Sarah Dalton: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director on the continued strike action and rejected pay offer

Negotiations between senior doctors and the Government have broken down.  

They've rejected a $160 million offer and are set to strike for 48 hours next week.  

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists had put a proposal which would have cost about $300 million.  

Executive Director Sarah Dalton told Mike Hosking doctors are playing catch up.  

She says doctors haven't had pay increases lower than inflation since the pandemic. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we're sick of this. Yet if it isn't the teachers,
it's the doctors and the nurses. The salary Medical specialists
have projected the new one hundred and sixty million dollar
offer at covers five and a half thousand senior doctors
over sixteen months. Thirteen thousand patients were expected to be
affected this time around. Sarah Dulton's the association executive director,
and is with us Seah mooning, good morning, one hundred
and sixty million. What's it by? I mean, how I'm

(00:22):
so worn down by this stuff? How far apart are you?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, we offer that the revised claim that we put
up when we're in facilitated bargaining a couple of months
ago would have priced out around three hundred million. So
we're still quite far apart, and is very difficult for
us to drop below that point, you know. That is
we initially put up a twelve percent claim, and in

(00:48):
facilitated bargaining we moved so that other than the new
step one, which would be quite a big jump, maybe
about seven percent, the rest of our members would be
looking at about four four and a half percent.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Well, that's one more than we've got until it's certainly
more than inflation. How can you claim your going backwards
to CPI.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh, our doctors have had SUBCPI pay adjustments since about
the time of COVID.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, but you can't go back on time. I mean,
why don't you go back to nineteen seventy three and
make it sound really bad?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, you know, you can say we can't go back
in time, but we have watched the real value of
specialist salaries decrease at a steady rate of non since
about twenty twenty, and we want to restore that value.
We want to reset the platform so that ideally helps
New Zealand will move forward with us to establish a
structure for senior doctor salaries. At the moment, what they're

(01:40):
incentivizing is locanworks, so become a contractor. They spent two
hundred million on contractors last year.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. I get all of this, but now's not the
time to be doing this. We've got less than no
money in a country that was confirmed yesterday to be
yet again going backwards.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, well, you know, no, there's no time is a
great time.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, it's not to remember. I mean, when we were
a rockstar economy. Maybe do it when we're a rockstar economy,
not a country that's going backwards worse than pretty much
any country in the world.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, I think at the end of the day, access
to healthcare led by specialists matters whether or not you're
a rockstar economy. And at the rate we're going, we're
going to have a critical shortage of doctors. Doctors have choices.
It's an international market, and our closest neighbor pays significantly
more for their skills. So I think there are some
hard decisions we need to make as a country, irrespective

(02:35):
because access to healthcare isn't based on business or rockstar economy.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I agree with you. Look, I've got some sympathy, but
I mean this, we're all off to Australia. Australia pays
more to it. That's always been the case and it
will probably always be. We're never going to be able
to compete with a twenty six million population or a
three hundred and twenty million American population. It's just it
is what it is.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
That's true. But Health New Zealand have also chosen to
suppressed staffing levels so for.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Our members because they haven't any money, Well no.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I don't. That's choices, right, that's choices about how you spend.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
So Sarah, where would you get your money from? So
whatever you want, where do you get that money from?
Who do you take it off? Tell me this morning
who do you take it off to pay your doctors?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Well, my view would be that we would look really
carefully at the taxation system and make sure that it's.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Text people more well.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Our recent report says that the tax based health system
is actually really efficient and works well as long as
enough money goes into it. And as you know from
our recent report, the Ministry have been misreporting our actual
health spend for some years and haven't been contributing comparative
data to the OECI did since twenty eighteen because they
don't know how to do it.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
What do you say to the people who are missing
out next week?

Speaker 2 (03:53):
I say, we're really sorry that you're missing out next week.
But what do we say to the people who have
missed out this week and the week after that and
the week after that. Because ask any of our members
and the queue of people suffering from unmet need, unable
to access healthcare is a reality every single day. It's
just health New Zealand doesn't talk about it on those days.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
All right, Sarah, appreciate your time. You have a good
week in Sarahdalton, who's the Associated Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
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