Transcript: AMA President, Dr Steve Hambleton, 4BC Brisbane, 31 March 2014
Subject: Queensland Hospital contracts
PATRICK CONDREN: Dr Steve Hambleton is the Federal President of the AMA. Dr Hambleton, thank you for your time this morning.
STEVE HAMBLETON: Good morning.
PATRICK CONDREN: You had to get some legal advice before talking to us this morning. Why is that?
STEVE HAMBLETON: Well, it’s disappointing, but there seems to be legal issues now to deal with in addition to the issues that we’ve had discussed and the Minister discussed this morning, and the AMA as well as the unions have been named there, so I needed to get some legal advice about what that actually means.
PATRICK CONDREN: And what did it tell you?
STEVE HAMBLETON: Well, it’s a major concern. I mean, we do have to be careful what we say. I mean, I’ve been attempting to be very careful about presenting the facts to the doctors to make sure they’ve got a fair opportunity to make a fair decision. I think the Minister touched on it at the end of what he said, and that is that trust has been lost by the way they feel the system has dealt with them.
This all began, I guess, at the end of last year with Industrial Relations Act changes and Health and Hospital Boards Act changes on top of the wording in the contracts. That made nearly – well, nearly 3500 people very, very carefully focused on every single word and every single comma, every single dot in their contracts, and it’s something that they generally don’t do.
And now that we’ve got ourselves in this very awkward situation, trying to do something about it has been very difficult and trying to rebalance contracts, which in the beginning were very one sided, were very much unbalanced.
PATRICK CONDREN: Well, Mr Springborg insists every time that we speak to him that he has addressed every single issue that you have raised.
STEVE HAMBLETON: And I can absolutely say that Minister Springborg’s intervention into this a couple of weeks ago was absolutely crucial in getting some movement. And we went from the contracts that we – the original contracts, which are what we’re talking about, to an addendum which does try to address the things that we’re talking about, and I know that – I saw that 7.30 Report last week as well, and the Director General actually attended that hospital to try to address those issues.
Now there is a proposed addendum for a contract that has not yet been signed to deal with those issues. So you can’t be transferred without a discussion with you, you can’t have your roster changed without agreement with you. There is a dispute resolution process, there is a limitation on the ability of the Director General to change your contract clauses. These are new things that have come in in the last couple of weeks, and that’s what we’re trying to get the message out about now – are the changes sufficient to actually resolve the issue?
There has been, even last week, late last week there has been some more wording being refined and late last week we also heard that instead of a three week – sorry – a three month resignation timetable, it’s now [indistinct]…
PATRICK CONDREN: [Interrupts] Sure. So do you think it’s going to be resolved in the next four weeks?
STEVE HAMBLETON: It has to be. I mean, I really think we have to pull out all stops, we have to make sure it is. The consequences for not getting it resolved are just unthinkable. We won’t – it took two years to fix Caboolture Hospital when we couldn’t get doctors to attend in that location and if that happened in more than one location, it would be catastrophic. So it has to be fixed. The Minister is focused on making it fixed. I’m focused on making it fixed. We’ve got to get the message out there and get solutions that will work.
PATRICK CONDREN: Okay.
STEVE HAMBLETON: So everybody has got to put their shoulder to the wheel.
PATRICK CONDREN: Okay. Dr Hambleton, thank you for the update.
STEVE HAMBLETON: Thank you very much.
PATRICK CONDREN: Dr Steve Hambleton, the Federal President of the AMA.
Source: AMA