Contract- What are they trying to sell and what are they trying to hide? #qldpol #smoqld #keepourdoctors
I’m just mentally reviewing the nature of the information provided to me by ASEM, AMA, ASMOF, Together, and various independent doctors from ortho, neurosurg, medicine, ED… They all present different viewpoints including independent legal advice from various lawyers and QCs. The advice is uniformly the same – these contracts are rubbish, they go into specific details and dissect the contract/addendum/amended addendum (usually) understandably, clause by clause.
I find it hard to read some of the commentary about the addendum and the amended addendum that refer to coded clauses that they change or preserve or stand on, or under, or whatever. If you can remember the code then its probably easy, but if you can’t then you need a legal opinion. I knew MOCA 1, 2 and 3 pretty well, and could understand them. Some of this stuff is getting complex though, and you have to keep track of which version you are looking at and what date it came out, and what legislation governs it, or you are completely lost.
Then I think of the advice I have received from the Minister of Health, the DG, senior exec (phrased as “I have been asked to forward this to you” ie, I don’t believe it either), my local member, other doctor’s local members and some suspiciously well informed commentators in public forums: they present identically worded summaries of events and recommendations to sign with identical attachments and identical spin – but the signatures change. At the first reading, these emails/comments seem reasonable and I wonder just why am I against these contracts. At first reading I question whether I am being unreasonable and petty. Then I get sent the same spin over a different signature. I read it again and start to see through the spin to the underlying text – the subtext and the real intent. Alternately, as I read through the text a second time I ask “why the initial change from MOCA? Why the subsequent change? Where have they NOT compromised and why?” Then there’s the cynical question, “when the text is more convincing than the content, what are they trying to sell and what are they trying to hide?”
So, if I need help to understand these “simplified” contracts. I can trust the QHealth side, after all their message is so consistent it could have all been written by one person, even if I find their reassurances somewhat naïve / condescending (not sure which), or I could trust this cohesive yet multiplex advice which comes across like a Wikipedia-like multisource article. Thankfully, the Qld Government is going to make it easier for me by trying to silence Wiki and labelling it as misleading “militant interstate union thuggery” (well of course it’s interstate – the antiunion legislation brought in last year has silenced any “militant Queensland union thuggery”).
I am still someone that people expect to understand all things IR that relate to doctors (I hate being played the fool and so I read a lot). I hope that the federal courts don’t deny me access to my multisourced legal advice – because as this simplified contract gets muddier, I’m going to need it to live up to that expectation.
Source: Facebook