EXPRESS The
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
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Celebrating country racing
Jamie Dickinson pilots Scott Cooper trained Lil’ Red Monkey to victory in the Color Studio Class 4 Handicap at the Mareeba Turf Club’s Celebrate Country race meeting on Saturday. Details, page 23. PHOTO BY Peter Roy.
Health care stand-off By Ryan Groube
A
senior union official has warned that unless a standoff between the State Government and doctors over individual contracts is resolved health services on the Tableland will suffer. Last week, senior medical officers gathered in Cairns to rally against the new contracts arguing that they will strip away essential protections including rest breaks, unfair dismissal and dispute resolution protocols. Doctors earning more than $130,000 a year have until April 30 to sign the contracts which the State Government says will simplify the existing archaic award, saving taxpayer money and reducing duplication. Cairns Region Representative of the Together union Sandy Donald, who works as an anaesthetist at Cairns Hospital, said about 90 per cent of the regions 200 affected doctors had indicated they would resign before signing the contracts. The Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service (CHHHS) district services Mossman in the north, Tully in the
south and runs west to Croydon and includes the hospitals at Mareeba and Atherton. Dr Donald said if there is no resolution before April 30, CHHHS may have no choice but to strip regional hospitals of specialists to retain a skeleton service at the region’s major hospital in Cairns. “Where we are headed is to the complete collapse of emergency and specialist health services in far north Queensland,” he said. “Having 20 per cent leave would be an absolute disaster, having 50 per cent leave would see many services stopped and emergency services reduced but we are talking 90 per cent. “If this happens I presume they [CHHHS] would have to strip every doctor they have left [from regional hospitals] and drag them to Cairns just to keep a basic service operating.” The CHHHS and Queensland Health Minister have been keeping quiet about the standoff. CHHHS Hospital and Health Board chair Bob Norman provided a brief statement to The Express which failed to address any of the questioned asked by this newspaper. The statement read: “The Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Board and CHHHS will restrict our discussions regard-
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ing doctor contract negotiations with the medical staff directly involved and inform the media when the matter is settled. We are grateful for your cooperation and understanding during this process.” The Express also contacted Queensland Health Minister Lawrence Springborg for comment asking if the State Government had a contingency to provide services should the majority of doctors decide to resign. Despite having three days to answer three questions, the Minister’s office failed to respond by deadline. Dr Donald said the lack of information from Queensland Health and the State Government about the contracts was not surprising. “All we can do is pray that there is someone within this government that is listening to our concerns which are reasonable and realistic,” he said. “The number of people we had attend that rally [in Cairns] was enormous [more than 300]. We had doctors speak out at that rally who would not have considered that even two months ago because they are morally outraged at the attack these contracts represent on the public health service.”
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