The doctor didn’t want to speak publicly but might have taken inspiration from NZNO nurses and kaiāwhina, several of whom last month silently stood and turned away as Brown also ticked them off over the “human cost” of striking.
‘An ex-banker lecturing a room full of doctors about ethics is like a donut lecturing me about healthy eating.’
Senior doctors at the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) conference last Thursday however were decidedly unsilent when the minister tried to dissuade them from striking this Thursday October 23, saying it “crossed an ethical line”.
“It is a question of who pays the the price and, right now, it’s patients,” he told the ASMS conference, reported The Post.
Many gasped, some laughed — and one stood up and turned away.
ASMS president Katie Ben — a Nelson anaesthetist who had just spoken about a workforce in crisis before the minister — responded this week with scorn.
“An ex-banker lecturing a room full of doctors about ethics is like a donut lecturing me about healthy eating,” she told Kaitiaki.
“He doesn’t understand health – it’s not all hips, knees and cataracts. He doesn’t understand half our patients won’t be treated by surgery. And when that was pointed out to him, he refused to listen.”
Ben said in her speech that the Government needed to listen to doctors’ concerns about critical understaffing and poor conditions putting patients at risk — this was why they were striking.
Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa – NZNO president Anne Daniels said it was “mind-boggling” that Brown would lay into doctors as he had to nurses.
‘We’re doing it together — and 23 October is absolutely reflective of the fact that people have had enough.’
“What he did at the doctors’ conference — these are intelligent, highly-skilled, knowledgeable people who do the hard mahi every day — and he absolutely stood on them, walked over them and treated them as if they were nothing,” she said.
“He has chosen to be deaf . . . but he needs to listen to us.”
ASMS members went strike for 24 hours last month, and have voted to strike again for four hours on October 23. An estimated 100,000-plus public service workers across education, health and disability services including NZNO have also voted to strike on that day over respective collective negotiation breakdowns.
Daniels said doctor’s decision to stand showed respect to nurses — and 6000 doctors’ going on strike showed many in the health workforce were fed up with Government “arrogance”.
“We’re doing it together — and 23 October is absolutely reflective of the fact that people have had enough.”
ASMS spokesperson and Starship Hospital respiratory paediatric physician Dr Julian Vyas said the Government needed to realise how strongly public sector workers felt about the damage being done to services due to underfunding and lack of staffing.
“I think the New Zealand public will understand this strike action is about finding funding to provide the services that we all depend on and need to live healthy lives.”
‘I thought ‘nah”
NZNO Te Poari member Rangi Blackmoore, who led the nurses’ back-turning, said as Brown complained about the cost of striking, she suddenly thought: “Nah . . . so I stood up and I walked and I just stood here, and I felt people coming and standing next to me.”
