Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, ABC Radio News
NEWSREADER: Doctors have expressed alarm at the existence of what they say is a secret Health Department document that could strip them of their right to practise.
The Australian Medical Association says the document proposes four categories of medical registration — basic, vocational, non-clinical and non-practising.
The AMA's president Kerryn Phelps says only doctors who fit the right bureaucratic guidelines for vocational registration will be able to practise.
PHELPS: We have been wanting for a long time to have a national system of registration so that doctors who were working across borders would not have to have separate registration for each particular state.
What's happened here is that it's been extended so that there will be quite draconian registration requirements upon doctors and it would be particularly discriminatory against women who are needing to take time off, for example, for family reasons.
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