Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, Channel Nine 'Today', with Steve Liebmann
LIEBMANN: First this morning to that highly publicised and at times bitter feud between the President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Kerryn Phelps, and Federal Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge. This time yesterday, Dr Phelps remained quite adamant she would go ahead with that plan to sue the Minister over allegations he made about her qualifications. But by late afternoon, the feud had been settled, following a two-hour meeting brought about at the urging of the Prime Minister. Well, Dr Phelps joins us in the studio now. Good morning to you.
PHELPS: Good morning, Steve.
LIEBMANN: That was a fairly undignified public spat, wasn't it?
PHELPS: Well, I think that any feuds between groups and Ministers are bound to get heated and certainly in this case, because there was no resolution to it as it went on, it became more and more heated.
LIEBMANN: What do you think the Australian public thought when they see two high-profile people like you and Dr Wooldridge brawling in public?
PHELPS: Well, the feedback that I was getting was that my boundaries had been crossed. The AMA's boundaries had been crossed, and that we should take action to ensure an apology for those comments.
LIEBMANN: What was it that he said that was so offensive and even if it was offensive, why couldn't you say, 'Oh well, it's an election year; this goes with the territory; I'll get on with the job'.
PHELPS: Well, it was impossible to get on with the job because the AMA was being marginalised more and more from discussions which were of importance to the Australian people, and we felt that it had become impossible for us to represent the health system in an effective way, under the circumstances. And when that line was crossed and GPs felt particularly insulted by the assertion that they weren't specialists able to deal with an issue like cholesterol, we felt that we had to make a stand at that point.
LIEBMANN: But there was, I mean, there's so much on the plate - a lot of health issues.
PHELPS: Hmm.
LIEBMANN: You've got the budget. You've got GP financing. You've got national competition policy, big health issues. And, they all got sidetracked by this.
PHELPS: Oh, no. I think they were actually quite central to the debate all the way along. The Government, in areas other than the Health Minister, were discussing with us a whole range of issues related to all of those issues that you raised. But, I think the ideal is that the AMA is able to represent the views of doctors - and after all we're at the coalface talking to patients every day - and the government was missing out on some very important advice from doctors because of what was happening. So, I'm pleased to say that we can now turn to the future and be dealing on a very - in a very central and focused way on those issues.
LIEBMANN: Dr Wooldridge said that the Prime Minister's intervention was quote 'helpful'. Was it really necessary for John Howard to step in?
PHELPS: I actually asked the Prime Minister to intervene and I'm very pleased that he did. The way that he intervened was entirely his decision and I think it was an important icebreaker.
LIEBMANN: Were you surprised that Dr Wooldridge apologised and in the manner that he apologised?
PHELPS: I have to say I wasn't expecting it, but I'm delighted that he did. It takes guts to apologise, particularly under the circumstances that we've seen over the last month or two. And I think that it was a real reflection of the fact that we both want to get on with doing what's best for the Australian health system.
LIEBMANN: So the hatchet has been buried?
PHELPS: Well and truly.
LIEBMANN: And you can get on with dealing with the key issues that relate to the health of Australians?
PHELPS: Absolutely. I must say that I think Australians are very well aware now of the issues facing the health system. I think that it is within the grasp of government to deal with those issues. We're looking at ways of dealing with the medical indemnity crisis. We're looking at the whole range of private health insurance issues. We're looking at structured settlements for medical indemnity. We want to see some commonsense into the competition policy debate and we want to see general practice, which is at a crisis point, being properly dealt with.
And, of course, there's a range of public health measures like indigenous health, and what we do about tobacco and alcohol use in Australia. We have a large number of issues on our plate and I must say that yesterday's discussion was lengthy because we actually did get into a lot of the nitty gritty about health policy.
LIEBMANN: All right, we'll wait and see. Thanks for coming in.
PHELPS: Thanks, Steve.
LIEBMANN: Thanks, Kerryn.
Ends