Interview - Dr Bill Glasson - ABC Radio 'The World Today' - Federal Government Plans to Send Bonded Medical Students to Regional Australia

The AMA has described the scheme, in which the Government would decide where newly graduated doctors would practice for a period of six years, as nothing less than "blackmail", and the Association is backed by medical students who are calling the Government's proposal "conscription".

From Brisbane, Gerald Tooth reports.

GERALD TOOTH: The Federal Government wants to get more doctors into regional areas where there are a crippling lack of services. To get them to go where they don't want to, it's offering 234 fully-funded new places at medical schools which will be bonded to government service.

Under the scheme, the graduates are required to spend six years practicing wherever the Government tells them they have to go.

Newly installed AMA President, Bill Glasson, a specialist who practices in rural Queensland, says the scheme is nothing short of blackmail.

BILL GLASSON: What we're saying is your personal circumstances have to be taken into consideration and we think six years is too long. Three years, I think, is probably acceptable.

If they want to introduce these positions, they certainly should be funded, number one, and they should fund them to the extent of the HECS fees. But I think to ask for six years, and ask for it in a situation where they are completely unfunded is, as I say, is immoral, unjust and we're not willing to accept it.

GERALD TOOTH: Bill Glasson is also saying the scheme is unconstitutional.

BILL GLASSON: We are actually looking specifically at the constitutionality of this issue, to see whether it is viable or not.

GERALD TOOTH: Will you mount a legal challenge?

BILL GLASSON: No, look, I just want to point out to the Government that what they're doing is not going to work, and that's the simple basis I'd like to put it to them.

GERALD TOOTH: And the medical students are equally unhappy. Nick Brown from the Australian Medical Students Association says it amounts to conscription for doctors.

NICK BROWN: Basically, the Government is exploiting medical students, or exploiting students who are yet to take a upper place in medicine, exploiting their desire, their desperation to study medicine, and saying if you want this place, we're going to slap all of these restrictions, all of these conditions on you once you graduate.

In return, the students get nothing, they get no financial incentive, they get nothing that any normal student wouldn't otherwise get. They still have to pay HECS. Under the Government's new higher education package that could cost in excess of $50,000.

GERALD TOOTH: Nick Brown says bonding will create a second-class group of medical graduates.

NICK BROWN: Students are not happy with this scheme. They would not accept it if they had to do it and we think that it will be a cascade effect. You'll have your rank order of students, and the students at the top and in the middle will keep rejecting this policy and will keep rejecting the system because they'll want to try again next year to get into a normal place, free from restrictions, and these positions will keep cascading down through the line until you've got the bottom level of students, and obviously then you've got a subclass of medical student and a subclass of doctor once they graduate. Now we think that rural Australia, and it's not just rural Australia but areas of need, deserve better than this.

GERALD TOOTH: Health Minister Kay Patterson stands by the scheme and says the reaction is alarmist.

Ends