that.
“We need to bring all the parties around the table, so this doesn’t crumble away,” Professor Fraser said.
“We don’t want to build something in sand that just falls over, so by no means are we here to agree on a deal at all. We’ll bring the unions, we’ll bring the key doctors, we’ll bring the AMAQ so when we get this, it is fixed, once and for all.”
Mr Springborg said the meeting was an “extremely positive” step forward.
“I’ve always said, that if we can sit around a table … that we would be able to clearly address what had been real issues,” he said.
“Unfortunately, sometimes, emotions overcome these things and actually take away from the clear thinking that is necessary when it comes to resolving what can be real issues for people.”
But there are still stumbling blocks.
Professor Fraser and Dr Hambleton said in the “spirit of good will”, postponing the deadline the government had set for doctors to sign the contracts – currently April 30 – would be a “show of decency” and prove the “rigidity” which had surrounded the process had been loosened.
But Mr Springborg said it was a “very important deadline” for payroll reasons and did not appear eager to move it.
“I am very confident that if we have our team sitting down for dialogue next week, the same people sitting around to resolve these issues, so we have consistency, we’ll be able to resolve them fairly quickly.”
And while the doctors were adamant that there needed to be some major changes in terms of some of the conditions, Mr Springborg said he believed many of those issues would be addressed the moment doctors held their contracts.
“We are in a highly charged emotional environment now and I think because a lot of people don’t actually have their contracts in their hands, they want those assurances, they want to be able to compare and contrast and I think that is a lot of the issues,” he said.
“So if we could move through good policy procedures, implementation and safeguards, I think we could address a lot of these things.”
Dr Davis, who has not ruled out resigning if the process did not move positively forward, said while there was still “a lot of work to do in a short amount of time,” he was pleased there was “at least the commitment and the desire for things to be examined”.
Professor Fraser said Dr Davis had shown himself to be a “man of integrity”.
“I think it is fantastic he has done it,” he said.
“For me it is a little bit of a shame that the rest of the Liberal MPs didn’t do that, but we are here, there is no use crying over split milk.”
But Professor Fraser said he and his colleagues hoped to soon be done with politics, and return to just doing their job, instead of worrying over it.
“Party politics never, ever triumphed over people’s health and it shouldn’t,” he said.
“A heart attack is a heart attack, it doesn’t matter whether you are Liberal or Labor or even Palmer, we just have to get on with giving people the best healthcare, putting the party politics to the side and dealing with people’s health.”
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald