The Government has accepted the Tasmanian Industrial Commission's recommendations on salary increases and other key issues to be adopted into a new Award for Salaried Medical Professionals.
Last month the TIC handed down an in-principle finding which required both parties to meet and finalise the details of a new award.
The Government has held productive discussions with the Australian Medical Association this week and our position is that we will work to establish a new Industrial Agreement which will incorporate the recommended salary increases and changes to the structure of the Award.
We value our health professionals and the incredibly important work that they do, and we will continue to work with the AMA to provide a final resolution to this issue in the near future. We will meet again next week to provide ongoing agreement on matters for immediate implementation, and to establish mechanisms to finalise other matters.
The doctor's pay dispute has been ongoing for more than three years and salaried Medical Professionals within the Tasmanian Health Organisations have not had a pay increase since 2011.
Taking into account that salaried medical practitioners have had no pay increase since 2011, the salary increase of 6.5 percent is broadly in line with the Government's wages policy of 2 per cent increases per year for that period, which has been factored into the Health Budget. In relation to the Forward Estimates, the Government has provided for an ongoing 2 per cent wages policy. The increase to doctors wages will be in the order of $5m in 2014-15 and ongoing $17-19m per year. The Forward Estimates are broadly consistent with that outcome.
It is mischievous for Labor and HACSU to compare this with the paramedics pay case. Doctors have not received a pay increase since 2011, and the 6.5 per cent increase is in line with government wages policy of two per cent per year. Paramedics have been receiving pay increases each year and their claim, which is currently before the Supreme Court on a point of law, is for a 14 per cent increase, much higher than the wages policy.
Unlike Labor which slashed frontline health jobs, we value all our health professionals and are rebuilding services.
As a result, the budget anticipated this outcome and there is sufficient flexibility in the health budget to accommodate the doctor's wage outcome.
We look forward to bringing this three-year saga to an end and ensuring our medical professionals can get on with their incredibly important job of improving health outcomes for Tasmanians.