After record spending on Health in Budget 2018 – Duncan Garner savagely blamed the coalition for the recent Junior Doctors strike saying the government only has itself to blame for strikes after hyping up pay expectations during the 2017 election.
Ironically Duncan was hyping up pay expectations himself for Junior Doctors in an open letter to Bill English in 2016 where he recommended pay rises in line with those given to the public sector.
At the time Garner took a much more toned down and respectful approach when voicing his principled objection to National’s $1.8 Billion surplus and proposed tax cuts in the upcoming election – still a year away at the time.
Now it’s all the Coalition’s fault according to Garner because more money should have been given to DHBs than the record increases they got in Budget 2018.
Nobody has told Duncan it takes 14 years to train a specialist doctor and the USA, Britain, Canada, UK, China and even Fiji all report chronic shortages of doctors.
They are all recruiting international doctors as hard as they can and so its not just a simple matter of throwing money at this or attracting doctors from overseas.
It’s also about where doctors want to work and live, lifestyle and pressure.
Even Australia who has one of the better number of doctors per 1000 people is chronically short in the rural regions and is trying to recruit our doctors while the UK is recruiting Australian doctors hard out.
Fiji is trying to import 300 Australian doctors at the same time.
You get the picture.
It’s like fill a shortage and another springs up.
Doctors in Auckland who are lured to Taranaki, or Dunedin or overseas create a vacancy that must be filled as the population increases and ages.
Meanwhile medical students who started in 2005 are just completing their qualifications to be specialists.
DHBs are flat out recruiting but losing the battle despite good pay – and I mean figures like 180,000 once a doctor is up and running.
The pay is much higher in the private sector.
Probably the worst aspect of Garner’s savage attack on the Coalition is he not only pointed blame at the Coalition unfairly but utterly misunderstood the reasons for the strike in the first place.
The strike has very little to do with money and more to do with an agreement that expires in February.
The hard fought for conditions that reduced the number of continuous days a junior doctor could work arose from strikes in 2016 and 2017.
They reduced the number of continuous days they could work without a break down to 10 from 12 days.
This might all go back to 12 days if DHBs don’t agree matters before the agreement expires.
There’s also a new union fighting against (dividing ) the junior doctors, arguing that junior doctors are missing out on training because of the restriction to 10 days – so the whole thing is a mess.
A mess too complicated for Duncan Garner to fathom – so he simply writes bile attacking the government about money.
There he sits snarling about how it’s all because the government spent money on first year free education and nobody can be fucked telling him he is a dork.
Until now.
You are a dork Duncan!!!
Gerard Otto is an activist and writer
A great summary. My daughter is a Junior Doctor and this strkke is ALL about rosters, numbers of days worked and the ability of the DHBs to require doctors to move locations at whim. It is a classic case od divide and rule with the introduction of a new union. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to maintain hard- fought for conditions?
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