Editorial: Rule change plays into NZ doctors' hands

Opinion

The carrot designed to lure New Zealand doctors across the Tasman is about to get bigger. From April, Federal Government controls that effectively tied local GPs to working in the Outback or other rural areas for their first 10 years in Australia are to be lifted.

That means New Zealand doctors can immediately eye Sydney and Melbourne, rather than having, quite unreasonably, to spend time tending the ill in the likes of Woomera and Wodonga.

Already, a worrying number of our doctors are attracted to Australia by pay rates that, for senior GPs, are up to 35 per cent higher than here. The potential is for that situation to worsen considerably.

Senior doctors will doubtless play on this during imminent negotiations over their collective agreement with district health boards.

Their current agreement also ends, coincidentally, in April. Already, they have talked of many patient services being held together by seriously short-staffed and overworked senior medical staff because of the flight of young doctors to Australia, and of wanting big rises to lift salaries closer to Australian rates.

Any such increase would, however, involve money that would, otherwise, be used to improve health services. The public would be the loser. The Health Minister has already said that this year's health-funding increase will be smaller than that of last year. It is, therefore, quite simply impractical for health boards to entertain the sort of largesse proposed by the senior doctors.

Under their current deal, which provided three annual rises of 4.25 per cent, specialists' base salaries increase through 15 annual steps to $195,441 a year. In straitened times, many would consider that reasonable, especially as the doctors can earn a sizeable added sum from allowances, extra hours and shift work.

It would also be wrong for the doctors to suggest there would be no movement to Australia if their demands were met. Fundamentally, New Zealand cannot compete with Australia.

The Australians face their own shortage of doctors and their own brain drain, with many of their best and brightest finding greener fields in the United States and Europe. They can up the ante whenever they want to increase their stock of medical professionals.

The loosening of federal controls will go some way towards undermining the New Zealand Government's own attempt to retain junior doctors through a voluntary bonding scheme.

Those faced with an imposing student loan debt will doubtless find it increasingly attractive to take up a big-money offer in Australia, rather than spend five years working in rural New Zealand.

Nonetheless, there is no need for panic. This is not a new phenomenon or exclusive to doctors. It should be addressed in two ways.

First, doctors' demands should be met as far as possible, both in terms of pay and working hours and conditions, but without depriving the public of health services. Secondly, the effort to attract sufficient immigrant doctors to replace those who leave must intensify.

New Zealand's lifestyle is sufficient to lure skilled people who are not driven solely by money. The barriers to such people must be placed no higher than those applying in comparable jurisdictions. Such has not always been the case.

In the long term, of course, New Zealand must aspire to living standards that place it on an even footing with Australia. That is a subject for a Government that, having set up a 2025 Taskforce for precisely that reason, has chosen to ignore its recommendations.

At some stage, it must confront tough questions about this country's tax structure and government spending among other things. If the right decisions are taken, the gap will narrow and this will again be a country of preference for professionals.