Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President with Louise Yaxley, ABC Radio, 'AM' Program
LINDA MOTTRAM: The former Federal Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge is understood to be preparing defamation action and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is talking to its lawyers too.
The writs are flying because they're horrified at being portrayed as taking money from asthma sufferers.
Last September, the former Minister approved $5 million towards a Canberra building for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners to which he is now an independent consultant.
Dr Wooldridge angrily denies a conflict of interest. He and the College argue that the building is needed to house peak medical bodies together so that they can work together better but they're under fire because the money came from sensitive areas of health including a million dollars from an asthma program.
From Canberra, Louise Yaxley reports.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Various federal governments have funded lobby groups to set up in Canberra in the past. It's immensely more sensitive in the case of health because the dollars come from the health budget.
STEPHEN SMITH: What sort of government thinks it's more important to build a building in Canberra for a lobbyist than to spend money on asthma prevention for kids and for rural and regional areas who need special health services.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Labor's health spokesman, Stephen Smith.
Dr Wooldridge reallocated four million unspent dollars from the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program and $1 million from the Asthma Management Program.
The New South Wales Asthma Foundation's Lindsay Cane won't buy into whether the College should get its money but is determined to see no funding taken from her cause.
LINDSAY CANE: I don't have all the details around this transfer right now but certainly I will be talking with the Commonwealth and I will be encouraging the Commonwealth to make sure that that million dollars that was committed still is in the pot for the Australian people to benefit.
LOUISE YAXLEY: The new Health Minister, Kay Patterson, insists it's an underspend and so under the use it or lose it principle, the money was reallocated at ministerial discretion rather than being grabbed back by the Finance Department.
KAY PATTERSON: In very large programs, there's a prediction over a period of time how much will be spent. Sometimes those predictions are not absolutely correct in the first year of a program and there was some underspend.
It's quite normal, it's quite a procedure that occurs. That money is moved within outcome programs to ensure that that money stays within the health portfolio and doesn't go back to general revenue.
LOUISE YAXLEY: But bureaucratic terms like underspend don't help much when to the public it's still seems like a trade off between help for asthma sufferers and a building to be known as GP House.
The College has a prime site just down the road from Parliament House amid HQs for various bodies competing to be up close and personal with the pollies so they can push their group's interests.
The AMA building's not far away but its President, Kerryn Phelps, says it accepted no government money. She dismisses the College's justification for the new building.
KERRYN PHELPS: Doctor groups already do get together. They don't need to be in one building, we have a number of different fora where doctors are able to get together and discuss issues of common concern. They don't need to have a new building in Canberra to do that.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Dr Phelps, who was embroiled in a public row with Dr Wooldridge last year, has already called for the auditor-general to enquire into every decision the former Minister took in the six months before he quit parliament.
Labor plans to call in the auditor-general today.
Whatever happens, the College of GPs is set to have a secretariat in Canberra in rented premises quite soon. Its plans for owning its own building in the nation's capital are a little dinted since the publicity's created nerves among some of the tenants it had hoped to share with and the Commonwealth dollars are dependent on the College attracting at least two co-tenants from peak medical bodies. So far it has locked in no other group.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Louise Yaxley reporting and Dr Wooldridge and the College issued written statements but they declined to be interviewed on AM citing legal reasons.
Ends