The Australian Medical Association's new president has vowed to repair the group's relationship with government, which he says has been partly damaged by speaking out on asylum seekers.
Western Australian obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Michael Gannon - who counts Coalition MPs among his friends - pledged to work "constructively" with whichever party formed government, shortly after he won the association's election at its national conference in Canberra on Sunday.
The doctors' union has lobbied against a range of Coalition policies under outgoing president Associate Professor Brian Owler, including its failed $7 GP co-payment and abandoned hospital funding formula. It recently launched a public campaign against the Turnbull government's extended freeze on Medicare rebates to 2020, warning patients this could lead to GPs charging a co-payment of up to $20.
Dr Gannon, formerly the president of the association's Western Australian branch, told Fairfax Media that its relationship with the government had been problematic, partly because the group had taken too many "risks" in criticising it on politically contentious issues such as asylum seekers.
Professor Owler has criticised the medical treatment offered to asylum seekers in detention, and intervened amid concerns a child known as Baby Asha could be forcibly removed from hospital and taken to detention. The child was ultimately released into community detention.
He has also called for an end to the detention of child asylum seekers, and accused the Department of Immigration of intimidating their doctors to prevent them speaking out publicly.
"I think there might have been a view formed in government that we weren't partners, that we weren't prepared to listen," Dr Gannon, who has named assistant health minister Ken Wyatt and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann among his friends, said. "That is not the case. We want to work constructively across the whole of the system and get back to talking about [health] issues."
Dr Gannon said: "It's not the AMA's job to talk more generally about asylum seeker policy. But it is their job to defend clear ethical principles regarding the health of asylum seekers [and] appropriate scrutiny of that care."
While he was prepared to speak out against policies "in an inconvenient way for government ... the AMA is strongest when talking about health issues using our expertise. Our moral arguments are stronger when we're talking about established principles of medical ethics and medical scientific evidence."
He hoped to offer "constructive solutions" whenever he criticised the government, saying that "everything should be on the table" when negotiating on the future of Medicare rebates.
The association's relationship with the government, regardless of the party in power, was more important than ever because the health system was at a "crossroads", he said, with a number of ongoing government reviews into the Medical Benefits Schedule, private insurance and primary care.
"If the government does not talk to the AMA, and vice versa, we are both poorer, and it is our patients who suffer most."
Victorian GP and former president of the Association's Victorian branch, Dr Tony Bartone, was voted vice-president. Dr Gannon and Dr Bartone will each serve two-year terms.
Meanwhile, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' ad campaign against the extended Medicare rebate freeze will begin airing on Sunday night, in time for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's second leaders' debate at the National Press Club. The 45-second ads, which depict scenes of ill women who are unable to afford doctor appointments, will run throughout the election campaign.
Labor, which introduced its own eight-month pause on the indexation of rebates in 2013, has vowed to lift the extended freeze if elected.
