N.Z.M.A. seeks independence

Press, 16 May 1985, Page 3

N.Z.M.A. seeks independence

PA Hamilton An independent medical profession, free from Government influence, was recommended yesterday by the Medical Association’s new president, Dr Malcolm Dunshea, of Hamilton. He reminded the association’s conference at Hamilton of one result of the profession’s being dominated by a Government—the Auschwitz doctors of the Nazi regime, and referred to rumours about Russian psychiatric services. Dr Dunshea’s address warned doctors to watch for the "thin end of a Govern-ment-influence wedge.” The Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, had brought to the portfolio a profound suspicion of the motives of the profession. “He still believes the profession is interested only in lining its pockets at the expense of the public purse, whether from individuals or from Government tax revenue,” Dr Dunshea said. Constraints on general practitioner services, maternity services, and public hospitals could only be regarded with extreme concern, he said. But these increasing restrictions and incursions on the freedom of the doctor to offer the best type of medi-

cal practice were not the prerogative of the Government—they were also apSirent in the latter years of e Muldoon Administration, he said. Most doctors had decided to have nothing to do with Dr Bassett’s "contract” for an increased childcare G.M.S. benefit. G.P.s could not freeze fees in the face of inflation and attendant increases in practice expenses, Dr Dunshea said.

Publication of the names of those doctors who joined the Minister’s scheme was viewed with some distaste. “It seems to divide the profession into the Government’s doctors and the rest,” he said.

Both the Minister and the profession might be pawns in a broader Government plan of economic change, said Dr Dunshea. Dr John Broadfoot, of Wanganui, was elected chairman of the Medical Association yesterday. He succeeds Hamilton’s Dr Dean Williams who has retired after two years in office. Dr Broadfoot became a member of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners in 1974. He has served as an executive member of the Wanganui division of the Medical Association in posts which include secretary and a past president. Dr Broadfoot has been a member of the division’s disciplinary committee, a delegate to the association’s national council, and is the association’s nominee on the Medical Council.

He has been deputy chairman of the association since 1983.